Out of Eleven, I Give it Five: Stranger Things Review

Maria Tsevdos '26

After nearly ten years Stranger Things has come to an end. The show’s final season premiered through November and December of 2025, with the finale premiering on New Year’s Eve. The final season of the show was highly anticipated, with nearly 35 million people tuning in to watch the final episode. Despite the excitement, the final season of Stranger Things was received with mixed feelings.

Season 5 had its good moments, and its bad moments. As usual with Stranger Things, the soundtrack was phenomenal. The show’s inclusion of “Purple Rain” by Prince, “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac, and “Upside Down” by Diana Ross have all been extremely popular choices. Every single episode of the final scene was both emotional and intense, and watching it felt like a constant rush of adrenaline. Season 5 also fleshed out the character of Holly Wheeler, and added a few more characters for the Mr. Whatsit plotline. But while the children all acted exceptionally, some viewers found that too much time has been focused on that plotline.

In general, the good things outweighed the bad for the final season of Stranger Things. For nearly the whole cast, the acting fell flat. The characters didn’t feel real anymore – instead it felt like watching people read off a script. Perhaps the acting suffered because for the most part the dialogue was stiff and awkward. However, the acting wasn’t always bad. When it was good, it was wonderful. The scene when Nancy and Jonathan are trapped is one of the rare moments where both the acting and dialogue felt natural. On the whole, the emotional scenes were of a better quality than the other scenes.

The final episode of the show proved to be the most controversial. Throughout season 5 there was hope that everything would come together and make the finale the best episode of the show yet. But on the whole those hopes were dashed. There are some smaller criticisms of the final episode (like the length and lack of suspense in the final fight scene), but the major critique is that of the ending. Many fans were upset and angry with Eleven’s death. If there was any character who deserved a happy ending it was her, but she was one of the few (if not the only) characters who did not have a happy ending. While the rest of the characters got their perfect endings, the end of Mike and Eleven’s stories was less than satisfactory.

If there was any doubt that the final episode was what it shouldn’t have been, then you only have to look at the media hysteria Stranger Things caused. Soon after the final episode aired, a theory called Conformity Gate exploded on social media. The theory detailed that the eighth episode of the show was an illusion created by Vecna, and the actual ending of the show would come out on January 7. Fans amassed a large amount of evidence to try and prove their theory. Most of the evidence was based on inconsistencies within the show. These inconsistencies ranged from props to character’s behavior. Other evidence includes characters supposedly acting like Vecna, color symbolism (for the graduation scene the characters wear orange, a color that represents imprisonment), and that the ending is too happy for the show. Ultimately, Conformity Gate ended up being just a theory, as no new episode appeared on January 7. Just a few days later on January 12 Netflix released a documentary about the production and behind the scenes work of the final season. This documentary was evidence enough to prove that Episode 8 really was the last episode of Stranger Things.

Overall, the final season of Stranger Things was a mix of good and bad. The season’s strong moments were scenes with lots of emotion and feelings. But the focus on making the emotion strong, tended to weaken the actual plot. Season 5 may not have been everything everyone wished it to be, but on the whole it was still good. The last season might not measure up to previous seasons, but Stranger Things will forever remain the cult classic that it is, and despite its ending, is still a show that influenced the culture of a generation for nearly a decade.