I know I never post about Stranger Things, but I just want to rant into the void for a bit.
I just hated the finale. If I'm honest, I don't believe it was complete garbage like I've seen a lot of people saying, but I have no interest in jumping in to defend it, even where it's undeserved.
It... disappointed me. I didn't find it fitting.
And I am fed up with seeing it being discussed everywhere, but I just can't escape it. And the more I see people share what the writers have said about it, the less I like it. I watched the finale almost a week ago and should probably do a rewatch before talking about it because my memory is just that bad, but this is more of a vent than a review. It's less of an actual analisys, and it's more about how I feel about it, but especially trying to figure out exactly why I feel like this and what it meant to me now that I have to see what the writers were trying to say everywhere.
To be fair, there are things I did love about it. [Dustin's arc, his tribute to Eddie speech during the graduation, come to mind. Also Nancy shooting from the camion, Max and Lucas are cute, and in general the little moments between characters. I also loved Hopper's speech to El after he had pulled her out of the tankÂ, though that was ruined but what came after, but I'll get to it.]
I will also say, I have seen a lot of talk about supposed "plot holes" and while some things were actually missed there, I personally & respectfully, don't really care about those. How did Max graduate? If Vecna was in the upside down in S1, how was will able to hide from him for a week? Yeah, sorry, I don't care.
To me, what had always made this show great was the connections between the characters and they were so important because all parties were important. They had a huge cast, and the way they connected to each other was just genuinely great to watch.
In season 5, things were different. The party was almost sidelined compared to earlier seasons, and split in favor of other arcs, which has been happening more and more after season 1. Dustin with Steve, Will with Robin, Lucas and Max. Mike... he was also there I guess.
There is nothing wrong with this, and it worked because those were all still connections, and they were great. And their independence from each other also works, in a way, with an epilogue, where the party says goodbye before going to college, and the older group (Robin, Steve, Nancy, Jonathan) meets, implying they will all drift apart eventually, but their friendship was meaningful. And their friendship had been set up so strongly since S1 that it did not take that much screentime to sustain. Nobody has a doubt they have been close friends in the between seasons. But while the party's scene hits hard enough, the older group's goodbye isn't remotely as strong as it could have been.
Take Steve. There are a lot of characters's connection that were just not developed onscreen in favor of other things-that has been the case since season four (Nancy and Robin, El and Max, Jon and everyone who isn't Nancy), which is a pity but doesn't drag the show down as much as what they did with Steve in S5. They dedicated a lot of time to his "love triangle" with Nancy and Jonathan, to then dismissed it offhandendly in an unrelated dialog. Then had Steve and Jon make peace over the latter saving the other's life, which lead to the clarification that none is ending up with Nancy, and then playing it like this group of four friends care a lot about each other and it's a bittersweet truth that they'll slowly drift apart. I guess that works for some people, but to me... I just don't care? I don't find their frienship compelling or meaningful as a group, so it doesn't break my heart if they don't stay in touch. Steve is pining for Nancy, who does not seem to care about him in any meaningful way, she is friends with Jonathan and Robin (though I don't think she even knows Robin is a lesbian), while Robin is closer to Jonathan's younger brother than to him, and Jon and Steve don't really like each other (unless I was not supposed to believe them when they said this, which could be, or I'm supposed to believe they grew closer in the months before the epilogue, although Jon had moved away...)
They could have solved the tension between steve and Nancy at the beginnig of s5-> have steve and Jon clear up the air -> making Jon realize Steve was never the problem and break up with nancy -> maybe throw in a "thank you, Robin, for being there for my younger brother, he looks so confident" -> getting to the big boss fight with them feeling like friends; and then I would have found this poignant and meaningful, and bittersweet.
Alternatively, they could have killed Steve off during the big fight. Don't get me wrong, Steve is, like, my favorite character, I am glad he survived! But what was the point of him and Nancy, his competition with Jonathan if we're supposed to read them as a close-knit friend group?
(Also, talking about Steve: the only son of a rich lawyer. How is his dad fine with what he's doing with his life? Cutting him off to "teach him a lesson" was one thing, but it has been what, 4 years? Shouldn't the lesson be learned, at this point? I would think Steve would move away if only to not have to deal with his parents, but I guess they literally disowned him.)
Also, I did like Stancy-but I'm not a shipper and definitely not to the point where I wanted her to compromise and have children. Had it been up to me it would have been Ronance all the way, okay? But looking at what they went with and that was never on the table unlike Stancy, moreover it's kind of implied in the finale that Steve fulfills his dream by becoming a teacher, so it's not like that was an actual issue. And if it was, it was okay too--but after S4 I'm supposed to believe she hadn't feelings for him? Though I do get why they couldn't have her say "I like you, but this isn't what I want", because that would have made for a even shittier friend group than what it turned out to be. (And in retrospect, having Nancy act jealous of Robin in S3/S4 while she has moved on from Steve is a little misogynistic.)
