This is going to be a full-spoiler... rambling about the ending of Stranger Things.
The internet is a place that monetizes polarizing opinions. We've seen the absolute havoc that that's wrought on our politics, but it also applies to our cultural discourse (which is not wholly separate). My initial impressions of the end of the series was one of qualified satisfaction. The show as always a bit messy, and I fully expected it to have a messy ending.
But I do think there are some valid questions to be asked about the intent in the writing of the series and ending it in this way. The Duffer Brothers have been fairly emphatic that, while they intend to keep exploring the universe of this show, they don't intend to revisit any of its characters - so the stories of all our Hawkins gang should be seen as complete (though I could for sure see a spin-off having a cameo appearance of an established character, or even bringing one in as a regular if they felt it would help the narrative or draw viewers).
We'll start needing to get specific soon enough, so let's do a spoiler cut.
There are plenty of criticisms of the finale that I just don't feel bothered by. I had zero interest whatsoever in checking in with Derek's family, and just assume they woke up at some point and went home. I'm not really that bothered with the Demogorgons not joining in on the final battle (though I will say the fan theory that the Mind Flayer built its body out of the Demogorgons in the Abyss is a better explanation than the official one that said Vecna just wasn't expecting an attack).
I truly don't know what ending people thought the show should have, as this seemed to basically do what it needed to do, and every proposition seems to just tack on more stuff that didn't get covered, which would have led to a bloated, endless episode.
However, I don't want to dismiss all criticisms:
At the end of the series, we're left with two explanations for what happens to Eleven. One is that she's dead, presumably ripped apart by the debris swirling out of the Upside-Down wormhole as it collapses. She does this at the advice of Kali/Eight, who thinks that the government, or powerful people in general, will never stop hunting her down to get the power she has, and that only by irretrievably dying, she can keep this dangerous power out of the hands of wicked people.
Only later, far after we get the scene of this apparent... it's not quite suicide, but a refusal to go to safety, knowing it will mean her death, that Mike comes up with an alternate scenario: That Kali used the last of her strength (oh yeah, Kali is for sure super-dead) to project an illusion that would give Eleven the cover, faking her death so that the government would stop coming after her, and allowing her to escape. Mike imagines that Eleven flees the country and make it to some idyllic and remote new home (in the credits it's clear this was shot in Iceland) where she can live in peace, but sadly must never contact her friends again lest they be used to find her.
To be clear: I don't think there is a canonical ending for her - it's what you, the viewer, think feels truer. Personally, I think that this somewhat-convoluted but at least less-tragic ending is the real one. Maybe I'm just sentimental, but I also feel like this show has too much heart to kill this character off.
But either way, it's not really a happy ending for her or for Mike. Even if she's alive, she has to remain in hiding for the rest of her life, and for Mike, he's going to struggle very hard to get over her and be open to relationships with others (while I do not fault people for shipping Mike with Will, I think it's pretty well-established that Mike doesn't see him that way, and I know there's a proud history of shipping canonically straight characters with characters of the same sex, I'll leave that to the fanfic writers. Besides, do you want Will to wind up with someone who's always going to be pining for the girl he lost?)
I think, though, there's a kind of broader thematic idea here: why does Eleven need to sacrifice herself (either her life or just her "life with her friends")? I mean, obviously, we have the logical reason - she seems to have the only really pure strain of Henry's psychically-enhancing blood, and so by taking herself out of the equation, the reality-threatening experiments stop. But on a thematic level, Eleven is still a child - only I think 15 or 16 by the time of the finale. Are these really the only solutions available to her predicament?
On a thematic level, the power of friendship, as cheesy as that can feel, has always been the best solution. It's what allows them to defeat the Mind Flayer, an eldritch horror from another dimension. Is that power not sufficient in the face of human callousness, cruelty, and ambition? I'm not saying that that's an invalid theme to land on, but it's a really dark one for a show that, while it's got a lot of horror elements, is ultimately more of a fun thrill ride.
Weirdly, it reminds me a bit of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the finale of Buffy's 5th season, the eponymous Slayer is forced to sacrifice herself to save both the world and her sister (even if her sister was manifested into reality only recently, she has a full memory of growing up with her, and Dawn, the sister, was made fully human). Buffy gives up her life to do this, even as she's spent the previous 5 years struggling with the pressure that someone only gets to take over from her once she kicks it (though it's a little messy, as that technically already happened). This happened to mark the end of the show's run on the WB, but it was picked up for two more season on UPN, during which Buffy was resurrected in the 6th season premiere and then went on to have, what I think, was basically the ideal ending, where her power was shared to girls all over the world, activating every potential Slayer, no need for anyone to die for the power to pass on.
Even if the last season wasn't great, that conclusion to the series really worked well, an uplifting solution to a conflict that had been part of the show from the start.
Eleven was always being pursued by the government - that's been part of the show's DNA from the start - but we never saw it presented as this "as long as you're around, the world is in danger" conflict until the final season. I think if that had been better-established early on, the show would have had sufficient build-up to A: fake us out with her death and B: have a more conclusive happy ending where the gang all comes up with some solution to keep her both alive and free.
Stranger Things, since season 2, has always presented its seasons as sequels, and I think that might also give us a bit of insight into how it was written: I wonder if Henry/One/Vecna as an idea had even crossed their minds when season 3 wrapped. While I think that he was a good villain (and Jaime Campbell Bower did a great job with him,) I suspect that I wouldn't feel any real hint of his presence in the previous three seasons.
I don't think Stranger Things suffered from poor forward-planning as much as shows like the Battlestar Galactica remake or Lost, both of which really built themselves around the revelations of their central mysteries. Stranger Things was generally more concerned with "how do we save the day?" than "who is that mysterious character in the shadows?"
But I think we can see a bit how a big thematic idea like "Eleven has to sacrifice herself to protect the world" really needed to be seeded earlier. The notion isn't even really brought up until the second half of the season.
I think there's a big discussion about how Hollywood has forgotten to write with narrative economy now that serialized television is as big a thing as movies, and that big-budget movies are now always serialized series. I don't want to get into all of that here, but I think we can apply this idea to Stranger Things: Eleven's death (or disappearance, if you believe like Mike does) feels like a bit of an emotional sucker-punch, rather than something that felt inevitable. Hopper tries to tell Eleven to hold off on making any big decisions about that until the Vecna problem is solved, and while perhaps the notion was that Hopper was in denial that he was about to lose his surrogate daughter, I, as an audience member, also kind of felt like he had a point.
Sure, the military shows up the moment they get out of the Upside-Down right as it's about to blow, but that in and of itself feels like it wasn't really given the time to breathe as a plot beat.
Just to be clear, these critiques are not here to tell you that I think "the final season was trash" or some other maximalist take that seems to go around on social media. I actually liked it quite a bit, and I think if I were to give my season rankings, I'd probably go 1, 4, 5, 3, 2.
But most works can be improved, and Stranger Things was, for sure, not perfect. Given my sentimental affection for the show, I'd have preferred that it was one of those transcendent artistic experiences where everything fits together like clockwork and lands perfectly. Those experiences are rare, though. And given what a massive hit it was for Netflix, you can be sure that there were a lot of cooks in that kitchen.
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