Via USA Today 

Jacqueline Graif

Editor-in-Chief 

Netflix began releasing the final episodes of its flagship show, Stranger Things, on November 26th of last year. The show had been running for almost a decade, and was adored by its audience for its mixing of coming-of-age stories with the monstrous realities of fictional Hawkins, Indiana. Season five, the final season, has received an 83% on the Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, compared to season one’s whopping 97%.

 It had been over three years since the last release of a Stranger Things episode, creating high anticipation for fans to find out what happens to a burning Hawkins. Season five follows the core party (Mike, Will, Dustin, and Lucas) and their now very large crew that they’ve gathered over the years as they attempt to defeat the one thing destroying their lives, Vecna.

The final episode “The Rightside Up” was released on New Year’s Eve, and fans poured into movie theatres across the world to watch the decade-long expected series finale. Unfortunately, lovers of the TV series left theatres disappointed and unsatisfied. With a 43% decline in ratings from season one on Popcornmeter, many fans expressed their dismay at how the show wrapped. 

Season five featured broken-up couples which fans thought were going to be endgame. Such as the everlasting “Mileven” (Mike and Eleven) and “Jancy” (Nancy and Jonathan). The “Jancy” split was so unclear that the show’s writers had to later clarify that their scene was in-fact a break up in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. Fans speculate that this is because writer Ross Duffer went through a tough divorce in February 2024. 

Fans and critics also claim that

“characters lacked enrichment or the deep insight they did in previous seasons.”

Alison Herman of Varietywrites, “By declining to enrich its characters as they age, ‘Stranger Things’ traps itself in arrested development. When you get bigger without going deeper, you end up stretched thin.” Social media users are even calling characters “lobotomized” due to new cringy dialogue that feels unfamiliar to the show’s earlier seasons’ quality that fans know and love. One particularly difficult moment to watch was Mike’s cringy response after Will’s coming-out: “Friends? No, thanks. Best friends!” The scene is incredibly unsavory and awkward, which is unlike previous Stranger Things seasons. 

However, the main reason for outcry was indeed Will Byer’s (Noah Schnapp) coming-out scene in episode 7. The backlash is not necessarily because of the coming out itself, but the way the writers, the Duffer brothers, wrote the scene. The scene is considered awkward and breaks a high-tension episode, as does much of the dialogue. Lots of fans also argue that a kid coming out as gay to a room full of about 20 people is not realistic for the ‘80s. 

Noah Schnapp said to Entertainment Tonight, “they wrote it not just with Joyce but with the entire cast standing there… like a press conference. I gotta be honest, when everyone had to be like, ‘And me,’ ‘And me,’ I was like, err… Is that gonna work?” The Duffer brothers told The Hollywood Reporter that they originally wrote the scene as an intimate moment between Will and just his mother but ultimately decided against it. 

Robin Buckley (Maya Hawke) had an incredibly well-received coming-out scene in season 3, where she tells only her best friend, Steve Harrington (Joe Keery), high on a bathroom floor, that she likes the girl that has a crush on him. @buckleysthinker on “X” says, “robin[‘s] coming out scene remains as one of the best scenes from this entire show.” The scene feels intimate, real, and vulnerable, landing episode seven of season three the second-highest rated episode of the season with an 8.7/10 on IMDb. In contrast, Will’s coming-out scene feels awkward and distasteful compared to Robin’s, granting episode seven of season five a 5.6/10 on IMDb. 

After the release of the series finale, Netflix released the documentary One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5. The documentary reveals the Duffer brothers began filming season five without having an ending written. The crew continuously expressed their concern regarding the ending, wondering when the impending finale would be written. The rush to finish season five may explain its poorly-received writing. 

The high-tension final fighting sequence of the show is even shorter than Will’s coming-out scene. The killing of Vecna and the Shadow Monster is done in an underwhelming (less than) seven minutes, despite a four-season build up to that exact scene. While Will’s coming-out is around thirty seconds longer than the fight sequence. 

Fans remain disappointed by the uncomfortable writing of season five, the holes in its plot lines, its ‘lobotomized’ characters, and its lack of surviving couples.