Pop Culture Happy Hour - Stranger Things

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

After five seasons and almost ten years, the saga of Netflix’s Stranger Things has reached its end. In a two-hour finale, we found out what happened to our heroes (including Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard) when they set out to battle the forces of evil. The final season had new faces and new revelations, along with moments of friendship and conflict among the folks we've known and loved since the night Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) first disappeared. But did it stick the landing?To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Well, it's over. After five seasons and almost 10 years, the saga of Stranger Things has reached its end. In a two-hour finale that Netflix dropped on New Year's Eve, we found out what happened to our heroes when they set out to battle the forces of evil. The final season had new faces and new revelations, along with moments of friendship and conflict among the folks we've known and loved since the night Will Byers first disappeared. I'm Linda Holmes, and today we're talking about the final season of Strzheimer. Stranger Things on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is Eric Deggans. He's a critic at large at NPR and also the night chair of journalism and media ethics at Washington and Lee University.

Hello, Eric. Hello, hello, hello, hello. Hello. Also with us is Ronald Young Jr. He's the host of the film and television review podcast, leaving the theater. Hello, Ronald. Hello, Linda. All right.

I am not going to try to sum up the entire story of Stranger Things. I'm going to assume that you know the basics. I will also mention that because we are talking about the season, you should assume you will hear about the whole season. So this is your spoiler warning. As season five started, the monstrous creature known as Vecna has disappeared after wreaking havoc on the town of Hawkins. And not only could our gang of heroes not figure out how to kill him,

they didn't even know where he was. As if things weren't dark enough, Vecna snatched Mike's little sister Holly, along with a bunch of other kids. and spirited them away to use them in some kind of ritual to merge an alternate dimension called the abyss, which, yes, is different from the upside down, with Earth and destroy it. But wait, there were also the problems of Max's coma, Will's angst over his sexuality, the rift between Dustin and Steve, and a bunch of other stuff.

So the challenge was to rescue all the kids and also solve all those problems. In the end, in the finale, there was, of course, a final battle that took place in the abyss. The heroes won, Vecna lost, and Eleven sacrificed herself so that the government could not use her blood to make more supernatural children. Then there was a very long epilogue revealing not only that everybody else lived happily ever after, but also that it's possible Eleven is not dead. She is just backpacking. The end. So I'm going to start with you, Ronald. how did you feel about this final season of Stranger Things?

So I think that season three and season four of Stranger Things was some of the best work that Netflix has done. I really enjoyed both of those seasons a lot. And especially where it ended with season four really enjoyed that. So it was a little disconcerting when season five starts and it felt like we went back to the beginning. I thought we were going to start right in the action. And we didn't. I stuck with it. I felt like all the tranches of episodes.

that came out on each day, they all were totally well, for the most part. They kind of were balanced and they kind of did the best that they could, I thought, or the best that they could offer, I would say. But when it got to the end, it felt like this whole season was more about saying goodbye to Stranger Things the show than it was about closing out the story well. And I think they said goodbye to Stranger Things the show very well, but I don't know that they closed out the story as well as I would have liked. So I'm kind of right in the middle. Yeah, I get that. How about you, Eric? What did you think? Yeah, I think that analysis is pretty

apt. My sense of stranger things is that there's a lot of elements of this show that really work. They have crafted this ensemble of actors who really click. And it's a pleasure to watch them bounce off of each other no matter what they're doing. And the sense of spectacle, that they have created with some of these characters. You know, the way Vecna looks and the special effects and when we finally get to see what the mind flare looks like. You know, the special effects of all of that is very impressive. But as you said earlier, the actual storyline, you know,

sort of connecting all this together was the weakest part of it. And I've said before that I felt like the series has started to keep telling the same story over and over and over again. So as a viewer, I know what's going to have. have been before it actually happens. Yeah. And by getting more and more elaborate in the circumstances that they're fighting against, it also becomes more and more islandish.

Yeah. And it becomes harder and harder to believe that this plucky band of kids ate it with just a couple of adults who seem to have a brain in their head are staving off this gigantic conspiracy to collide worlds and destroy the entire earth. Yeah. It's like, really? Yeah. And on top of all of that, the one thing that I really will ding them for is wasting Linda Hamilton.

