Why I like Stranger Things’ final season
I recently rewatched Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (bear with me). The protagonist scarpered from his professor role at an American university at the drop of a fedora, on a hunt to find a legendary ark. Along the way, he brought a whip to a gunfight (and succeeded), discovered tombs that not even the locals had found for thousands of years, all while preserving a completely unblemished hat. And, miraculously, Indiana doesn’t have a single known STD.*
The movie is a classic. Indiana Jones has a lot of heart, showing the spirit of adventure and bending the story to match that sense of fun. Facts are cherry-picked, while the plot is warped beyond its constraints. It’s a journey, successfully adjusting the viewer’s suspension of disbelief, a feat that more modern movies often fail to achieve (I am looking at you, fridge scene from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).
When the final episode of Stranger Things released in January 2026, I realised that we have lost the art of making adventure-filled stories that treat reality with a playful lick of paint. The season has many, many logical holes. Why didn’t the two girls run to the portal as soon as it appeared? Why were there no Demogorgons in the Abyss? Surely a gigantic Mind Flayer would have killed at least one child? These flaws were so pervasive that fans even conjured “Conformity Gate” to account for a fictional ninth episode.
But I did not mind. The story had lots of heart, and it bent around characters who have been with us since 2016. The show gave arcs to characters that were fulfilled by the end of the final episode. The catharsis of seeing the children succeed was immense and, in my view, executed near-perfectly. And the final shot, with new children playing D&D together, is a perfect bookend to the spirit of the story.
The story did not make complete logical sense. And I know that the “line” for incredulity is marked differently for different people. But Stranger Things made a genuine attempt to shape its narrative for the sake of character development. In that sense, I think it succeeded.
Then again, I don’t think the Duffer Brothers helped themselves. Publishing a documentary on their creative process, complete with visible flaws, tarnished their image. I cannot believe they showed a moment where the team used ChatGPT, and that they seemingly had no clear idea how to string the story together. But the duo always had the goal of writing a fun adventure with kids at its centre, drawing heavily from Stephen King as an influence. I think it worked out in the end. I just hope the duo plots a little better next time, for the sake of their own mental health.
*… probably.
