We’ve all had a few days to sit with the Stranger Things finale now, and reaction has been mixed. For every hardcore fan who found themselves in floods of tears by the end, there was a disgruntled TikToker aggressively listing all the plot holes the episode left unfilled in its race to the finish line. In other words, how you felt about Stranger Things as a whole probably determined how you felt about the way it ended.
Which, despite any qualms you may have about the finale – and we’ll get to those soon – seems like the best way anyone could possibly wrap up a series. There was no tonal pivot; no bleak, Dinosaurs-style parable; no “it was all a dream” St Elsewhere-style cop-out; no Blake’s 7-style final bloodbath. Stranger Things died as it lived – full of spectacle and sentiment (and a chronically unwieldy mythology, and way too many characters).
