cutgate this conformitygate that itβs probably a sort of combo of the two, letβs be honest. this is rewritegate
just the combo of rossβs wife divorcing him and the political climate getting more rocky in the U.S., and thus netflix starts pushing against byler being the end all be all.
leigh was almost certainly a part of the creative process. itβs not like ross went home and just didnβt talk about his story, and itβs not like he didnβt accept input from his wife. when things went to shit and they divorced (early in 2024, right around when filming for s5 started) that extra input was gone, ross is left with nothing but his own idiot dumb man brain and his twin brotherβs equally idiot dumb man brain.
that combined with the continually worsening political climate, it probably involved a rewrite of the ep 6-8 scripts. netflix execs likely approached the duffers about changing their story, likely referencing to the largeness of the show and the unconventional ending.
the duffers said they fought for certain things with netflix and didnβt win them all. i would guess thatβs why the ending is the way it is, itβs likely why it feels off, why they still have that βfuck conformity!β speech from dustin while itβs the most conformist ending ever. every character is pressed into this perfect mold of whatever stereotype they fit into. lumax is just βthe couple,β dustin is βthe smart one,β will is βthe gay one,β itβs all so fucking weird. and then you have mike, who we never get the pov of past likeβ¦ s2, and somehow heβs the narrator again. heβs supposed to be the writer of this story and the clear main character whoβs now writing the endings for them all. it feels out of place because it doesnβt feel earned after the ending we just got, and it doesnβt feel like him. itβs too conventional, when we knew that mike pushed against the rules his whole time growing up.
so we get this hyper meta ending, where there are little details that would almost make us believe none of it is real, and perhaps that was intentional and its conformitygate, or maybe itβs just a bad combination of factors coming into play during the writing and filming of season 5. rossβs divorce, netflix execs, and the worsening political climate almost all played into the shit ending of stranger things, and itβs a shame to know that itβs likely true and thereβs likely an alternate ending out there somewhere, scribbled in notes and tucked away in little journals.
if this story followed a true writing process there would be evidence to an alternate ending under lock and key somewhere. maybe in rossβs nightstand, maybe hidden in the dark recesses of mattβs filing cabinet. there are likely scripts weβll never see, dialogue that will never be spoken, and scenes that will never be filmed. no cut footage, no pre-filmed alternate ending, but rather an ending that would never see the light of day because of the influence to conform. and that makes me sick and it makes me upset that the duffers couldnβt even try and write a good ending after all that. itβs like they gave up and said βwell whatever weβll still get our billion.β
itβs my only comfort, really. the idea that this show really was very very good, and part of that was because of good people and good influences. you lose those and then yeah, you really do just have two cishet white idiots sitting in their basement writing a sci-fi story. itβs a shame we got turned into noise in the end when byler was clearly intentional. thereβs no saying it wasnβt, thereβs no acting like it wasnβt deeply etched into that story from the beginning. and s5 doesnβt add up and thatβs not a sign of it never having been in the cards, but rather a shitty spackle job over the engravings scribbled across the wall. it feels covered up because it probably was covered up.
rip byler. you would have been too good for the GA anyway.