Yes. Why was she there? When they first introduced her, it seemed like, oh, man, this is going to be a great character. Really cool, yeah. And then when she confronted a hopper, you know, and they had their fight, that was great. And then nothing. She was a day late and a dollar short for the rest of the series. Yeah.

Could have been anybody. They turned her into a cartoon character. So. Yeah, I have another thought about her, too, which is so she's the military honcho who's running kind of the lab inside the upside down where they're running all these experiments and they're, you know, doing all this stuff. Her name is Dr. Kay. So there's this big giant battle. Then they all go back to the real world through the gate or whatever it is. And then they find that the military is waiting there. So now all of our heroes are in the custody of a bunch of

violent goons. And then you have all the business with 11 and she appears at least to have died. And then it's 18 months later. And there was part of me that was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. What did all the violent goons do with these people after 11? Good question. Where they just like, we'll call you a taxi. You can go home. You know all about our government experiments.

Hopper, you killed a bunch of soldiers. But it's all, you know, bygones. Let's just everybody go home. We just won't ever talk about it. But you guys can all live, right? And to me, that was an example of how. how they wanted, I think, to get to certain big moments. They wanted to get to that fight, which I actually thought the fight was very cool.

I enjoyed the final fight quite a lot. I enjoyed Nancy very much made up to look like Ripley from aliens. Enjoyed her kind of stepping into being like the big hero. Enjoyed a lot of that stuff. But they wanted to get to that big moment. They wanted to get to this big moment of Eleven's sacrifice. They wanted to get to, you know, these certain things. but I don't necessarily think this is kind of what you guys have said too.

I don't necessarily think that it holds together that well as a story. And, you know, Eric sort of made mention of this, but as it sort of got more and more convoluted in terms of the lore, I did not really understand why we needed the abyss on top of the upside down. Like, why couldn't this all just happen in the upside down? Like, what is the need to very close to the end of the series be like, okay, whole new place to go? And it felt to me a little bit grasping. And I also have to go on record as not a fan of the ending where they say, you decide what happens. I don't like that either. It's a cop out.

There can be successful ambiguous endings. Do not get me wrong. There absolutely are successful ambiguous endings. But there are also ones that feel like they don't want to bother anybody in the fan base. So my feeling is that they sort of sense that in a battle like this, there's often some loss. There's often some kind of cost to these battles. And so it feels like they wanted 11 to make this sacrifice, but they knew everybody would be really mad. So they sort of give you this, you decide, maybe she's alive.

And, you know, it's not my favorite way to do a finale. I sort of feel like as the storyteller, it's your responsibility to decide what happened and not to sort of give people two doors to walk through. That does not appeal to me. I did not like that. I will also point out there had been a lot of speculation among fans that several people would be killed. So I think they were also fainting towards that. Through the entire, you know, two hour finale, they were fainting towards, you know, major deaths. You know, Steve almost dies.

Yes. And also, maybe there was a sense that they had to have a death. So they sort of killed 11. I mean, one ambiguity. When it's done well, it's inception, where the top is spinning at the end of the film and we can debate over whether he's in the dream world or not. I thought that was the way that you do it if you're going to do it. So we could really, really get into it. In this one, I felt like it was settled that 11 is not dead.

And I only say that to say, if this was supposed to be ambiguous and this is how it turns out that I don't think they did a very good job. of saying dead or alive. Like they didn't even commit to it being ambiguous. It kind of felt like they all got tears in their eyes and Mike's like she's alive, basically, towards you, which was kind of frustrating to me because it does feel like a double cop out, if you will. Yeah. I feel like people could have died at the end of Stranger Things because it makes the stakes

actually seem real. Throughout the duration of the show, all they did was introduce new characters and then kill them instead of killing anyone in the core characters. Yeah. And yet and still at the end of this, give everybody an epilogue, which to me felt wild. I think that's where I feel like they were really committed to the fans and to fan service more than they were to ending the story well. That epilogue was so long. I couldn't believe. I stopped the Netflix to see how much time there was left. I did the

time drop. It was 40 minutes. I watched it right when it dropped. So I turned it on at eight and I knew it was supposed to be two hours and eight or nine minutes. And I'm looking at my watch like, wait a minute, it's 930. And this appears to be over. What in the world? And I was sitting there thinking, like, is this going to be like cast interviews for the last half an hour? And then they go to this epilogue and I was like, you guys, you have got to be kidding me. And there were parts of the epilogue that I thought worked well.

