By: Dylan Sattler

“Stranger Things” has been one of the most talked about shows of the last nine years, the story following a group of friends in Hawkins, Indiana, who just wanted to play D&D, but instead got trapped in a constant battle with otherworldly beings.

I’m sure you have seen it; if you haven’t, consider this a spoiler warning. This show is one that you have to pay all the attention you have to it. There is so much information in each second, from throwbacks to foreshadowing, every frame has something important to show. But anyway, here are some of the biggest things that bothered me about the final season of “Stranger Things.”

When I watched the last episode of Volume 2, the only question that I could come up with was, “How could they wrap everything up in only two hours?” The short answer is that they didn’t. So many questions are left unanswered, or have an ambiguous answer that Matt and Ross Duffer, the show’s creators, refuse to give a single answer to. So many plot holes were left wide open, yet they still dedicated time to an entire documentary and an entire Broadway play. The play was a prequel, aiming to focus on the early life of the adults in Hawkins, like Hopper, Joyce Byers, and mainly focusing on Henry Creel, also known as Vecna. The play is incredible and so cool to watch, yet for some reason, the show did not see any reason to connect the fact that Hopper, Joyce, and all the other well known adults on the show went to high school, and knew Henry personally. If the writers chose to make this connection, it would have changed the show’s dynamic so drastically, making a stronger connection between Venca and him, taking his old high school buddy, Joyce’s son. 

Another big plot hole is Hopper’s entire story in the epilogue. How could he possibly go back to being a normal guy around town when the entire town thought that he had been dead for three years, yet they just accepted him back as police chief? Not to mention that after Max wakes up from her 18-month coma, she happens to see Hopper standing there behind El, after thinking he was dead for a year before she even went into her coma. And when Mr. Clarke, the kids’ teacher, joined them, how was he so confused about the upside-down, but not Hopper being there? Don’t even get me started on Patty Newby. I could go on forever.

Speaking of Max, how did she regain the use of her eyes after the events of season four? There is basically no way that she wasn’t blind, or at least had severe visual impairments. Also, how did Dustin have a limp in the season four epilogue after hurting his ankle, yet Max doesn’t have a limp or any kind of physical disabilities from having all of her limbs snapped?

Now I’m going to talk about the inconsistencies of the final battle. This battle makes no sense and is also anticlimactic. This battle only lasted under seven minutes, which is shorter than the season three final battle, which was fifteen minutes. What was the point of Steve and Dustin? They stood under the Mindflayer and stabbed it on the underbelly, but all that accomplished was being covered in weird, gross Mindflayer goop. This battle was also unrealistic because they spent the whole season displaying the hivemind link between Vecna, the Mindflayer, and Will, yet none of the things that all the kids are doing to hurt the Mindflayer was affecting Vecna, as he has a pretty calm battle with El inside the cave of the Mindflayer. And when Vecna is killed, Will is just standing there watching, unaffected. Also, where are the demogorgans and demobats? They would make the battle so much cooler and longer.

The last thing I want to talk about is the obvious queerbaiting of this show. Now, I myself am not personally a “Byler” shipper, yet I can’t deny that there were absolutely signs that there were shared feelings on both sides, the clear yearning from Mike, and his inability to love El as she loved him, unable to say I love you, or hold her like he loves her. Yet during a stressful time, Mike has the time to flirt with Will, and when Will comes out as gay to the group, Mike is seen to be having serious feelings about the situation. As they are climbing the tower to enter the Abyss for the final battle, Mike and Will hit the final blow with the “Friends? No. Best friends!” 

This season was built up so heavily, and I was honestly so excited to see how they rounded out the story, yet I was disappointed to see that only a fourth of the story was finished. I didn’t even talk about where Dr. Owens is, where the military went, El’s sacrifice, the kids in the epilogue, or anything to do with Kali. We waited nine years for questions to still be left unanswered, which is such a disappointment to every fan of the show.