strange, nightmarish creatures awaited me

2026 COLOUR CHALLENGE: March + Black and White ↳ theme: cinematography ↳ challenge: no faces

heart-shaped pendants ( silver ). made by me. credit not necessary. requests open.

there isn’t a single case in history where the US actually saved a country from anything, what they did leave behind, consistently, were stolen resources, exploited land, and futures permanently scarred by military dictatorships.

what the US does in the middle east is widely known, what many people still don’t fully grasp is what they’ve done and continue to do in latin america.

they funded, trained, and supported military dictatorships across most of the region, and they infiltrated our cultures in a calculated, orchestrated way that still shapes us today.

#and she did it!

I think, in many ways, the finale hit most of the marks for me in terms of closing off its characters stories. The party graduates, the older teens do what they love, Joyce and hopper get to be happy…it’s honestly more than I was expecting. I feel like many people wanted the duffer brothers to just bite the bullet and kill off a bunch of main characters, but honestly, I’m happy they didn’t.

Except, they kind of fumbled terribly when it came to their main character.

Elevens ending is a lot more lackluster for me. She’s been one of my faves on the show since the start, and she had sacrificed everything if not more for a town and a world who had been nothing but cruel to her. She was born into the world suffering and has suffered the entirety of the shows 5 seasons, and I think her choosing to “kill herself” dishonoured her character gravely. Eleven DESERVED to be happy after everything she had gone through.

The Duffer brothers deciding to leave her ending “up to interpretation” was, in my opinion, for 1) for shock value and 2) for creating ambiguity. No one truly knows if el is living somewhere far away and just faked her death as Mike had theorized. Of course you can pick apart his story and choose to decide what you believe (and obviously I choose to believe that she is alive and well), but ultimately, she is either dead after having a (mostly) terrible life and ruined childhood, or living off the grid alone and apart from the only group of people who had ever been kind to her and loved her. And that’s genuinely so disappointing to me.

I will say though, the emotional heights in the finale were done very well! Millie & Finn did fantastic on their last scene together, and the scene with Dustin, Max, Mike, Lucas & Will finishing their last game of D&D was a great way to end the show (it started how it ended, one of my fave tropes).