$480 million and no final answers: what happened to Stranger Things?

I’ve been watching “Stranger Things” since fifth grade, shortly after season two came out, and I was absolutely hooked from the first episode. I began rewatching it obsessively, dressing up as its characters every Halloween, spewing out obscure facts about the show and, all of a sudden, my bedroom started looking more like a gift shop.

I’ve spent almost half of my existence on this world fixated on this show and, I have to admit, it has taken over my life.

But something happened. I began to notice it in season four, but it really picked up in season five. It felt less mysterious. Less personal. Less… nostalgic. It was escaping the grasp of authenticity that it held in the first few seasons that made it so different from every other show and was instead becoming an over-commercialized cash grab in front of my eyes.

I knew this installment would be different as soon as I saw the first five minutes that the show most graciously posted online a few weeks before the premiere, where we get a flashback scene of a weak little twelve-year-old Will Byers—on the brink of death on his sixth day in the Upside Down—somehow mustering the strength to swing from tree to tree to escape the Demogorgon.

Like… absolutely not.

My expectations were already low, but I held onto hope. Ross Duffer had promised on an FYC panel in 2022 that season five would have a similar “tone” to season one. And Matt Duffer stated in a Variety interview last October that every remaining piece of lore had been exhausted to create a “complete story”—no plot holes, no dropped storylines and nothing unnecessary. No “Game of Thrones.” No “Walking Dead.” No “Rise of Skywalker.”

Instead, as each volume released, it became clear that the Duffers cornered themselves into a wall, inflating their show until it all eventually spilled over onto my screen in the form of eight episodes full of retconning, over-explanation, overcomplication and, in general, scenes that made me squint my eyes, tilt my head and say, “Really? Are we seriously doing this?”

And the worst part is, it doesn’t even seem like they tried to clean the mess.

Firstly, I have an issue with the characters and how they were handled this season: for example, Joyce Byers. She’s one of my favorite characters, but it was hard to give her her tens this time when her character completely flopped. What happened to the woman whose adventures stretched from communicated with her missing—presumed dead—kid using Christmas lights to hopping onto a plane with some conspiracy theorist and a Russian smuggler to a prison camp in Siberia? In season five, her role in the series was reduced to being a set of ears during heart-to-hearts with her son, scenes of which there are far too many.

The storyline of the bold mother who anchored previous seasons (dare I argue she was the main character?) completely disappeared in favor of expanding the plots of characters I unfortunately felt little emotional attachment to, such as Holly Wheeler. She got more screen time this season than the core cast, yet she still felt like such a random, last-minute addition. Holly felt oddly disconnected from her earlier appearances—like they created a brand new character and just slapped a familiar name onto it. Even her reunification with her siblings at the end didn’t make me feel anything because of how little the show seemed to want me to care about it. Not to mention the random and irrelevant plot she was attached to, which lowkey bored me to death. Sorry.

Vecna, the central villain from season four onwards, was introduced as a terrifying presence last season. He could kill people with the snap of his fingers and there was no clear method to defeat him. However, he quickly turned into more of a burden for my viewing experience in the fifth installment. Henry completely lost any intimidation he may have had once he took on the questionable role of Mr. Whatsit, running a daycare instead of twisting people up like wet towels. And his death scene? Puh-lease. The only times he really had an effect on me was whenever he was actively a villain, but then he would go back to babysitting his class of fifth graders who were clearly never taught “stranger danger.”

Even more frustrating was all of the implied lore surrounding him. The writers repeatedly hinted at Henry Creel’s origins while withholding meaningful explanations about it. For example, what about Joyce’s play was so important to him that his memory of that day was encountered twice? Who was that man in the cave that he randomly walked into, and why did he have a suitcase with a glowing rock in it that seemed to give Henry his powers? It almost feels to me that the writers are holding back so much information because they’re practically begging the audience to travel over to New York or London and cough up a couple hundred dollars to watch the stage play, which means more money in Netflix’s wallet.

Speaking of money, the budget for season five reportedly reached about $480 million. For reference of just how much it’s grown, it cost approximately the same amount per episode of this season (around $50 million) as the entire first installment did in total. Also—fun fact—it’s just about the entire GDP of Micronesia.

While much of that undoubtedly went toward the crew, ensemble cast, marketing and whatever else, my main concern is with the unnecessary amount of it that was spent on CGI. It’s difficult to justify the presumably hefty cost when I’ve seen them capture amazing spectacle in the past without overcomplicating it with excessive amounts of CGI effects that I know a lot of that money went to. Like, for example, there was absolutely no reason why the final battle just had to take place in a random, badly bluescreened-in desert against some absurdly easy-to-kill variant of the Mind Flayer rather than somewhere in Hawkins or at least in the more familiar Upside Down.

I’m also growing intolerant of the Duffer Brothers themselves. Since the final release, interviewers have been asking them valid questions about the lore and completely unanswered questions that are still lingering, and the brothers’ responses are just atrocious damage control.

When speaking about the fate of the military after the Upside Down disintegrated, this was Ross Duffer’s “explanation”: “I suppose there’s not much else to do. My guess is they just sort of slowly dismantled operations and left town.”

On whether or not Eleven actually died: “It’s up to the audience to decide ultimately what her fate is.”

On whether or not Robin and Vickie stayed together: “We want to leave it a little bit up to the fans. Maybe, maybe not.”

On why Joyce, Hopper and Karen never actually realized in the show that they went to school with Vecna (them all being the same age is a concept that was retconned in, by the way), Matt says, “I’m sure that, yes, in the gap between seasons four and five that was discussed.”

This is my favorite. On why there weren’t any demogorgons, demodogs or demobats in the Abyss helping Vecna: “They’re there somewhere.”

Girl… hello?

Aren’t you the creators of the show? Why do we have to figure this out? Do you even have it figured out? How about you use some of that half-a-billion-dollar budget to actually put it on my screen? They’re framing their plot holes as being deliberate artistic choices, but they really just read as avoidance.

To be frank, it’s sloppy. They’re acting as though they didn’t have over four years to write, plan, film and edit season five to be cohesive with other seasons, let alone almost ten years to narrow down the final story. I haven’t even talked about my issues with the ambiguity surrounding characters once central to helping out the group (like Dr. Owens and Suzie), or what happened to the Turnbows after they were kidnapped, or the fate of the pregnant women in the Upside Down, or why Will wasn’t physically affected by the deaths of the Mind Flayer or Vecna, or the terrible endings for Mike and Eleven… or, or, or.

The “Stranger Things” I used to watch—the one that was made with love and minimal advertising—has turned into a shell of its original self. The charm and intimacy of the early seasons has been buried beneath pricey, Marvel-esque action sequences and big fancy special effects, and it just got worse when they began to sideline major characters in favor of inviting more cast members to match its already inflated scale.

Ten-year-old me fell in love with the most perfect story. It had quirks. Its own personality. Eighteen-year-old me watched it dissolve into a product that seems like it was built just to make a profit. I really hope that whatever spinoffs are planned will do the series justice, but, as of right now, I have some serious doubt.