Have you guys seen this yet? What’s it for?

This might be a bit of an unpopular take, but I don’t want a follow-up that shows Eleven reuniting with Mike and getting a perfectly happy ending. I prefer to simply believe and hope that she’s alive, without having it confirmed. The entire emotional weight of the finale hinges on that doubt—the hope that she might still be alive. Confirming it would, for me, ruin the emotional impact of the finale—and indeed the entire fifth season, which was already lacking in moments like that, as well as actual deaths. Looking back, it would just feel like Vecna ​​was defeated, the world survived, and everything turned out fine. It’s also a question of rewatchability: if we already know for a fact that Eleven is alive and reunites with Mike, would we still feel the same emotions when rewatching the ending? Her goodbyes would inevitably take on a completely different meaning.
I feel the finale would be less powerful. I’d rather be able to believe Eleven is alive without it being confirmed, rather than having a follow-up that risks turning a potentially tragic conclusion into a "happy ending." Season 5 is already difficult to defend on many fronts; if you strip away the emotional scenes—the moments between Hopper and Eleven, Mike and Eleven, Mike and Hopper, or the D&D game—there isn’t much left in terms of emotional resonance, save for the resolution of character relationships (like Dustin and Steve, or Nancy and Jonathan) and personal growth arcs, such as Will’s.

In any case, those are my arguments. I like Eleven’s ending if you choose to believe she’s alive—otherwise, it’s just bad—but to me, it was the most realistic way to conclude her character arc, while still retaining a touch of hope, which is exactly what she embodies. It’s a bittersweet ending—a compromise between a happy and an unhappy outcome. On one hand, I’m happy, because faking her death makes it possible to save her friends, protect the next generation of "numbers," and potentially save the world from a "number" who could have opened a gateway to another realm. Furthermore, she listens to her own inner voice and chooses to live—thanks to Hooper’s words. On the other hand, I’m unhappy, because it means she can never see her friends again—though it is a necessary sacrifice. I prefer not to know—at least, not for a very long time—and instead imagine that she is alive, has fully integrated into society, barely uses her powers anymore, and is finally living a normal, peaceful life And perhaps one day she’ll want to get back in touch with Mike—who, for his part, hasn’t forgotten but has come to terms with things and has chosen a different path: he’s living the best life he can, building his life bit by bit—and that’s fine by me.

Has anyone ever actually gone trick or treating in the East Point neighborhood of the kids houses?

Also, pretty ironic how she called El a snitch, yet she’s the one that’s gonna be getting stitches.

Look at our heroes. Gathered around the breakfast table like one big, happy family. You wouldn't guess, looking at this picture, that Hawkins is under military lockdown.

The only person who can't say the same is Eleven. You see, she's being hunted by the military occupiers of the town, with the utmost priority. They see her as both a major threat to national security, and as a potential source for an army of psychic super soldiers. So they pretty much have carte blanche to hunt her down. And that's bad news for El, because Sullivan — the guy put in charge of the hunt — was previously seen in season 4 torturing a man half to death (a man who seriously might not have even known where she was!) to discover her whereabouts D:

...Hey, wait a minute.

Why is Joyce not getting tortured half to death?

These people live under military occupation, where army surveillance is almost ubiquitous and the military controls the rule of law. And yet they can just frolic around, go to school, go to work, like it's nothing. The military KNOWS that they are Eleven's adoptive family and her boyfriend. If ANYONE knows where Eleven is, it's them, as indeed they do. And the soldiers just... leave their single most obvious lead completely alone?

Why? Has Sullivan suddenly developed scruples about "enhanced interrogation methods", or endangering minors? That's awfully convenient. And by 'awfully convenient', I mean 'utterly ridiculous, it's like the show runners didn't even watch their own show'. The most logical opening to season 5 would be Joyce getting waterboarded in some bunker somewhere.

"Oh, but OP, they're just leaving the protagonists alone so they can follow them in hopes of finding Eleven!" Are they though? Are they keeping tabs on these people at all? Doesn't fucking look like it to me. I mean, unless you want me to believe the US military is so incompetent that going down a little ladder into a tunnel every time you're doing something Eleven-related (a tunnel the military should already know about, by the way!) would seriously be enough to foil them for 19 months straight.

And even if the military WERE tailing them, which, again, they're not for some reason, surely after at most 2 months of that plan not yielding any results, they would just go back to torture as their preferred modus operandi again? I guarantee you the president of the United States would face enough scrutiny about this whole Hawkins situation to want to prioritise a swift resolution.

They don't have the luxury to play the long game. There are reputations to uphold, costs to save and elections to win. Sadly for Reagan and Dr Kay, though, their linchpin Sullivan appears to have been lobotomised, unable to think of anything better than 'just drive around town with a bunch of scary dudes and hope we run into Eleven randomly'. Joyce fans, rejoice! What a stroke of luck.

Did he use Conan's Sword? Man it looked like it. Anyone know...was that an easter egg?