All this is something that I found underwhelming, because from Stranger Things I expected more, but ultimately I could have easily looked past all that because it's not actually that important. I'm not arguing that stancy should have been endgame, I just find it significant because it was given a lot of focus, and it does not serve the story (or the planned ending) at allâwhich makes me suspect it was only there to feed into the shipping. They wanted to go out big, be watched and be discussed more than ever before, and if they had clarified Stancy and Byler were not happening back in Vol1 (which for the direction they took the story in could have benefitted it, for Steve because of what I mentioned earlier, and Mike and Eleven's final goodbye would have hit harder if half the audience hadn't been convince they had broken up off-screen between seasons.) it might have hurt their numbers.
Oh, well, if this had been my only issue with the finale I would still think it was pretty good.
What to me damnes the series is Jane's "sacrifice". And the reason that were given for it on top of that makes it worse.
I remember talking to my brother before S5 came out with my speculations, and I told him one thing I did not want to happen was for Eleven to sacrifice herself like she did in S1.
I am fine with characters dying, even my faves. I don't love it, but I accept it easily. I am fine with Eleven dying. But there is a huge difference between a character dying, and a character committing suicideâand the way Eleven's is framed is especially awful to me. And I see discussions on reddit and they talk about it like it's some empowering choice.
She didn't seem so understanding of Hopper when she had found he had planned to make the same choice earlier in the season. I guess she realized he'd been right all along. Maybe she forgot how it felt after S3, or didn't think anybody could feel that way about her. Shit, it gets bleak fast.
And it sucked even more, because the threat she was shielding the world from was hypothetical and contrived. You mean to tell me that the branch of the military who opposed brenner and considered 11 a failed experiment and wanted to get rid of her in S4 was planning of making more numbers?
Also, if all they needed was her blood, how am I supposed to believe doc Brenner never attemped it? Esp in season 4? They even gave the military a weapon which not only disables El's power, it entirely incapacitates herâbut which does not affect regular humans at allâjust for this.
(They are so sure El's blood would work where Kali's didn't, they must have tried it. They must have stored some blood of hers and just ran out. Which would mean her sacrifice is futile and there already are new numbers running around. But maybe El survived and before going to Iceland hunted them down for one last Star Wars reference.)
I guess it's okay to be a bit different, but if you are TOO different you gotta kill yourself. Sorry, it's not funny, but that exactly what crossed my mind watching the scene... after what Jane went through in Lenora that is what her suicide tells me.
And it sucks because while Stranger Things has been dark and depressing, at times, it has never been this bleak. And the way they play it off is like they are even unaware of how bleak this is.
Then I log on the internet and read that Eleven was supposed to represent the magic of childhood. And it's just baffling.
Whose childhood, exactly? The party's? Mike's? The viewers'? The writers'?
I'm genuinely trying to understand, because I don't get it. I would probably still feel the same way if I didâI do think that a story like this should work on its own even if you missed the allegories, and I think that she could have died/disappeared ambiguously in a variety of ways. But they did want her to choose it, and acted like it was her way to finally take her destiny in her handsâlike everytime she had chose to go back to save her friends in s2 and 4 hadn't been her choice! She has been doing this all along! She struggled with her identity, not self determination. Choosing this does not add anything to her character.
Maybe I could see El as a symbol of the magic of childhood in season one, when Mike and the party was the focus, when Eleven felt less like a real person. When they were still acting like children, treating the search for Will like it was a game. But all that is long gone by s5, and like I said earlier, they are just not that central anymore.
For the viewers, yeah, I guess the 80's nostalgia is powerful. I can see how the show kind of embodies that, with its spooky vibe and so on, but that hits only for their generations, which aren't even that much older than mine and still I don't really find it to be nostalgic nor inherently about childhood. And most of the vibe came from the mystery of the upside down, but that incomprehensible evil that was found in that dimension was gone once Vecnaâand to some extent even Billyâshowed up.
Obviously, they couldn't say that the upsidedown was represented the magic of childhood itself, because then Will would have wanted a word; but to me, there is not a big distiction. Eleven was the one to open the door, to create the wormhole, and they do disappear when El doesâtemporarily at the end of season one and permanently in the series finale. I guess from Mike's perspective El's what turns that traumatic experience into a somewhat positive one, which fits with that reading for him; but, again, that was just in season ONE.
El has spent the years since becoming her own character. Her struggles when she finally entered the real world felt relatable, realâat least they are to me, because I remember what it was like being a weird, neurodivergent and heavily depressed girl with no friends in high school.
