At the end of an era, the instinct has always been to look back. That’s especially true for television, and just as valid: audiences want to reflect on all the ways their favorite characters have grown, the hardships they’ve overcome, the relationships they’ve forged. It’s why it’s so common to see flashbacks in a series finale — but the final episode of Stranger Things takes that expectation and pushes it far beyond its breaking point.
Inarguably Netflix’s biggest series, Stranger Things was always going to get an outsized farewell. It’s a major money-maker for the streamer; the foundational franchise for an entire generation of TV watchers. But from the very beginning, the final season felt way too bloated. Matt and Ross Duffer, the creators of the sci-fi series, described Season 5 more like “eight blockbuster movies” than a television show. They also intended to split all that into three “volumes,” adhering to one of Netflix’s most irritating release habits. The more the Duffers spoke about their plans, the more they seemed to get lost in their own ambitions. And though the season certainly started strong, it eventually lost all the goodwill it’d spent years building, skimping on satisfying answers to nearly a decade’s worth of questions — or any truly challenging developments, for that matter — in favor of tedious walks down memory lane.
