Nearly a decade of Netflix’s most popular and long lasting series, Stranger Things comes to a grand finale, with the final season closing out, at last, the Upside Down frenzy we’ve been living in, as a fantastical escape from an otherwise tumultuous last 9 years we’ve all had IRL. Nothing has come close to this level of involved excitement since the Avengers x MCU ended.
Apart from wrapping up the entire franchise, Season 5 more specifically concludes the story of Season 4, that introduced the evil Vecna, as the puppet master of everything that’s been happening in Hawkins since the beginning. After suffering defeat at the end of S4, he returns both as Vecna and as Henry with a bigger plan for destroying human kind, not just from the Upside Down, but from another world in another dimension (the Abyss), by once again kidnapping and preying on the minds of impressionable and weak children. The intrepid gang from Hawkins, led by our favourite teenagers, once again unite and hatch multiple ideas to foil Vecna’s plans, with an attempt to save the world, while simultaneously battling death and near-death situations, suffering losses and pain, while battling their own inner demons, emotions and growing up.
Enough has been said about how disappointing the much-anticipated and highly hyped last episode of Season 5 was. All I’ll say about that is, there’s no way it could have lived up to the hype. Nothing really can. But objectively, was the much awaited final battle against Vecna underwhelming? Yes, for sure! For all its faults, what the Avengers End Game (2019) got superbly right was the final war against Thanos and his army. In fact, across Infinity War (2018) and Endgame, we were deeply satisfied with the fights, the action, and the revenge. Stranger Things Season 5 definitely mis-played this. And granted there is no excuse for it, given how tuned in Netflix and everyone is to the audience expectations through social media. They must have known what the audience was looking for. And to get that wrong is a big miss.
(And on a side-bar, for all of us James Cameron nerds, what a waste of Sarah Connor, I mean Dr. Kay!)
However, and this is the classic battle of perspectives - short term vs. Long term. Is this one thing or one episode bad enough to take away from the entire Season? After having blown our minds in Season 4, with Vecna as the source-code of everything, Season 5 takes it to a logical conclusion on what Vecna’s ultimate mission is, bending our minds further, re-positioning the Upside Down from ‘another dimension’ to actually a ‘worm-hole’, re-positioning the role of a larger number of children in the whole mix, and even re-positioning Will and Vecna themselves in the roles they play in the whole narrative. In that sense, Season 5 continues the legacy of new twists, turns and concepts in the narrative, that we have come to expect from Stranger Things.
Season 5 also continues the other core strength of this franchise, which is about building characters and the relationships between them. Season 1 gave us the first set of characters - Will, Mike, El, Dustin, Lucas, Steve, Jonathan, Nancy, Joyce and Hopper. Season 2 gave us Kali, Max, Bob, Billy and a transformed Steve, with a new unexpected friendship with Dustin. Season 3 gave us Robin, Smirnoff, and Murray. Season 4, apart from Henry, gives us new relationships, Joyce and Hopper getting together, Nancy and Jonathan’s weakening relationship, Lucas and Max’s strengthening bond; Will and Robin’s sexuality, separation of friends that come together, Eddie and the Hellfire gang, Nancy’s fiercely brave and independent streak. Season 5 then continues this streak, with new characters in Holly (Mike and Nancy’s little sister who is now a pre-teen) and Dipshit Derek (my favourite character from Season 5), new bonds between Will and Robin, transformation of Will’s character into a stronger-yet-vulnerable adolescent, and so on.
In fact, this is perhaps the most important reason why one episode or even an entire Season is not enough to erode our decade-long “relationship” with the franchise. We know and love these people from Hawkins, as if they are our own. We know Hopper can’t let El go, because of the pain he’s suffered on losing his first daughter to disease, that he still blames himself for. We can feel Joyce’s helplessness at not being able to help her children, even as she fights the guilt she bears for not being around for her kids more. We cry with Will, when he feels alone and weak, because he is still in the closet and doesn’t even know what the closet is all about. We strengthen with the power of connection that Max and Lucas share that will save them both. We are brave and courageous with Nancy to kick any bad-ass that comes in front of us. We lament with Dustin as he loses his best friend Eddie (actually) and Steve (emotionally) and cheer when they get back together again. And we kind of get Mike and El’s romance too (okay may be that’s a stretch!).
One under-whelming anti-climax episode is not going to change that, is it?
Season 5 also closes out one important angle, according to me. And that is a point of view or a larger perspective that the narrative has been chasing across five seasons. And this is in the area of creating a more inclusive and a connected society, that treats the differences and diversity between people as a means of cohesion rather than a cause to fragment, that doesn’t reject the relatively less fortunate and ‘weaker’ people, but instead helps them transform into areas of strength towards the benefit of the larger cause. From Will the Weak, to, Will the Wise. From the beginning Stranger Things gives agency to kids rather than adults. It’s the kids who are leading, plotting, kicking ass and saving the day. The adults are just enablers. And even in the kids, it’s not the stars and the achievers of Hawkins school, but the freaks and the outcasts that are making things happen. Even within adults, Joyce, Hopper, Murray, Bob, are all people on the outer-skirts of socially accepted citizenry. Will and all the kids that are picked on by Vecna (as explained by himself) are those children that are weak and vulnerable and in some sense outcasts by the mainstream.
Further, throughout all the seasons, all the action and success and glory that happens is never an outcome of one person’s effort. Everyone in the casting has a role to play towards the larger common purpose of defeating Vecna. Each of them, a unique character, and different from each other, but each of them contributes in some way or the other. Even Erica (Lucas’s precocious little sister) and Mr Clarke’s (the school science teacher) play their part in the whole thing. No one is left out. Everyone has respect. And everyone matters. No job is big or small. No one has the main character energy. They all play their part. And they all play as a team. And if this wasn’t sufficiently clear all this while, Dustin nails it in his valedictorian speech at the end, as they graduate as the Class of 1989.
And finally, while many have criticised the over-emo-drama in the last hour of the final episode, it was necessary to have done that. It was the final ending of the decade long franchise. The series owed it to its fans to have a proper closure of emotions and relationships between the different characters. Killing Vecna and saving the world, while critical, was not the only deliverable of Stranger Things. A little bit of nostalgia for the time gone by, and giving us a clear direction on how the lives of each of the characters would go in the future, including the future of the game Dungeons and Dragons, that started it all, was an important ending in itself.
In the end, we say a big THANK YOU to Netflix and to Duffer Brothers for creating a whopper of a franchise when none existed just a decade ago. Not an easy feat in a day and age, where all popular content is just re-makes or sequels of old franchises. Thank you for the beautifully human and nuanced characters, including Vecna. Thank you for giving agency to the children, who will save us all in the future. Thank you for the relationships and emotions between a myriad set of characters. Thank you for the spooks, the chills, the action and the shock-n-awe. Thank you for the Upside Down (I still prefer it by itself without the wormhole angle, TBH). Thank you for a whole new imagination. And thank you for the whole 1980s nostalgia trip.
Can’t wait for what you create next, Duffer Brothers. Will be waiting for it..
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