It just feels gross to me that they took this and just went down that route. The writing even had to force it up until the end: the characters didn't really need to leave from the same gate they went in, they could've just ditched the cars. It was a stupid decision that could not be explained. They were 15 medium to higly intelligent people, and it didn't occur to any of them that it was a really stupid idea? I get that El was tired, but Vecna was defeated, they could've spared a few hours to recharge her battery.
These are things I would look past if they didn't lead to something that ruined the show, for me. But this way I can't just see El's "sacrifice" as insulting and unfitting, it was also contrived. And she could've died fighting, but I'm supposed to find her making that choice for herself more powerful? A girl who has never truly lived choosing death because she was too much for this world? Choosing to disappear? The beautiful speech from her dad dismissed by her own about having grown up and needing being allowed to choose for herself? Which was great from Will to his mother but much less so when it was literally about suicide? And making it ambiguous is supposed to make it okay? Am I missing something? Is it actually some empowering choice, after all?
I think that the big issue I have with all this stems from the fact that I have never read the show as being about growing up, either. To me it was about what it means to be different, one's connections, and how they are changed by them. And after the wormhole reveal I only felt more strongly about this, so to have El sacrifice her own connectionsâwhich she does however you chose to read itâthis way just feels bleak, to me.
I was aware ofâbut personally never agreed withâthe criticism that taking away the mystery from the upsidedown had ruined the show (thought I understood the point a lot of people brought up), because to me it made senseâthe UD was the different and the weird; and yes, dangerous and scary (more like reptiles and spiders than queer people). The more they interacted with it, the more it changed them, and the more the characters became a little weird and different themselves in turn, and struggled to fit in the real world. When you are already different (Eddie, El) this encounter with the weird almost literally turns you into a monster in the eyes the normal peopleâin Eddie's case, his attempt to redeem himself from something for which he was never to blame had led him to a pointless deathâsad, but a tragedy and unfair. So it didn't make sense to me that they would have the one who represented this the most to kill herself so that the world could be "normal" again.
And that was also the distinction between the upside down and Henry: he is evil because he is an homicidal maniac who believed the world need be cleansed, not because he liked venomous spiders.
(And again, that is my interpretation which I know now it's proven wrong, but that was my reading. Wrong as it may have been, I think it explains why to me, El's fate is enough to completely ruin the finale.)
Of course, she might have survived, but at this point this just feels like a way to add a layer of mystery to further the symbolism that I didn't get in the first place, rather than something real, and felt. She might not have told Mike, so that he could move on, but she could tell Hopper, Max, or Will. (I would have picked Maxâit would have been nice closure for them, she would have said goodbye to her, and Max would have called hypocritical because she had been so unable to let go that she had brought her back from the deadârevealing that she had realized it had been herâand then El would have admitted that it was a trick, but she could not tell anyone. That is because I didn't like the ambiguity in this context, so if it had to be ambiguous then I guess I would just not have stressed how great it is that she made the choice for herself.)
But she let them live with that. (If she isn't dead.) I guess I get to pick the ending I want, except not really because, oh, look, I log on the internet again (when will I learn?) and apparently there IS a correct ending, which the writers only told Millie.
Well, personally, I reject this, but thank you. They had their chance to tell their story and chose to leave it up to interpretation, and that is what it is, to me. They don't have to bother with all the secrecy, they can go on record saying that she died or that she survived and became baker, I really don't care; until they work on a sixth season or a sequel, none of that will be canon to me. (And probably even then, because I doubt I will be watching. But lets be real, they told the character's actress, do we really think they would do so if she was dead? That's too cruel. They probably told her all the details Mike could not imagine as real.)
It makes me think about Captain Disillusion's Escherian Stairwell Deconstruction video. At 12:20, there is a clip from the author explaining how he wanted to bring back that sense of awe he felt as a kid watching movies like 2001, and how contemporary movies don't give him the same feeling anymore, going on to wonder why that is. Captain Disillusion then gives his explanation that it's normal, it's because he grew up.
It makes me think that the Duffer brothers had the same goal, while being self aware of the nature of that feelingâthe allegory works for them, but didn't seem to consider that it falls apart the moment one doesn't identify with Mike. And they had written like it this way in S1 and they just couldn't let it go.
In the end I know Stranger Thing probably just... wasn't for me. I just cannot comprehend how this symbolism works, and I guess that's my limit. But I really loved this show until this and I can't help being disappointed. I don't think it was remotely as bad as, say, GoT; but that was a very low bar and as far as I'm concerned, it's still not really good.
But the most damning thing of all, is that now when anyone tags ST, it's never Star Trek!
Anyway, if anyone understands this "symbol of the magic childhood" and feels like explaining it to me respectfully, I am genuinely interestedâI won't like it but at least I won't hate the finale as much.
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