*Spoilers ahead*
The Stranger Things phenomenon reached its climax with the release of the Season 5 finale — and series finale — of the Netflix hit.
As the final episode “The Rightside Up” streamed globally over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, audiences took to social media to share pretty divisive reactions to the ending, after nearly a decade of Hawkins adventures.
Social media lit up with reactions ranging from ecstatic praise to harsh criticism as audiences weighed in on the epic two-hour episode.
Here, we’ve got everything you need to know about the episode and response so far.
What happened in the season finale?
In the climactic finale, the Hawkins crew faces its greatest threat yet: the Mind Flayer and its puppet, Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower).
Using a plan named “Operation Beanstalk,” the gang fights to stop Vecna from merging Earth with the Abyss. They find a way into the body of the Mind Flayer, where Vecna is in his bodily form.
Eleven and Will work together to overpower Vecna, with Will tapping into his mind so the pair can finally defeat him.
Joyce and Will arrive to help ensure Vecna is finished, with Joyce issuing the final blows by severing Vecna’s head.
The group frees the imprisoned children and escapes back through the Upside Down toward safety. Hopper and Murray remain behind to trigger a bomb set to detonate with a timed recording of Prince’s ‘When Dove’s Cry’, designed to destroy the Upside Down and the Abyss once and for all.
In a crucial moment that will surely be debated for months to come, Eleven appears to sacrifice herself to destroy the threat.
An 18-month time jump shows the characters moving into new phases of life; Hopper proposes to Joyce, Robin attends Smith College in Massachusetts, Steve is coaching Little League and teaching Sex Ed at the high school. Nancy dropped out of university to take a job at the Boston Herald, while Jonathan is a filmmaker at NYU and working on an anti-capitalist cannibal movie.
Max and Lucas settle down together, Dustin enrols in university and regularly hangs out with Steve. Will moves to the city and becomes a writer.
Does Eleven die in the season finale?
Will reveals that Eleven didn’t actually die, but is living in a remote area of the world. She’s shown surrounded by waterfalls.
Whether this is real, is up for debate. The creators told Tudum that they intentionally left ambiguous, rather allowing viewers “to decide what they think happens to Eleven.”
According to the creators, Eleven was never meant to share the same ending as the rest of the Hawkins kids. “There was never a version of the story where Eleven was hanging out with the gang at the end,” Ross added in another interview with Tudum.
What did fans think of the Stranger Things finale?
Fan were extremely divided over the finale, with many of them expressing severe disappointment with how things were wrapped up. One fan compared the ending to an episode on the Disney Channel.
“Main villain killed halfway in, nobody important died, no explanation on Henry Creel’s origin story, & only an 18-month time jump. Stranger Things finale was the stupidest f***ing ending I’ve seen, right up there with the Umbrella Academy,” one fan said in a now-viral post on X.
“That Stranger Things 5 ending was kinda bunk… I was literally expecting a Vecna phase 2 for half an hour. Nope. And nobody important died or anything,” another person remarked.
“The worst possible ending,” a third person added.
One fan criticised their decision to end the action so soon, writing, “The biggest mistake they made was a whole 50 minutes of the episode just being the epilogue, the could’ve used those at least 30 of those 50 minutes to make the fighting scenes better”.
However, there were some fans who felt satisfied with the Stranger Things season finale.
“The Stranger Things Finale felt like a return to the shows prime form. Everyone hit their mark, it felt big, it felt epic, it was a worthy finale,” one fan said.
Another added: “The Stranger Things 5 finale was beautiful there will never be a show like this ever again.”
All episodes of Stranger Things Season 5 are now streaming on Netflix. Watch the official trailer for the finale below.
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