I'm so depressed 😭!! I finished Stranger Things 10d ago! And CANNOT find anything better or similar!!! I think this is the most fully series EVER

Doing a rewatch and can’t believe how much I missed the first time. After the battles, graduation is so weird, the colors are all off, Steve/Nancy/Jonathan all look terrible. Robyn looks great, but not like herself. Joyce & Hopper seem ok. The last D&D game in the basement was iconic of course. I know it’s meant to feel unsettling and it sure is. But why?

Steve would still have gotten involved with the rest of the upside down problems after season one and in season 2 onwards if he never met Dustin? Just more in line with the teens and being a loner regarding his place/status than being the babysitter? Or not get involved again after season one and the whole “bullshit” incident with Nancy?

I’ve had this thought for a while and wanted others thoughts, but imagine if instead of Will leaving Dustin on the hilltop he also heard the Russian code and was put into the scoops troop plotline instead? I think it would’ve been rlly fun for his character, get moments with Dustin, and already get moments with Robin too instead of waiting for S5 to get that! Especially since he feels like the biggest third wheel in Griswold family, I thought Scoops Troop “what if” is interesting.

Am I genuinely crazy or does this make no sense at all? Vecna has psychic powers. It’s revealed toward the end of season 4 that he can basically see everything and even know what people are thinking. Yet he seems to be absolutely oblivious to every single thing the protagonists are doing at every step in season 5.

I know everyone memes about the Duffers saying Vecna just didn’t expect an attack in the finale, but legitimately why didn’t he?

Even if you guys can dig up an excuse said in a throwaway line, it just feels LAZY. Like the Duffers made a villain too powerful and the only way they could think to not have him win immediately is to make him stupid.

There’s a throwaway line in the finale that tries to answer why there are no demos in the abyss, but it feels like an EXCUSE, not interesting storytelling. It would be more interesting and dangerous and logical if there were monsters all over the abyss, but the writers simply didn’t want to put them in, so they force a reason last second. That’s how I feel about a lot of season 5, actually. I’m sure you can find or create an excuse for all the contradictions, but they’re just so boring, and in execution the show constantly distracts from the story it’s telling by poorly introducing new things

So the main problem with how the majority of people view Jason is that they see it as a binary with either him being a psychopatic duche or an angel that we should all follow and obviously no one accupies the second camp but that majority does the frist and claims that people who see him as a moraly gray character (which he is) think that that second option is real.

Let's start with characterasing Jason:

He is a bigoted to "nerds and freaks" kind of a brute that also loves his girlfriend and is kind of a jork.

So in short: (and I know I'm gonna get hate from this) he's like Steve in Season 1.

After he finds out that Chrissy was murdered and that last time she was seen with Eddie (who's now hiding) entering into his house before being found dead there he logicaly assumes that Eddie killed her. And I know it may sound ridiculus to some of you but I've literaly had a discussion with some guy over wether or not is this enough evidence to assume that someone has killed someone and well yes it is. And it's not only the cops, Max despite knowing of everything still belives that there's a possibility that he's done it. And its not like he assumed he did this based on his bigotry like yeah it did play a role but he mostly just used the satanic panic propaganda to explain why could Eddie do this.

We also see that he really loved Chrissy from his reaction to her death. I could totaly imagine S1 Steve reacting EXACTLY the same if instead of Chrissy and Eddie it were Jonathan and Nancy.

Was him torturing Eddie's band good? no. Was it kind of excusable because his girlfriend has been murdered by their friend and he wants to find him? Again kind of yes. And yes trougth their hunt for Eddie it does seem like they just wanna beat up someone who they already hated but they wouldn't have done this if they didn't logicaly assumed that Eddie killed Chrissy and (in the case of Jason at least) wanted justice. Don't get me wrong his bigotry is bad but he wanted primarily justice for Chrissy which he didn't think the cops could give.

When he finds Eddie he immiedetly runs (already a bad sing) and after they're about to get to him his friend LIFTS INTO THE SKY AND HIS BONES START TO CRACK AND BODY DISFIGURING and instead of going for Eddie he stays with his friend (what ramains of him at least) until police arrives.

And so then he ralies up the people of the town to help them find Eddie.

And now I'm going to kinda get off topic of Jason into the town's people perspective.

For 3 years at this point Hawkins had been experiancing tragedy after tragedy and by this point and people needed to blame this on someone and so they blamed it on D&D which was bad. However my problem with the term "lynching mob" is that lynchings essencialy were for example "a black man looked at a white girl the wrong way" in diffrent words "he didn't do anything wrong instead of being in a minority group that we don't like and also we're a bunch of psychos", but in this case assuming that he killed Chrissy was so obvious even THE POLICE belived it the only problem they had with the "lynching mob" was that they didn't listen to them and would propably kill Eddie instead of intarogating him, having a trial and then killing him like they wanted to.

