REVIEW: 'Stranger Things' Season 5 Finale Exposes The Duffers' Weakness as Writers and Showrunners
- Christopher Mills
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Netflix's staple hit show, Stranger Things, has finally come to its end after 5 seasons and 42 episodes, with numerous spin-offs on the way, video games and non-stop merchandise. The Duffer Brothers had something extremely special with Stranger Things Season 1, but as the show went on, it left behind the small-town mystery and slowly moved onto a grander supernatural story as we faced monsters and creatures that had the power to destroy the town of Hawkins and the rest of the world with it.
The fourth season introduced Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bowers) as Stranger Things' overall villain, who was behind the scenes from the very beginning, and the Duffers did an amazing job setting up Vecna as a villain due to the stakes that were built in the fourth season with the many deaths that took place and Max's entire storyline, which saw her on the run from death. Stranger Things had never felt that good, with episodes reaching feature film runtime lengths to tell their story, which some people weren't the biggest fans of, but unfortunately, the Duffers seemed to have given up with their final season and its finale, which felt like it missed a few notes.
Stranger Things Season 5, Episode 8, "The Rightside Up", follows Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and the party as they initiate their final plan to stop Vecna from merging the Abyss with their world.
This show started off with a small-town mystery that was able to catch the attention of its audience and was filled with great performances all around, from the kids to its A-list stars like Winona Ryder. The Duffer brothers had a hold of the show when they were dealing with such a small-scale story, but as the seasons went on, the scale of their battle got larger. This finale proved that the Duffers weren't ever capable of handling a story of this scope. There are just too many variables which they lost control of.
It's a 2-hour and 8-minute finale which spends the first hour on the battle against Vecna and the Mind Flayer, while the second half acts as an epilogue that wraps up (almost) everyone's story. There are some people who seem to be mistaken about what most fans of the show wanted from the ending. There is a strong lack of character deaths throughout the show when it comes to the core cast. The Duffers struggled to kill Steven and Hopper and failed to even kill off Max (Sadie Sink), who still would've received the same storyline in this season but instead would've gotten a bittersweet ending. With how large the stakes are, not enough casualties take place, and it personally stops Stranger Things from being a show that can be taken seriously when its writers are too afraid of giving any of their characters an ending that isn't happy.
The epilogue manages to still be satisfying as a long-time fan of the show, and it does without a doubt give a euphoric feeling seeing the kids we've grown up with graduate, but the epilogue still leaves some questions to be answered with the overall show that not even the creators are capable of answering, making you wonder if they even wrote their own show. The Stranger Things finale manages to only kill off three characters: Vecna (unsatisfyingly), Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) (predictable) and Eleven (yet again, predictable). Coincidentally, the three characters with powers are killed off to stop any sort of cycle from continuing, but it's Mike's (Finn Wolfhard) monologue in the epilogue that just makes you take a huge sigh and shake your head as the Duffers try to give hope to Eleven being alive in a situation that makes completely no sense.
Stranger Things Season 5's finale is frustrating because characters like Joyce (Winona Ryder) get no real development; characters are forgotten about, such as Vicke (Amybeth McNulty) and Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton); deaths that take place have no meaning due to Mike's epilogue; and the final battle doesn't feel like a final battle and comes off as a lacklustre attempt to make the fans cheer one last time. How could there be no Demogorgons, Demodogs, or Demobats in the finale? If the show were truly based around Dungeons & Dragons, the Party would've been facing against all of the Upside Down/Abyss' creatures as they fight their way towards Vecna and the Mind Flayer, which would've acted as a final boss.
There's no true connection to Stranger Things: The First Shadow, and the finale doesn't tell us anything new that we didn't already know, and yet again, the only performances that are worth mentioning come from Nell Fisher as Holly Wheeler, Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson and Jamie Campbell Bowers as Henry Creel/001/Mr Whatsit/Vecna. The writing might've been close to abysmal, but these four actors pulled through and gave a final performance that makes up for one of the worst finales in television history.
Stranger Things may have concluded with a finale and final season that doesn't reach the lows of The Umbrella Academy, but it for sure reaches the underwhelming disappointment of the Game of Thrones finale.
About Stranger Things Season 5
Premiere Date: November 26, 2025
Episode Count: 8
Executive Producer/Showrunner: Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer
Writers: Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer, Caitlin Schneiderhan, Paul Dichter, Curtis Gwinn and Kate Trefry
Director: Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer, Frank Darabont and Shawn Levy
Distribution: Netflix
Cast: Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Jamie Campbell Bower, Nell Fisher, Linda Hamilton, Priah Ferguson
