the cat from the x files

but you know what i DO want? nothing burger adventures with the party. i wanna see them go on day trips to lover’s lake, pushing each other into the freezing water right before it freezes over in the winter. i wanna see them arguing over who gets front seat of steve’s car when he gets forced to drive them around. i wanna know about will and max’s secret movie nights where they’d rewatch everything the party had already seen together because they just can’t STAND when lucas and mike talk thru the plot. they need to watch it again for themselves like the movie snobs they are.

but i also want to see the deep, emotional moments. i want to see what the conversation looked like when max broke up with lucas after billy died. i want to learn how mike got back into dnd after will moved away, and the guilt he carried because of that. i want to see el sign up for after school clubs because she finally has a chance to explore her interests in lenora instead of having to hide all the time.

a battle of the minds, showing the main characters their darkest fears come true, slowly driving them insane

THIS is how you do a final battle with horror instead of action, to show that you can’t win with guns, but with love

el's humanity and personhood were disregarded her entire life until she escaped the lab, and the duffer brothers took that from her in the end by treating her as this Magical Symbol for the other characters' journeys instead of as her own person.

they took the story of a girl who was abused and isolated her whole life, then finally got free and found family and love and connection, people she considered her home, and decided to end that story with her either dead and never truly getting to experience living as a normal girl for more than 0.05 seconds, dead after all of that abuse, dead after thinking there was no hope for her future (almost as if they were validating that line of thinking), or she's alone. the girl who learned last season that her true strength came from love will never see her loved ones again. the girl who every step of the way has been independent and making her own choices but also realised that she wants most of all to be with the people she loves, that they were the home she was choosing for herself, now just has to be off on her own forever.

not in a “it was all terrible” way.

but in a “how did we fumble THIS many narrative balls in the FINAL season of a billion-dollar show” way.

and it all starts with:

⸻

THE HOLLY WHEELER PROBLEM

i said it.

i meant it.

i’ll say it again louder for the people in the upside down.

the holly plotline was useless.

not “bad.”

not “poorly acted.”

just… narratively unnecessary.

she had more screen time than half of the original cast.

HALF.

characters we’ve known since season 1 were standing in the corner like forgotten coats while holly and her little stranger squad were running around having their own side quest.

and for what?

what did it actually change?

remove the holly plotline and you still get:

• vecna

• the final fight

• the upside down

• the world ending

but suddenly you also get:

• more time for mike

• more time for will

• more time for joyce

• more time for literally anyone who mattered

they said they were “circling back to the core themes.”

FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE PREVAILS MY ASS.

this season was:

doom

gloom

crying

death

suffering for no actually reason

apocalypse

action packed bullshit

⸻

HOPPER SHOULD HAVE STAYED DEAD

i love hopper.

he is a king.

he is a dad.

he is a real life hero.

but.

HE. SHOULD. HAVE. STAYED. DEAD.

bob’s death in season 2 hit because it told us something:

no one is safe.

that’s what makes horror work.

that’s what makes you hold your breath.

now?

steve falls off a TOWER in season 5 and i don’t even blink.

i was like:

“he’s fine.”

because he is.

everyone is.

they have so much plot armor they could walk into the sun and come back with a mild tan.

when everyone is guaranteed to survive, nothing feels dangerous.

and when nothing feels dangerous, nothing feels important. Or real!

hopper staying dead would have:

• raised the stakes

• fixed the fear

• and forced eleven to grow on her own

which brings me to—

⸻

LET ELEVEN BE A PERSON, NOT A PET

this is not about ships.

do not come in here with that energy.

jane needed independence.

she needed to exist outside of:

hopper

mike

the government

netflix’s marketing department

kali should have lived.

period.

eleven could have escaped.

built a life.

been a person.

instead we got:

more suffering

more trauma

more reset-to-factory-settings arcs

girl has been through ENOUGH.

⸻

THE WILL BYERS SITUATION

they should not have dragged will being in love with mike this long.

there were two options:

1. follow through

2. shut it down early and give will a new love interest

they did neither.

they just let him suffer in the narrative corner for five seasons.

and that robin pep talk?

wasted time.

led nowhere.

gave him false hope.

then did nothing with it.

you know what that time could have been?

what were all those clues? those glances? the touches? the tension?

all these for a big Nothing Burger!

THE FINAL FIGHT.

people are not wrong when they say the final battle was barely longer than will’s coming out scene.

priorities were in hell.

⸻

CONFORMITYGATE AND THE MARKETING MACHINE

netflix knew this was controversial.

they fed it.

they promoted it.

they tweeted about it.

because controversy = clicks

clicks = engagement

engagement = money

we are not viewers.

we are metrics.

we are little corporate pawns in netflix’s chess game.

and they’re playing 4D chess with our feelings.