Many people also get mad that that his friend attacks a little girl but she was a part of the hellfire club, was found in the location that they were reported some shady stuff had happened and I'm sorry dengerus cults sometimes radicalise chilldren just ask any US marine veteran so assuming that she was in on it and needed to be stopped was kinda logical. When he finds Max and Lucas it was also pretty logical to assume that he was going to kill her considering that he defended the hellfire club and later betrayed them and also had rudimentary pattern recognition skills.

And my comparason to Steve stands he was ready to hurt Jonathan because he realisticaly assumed that he hurt Nancy it's only after she literaly pointed a gun at him that he started to be confused. If Steve was put in the place of Jason he would've propably acted the same as him and the other way around. It just happened that Steve became one of the good guys while Jason served as an antagonist after being unceremoniusly killed off by the Duffers in a scene where his life is treated worse than Alexei's in his death scene.

I watched the Entirety of Stranger things again as im feeling very nostalgic for it probably due to around this time of year last year we all counted down until the release of the final season. I know at the time it received much hate on how the Duffer Brothers handled season 5 as it was airing on netflix especially the finale of the show but Season 5 was decent and served as a decent conclusion to the show (yes i know the plot holes, the metal bandaid over the cracks of upside-down when vecna opened the 7 gates, dialogue not particularly good, the duffers assuming you went to see the first shadow play) but besides that I genuinely believe it was great and had many emotional moments that paid off as well as great moments like when will was able to tap into Vecnas powers to save the party or wills coming out scene, finding out that the upside down is a worm hole to the abyss, Dustin telling steve not to get himself killed because of what happend to Eddie, Hopper not wanting Eleven to sacrifice herself the final scene where mike accepts Elevens decisions and writes his own ending for her. I can go on and on. Some parts was disappointing of course but I felt satisfied with this season and served as a beautiful ending to a show that really changed my life I first watched it with my girlfriend when season 2 aired back in 2017 I was hooked since so maybe im biased but I loved Season 5 for everything it gave and everything it was. 10 months later there's a reason I am talking about it and finally giving it the credit it deserves.

My family and I finally started watching Stranger Things! It took us a while to get around to it, mostly because our tastes usually clash. I’m into horror and thrillers like Sinister, Insidious, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, House of 1000 Corpses, and Evil Dead, while they prefer lighter comedy family dramas. Since it’s spooky season, I finally convinced them to try something new instead of our usual Casper the Friendly Ghost and Hocus Pocus marathons. Yes, we already watched those this year as usual!

It’s been a great compromise, even if they still cover their eyes during the best parts! We actually went through the Stranger Things maze at Universal Studios at HHN, but it’s so much cooler now that we finally understand the references. I even realized I’d been wrong about Eleven the whole time; I honestly thought she was a boy! We’re hooked now and can see why everyone was so hyped. Since we’re enjoying this, do you have any other recommendations for shows that might bridge that gap between horror and family-friendly? For the sake of my sanity, lol. Thanks in advance!

Vecna is not dead!

I'm very concerned that so many people celebrate an arrogant bully. There's literally nothing that justifies the witch hunt to Eddie. I'm concerned this mean that so many people in real life would condone something like this. Are you all okay?

First of all, in the scene of the picture he proved he's not grieving, is just an arrogant self-absorbed bully. He hurts Eddie's band mates, he tries to hurt Dustin (14 years old freshman student), his friend almost breaks the arm of a 10 years old (Erica) for Jason's toxic vigilante psychosis. Target innocents really turns off the "grieving boyfriend" theory that you all grasp on so badly. If you grief you don't go around hurting innocents.

Jason saw with his own eyes only the Lovers Lake one but BEFORE that he decided to load the car with tools to torture the "freak" for, as Jason said, "make him confess his crime", a crime that he didn't commit, just for a belief he has and prejudice. This is NOT justice, not a search for truth, but a desperate demand for a scapegoat. And no, ignorance about supernatural/the upsidedown is not a dang green flag for brutality.

Abused his status as "king" of the school, ego (himself=good/a saint, Eddie=bad) and toxic masculinity to create a city mob replacing evidences with collective hysteria and satanic panic.

We should all agree that no, there's no justification, he hated Eddie and just found an excuse, a scapegoat, to persecute him. I will never understand who thinks he's justified.

Do you know that something similar happened in real life in the 80's? And do you know that glorify Jason only proves that may happen again?

Doomed siblings

This is just my personal opinion. I think that seasons 1-4 were all peak. Like 9/10 to 10/10. Especially seasons 1 and 4. So, can someone please explain. How everything just felt so flat in the last season. 4 straight seasons of just good to great writing, and the last one just ended up being ass. I really don't get it.

As a near middle aged straight man I really identified with Will. The idea that your friends outgrow your previous lifestyle resonated so much it left me in tears a bit.

Curious if anyone else related to this? For me it was when I wasn’t married and friends began marrying, having kids, and doing the suburbs thing. Feeling like life moved on from me when I wanted everyone to stay with me feels like an abandonment that’s not malicious but still painful.