Stranger Things Ends with a Shrug

Series finales are hard. Most fade from memory. Some are disasters, and a few act as a capstone to shows that’ll be in the public consciousness for decades to come. The Stranger Things finale falls somewhere in the middle. It’s okay, not awful. It returns the characters to the mundane world after their long adventure and grants them the freedom to move forward with their lives.

The writers were never going to kill off this bloated ensemble cast, which explains why more than 40 minutes of the two-hour-plus finale consists of epilogue. But contrary to what some viewers might think, character epilogues matter. Winning and then cutting to a freeze frame doesn’t show the growth characters earn through their journey.

The series' persistent dialogue repetition reflects a structural flaw common to Netflix shows, where writers assume viewers aren’t paying attention. Plans are repeated only to collapse in dramatic failure. Presumably timed for the moment a distracted viewer might glance up from their phone to see what went wrong.

Among the criticisms I’ve read about the finale, the one I agree with most concerns the use of material from the Stranger Things stage play without making that content accessible to the larger audience. I’ve walked past the Stranger Things theater in London’s West End for years without feeling compelled to see it. But if I wanted to understand Henry Creel’s backstory I should have bought a ticket. On top of the Netflix subscription I’ve paid for years to watch the streaming show.

I understand the economic advantages of mixed-media storytelling for franchise properties, and Stranger Things will become a franchise property. But as Marvel movies have demonstrated, audiences walk away when you pull story elements out of the core narrative.

Stranger Things as a franchise won’t end. The original series has been a goldmine for Netflix. But whatever spin-offs emerge will never match the online phenomenon this show became. The high-water mark of “kids on bikes save the world” has now passed.