Finally someone who doesn’t hate Kali😭

Can we just give an honourable mention to Jamie Campbell Bower..  his Henry acting was a class act..✨

Someone finally annoyed the military is acting like they have it all figured out and they don’t. Ep 4 should’ve been the wake up call.

Mike really chose the soundtrack for his girlfriend to die to I’m sick

It’s not awful but it really wasn’t that good either. El deserved so much better 🤷🏽‍♀️

20:36 No Brad, I'm in FULL agreement with this sentiment! Kali is a kid too, I kinda got the ick from Hop in that moment 🫠

Apparently Noah had to beg for the scene between him and Mike on the tower to be written into the show

The government plotline this season was so so so stupid

I’m so pleased to hear someone else say that Khali aka 8 also deserves a happy ending. If anything, shes had it worse than 11. Khali already experienced the loss everyone is trying to protect 11 from yet show her no shred of empathy or sympathy it really bothers me. She has every right to be a little cold giving what shes survived. I just hate the way the Duffers did her in this show. She deserves so much better.

My personal biggest issue with the finale is Mike not saying I love you to El when she was DYING! MICHAEL ARE YOU KIDDING?

YES, I can finally reveal all the things that irritated me.

1) I HATE that they created an entire play worth of backstory for their main villain, only to include like 1% of that backstory. If they wanted people to know the backstory they should have put the play on Netflix, or chosen a different medium. A large chunk of people didn’t see the play, and some people didn’t even know the play existed or had such important context.

1.5) I hate even more that the play set up Henry not being himself anymore, and so while it’s the same body it’s a different person. But the finale just goes “yeah well Henry could’ve definitely restrained himself, so he just actually wanted to be evil”

2) I hate how easy it was to do everything. Your telling me Vecna was surprise attacked in season 4, and not one part of him thought “don’t under estimate these kids, be prepared”. Stupid.

3) I hate how El went out, and I hate even more the explanation these writers gave. Essentially saying “oh yeah this girl was abused her entire childhood and all she wanted was a family and to be normal…but SHE needs to kill herself cause she’s the only remaining problem”. What a horrible message: instead of letting people help you through these issues and finding happiness for yourself, you should actually just kill your self for the sake of everyone else’s normalcy.

4) just overall I feel like they missed so many opportunities for great plot lines. I would have loved to see will have more of a plot where Vecna does utilize him as a spy again, and have that be more present. Especially because the already tied his coming out into vecnas power over him (which could have been scrapped), there was a lot more there. More of max, Kali, and El in the mindscape. We really should’ve had this beginning in the last half of episode 7, and that way more of vecnas backstory could be shared

5) again, just want to reiterate how absolutely ridiculous that play is to me. You set up that all the parents, especially Joyce, know Henry and nothing happens with that. And the response for not including more of the play is “we didn’t want to confuse people”. Then why make the damn play. It really irritates me. The play itself seems really good, but the concept of it is ridiculous, could have easily been a 1 season spinoff between seasons 4 and 5.

6) Steve’s almost death made my eyes roll so far back into my skull you’d think I was being taken by Vecna. The moment that shit cut to black like it was a cable television show, I knew not enough people were dying. You know it’s bad when the entire show I’ve been on the “steve not dying” campaign but I would have rather had the most brutal Steve death ever. Again, you’re telling me the only characters to die were the 2 mentally and physically abused girls who deserved to live more than anyone. Not a single other non powerful person gets taken out? Murray makes it through, every single child lives, every single character out like 18 is completely fine? When the stakes are so high? It is so ridiculous.

Edit: in regards to el needing to die to stop the program and staying alive would mean she’s always in danger. A lot of people, me included, have pointed out that the entire reason for this program is to help fight the Russians in the Col War, a war that ends like 2-3 years after this takes place. So realistically, everyone who knew and had power to capture and experiment on El would’ve no longer had that power. All these scientists whose sole purpose is this program would’ve left. So yeah SOME people would’ve tried to find her, but not to this level. And if el can evade this level of government takeover for 18 months, she could easily evade people who no longer have resources to find her. Everything they were using El for would’ve been completely shut down in 3 years time

Edit again: I think a large part of why El’s death doesn’t make me emotional is because this entire seasons she’s felt like a robot. Train, train, stay hidden, train, fight, escape, train, die. Season 4 was all about her regaining her power AND becoming her own person. She can love Mike, she can have her family, and have her powers. Season 5 just squashes all of that and says “eh yeah, she’s just a tool, not a person”. I think the thing that really tells me how little the differs understand writing and how little passion they have for writing is how they did not think of a new ending. To my knowledge, this show was originally only going to be 1 season and end with El disappearing. Which works after season 1, but we’ve gotten 4 seasons of character development for el, her learning to exist in society, making friends, learning about who she is. But we could not have picked a new ending, we just recycled the same exact ending as the first season. Unoriginal, and poor writing.

Edit again again, I get El herself wanting to save others from more chaos and fighting, my problem is the show frames it as the correct decision. And the duffers in the bts documentary talk about her dying not as a result of the corrupt government, but as her entire life leading to this moment of sacrifice. Like she never deserved to live because “magic of childhood” or whatever. Like she’s just a figment of their imaginations instead of a real human who’s experienced major trauma and abuse. It also pisses me off how nobody except Mike was sad in the epilogue. Hopper essentially says “eh get over it, she’s gone. She also wasn’t even my real daughter so who cares”

Edit 1 month later: I stand by everything I’ve said. In fact, I’ll do you all one better. El should have told Mike her plan, and he should have “died” with her. If the ending was gonna be “El needs to die/leave so her friends can be safe” Mike should’ve gone with her. Also so many people should have died. Murray, Mr. Clarke, Vickie, Steve, Jonathan, Robin, Ted, some of those fucking kids, 1-2 of the OG group of boys, all easily gone. Literally all of those characters I would’ve had 0 problem killing for the sake of stakes and emotional impact, and not a single one of them died. I’d rather be handed emotional pain and anguish over a poorly thought out/poorly executed ending any day.

43:17 "I'm gonna walk that stage next month, I'm gonna look Principal Higgins dead in the eye, I'm gonna flip him the bird, I'm gonna snatch that diploma, and I'm gonna run like hell outta here!" He did it for Eddie! 🥹😭🤘🏼🖤⚡️

Really didn't like this ending, it felt like no thought was put into it. The government just letting everyone off the hook, the Mike and will scene on the tower(which mind you, Noah had to pester them to add it), will being fine when the mindflayer and vecna were killed(which is a HUGE plot hole imo). And after finding out the ending wasn't even written when they filmed the first episode this season just cements how little they cared. And ik people are gonna say I had way too high expectations but girl why wouldn't I. This is such a big show it deserved to be given a great ending. Sorry for that rant 😭

Dustin’s speech is what Eddie imagined in Season 4 (rewatch the scene in the cafeteria!)

"Short answer, no" EXACTLY

One of the things that surprised me the most was Karen still with Ted after all

I thought it was a pretty disappointing wrap up. I didn’t like the ambiguity of El’s ending… but I loved where we left Steve.

is it weird that i looked forward more to your reaction of the finale than the actual finale itself😭

With all the plot holes and stupidness of this finale, the thing that annoys me most is Derek getting out of breath. Max being ABLE TO WALK despite being in a coma IRL proves that the condition of your real body has no effect on what your ‘mind-body’ can do in the memory world. Yet Derek gets out of breath? He should be able to run just as fast as the other kids. It’s so annoying.

thank you for making me feel better about El choosing to off herself. I've been struggling with the finale and your reaction has made me see the episode in a different light. sincerely thank you.