The end has finally arrived for Stranger Things with its final episode, The Rightside Up. LMO’s rundown of the show leading up to this point can be found here:
Endings Are Hard
After volume two ended on a slightly shaky note, the two-hour finale had to steady the plane and stick the landing of this ten-year journey to avoid being another Lost/Game of Thrones cautionary tale.
The first thing to say is that it successfully avoids that level of controversy. For fans of the show, the finale delivers a largely satisfying end to the story of Hawkins and its evil doppelganger, The Upside Down.
While nowhere near as spectacular as the season 4 finale, The Rightside Up is a solid effort with no major ‘shit the bed’ moments. The story ends definitively (for the most part) and the characters are given a proper send-off that feels earned.
Perhaps that’s the best we could realistically hope for. Endings are hard. Questions are more intriguing than answers. Possibilities are more alluring than reality. A cliffhanger beats a firm conclusion almost every time.
Plus, a finale carries so much expectation and baggage to not only wrap everything up in a neat and satisfying bow, but to rectify any accumulated issues that fans had with the show up to that point.
People often defer criticism until the end, or at least they hold out hope that their gripes will be solved by then. When they aren’t, the backlash begins, and the finale takes the brunt of it.
I’m not making excuses. The finale of Stranger Things won’t change your world. It won’t win over anyone who’s already on the fence, fully checked out or ambivalent about the whole thing. It won’t make you look at the show in a different way and it won’t solve any issues you might have with it.
But it lands the plane safely. Whether that’s enough for a show that promised so much is up for debate.
Safety First
If you care about the story, and in particular the characters, you will likely have a good time with The Rightside Up. The episode features a 1 hour 15 minutes final battle followed by an 45-minute epilogue.
It puts The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to shame. It sounds indulgent, and probably is, but it gives the audience a chance to breathe and say goodbye. The epiclog is definitely the strongest part of the finale.
Before that, the final battle splits our characters into four groups in Hawkins, Vecna’s mind, The Upside Down and The Abyss (the Mind Flayer’s home world). The action is coherent and flows well, although the plan requires a serious suspension of disbelief at certain points. Let’s just go with it.
Despite the potentially world-ending stakes, the final showdown feels safer than previous seasons. Enjoyable enough, but far less tense. In season 4, you felt like our heroes could fail and Vecna might actually win. And he did.
If season 4 was The Empire Strikes Back, then this is Return of the Jedi. Just so we’re clear, I’m not saying season 4 of Stranger Things is as good as Empire. I’m just explaining the difference in tone.
Season 4 took our characters to the brink, but season 5 lets them off the hook. Vecna/Henry is no longer scary, although the show stops just short of making him sympathetic. Victory for our heroes feels inevitable, despite the late return of The Mind Flayer.
The only question is who’s going to die, but it never feels like they are going to kill anyone. Multiple last moment saves lack impact and aren’t fooling anyone at this point. The show has gone this long without killing off the cast, and it isn’t about to start now.
With one possible exception.
Tony Soprano
The show kills off a major character but leaves just enough ambiguity around their fate to keep things interesting. Is it a cop out from writers who love their characters way too much? Almost certainly, but it still feels right in terms of the story.
In the very last scene, Mike provides an alternative explanation for what might have happened via the medium of Dungeons and Dragons (hey, what else?).
The show runners have said they will leave it to the audience to decide what happened. It is a brave move that is bound to upset some fans, if the reaction to the ending of The Sopranos is anything to go by. It’s the closest the finale comes to courting controversy. But, like The Sopranos, it’s pretty clear what the answer is.
The final D&D scene in Mike’s basement brings the show full circle, nails the emotion and represents the boys leaving their childhood behind. Just as well, seeing as some of them are in their mid-twenties now (I needed to get at least one age-related joke into the review).
This isn’t the end, of course. The Duffer Brothers are already talking about spin offs from Stranger Things. But the story of Hawkins is over. I’m sure many of you will be relieved.
