Thoughts on Stranger Things 5

Recalling cultural zeitgeists like HBO's Game of Thrones or the BBC's Sherlock, especially their lacklustre final seasons, gave legitimate reason for audiences to apprehend the quality of Netflix's final run of the hit series Stranger Things, released in three volumes over the last two months of 2025. The sense of finality has been undeniably palpable, given the show's success and decade-long run. Fans wanted to experience a proper conclusion to a story many around the world have grown up with. And like Benioff and Weiss, or Moffat and Gatiss, Stranger Things' creators - the Duffers - have irrevocably and indisputably proven themselves to be... well... just another pair of hack writers.

The curse of blockbuster television populated by mystery boxes is (unfortunately) having to resolve them by the end of the series. This doesn't denote an answer to every question and theory previous seasons have left us pondering over, but some are more important than others, and as creators the Duffers had an obligation to deliver on these questions for their audiences. Which, for Season 5, they hardly did in a way that was earned.

While I'm not as obsessed with the show as countless others may be (and not a sufferer of copium (Conformity Gate)), I am a writer and still an audience member. In this article we shall cover a semi-non-comprehensive review what went wrong in this year's installment of Stranger Things.

***SPOILERS AHEAD FOR STRANGER THINGS 1-5***

Cheap Production Design?

Over $400 million spent on over 10 hours of television produced in 3 and a half years, and where did all the money go? Certainly not to the look of the Upside Down, the Abyss, nor Vecna's mind palace. Just compare the lighting effects in Max's scenes for S4E4 and S5E6.

Whether or not the show should have maintained the small-town Twin Peaks aesthetic of its first season, one can't dispute the effectiveness of the Upside Down's presentation within said installment. A tenebrous, toxic, unnatural shadow of Hawkins, self-sustaining and disgustingly organic with slithering tendrils and membranes for portals that materialise and disappear, and shrilling cries from the darkness hinting at an alien ecosystem we're yet to fully understand. Over the course of the series, the spores diminished, the dimension got brighter, and even the military decided to set up camp. The fear factor of what was originally a horror show, was gone, and the effort to uphold it got cheaper. Don't even get me started on the piss-filtered Abyss (and we can tell when actors are a metre away from the volume screen, Duffers!).

Egregious Dialogue

This was, in fact, the first glaring detail that made me question the season's quality. Many online have claimed that the show's dialogue has always been preachy, snarky, cheesy, you name it. I've only, however, observed this to be the case whenever the Duffers have gotten too carried away with their own story, namely in certain moments for Season 3 and 4, and less so in earlier installments when the stakes were more grounded.

Dustin whispering twice to Steve about intercepting a Soviet transmission, before shouting it for all to hear when he couldn't understand, is one example (Season 3). Erika's monologue about laughing at her opponents' defeat in D&D when confronted by Eddie (Season 4). These are writing tropes, employed for dramatic effect or for humour, and like any cliché (like the inclusion of a 'jock' or bully archetype in every season and having them beaten up by the other characters), it displays an immaturity on the part of the creator, who can't separate emotion from professionalism when producing a work of art.

Granted, Stranger Things' wit is renowned, but after listening to Lucas' popcorn analogy, Robin's vinyl analogy, Steve's slinky analogy, a pattern of triteness starts to emerge. And these are the obvious examples. Dialogue throughout the season hinges on repetition for dramatic effect, a question-and-answer format for dramatic effect, or lines meant to throw audiences off completely, notably Robin's preference to one of the tunnels in The Great Escape.

Compared to the pathos of Season 1, Season 5 used every trick in the writing book for drama alone, be it for free promotion through TikTok clips, or out of typical laziness.

The stakes have never been... lower?

We saw the Soviets experimenting on Demogorgons last season. We know about a rift between departments in the U.S. Government on matters concering Eleven and the Upside Down. We saw a literal rift tear itself into existence in Hawkins. And yet, Season 5 elaborates on none of this, neatly backpedalling and patching up cliffhangers of the past.