I think the D&D game worked really well. That should have been it though, Linda. That should have been the whole thing. That's what I would have made the epilogue. I thought that was very sweet. I thought it was a good way to come full circle. But all the other, like, I don't need to see absolutely everybody graduating from high school. I just didn't need that on top of everything else.

Plus, to me, it was a little bit like, everybody's fine now. Like, that's an awful lot of trauma. Nobody has trauma. Yes. To be like, everybody's fine now. And I also must say, and I try not to come down hard on them about this, but, like, it also gave another opportunity for several more terrible wigs. Some of the bad wigs on this show, man, and I did find it distracting, but it felt like it was unnecessary because it was all coming out of this, particularly the rooftop scene with the four older kids with Steve and Jonathan. No need for it.

First of all, I just think Jonathan is such a boring character. Oh, my gosh. So boring. I think my other issue with this season was I think there are characters that they continued to have a really good handle on, like Dustin and Steve. And I think there are characters that they lost the handle on. And I feel that way about Mike. I even feel that way a little bit about 11 in some ways. As she grew from this wide-eyed little kid to this woman, I kind of feel like they lost the handle on writing for her.

Yeah. I felt in the end like some characters still worked, but other characters really, really were not kind of weight-bearing by the end of the series. Hopper. is another one that you're right, that they lost the handle on towards the end. Because even by the end, when you get to the point where he's proposing to Joyce, I remember thinking, what were you doing this season? Like, why were you here? So I felt like that was like a common refrain.

Well, you know, again, in this idea of telling the same story over and over and over again, you know, his trauma over losing his biological daughter and him trying to do different with 11 is a story they kept telling over and over and over again. And that was his note during this final run of episodes. you know, him and 11 coming in a conflict because he was constantly overprotective and she was trying to step out on her own. And we've already seen this. They've already played it better in previous seasons.

Yeah. So, again, it felt like a bit of a waste of two actors that we know are really good. Yeah. Well, and it also opened the question, I think, when you talk about telling the same story over and over again, when they brought back the sister, when they brought back Collie, I was like, I don't think anybody enjoyed her the first time necessarily. I'm not sure why they're bringing this character back. But then by the end, in the finale, I was like, oh, they brought her back so that somebody who doesn't mean very much to anybody could die during the finale. Yes. To give it that sense of like a loss that people will be like, oh, yes, something sad happened, someone died.

But it won't really count or mean anything. Because as I think Ronald was saying earlier, they bring on new characters and those characters can die. Billy, Eddie, dead. Exactly. And Bob, right? Right. I don't want to make it sound like I was bloodthirsty and wanted them to kill a bunch of kids. That's not what I'm saying at all.

I'm just saying the whole thing felt to me like an exercise in trying to have it both ways and always. And that epilogue to me honestly felt like a 90210.1 episode. It was sort of so cliched and so trite all the stuff that they were saying in some of those scenes. it just didn't feel like the same show to me. Okay, I'm going to attempt a big idea here, and you let me know if I'm getting ahead of my skis on this one. I already agree, whatever it is. So, Stranger Things and its whole evolution as a series,

feels to me like a real analogy for streaming itself. I went back and I watched the first few episodes of the first season. I did too. And it's such a cool, basic, simple story with these, young kids who you have no idea who they are, but they're compelling, right? And the nostalgia and, you know, like it's all there. And as it becomes this bigger, larger, more involved, more technically ambitious, more spectacle, laden, death involved thing, it somehow loses that spark, that initial sort of creative, wow, this is really cool and different kind of thing. And it becomes something that's

entertaining and an achievement, but also kind of gets in its own way because it's become this big, huge thing now. I mean, Stranger Things brought on this whole new era in streaming. And I think initially it was a great thing. But now it's become bloated in the same way the streaming has become kind of bloated and is getting in its own way. And it was interesting to me to watch these last few episodes. I sort of feel like, wow, man, I feel like I'm seeing the arc of a platform. you know, told it a fictional story.

I think that makes a lot of sense. And I do think that because I was relatively underwhelmed by the finale, it can make it sound like I was underwhelmed by the show. And that's not really true. I also agree that when I went back and watched parts of it, parts of it were really moving and fun. And I think when they first started it, what there was of the lore was simple enough that it was relatively easy to follow.

