The long-awaited Stranger Things finale has arrived, one of the most anticipated tv finales of the decade, but was the wait worth it? Stranger Things is a widely known show first debuting in 2016 about a girl with superpowers, a group of boys taking her in, and their fight against monsters and authorities. The first volume of the new season, including episodes 1–4, came out November 26, 2025, and in my opinion they were the best few episodes of the season. The release of the first four episodes set the standards very high, maybe too high for the writers, the Duffer Brothers, to match up to. As the episodes came out, with volume two coming on Christmas and the finale on New Year’s Day, I started to notice inconsistencies within the plot—as did other fans.
Starting first with the Upside Down, an alternate universe hidden under the small town of Hawkins, I want to highlight a few inconsistencies. In previous seasons, the Upside Down was literally upside down, shown in many instances where the main characters had to cross through a hole in the ceiling or floor and ended up almost landing on their heads in the Upside Down. However, this season, when a hole opened up somewhere across the town, it was right-side up? It doesn’t match up with other seasons.
Moreover, in season 1, the Upside Down was deprived of water, and pools were left empty, but Eleven, one of the main characters, used a tank filled with water as a sensory deprivation tank in the Upside Down.
Lastly for the Upside Down, in episode 4, “Sorcerer,” we are introduced to a gigantic wall connecting the Upside Down to the Abyss. That wall was huge . . . I find it hard to believe that it had gone unnoticed for four seasons. And if your argument is “they haven’t been to the Upside Down that much and haven’t explored enough,” they go multiple times each season except season three. Hawkins is clearly a small town, and they’ve surely gone enough times to get at least kind of close to the edge of it.
Next, the script. Maybe the phrase “Godammit” was popular in the 80’s (not that I would know), but it seriously couldn’t have been that popular. The amount of times that one word was said this season is excessive. The dictionary is massive; there’s definitely an alternative word to use. It seems more like a 4th grader finding out a new bad word that you won’t hear the end of for months.
Next, the poorly written lines that are hard to understand. In episode 6, “Escape From Camazotz,”we learn that Jonathan was going to propose to Nancy, but as we all thought they were about to die and they were confessing to each other, he takes out the ring and says, “Nancy Wheeler, will you not marry me?” Now why would you say that? Not only is this a very bad time to break up, but it was also very confusing to understand as a viewer. They seemed to have solved their problems in the minutes before this. This line fit in so oddly, it’s hard to determine whether Jonathan is proposing, joking, or ending the relationship.
Another awkward quote that was hard to ignore: Mike said at the very beginning of the season, when stopping the bullies from beating up Dustin, “Stop this meathead from reproducing and further infecting the world with his unique brand of idiocy.” This quote sounds more like it was generated by artificial intelligence than a witty teenager. The writers are in their forties, and my parents in their fifties could understand that nobody even close to my age would say that.
Even the actors were confused with the script. In “One Last Adventure: The Making Of Stranger Things 5,” a behind-the-scenes documentary that came out on Netflix on January 12th, Maya Hawke, who plays Robin Buckley, had to remind the creators of the show that nobody knew she and her girlfriend were dating yet. Imagine being so careless with your script your own actors have to remind you about the script you wrote.
Not only had they been careless, but the documentary reveals that they didn’t have a finished script going into filming the finale. Not even the timeline. Nothing. Going into film the finale of the Stranger Things franchise without a complete script sounds wildly unprofessional. Did they think that the show was so popular that they could get away with anything? They had three years to write a script; they can’t be serious. Then they go ahead and lie in an interview and say they knew the ending from the very first season—it gets to a point where you could call this lazy.
Though I honestly feel that this was a pretty okay finale, it crumbled under pressure. It doesn’t feel like the Emmy-winning show that had me captivated the first time I watched it. These missteps made the final season feel rushed and sloppy, and honestly not worthy of the massive fanbase that spent three years—1,245 days—waiting for.