Stranger Things Season 5 finale: This could have been an email

After almost ten years of monsters, trips to the Upside Down, and a whole new wave of Kate Bush fans, Stranger Things finally wrapped up on January 1, 2026.

The last episode hit Netflix and over 350 theaters across the US and Canada all at once. That’s how you say goodbye to one of Netflix’s biggest hits. The finale ran two hours and was titled The Rightside Up. It brought Eleven, Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas, and everyone else in Hawkins to the finish line.

The fifth and last season featured three separate drops over the holidays. First, they gave us four episodes on November 26, 2025. Then, three more landed on Christmas Day. Finally, the big finale came out all by itself on New Year’s Eve. This schedule kept fans hooked from Thanksgiving right into January.

Stranger Things Season 5 finale: A safe landing that played it too safe

Stranger Things Season 5 Episode 8 dives right into the chaos. The gang comes together to defeat Vecna one last time. There’s a huge battle with explosions and powers everywhere. Eleven, Kali, and Max go into Henry’s head while Hopper and Murray are handling a bomb, hoping to blow the Upside Down. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew is charging into the Abyss to pull Holly Wheeler and the other kids out of danger. It’s all very heroic and all very on-brand.

But the plan just... works. Like, way too smoothly. After all these seasons building up Vecna as the scariest villain in the Upside Down, he goes down without much of a fuss. There are no betrayals, no last-second reversals, just everyone ticking off their checklists and waltzing out the other side.

A couple of people die, but nothing that shakes the ground. It’s almost like the writers ran out of steam. Where’s the gut-punch twist? Where’s the ‘oh my god’ moment?

The biggest moment of the Stranger Things Season 5 finale was Kali’s death. Lieutenant Akers shoots Kali in the gut during all the Hawkins Lab chaos. For all her powers, she is not invincible, and she dies. Eleven loses it and flips Akers’ own gun against him, blows his brains out. Now, Kali never had much screentime. She sort of appeared and disappeared from the story, so when she goes down, it doesn’t exactly rip your heart out the way, say, Bob’s death did. It’s sad, but not ‘I need to take a walk’ sad.

After that, Eleven makes this big decision. She is done letting the government mess things up, so she stays behind to shut it all down. She chucks Mike back into the Rightside Up, and the bombs start going off. Looks like she is pulling the ultimate hero move, ready to die for the cause.

Except the show pulls a fast one. Suddenly, Kali’s illusion powers kick in, and it turns out Eleven isn’t actually in the portal. She lives! So you get your big dramatic sacrifice moment, but without any actual loss. Maybe the writers wanted all the feels but couldn’t quite commit to the consequences.

One of the most significant things about the Stranger Things Season 5 finale is what it does not offer. After five seasons packed with monsters, secret labs, and all that cryptic jazz, the final episode wraps it up. The Upside Down is wiped out, Vecna is gone, the Abyss is slammed shut, and the government shadiness is over for now.

Don’t expect some massive info dump about the real deal behind the Upside Down. If you were holding out for answers, that ship sailed earlier. We have already discovered that the Upside Down is merely a wormhole connecting Hawkins and the Abyss, rather than an alternate universe. And even that wasn’t new in the Stranger Things Season 5 finale; that was revealed back in Volume 2. In the end, the finale just sticks to the plan, with just the gang doing what they said they would do. That’s it.

Vecna’s backstory gets a little more detail thanks to Holly Wheeler poking through his memories, but it’s nothing game-changing. He is still the same messed-up kid who got lured in by the Mind Flayer. We keep hearing about his big plan to rebuild the world, but what even is it? They barely give us any real answers. And that whole time obsession they keep dangling in front of us barely matters in the end.

Remember when The Mind Flayer was the ultimate nightmare since Season 2? It goes out with Vecna in this CGI-overload fight. Looks cool, but where’s the twist? After all the dread and drama, the demogorgon puppeteering, and Hawkins living in constant fear, it’s just… over. There are no secrets or deeper meanings. A bunch of kids just defeated an interdimensional villain just like that. That’s the end.

Trending

Stranger Things Season 5 finale is now streaming on Netflix.

×

Was this article helpful?

Thank You for feedback