By Lottie Merchant, Second Year, English Literature
Volume 2 and the finale of the fifth season of Stranger Things (2016-) was a far cry from the enigmatic mystery of the first seasons of the show. The beloved series began as a small-town mystery with the disappearance of the 11-year-old Will Byers. As the show has progressed through four more seasons, there has been an increase in its audience, but alongside that, there has also been an increase in scope. Stranger Things 5 (2025) focuses on saving the world from Vecna, the all-powerful monster that wants to eradicate humanity.
With volume two released on boxing day and the finale on New Year’s Day, the series has received a rather conflicting discourse. Social media platforms have accommodated discussion of both the praise and grievances viewers have experienced. With a lot of online conversations reducing the plot of the series to ‘bad writing’ and the look of it to ‘Netflix lighting’; but these are redundant readings of some of the really disappointing aspects of the final season of this beloved series. Stranger Things 5 felt to me, a bit of a long-drawn-out mess, with its huge scope, huge cast and huge amount of story lines rambling on and tangling up with one another. The end of Stranger Things felt somewhat directionless, confusing and just far too safe for a series that started out so inspired and intriguing.
This volume and the finale really, really, suffered from telling opposed to showing. The characters of this season relentlessly pitch to each other their plans and ideas of how they are going to defeat the villain, Vecna. Through various analogy and over explanation we are told their plans - so much runtime is consumed by this motif of characters telling us what they’re going to do and how they’re going to do it. When you watch it, it feels as though the writers think you’re stupid - or that you’re not fully concentrating. And that’s the thing - we aren’t fully concentrating.
Production companies are making content for the second screen generation.1 They have to make their TV shows comprehensible to someone with divided attention; when scrolling, replying to emails or texting we can still kind of know what’s going on because the characters are almost self-narrating. Maybe it could be argued that this is a problem that’s much bigger than season 5 of Stranger Things, but for those who are fully concentrating, watching it begins to become tedious when you have to listen to Robin or Steve or Lucas or Will explain what they’re about to do instead of just doing it, over and over again.
On the other hand, a lot of people are calling this season too confusing. A result of weak dialogue and far too many stories and characters to follow. I think a good example of this is the scene where Nancy and Jonathan ‘break up’ in episode six. The couple have been together since series two and in this very long scene the two believe they are going to die. Jonathon asks Nancy to never marry him, and this line elicited a huge amount of confusion from viewers. The issue is that people believed Jonathan was proposing instead of breaking up (they thought he only asked Nancy to never marry him because they’re going to die). This resorted in Matt Duffer, a creator of the show, having to confirm to People magazine that it was in fact a breakup and not a proposal. The dialogue here is misleading and obscure and also a bit unexpected as a lot of people were rooting for Jonathon and Nancy to make it work.
There was also a lot of confusion surrounding the relationship between Will and Mike. Mike asserts in the finale that ‘[we’re] not just friends’… (long pause) …’We’re best friends’. Which was again, a really weird choice of dialogue as it allowed you to think for a second that they were more than friends. This scene also came after Will’s coming out scene (a scene which Netflix have stated took 12 hours to film) which just makes it more bizarre. The show should allow us to spend more time with characters by having less of them, so we can understand them more. There are just too many to follow and none of them or their relationships are really developed this season.
Stranger Things is a series quite reluctant to killing off any characters. Across the 5 seasons, the majority of characters that are actually killed off are the ones that are brought in that same season, think back to Eddie, Bob or Kali (with the exclusion of one episode in season 2). Billy is an exception, but he only really becomes a prominent character in season 3 - the same season he dies. When I was watching season 5 it became quite apparent that the writers really do seem scared of their audience. It seems like they are trying to please as many people as they can and not offend anyone.
And incase anyone was wondering, here are all the plotholes in Stranger Things 5. pic.twitter.com/E4jq7awkDR
— 🚬 (@bangbyers) January 1, 2026
Not killing the beloved Steve Harrington may result in less outrage from fans, but what’s with all the fake-outs? Steve falls off the tower, his hand slips, they cut to black for a little too long…we think he is dead… and he is saved by Dustin. And this happens a lot in the second volume and finale with Nancy in the abyss and Eleven in the tank. I don’t think that death is the only way to elicit emotional response, but it would definitely raise the stakes a bit. Vecna is meant to be an almost invincible villain, and yet not a single member of the crew is even heavily injured when they go to attack him in the final battle. It just makes Vecna less convincing or scary.
Obviously, I am overlooking a major aspect of the finale, but this a big spoiler, so don’t read this if you haven’t watched it. In the finale, Eleven sacrifices herself with the idea that this would end the disruption. Yet even her death isn’t even fully final. In the almost hour-long epilogue, Mike tells us that he believes Kali helped her escape.
Kitty Atherton
I guess you could argue that Eleven is as good as dead because she can never return, but to me, adding this open ending seemed like they’re leaving the door open just in case they want to make a spin off. They really played this season far too safe to make it interesting.
Considering the fact that this season did have to wrap up the show, it did succeed (to an extent) in explaining the majority of the mystery and bringing it to an end. It’s easy to overlook that this is a huge task to take on. Notably, there were some great performances in this season from a lot of the main cast. I enjoyed Jamie Campbell-Bower’s performance, who was genuinely threatening as both Vecna and Henry Creel. I did also enjoy a lot of the soundtrack choices, and a lot of the fight and combat scenes were entertaining as well.
Despite all my issues with it, it was still entertaining to watch, and I respect the difficulty involved in concluding what seems the world’s most popular show right now.
Featured Image: IMDb / Lottie Merchant
What did you think of the Stranger Things finale, do you wish believe there is a hidden ninth episode?
