‘Stranger Things’ Finale Review: One Last Game Among Friends (Netflix)

FULL SPOILERS for the series finale.

It’s an anti-capitalist metaphor: the more it eats, the hungrier it gets. It’s called The Consumer”. Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton) is pitching his future movie to his friends, imagining himself as a filmmaker someday. He could just as easily be channeling the Duffer Brothers, talking about what it was like to make Stranger Things, to work with Netflix, and to exist inside the way TV shows are now produced—and consumed. He could be talking about Vecna, the villain who literally feeds on children’s fears and innocence. And he could also be talking about the real world, which at times feels very far removed from the nostalgic, cinephile snow globe the series lives in. A real world the show cautiously brushes up against again in its final stretch.

What we get is a good, solid, old-school conclusion to a series that, over time, became more famous for its problems than for its achievements—especially because those achievements now belong to a different nostalgia cycle. Not 1983, but 2016, the year Stranger Things premiered. That early Spielbergian teenage-epic charm, that Amblin-meets-John Carpenter-meets-Stephen King cocktail, slowly slipped into the background, swallowed by an ever-growing mass of monsters, CGI, convoluted plans, and increasingly incoherent situations. Later seasons often survived more on affection and patience than on inspiration. In the finale, though, some of that warmth returns—and with it, a lingering sense of a missed opportunity: the chance to tell a more honest, less “mediated” story about adolescence. Not mediated by the fantasy elements themselves, but by the capitalist metaphor Jonathan was probably referring to: feeding the machine a product that, by definition, will never satisfy its hunger.

That other version of Stranger Things finally surfaces in the second half of a finale that very clearly could have been two episodes. The first half is the obvious, predictable part: the “final battle,” the long-awaited showdown with the villain across the multiple planes and dimensions the series has been juggling for years. It’s epic, sure, but in the age of all-encompassing CGI, size doesn’t really matter anymore. What you mostly see is half a dozen actors standing on a set, staring intently at nothing, later surrounded by digitally generated monsters and cosmic horrors. There’s tension, action, the usual wildly overcomplicated plans, and the expected sacrifice from Eleven, who once again has to give absolutely everything to save her friends—not just from Vecna, but from the military as well.

Once the monsters are dealt with (yes, Vecna’s evil is indeed tied to that little man with the briefcase in the dark cave), many viewers probably noticed there was still a full hour left. An hour? Just to wrap things up? Yes—and for once, the excess runtime actually works. In those final moments, typically reserved for tying loose ends and lining characters up for the inevitable sequel or spin-off when The Consumer comes knocking, the Duffer Brothers manage to do that and go beyond it. How? By reconnecting with the spirit of adolescence: fantasy games, Dungeons & Dragons, and the power of storytelling as a way to remember what was lived and to honor the friends who were part of it.

As they play D&D after graduating high school (in a sweet, slightly political scene capped by a Dustin speech), Will, Nancy, Lucas, Mike and Dustin imagine their futures. Or rather, Mike imagines them. He’s the one who will later tell the story, who will narrate the adventures those kids once dreamed up around a role-playing table—adventures that eventually became Stranger Things. That future, adult Mike could easily stand in for a “Duffer”: the one who took on the task of remembering, of turning memory into fantasy, of folding all his childhood obsessions into a story meant to entertain the world. That’s the frame the series ultimately places itself in, including even Eleven’s future. At the end of the day, it’s about telling stories so people—and moments—aren’t forgotten. That, if you like, is the show’s other metaphor.

It would be nice if all five seasons of Stranger Things could be neatly contained within that tender, romantic, emotional ending that seals the story. But the truth is that the other metaphor—the capitalist monster that always wants more, more, more—dominated most of its ten-year run. Like any good board game, it should only last so long; even the most devoted fan eventually gets tired of endless twists, loops, and repetition. By the time the friends put their manuals away and make room for a new generation of players (the eleven- and twelve-year-olds they just saved from Vecna), it’s clear that even they are exhausted.

And if Stranger Things really was, as the finale gently suggests, just one of those games, it should have been tighter, leaner, more inventive in its storytelling, and less constrained by established formats. If the teenage friendships it celebrates were unique and unrepeatable, then the series telling their story should have been, too. It managed that only occasionally—those moments when its creators briefly escaped the episode-producing machine and let the ghosts, or the very real people inside it, breathe.