Strange Mix of Emotions

Contributions from Alessia Giordano

On December 31st at 8 PM, I turned on Netflix to watch the final episode of a TV show I have been watching for the past 9 years of my life, Stranger Things. Instead of being happy, I was appalled. I was shocked to see one of the greatest shows of our time end in such a way.

The release of volume 2 changed the trajectory of opinions for the show forever. After this volume came out, TikTok was harsh on it. Volume 2 was filled with dialogue and build-up that went nowhere. There was so much dialogue that no progress was really made in the plot. Characters like Holly Wheeler, a character who was never important until the final season, got more attention and screen time than any of the other important characters, like Joyce, Hopper, and Steve.

There were 8 episodes of the season. 4 episodes from volume one and 3 episodes from volume two. With 7 episodes complete, fans were confused to see how on earth the Duffer brothers were going to resolve so many plotlines in the finale.

When the Finale premiered, people were stoked. The moment people have waited for has finally come. The episode started off strong, but as it climaxed, many plotlines were left unattended and what seemed to be forgotten. When the climax had come to a close, many fans were upset about the final fight.  Even though the crew was able to defeat Vecna, many fans were upset about missing things in this battle. There were no signs of demogorgons or demobats that had killed previous characters like Bob and Eddie. These missing villains were very easily caught by fans, and it set them off. Another thing about the final fight that made fans upset was the duration. This fight was supposed to be one final, amazing concluding fight.

The audience of the finale felt it was a boring fight with no sort of challenges for the gang. There were also no deaths in this final battle, which fans were okay with, but felt that, with the amount of hype the finale had, there should’ve been more deaths. Even though many were upset about this, fans were not mad about the fact that eleven died. To address Mike’s theory, it’s clearly a hoax that he made up in order to cope with her death. With that, eleven’s death felt needed. Logically, there was no way a happy ending with all of them was going to happen. It also made sense that it started with her, so it ends with her.

With a show as grand as Stranger Things, strong fans did not accept a faulty ending. The media started going off on this theory, “Conformity Gate”, with the idea that the finale was a “fake” finale and a secret ninth episode was going to be released in 2026 on January 7th. Why the seventh? The answer to this question is overanalyzing. The main idea was that Mike was living a fake reality in the finale’s epilogue, as there were so many major inconsistencies. An example of this is the graduation scene, as Max Mayfield missed 2 years of high school and still graduated at the same time as the rest of the crew.

Another thing fans were looking at were Netflix, Instagram, and TikTok posts to see if there were any coincidences that point to another episode. With all this hype behind “Conformity Gate”, eventually knows what happened. January 7th rolled around, and no secret episode came out. Some fans were upset, some were already expecting no new episode.

The major coincidences in the finale can just be pointed to bad writing, as stated in the documentary of the making of the final season, that they started filming the final season without finishing the script. Astonishing, right? 

Stranger Things has been a growing phenomenon across the years, with every single season, expectations kept on rising high as more and more fans joined the fandom. The surge in social media activity during seasons 3, 4, and 5 helped spread this. But sadly, the show didn’t stick the landing as well as other shows, leaving millions upset.

There has been speculation about spin-offs, but do we really want spin-offs? Are they milking money out of this franchise? Who knows, but what we do know is that there were some very high peaks in this long-running show, and some very low lows, specifically with the ending.