[Ed. note: This article contains full spoilers for the series finale of Stranger Things.]
Something has seemed wrong since, let’s say, some time in 2016. Whatever your political, economic, or religious affiliations, there’s no denying our world has veered down a polarized path in the last decade, one that most people never saw coming in the optimistic, post-recession era of the early 2010s. To quote a much-memed sentiment, we’re all living in the “wrong timeline” — but there’s no easy, dimension-hopping way to fix it.
That’s not the case in Stranger Things, which offers exactly that solution to a decade of trauma and horror in its movie-length final episode. After launching on Netflix in the summer of 2016 as a taught, science-fiction thriller best-described as E.T. meets The X-Files, the show culminates a decade later with an epic battle between psychic warriors, molotov-cocktail-chucking humans, and a giant CGI monster called The Mindflayer — all set against the backdrop of an evil alternate reality known as The Abyss.
It’s an absurd ending to what was once a tightly constructed horror show with a moody synth soundtrack, but it also feels weirdly appropriate. Like finally taking down an impossible Dark Souls boss, the experience of watching these kids somehow defeat a Godzilla-sized enemy that represents all their fears and self-doubts was incredibly cathartic, yet it was only an appetizer for what came next.
With the Mindflayer dead and its partner-in-crime Vecna impaled on a giant rock, our heroes celebrate their victory, but it’s not quite over yet. Vecna is still breathing, and for a second, it looks like the character (a human corrupted by evil) might get redemption. Instead, Joyce Byers (Wynona Rider) picks up an axe and chops his head off. As she hacks at Vecna’s tree-trunk-esque neck, we see flashbacks of all the ways he’s tortured the show’s sprawling cast of characters; a decade of death, violence, pain, and anguish summed up in a few short moments. Then, Joyce cuts clean through and the nightmare finally ends.
The gang sets off a bomb to destroy the Upside Down (which we learned in season 5 is actually a wormhole connecting our world to the Abyss) and makes their escape, as a pair of Prince songs (“When Doves Cry,” followed by “Purple Rain”) sets the tone for their final victory. Ahead of the finale’s release, Netflix hyped up the episode as featuring a song that had never been used in TV or film before. That’s not exactly true — those Prince tracks famously appear in his 1984 movie Purple Rain — but it’s still an impressive accomplishment that points back to a larger theme in the Stranger Things finale.
Prince died in 2016, just a few months before Stranger Things premiered. It was one of many tragic deaths at the time that seems, in hindsight, like an omen of the dark path we were about to embark on. The artist’s inclusion here only heightens the cathartic feeling of watching a decade of trauma fade away and vanish.
But Stranger Things isn’t over yet. A final act reunites the core gang (minus Billie Bobby Brown’s Eleven) for one last Dungeons & Dragons campaign. As they vanquish an evil vampire, Dungeon Master Mike (Finn Wolfhard) spins a story of where their lives will lead next, imagining happy young adulthoods for each of them. It’s a touching farewell to a cast of characters we’ve come to love, if a bit drawn out in an already indulgent finale. Of course, real life has its challenges, too. The kids will all face their share of defeat and heartbreak as their lives go on, but in the show’s final moments, we’re given a brief respite from both sci-fi horror and reality to imagine a perfect world might really be possible.
In Stranger Things, evil has finally been vanquished. If only our own reality was so simple.
