In a scene from the final episode of Netflix's Stranger Things, Dr. Martin Brenner reveals the Vecna (One) plan to Eleven. “Think of it as a dam. One is slowly breaking this dam,” Brenner says, holding a pencil before breaking it down the middle to indicate the end of Hawkins. It’s a scene that is complete. Kindly explains why Stranger Things became a pop culture phenomenon. Do artificially deep things in a deceptively easy-to-understand way. The previous season of Stranger Things seemed to exist beyond the show's wall of logic and comprehension. There's further evidence of potential. Timelines merge, characters are added and subtracted, and narratives collide just because they should. But it's not the show's map that has always impressed, but of course, Not one but several likable characters have the ability to marry nostalgia with coming-of-age stories. To what effect Stranger Things is a feat of ingenuity, getting the simple work right. And in this massive final season, It leaves an impression.
The final two episodes are clearly about multiple narratives coming together for one big last battle. Eleven are freed at personal cost. So there's Hopper. They won't all get together and stand together, but the show makes sure that there is a collective fighting spirit. no one really asks questions about timing, coincidence or even if the assumptions most characters make about the world no one really understands, even verified are also. Stranger Things operates on an instinct driven by comic-book energy, which can often feel like a video game. There are smaller missions, which lead to other missions. Nothing is as simple as a fist-fight or a direct battle of powers. No one really asks why it can't be a direct fight between Eleven and Vecna, without the prelude to many humans attempting to do so in vain. Waiting, wandering, the many pop culture milestones we go past in the process are all there.
There are some obvious stars from this past season. Steve, last season's cocky stud, emerges as the poster boy of redemption masculinity. He is heartbroken, but he is still learning to walk with her. Nancy's journalistic abilities take center-stage as the brainchild of the operation. There's even an intriguing sub-plot of Bill secretly in love with Eleven. Perhaps the show's biggest strength in this long past season is the pedestal that helps Eleven retreat. Other characters, their journeys seem more presentable and important. Hopman's arc could easily have been removed because it exists to serve fans, and even then, it doesn't feel juvenile and redundant. It carries its own globetrotting intrigue, and combines the political flair that comes with international diplomacy—a third of this past season has operated around a Soviet prison. Stranger Things has been Netflix's most American show to date. It is red, blue and white on the inside.
The long run-time of two finale episodes makes sense in retrospect. Stranger Things juggled so many threads, quickly cutting or tying them together, there was no choice. It's a GOT-like mistake that the show chooses not to do. For that matter, the antagonist is nearly absent during the final episode. The show has realized over the course of its four seasons that it is the characters, their chemistry, their nifty little science projects in the form of plans that people come to see. The nature of the antagonist may change, what should remain is the nostalgic core of the show. That's why the show has always been reluctant to divorce its characters, some of it in a painfully visible, but nostalgic arc, like Will, after being reclaimed from the dead. The show has some hat-tips for inclusivity, but they clearly feel aimless. To fit all that '80s political stuff.
Stranger Things has never been complicated enough to be intriguing or mysterious. It lost that novelty after the first season. What it has done in the middle of the two seasons is create characters who, at times, perpetuate the cyclical futility of fighting the same fight over and over again. On some level Stranger Things has always been a soap, reluctant to evolve into anything beyond its sexiest, but convenient pleasures. We found comfort in simply switching on the same room show with different antiquities and collectibles every few years. Some worked, some didn't. Somehow the stubbornness of this show made this room memorable. Some pillows, some books and some cassettes that you simply could not have discarded. You knew what you were running into every time you walked in, and yet, Stranger Things felt cathartic, nostalgia done, thrilled, excited. Of course the finale has an upside-down rock concert. It couldn't have been any other way.
