Stranger Things Season 5 finale: Five questions that the show left unanswered

After nearly a decade of monsters, mysteries, and emotional damage courtesy of a small Indiana town, Stranger Things has finally closed the door on Hawkins. Season 5 delivers answers where it counts, but it also leaves a handful of deliberately messy, haunting questions behind. The kind you keep thinking about long after the credits roll.

Did Eleven really survive. Was Vecna ever redeemable. And how much of what we saw was truth versus hope dressed up as closure. The finale ties up the story, not every thread. Below are five major questions Stranger Things leaves unanswered, and why the show wants you to sit with that uncertainty instead of solving it.

What kind of new world did Vecna actually want to create in Stranger Things?

Still from Stranger Things (Image via Netflix)

The biggest unanswered question on Stranger Things is that we still don't know what world Vecna wanted to create. Although it's the basis of his evil, the show never gives us a glimpse into what Vecna's plans actually were and what would have happened if he had actually won. We do know that he hated humanity, control and order but we never get to know what replaces this destruction. Vecna talks very often about freedom and evolution but the world he muses seems pretty far from it.

The Upside Down, even at its peak, never resembles a functioning ecosystem. It is decaying, static, trapped in a single moment. That suggests Vecna was not building a future, only extending his trauma outward. His version of a new world likely would not have had cities, families, or growth. It would have been an endless echo of his own broken childhood, imposed on everyone else.

Stranger Things maintains this ambiguity and it doesn't let us understand his true cruelty and the logic behind it. Perhaps by refusing to shed a light on his ideal world, the show frames his ideology as empty. There was no paradise waiting on the other side. Just silence, control, and a universe shaped by one person’s refusal to heal.

Where did the demodogs, demobats, and other creatures go?

By the finale, many of Upside Down’s most recognizable creatures were noticeably absent. From the first season and first season, these creatures are the only monsters we're afraid of and who created all this wrath but as the show reaches its end, the creatures stop making sense. They don't show up for the final battle and they simply fade from relevance. It's one of the most disappointing parts of the finale, because a showdown where Vecna fights with all the creatures would have been epic and grand. Many fans have pointed out the battle as underwhelming, making it look too easy for the Mind Flayer and Vecna to be defeated.

But it also raises questions about their existence. Were they living beings with instinct and survival drives? Or were they always an extension of something larger? Surely their presence during the final battle would have raised the stakes and Vecna would not have died so easily. But the confusion remains on whether this is a plot hole, or an ambiguous detail on the show.

Why did the military vanish so suddenly after Eleven's death?

Another confusing aspect of the finale was how the military just withdrew after Eleven's death and we didn't get to know what happened to them or how they dealt with things. The immediate time jump after Eleven chooses to stay behind at the Upside Down makes things a little confusing. What was the immediate after effect? What did the military exactly do? For years, Hawkins was treated as a problem to contain, exploit, or weaponize and Eleven was the key to all of it. Once she is gone, the incentive disappears too.

And what does it say about accountability when power simply walks away once it can no longer extract anything useful. The show leaves unanswered whether the government learned anything, felt remorse, or chose silence as its final act.

More characters and their fates we don't know of

Sure, we got to know what happened to our main characters but a few characters and their fates were completely abandoned. What happened to Scott Clarke? After he helps the group enter the Upside Down, we don't know what happens to him. Is he alive? Dead? What is he up to?

What happened to Murray Bauman? As important as he was as a character throughout the show he's not included in the final moments of the show when we are exploring what happened to all the characters.

Same goes for Vickie. Robin's girlfriend made quite a lot of appearances throughout the show but we don't see her at the end of the episode. Not even a mention. Which means there are some characters who have been totally sidelined and although they played big parts in the earlier episodes, the finale does not do them justice.

Is Eleven dead or alive?

The show’s final and most emotional question is also the one it refuses to answer: Did Eleven survive, or did she sacrifice herself entirely?

The finale presents two truths and never tells you which one is real. One version shows Eleven staying behind in the Upside Down as it collapses, choosing finality so no one can ever use her again and the other version comes through Mike. Framed as a Dungeons and Dragons story, he imagines Kali casting one last illusion, allowing Eleven to escape unseen. The final image of Eleven walking alone through a peaceful landscape with waterfalls supports that hope without confirming it.

The ambiguity is the point, but it's also a little frustrating. Which version of the truth is true? And even if Eleven did survive, what life is she leading now? Where is she?

But maybe for Hawkins, Eleven lives on either way. In memory, in love and in the fact that the world is finally quiet.