SPOILERS are ahead for the Stranger Things finale, now streaming with a Netflix subscription.
There’s few TV finales that have been as highly anticipated as the end of Stranger Things. Leading up to the last episode, our theories kept piling up, but the biggest question on everyone’s minds was this one: ‘Who’s going to die?’ Now that we know all the characters’ fates, I can’t help but think about what the Duffer Brothers told CinemaBlend just ahead of the finale about how they approached executing the ending.
At the time, “The Rightside Up” hadn’t yet come out, so I didn’t know that the only characters that would die would be Vecna/Henry Creel, Kali and Eleven, who is presumed dead, but really her fate is up in the air. Here’s what Ross Duffer told us about killing characters:
There's so much noise around the show and everyone wants different things, et cetera. So, because the fan base is so large and the demographic is so spread, that at the end of the day you just can't really worry about it too much. You're gonna drive yourself crazy. So, our approach is sort of to try as much to replicate how we wrote Season 1, which is just rely on each other and our instincts and rely on the other writers in terms of what feels right to us. And, if Ross and I are happy with it and the other writers are happy with it, and then ultimately if the actors are happy with it, we feel we've landed in a good place. And hopefully that resonates with the audience.
Fans have essentially had from the finale of Season 4 (which came out back in July 2022) until New Year’s Eve of 2025 to make guesses and bets about who would survive the end of the show. It became an obsession of the fandom, with it being popular for fans to get worried about the fate of Steve Harrington in particular, and update odds and guesses up until the two-hour episode dropped on December 31.
As Ross Duffer shared, they decided to drown out the “noise” of outside opinions and ultimately do what felt right to them and the writer’s room. They said they were inspired a lot by their work on Season 1, before the show became a phenomenon. I can absolutely see that in the episode itself, especially regarding that emotional D&D sequence with Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas and Max. He also told us this:
It stressed us out… You spend so many hours in the writer's room, so we probably explored every single possible version, right? Which is always fun. And you're like, ‘What does this do to the show? What does this do to the other characters? What feels natural? What feels forced?’ I mean, that's the thing. You never want to do something for shock value. So that's the thing that Ross and I wanted to avoid. It always has to be, if you're gonna do something, there has to be a reason behind it that is much more meaningful than just shocking or surprising the audience. So, that was sort of how we approached it.
As they probably expected, since the finale aired, there’s been a lot of conversation about what was good about it and the things people didn’t like about it. I know I found it to be really emotionally satisfying to see it all play out, even if the finale epilogue doesn’t completely add up for Max and Dustin. (It even had one more big music moment I can’t stop thinking about!) Tons of fans were even afforded the opportunity to see it in theaters with fellow fans. So, all around, I'd say we got a great ending!
Plus, the Duffer Brothers told Variety this week that they are working on a Stranger Things spinoff, which will answer fans' questions about the mythology of that stone with “completely new characters, new town, new world, new mythology." So, as we say goodbye to Stranger Things, it’s interesting to hear their perspectives on writing the last episode and how they handled the outside pressure.