One of the many tenets of Game of Thrones, manifested in the White Walker storyline, was the necessity of putting one's differences aside to combat a greater existential threat that renders all human concerns, like political power, pointless in the face of it. The Duffers themselves proudly declared their fourth season a Game of Thrones season, due to its scope and, potentially, the link between a powerful humanoid antagonist Vecna, and Will, like the Night King and Bran respectively. But unlike that show, which didn't unite the people of Westeros, North and South, against the winter of the Long Night and an army that never dies, Stranger Things had this chance. It didn't take it.

Never do the Soviets and the Americans put their differences aside and, like Rocky in his fourth movie or Forrest Gump, implicitly resolve the Cold War. By applying what each side has learned about the Upside Down, and collaborating with our cast of protagonists, a war for the fate of humanity would have been the next logical step in the ever-increasing stakes of the show.

The Duffers opted for a D&D campaign against the Mind Flayer and Vecna which, although thematically relevant for the show, depicted our heroes (traitors to their own country whom had slain dozens of American soldiers by this point), stabbing and shooting at a Kaiju while suffering no casualties. An underwhelming end to what was a logical progression of narrative.

And everyone knows by now about Will's coming out scene, an Emmy bait performance which took 12 hours to film - nobody knows how or why - when the apocalypse is about to descend on Earth and end life as our characters know it. Clumsily handled, leading to the lowest rated episode in the show's history, and memed to oblivion.

Which leads us to:

Everybody is safe. Except for one or two characters.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, the release windows for this season were marketed as dark. Many fans interpreted this as the deaths of major characters. Nobody was safe... except for everybody, save for Ackers, Eight, and Eleven (question mark?).

The Duffers liked Joe Keery, ergo Steve was rewritten from a jock that would be killed to a hero who rose to the occasion for people he hardly knew. Hopper was a fan favourite and in desperate need of redemption, so he wasn't blown up, he only ducked. Mr Clarke was the intelligent exposition dump on science, and even he was brought back to stare bewildered at the tentacles of the Upside Down. And Joyce was played by Winona Ryder.

The creators have always liked certain characters or actors more than others, with one-off additions written in deliberately to be killed by the plot within the same season. The Duffers were never going to be brave enough to end a personage's arc even if it was resolved. Max's death in Season 4 would have given Lucas the drive to finally become a relevant character again in Season 5. Nancy and Jonathan's 'break-up' and death, while having a frustrating setup, would have broken Steve, further solidifying his friendship with Dustin and raising the stakes in the finale when both had nothing to lose against Vecna. Karen and Ted's demise would have given Mike, like Lucas, motive against Vecna, and prevented one of the more ridiculous scenes in the show when the Demodogs, which for certain would have killed Robin, Vickie, Lucas, and Max in what might have been a poignant episode, were blown up by an incapacitated middle-aged mother with an oxygen canister. And, obviously, most characters, in the manner that the final battle was handled, would and should have perished.

When the show is finally brave enough to kill off a character when the story requires it, other characters within the series itself retcon the moment. Just move on, Mike, Eleven is gone. How could Eight mentally reach her from the lab at the exact moment the military intercepted the heroes' trucks?

Closing Thoughts

The first season of Stranger Things was tightly written, clever, with a dash of 80s nostalgia and grounded in a story about a missing boy against the backdrop of horror sci-fi. After its success, the Duffers were highly encouraged to continue the series, without, clearly, knowing where to lead the story. Lovecraftian monsters, wormholes, Soviets, lasers and portals, hive minds, 80s hair and music galore; the show went off the rails. And rewatching seasons 2-5 is nigh impossible, knowing that we don't receive the conclusions this story deserved.

Contradictions in the script, explanations in interviews and a stage play outside the show as to what happens within the show, all point to one thing: the Duffers were always hacks who improvised as they went along. There's a good chance they never thought about Vecna until Season 4, when the show was at its most divisive, and a tangible, as opposed to an esoteric, antagonist was mandated to draw audiences back. Characters have a role in Season 1, then do nothing for the rest of the show. Why did the Mind Flayer ultimately want to destroy the world? How did a piece of it reach Earth? Where were the Demogorgons during the final battle? Why did the military let Hopper and the gang go after the crimes they had committed?

The story became too bloated for its own good, and without the willingness to sacrifice spectacle and personages in favour of a story with substance, Stranger Things has been doomed to fail since the end of Season 1.