EDITOR’S NOTE: This article contains spoilers for the series finale of “Stranger Things.”
With a giant evil spider monster, mysterious briefcase and a whole lot of teary characters bidding adieu, “Stranger Things” has now become a thing of the past.
The Netflix series that capitalized on ’80s homages and synth notes mixed with pop hits ended its fifth and final season with a 2-hour-plus finale that debuted on New Year’s Eve, in which no one (really) died, lifelong friendships were reforged in fire, and a bunch of Dungeons and Dragons nerds finally graduated high school (even though they all look old enough to have college under their belts by now, too).
The first two chunks of the season – unceremoniously released smack-dab on Thanksgiving and Christmas – set up this last adventure, putting in place the pieces for a climactic showdown in an episode titled “The Rightside Up” that summoned essentially every surviving member of the extended cast (even Mr. Clarke!) to defeat Vecna, a.k.a. Henry Creel, a.k.a. One.
In a behind the scenes clip released before the episode, “Stranger Things” co-creator Ross Duffer said that since it was the last hurrah for the show, they wanted to “make it as big as possible, and I don’t think we could put another character in, I think the whole thing would break.” That felt true in this final stretch – some characters barely uttered a word of dialogue in the last episode, not for lack of urgency, but simply because there was no space or time for them to do so.
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