⸻

BACK TO HOLLY (BECAUSE I’M NOT DONE)

they aged her up.

ignored her canonical age.

made her important.

why?

new kids = new audience.

but what was their actual purpose?

“to merge the worlds.”

okay.

why.

how.

to what end.

no answers.

Pure aesthetic, zero explanation.

we didn’t need 12 new characters in the FINAL season.

we needed:

the kids we started with.

that’s it.

⸻

IN CONCLUSION

the choices this season were… interesting.

that’s the nicest thing i can say.

this could have been a beautiful, focused, emotional ending.

instead we got:

corporate storytelling

safe decisions

marketable drama

and a finale that felt like it was trying to please everyone and satisfied no one.

anyway.

i’m going to go lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling now.

reblog if you agree.

reblog if you’re mad.

Dang what a scene THAT could have been.

"you're supposed to be dead"

You are an experienced, decorated detective. You're well-known for being sharp-witted, brilliant, and you've always, always been able to solve your cases with a deadly accuracy.

But there's one case that you have never been able to solve, an inexplicable case that has been hanging for decades. You've come close, but somehow the criminal always gets away right under your nose, leaving nothing but cryptic hints and supernatural disappearances. This one case, you've never been able to understand. It's frustrating — but thrilling all the same.

One day, as you near your retirement, the same criminal begins dropping deliberate hints, all alluding to one thing: they are going to commit one last crime, one last crime that will explain everything. Decades of chasing, decades of searching, decades of defeat. One last crime, one last chance for you to set this right.

You get an anonymous tip that the criminal has been sighted for the first time in years at a nearby cafe. You rush in with your colleagues, preparing for a massacre, but you find the man you have been searching for for what feels like your entire life lounging on a plastic chair nursing a warm cup of coffee. Waiting.

He doesn't even flinch when you move to arrest him.

When you bring him back to the station and shove him inside an interrogation room, he is quiet, complacent. You begin to ask, to uncover. You think this will be the best experience of your life—finally, finally!—but it turns out to be utterly disappointing. When you ask why? he shrugs. When you ask how? he says something so absurdly ordinary that it doesn't add up. When you ask about all the clues he's left, all the trails, all the inexplicable occurrences in his wake, he says, earnestly, that he doesn't know. It was an accident, it seems. You explain to him your theories, your interpretations of his actions. He looks at you blankly. It hits you that he was never quite as clever or as astonishing as you'd thought.

At this point, you're in despair. You exit the interrogation room, to talk with your colleagues. To make sure you haven't made up everything, to make sure that all of your analyses, theories had been once been grounded in fact. Your colleagues nod — yes, of course, we'd come up with those together. Yes, of course, we'd witnessed that together.

When you return to the interrogation room, you find blood on the walls. A sharp gasp. The criminal is dead, gun still smoking in his hand. You're — shocked.

You call for help, you check the cameras, you check his pulse — he's dead. For real. Shot himself in the head.

It's over, just like that. Hundreds of answered questions. Hundreds of mysteries that have yet been uncovered. You've found the criminal, but he knows as little as you. You cannot settle with the fact that you will never receive the answers you've searched for, answers you've searched for years and years and years.

A quiet silence hangs over the meeting room. You and your colleagues settle around a round table: there's happiness, of course, that it's all over and that the criminal is dead (of course), but there's also an unsettling anger, an odd grief.

Even your colleagues with whom you have never agreed with, colleagues who have ridiculed you for your theories, for your predictions, for your assumptions sit with you, basking in that same silence.

"Maybe this isn't over," someone pipes up. "Maybe this is the final crime. Maybe we've been played."

There: the silence shatters. Everyone starts talking again, animatedly, a little hysterically. Yes, yes. It can't be over. There must be more. It can't be over: too many loose threads, too many equations unsolved. Of course this is another elaborate crime. Of course.

What are you going to tell everyone? What are you going to tell the families torn apart by these crimes? What are you going to tell to those still scared, still hurting?

What are you going to tell the kids?

The kids you had sworn to protect. The kids that have never felt like they belonged. The kids that have always felt — different.

The little kids that have felt ashamed for their love. The little girls that never had a choice. The little storytellers that have never got their happy endings.

What are you supposed to tell them? That they will always have to apologize for loving? That they will always fall in love with the wrong person? That, for some, life will always be unfair and that they will never get a chance to truly live and they must accept it? That if you can't run away from fear, you might as run into it, succumb to the pain? That they must live their whole life with regret?

You can't. You can't bring yourself to tell them you've failed them. The metaphor falls short now.