By Chris Snellgrove | Published
This should have been a pretty good month for Netflix. They let go with strategies Stranger Things Season 5 was three installments, dropping the first two on Thanksgiving and Christmas to maximize viewing. However, fans were not impressed with the latest installment, and the penultimate episode, “The Bridge,” is now the lowest-rated episode of the entire series.
Fans have high hopes that the show will follow, but I have bad news: the Stranger Things the last of the series will be a critical miss, and there is no hope. There are too many arcs to wrap up, too many questions to be answered, and too little time left for any of it.
I Stranger Things the series finale will last two hours and eight minutes, which is the length of an over-the-top horror movie. On paper, that might seem like plenty of time to wrap up the events of this season and generally bring the show to a satisfying conclusion. Unfortunately, Season 5 was horribly slow paced, and the episodes spent so much time setting up the final episode that the finale wouldn’t have enough running time to wrap everything up while keeping the fandom happy.
Vecna Will Ruin the Unknown for the Last Time
Perhaps the biggest problem with Season 5 has been Vecna. Sure, he did a good job looking scared, and seeing him run through a small army in Episode 4 was pretty cool. But we still don’t really know how his crazy plan to merge the two worlds (the real world and Gosha) is supposed to work or how this will help in his plans to rule the world. Worse, we don’t really know what his motivations are, making him look like a typical villain.
I Stranger Things the series finale will provide answers, but the fact that the rest of Season 5 left all these mysteries about the criminal will enter the running time of the final episode. As most fans know, information about Vecna’s past and possible motivations has been revealed in the stage play Stranger Things: The First Shadow. The good news is that the Duffer Brothers have confirmed that you do not need to watch the game and that all relevant information will be displayed on the screen; the bad news is that most of it hasn’t been revealed, which means that most of the finale will be consumed by the reveal.
Too Many Characters, Not Enough Time
In addition, Stranger Things already has a huge cast, but Season 5 keeps introducing new characters (like Dr. Kay and Derek) while bringing back old ones (like Holly, Eleven’s “sister”, and Dustin of MacGyver’s science teacher) to the action. This compounds the show’s biggest ongoing problem: there isn’t enough time to give the rest of the cast a chance to shine. Now, the series finale has to give each main character a crowd-pleasing moment or two while still finding something for the minor characters to do, and there isn’t enough running time to do each character justice.
I Stranger Things the series finale will need to close arcs between several fan-favorite characters. We’ll probably get some sort of closure about Hopper and Eleven’s fractured relationship, possibly with at least one of them sacrificing themselves for the good. Will still needs to confess his feelings to Mike, Nancy needs to figure out if she wants to be with Steve, the kidnapped children need to be rescued from Vecna, Vecna needs to be stopped, the Upside Down needs to be shut down, oh, and we still need to learn who Dr. Kay is and why she appears to be Dr. Brenner 2.0.
Unknown Objects All Set, No Charge
This means, to put it mildly, a a lotand many fans were waiting Stranger Things folding at least others of these episodes in the seven episodes leading up to the series finale. Unfortunately, despite some crowd-pleasing moments (like Vecna’s aforementioned battle with the Force and Will separating the Demogorgons from his mind), this season felt like a set-up for the finale. It’s a completely backwards way of telling a story, and with seven episodes to show, it will be approx it is impossible so that the final episode provides a truly satisfying conclusion.
Like the rest of the fandom, I’ll be tuning in on New Year’s Eve, and I sincerely hope that this show gives us a final episode that touches everyone’s psyche. However, so far, Season 5 has been nothing short of spectacular, providing endless space for a final episode that fails to live up to everyone’s expectations. If the series finale is equally disappointing, then Stranger Things it will be so It is lost again Game of Thrones: a great show that ends badly everyone he stops caring all at once.
