The World At My Feet

I wasn’t completely in love with the Stranger Things finale either. To some degree or another, they weren’t gonna please everyone. Still, there are certain things they probably could have/should have done better.

But most of the characters are all literal children. I’d love a secret 9th episode too. But honestly, if we don’t get one? Maybe we just didn’t see Vickie in the epilogue because in your early twenties, sometimes you can break up and move on quickly.

I’m sorry Byler didn’t work out. That would’ve been nice. Culturally, we definitely could’ve used that representation, but who is still together with the guy they had a crush on in middle school? Maybe they’ll go on their own journeys and grow and reconnect in their late twenties/early thirties? The Duffers didn’t say no. They just said “not in the next couple of years.”

For a character who represents a community that sees love as a spectrum, we sure are mad about Will’s relationships not being perfectly cut and dry. Mike too, if you’re a Byler.

In a similar vein, I guess SOME high school girls wind up with their high school boyfriend, but let’s be real. How often does that really happen? Whether you liked Nancy with Jonathan or Steve, just because they fought a war together doesn’t mean she can’t grow and move on and meet other people. Can’t friendship be enough? She looked at both of them, assessed the situation, and decided she wanted something different. Not better. Not worse. Different. That’s what it looks like to grow up.

When you’re in high school, everything feels like it matters forever. When we watched their journey, we felt that. We went back there with them. It felt good, but that doesn’t make it realistic for either coupling to last into adulthood.

Sometimes there are consequences to life. Did Eleven get the ending she deserved? Hell no! But not everyone does. Most people don’t.

Maybe Mike couldn’t say he loved her because he’s a traumatized 15 year old child with an emotionally absent father. It’s not like he’s 45 and can’t say it. Cut the kid a break!

For that matter, stop pushing the kid out of the closet! How many of you came out before you were 19? Just because you think you see it doesn’t mean he’s figured it out yet.

Mike never knew the truth behind will’s painting. In all your middle school and high school years, were you never once on the giving or receiving end of a gift that meant more than the giver let on? C’mon.

Was the ending cheesy? Yeah, but didn’t we all fall in love with the franchise for reminding us of those cheesy 80s movies we love so much? Those movies might not have been so well received in 2025. Cuz they’re cheesy. But we love them anyway.

It wasn’t a masterpiece, but most things aren’t.

But all y’all had fun, didn’t you? For a decade, we all put our heads together and used this show as an excuse to talk to each other and spend time with each other. For a decade, you all had fun coming up with theories and ships.

The Duffer Brothers had a very important platform, and we can discuss whether or not they used it to its full potential or behaved ethically or whatever

But most of the criticisms I’m seeing about the ending itself really feel more like human realism than actual plot holes. Aren’t you glad you don’t still love your middle school crush? Didn’t you dodge a bullet by not marrying your high school boyfriend? Didn’t you have fun with them in the moment anyway?

Middle school and high school—hell, life!—is hard enough without the added trauma of monsters and super powers and government conspiracies and alternate dimensions. Give the characters some room to be as human as they’ve felt to us over the years.

Can we all just take a step back and appreciate that we just had fun for a few hours in the flaming dystopian hellscape that is our reality? That it made the wheels in our mind turn? That we thought and bonded and imagined and had a good time? There’s not much that brings people together, across political and socioeconomic lines, but stories still can. Stories still do.

Sometimes it’s not that big. Remember how we all got here in the first place.