You know, you had a kid who had disappeared. you know, there was a sense that he was kind of in another place, you know, and he could call his mom, he could, you know, they could communicate with Christmas lights. And there's a moment in this season where they're all talking about Vecna and they kind of rattle off his different names, right? Mr. What's it? He's actually Henry, aka Vecna. Somebody else says, AKA I was like, you know, you guys may have made this a little too complicated because. More than one of those things comes as a kind of a, hey, guess what? This is the same person as this. And like at some point it's like, oh, okay, we get it. There's this guy and he's the guy.

And I do think the lore became too much. At some point, I had a very difficult time keeping track of like, so where's your physical body and where's your mind? I get it. Please don't email me. I get it. I understand, I think, in the end, what the idea was. But I think it got very fuzzy to me. I'm sure the Duffer brothers understand it.

I'm sure the script supervisor understands it. But it got very much to me like, wait, I'm sorry. So where are they again? These kids are physically inside the mind flare, the big spider. But their minds are in this other place, frolicking around hanging out with Henry. But to me, that all eventually got a little convoluted for this lady. They kept having to stop to explain the plot. Yeah.

Every set of episodes, someone would be like, okay, so here's what's happening. And they would explain it to each other. And I remember, I'm saying, yo, if y'all had to do that more than once, then you're doing something wrong. We should be able to follow. I noticed that, too. Every character had their moment of like, so here's what I think. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. That's another thing that brings it down a notch for me is if you have to constantly tell me, tell me, tell me what's going on rather than show me, that is kind of a failure. Yes. When I thought about that was when Jonathan's, saved Steve from dying? And you were like, okay, so here's sort of a reconciliation between these guys. They've had this disagreement over this girl, but they're on the same side. And,

you know, Steve's grateful and Jonathan saved his life. But then you have to have them walking across the- Yes, and talk about it. The empty abyss having a conversation that amounts to, I guess, you're not such a bad guy after all. You know, I'm not going to end up with her. Well, I'm not either. Oh, well. And to me, it didn't add anything that you didn't get from him saving his life. Just have him save his life. Have him be grateful. Now you're fine. Now everything's fine. Okay. And I hate to say this as somebody who loves movies about people who can fly and melt things with their eyes. But how in the world does a military fill with experts know less about the upside down than these kids who haven't even graduated high school yet? I just, that was something that just constantly nagged at me for the whole final run of episodes, how, you know, the military is set up inside the upside down, studying all this stuff, and they still don't know nearly as much. It's just, oh, man, really?

Really? It definitely got a little thick on the ground at the end. I think you're right that it became more about making a fitting end for a phenomenon of a show. Yes. You know, give all the fans, what. whatever they want. If you want there to be a dramatic loss, there's a dramatic loss. If you don't want there to be one, then there wasn't one. Believe what you want to believe. Go off, be happy. Look, here's everyone happy. And Will went off and got a boyfriend. And of course, Stephen Dustin still

hang out. And, you know, all the things that fans would want. Oh, and of course, Joyce and Hopper have to get engaged. It's not enough to be together. Everybody has to get married. It's sort of like that rather than what's the most satisfying way to complete the story that you've been telling. Yeah. So I was mixed. Yeah. And the other thing that kept nagging at me was how many people actually do get killed by the characters in the main characters? Murdering.

Yeah. They murdered a lot of people. Many people and many monsters. Yeah. Well, the monster's okay. You know, there's these frightening things trying to kill them. But killing actual people and not thinking about it at all. You know, just another example of how it's achieving a little bit less because it's not tackling some of these things that could really be next level storytelling, you know, making the kids feel the deaths that come about and think about them a little bit.

Yeah. And again, it also goes back to somehow, I'm not sure, 18 months later, they'd all be grinning and happy and footloose. Did anybody get any therapy? I don't know. I think Hopper would be in jail for sure. Yes. I mean, he definitely, he killed like a dozen soldiers. In cold blood.

He really did. He really did. All right. Well, I think we are all mixed on the final season and finale. I think it is fair to say, tell us what you think about the final season of Stranger Things. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCHH. That brings us to the end of our show. Eric Deggans, Ronald Young Jr.

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support. our show and public radio, and you get to listen to all of our episodes, sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode is produced by Carly Rubin, Kayla Latimore, and Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, come in, provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture

Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.