After 42 episodes and an unquantifiable amount of loving, longing and sobbing on behalf of the fictional characters we’ve all grown to adore over the past (almost) decade, Stranger Things has come to an end.
The final-ever episode aired on Thursday, and we got to see our favourite Demogorgon-fighting, Dungeons and Dragons nerds battle it out in one last fight to defeat Vecna and the Mind Flayer. It was dramatic, epic, and a wild rollercoaster of emotions. IDK about you, but I was clutching onto my seat for dear life. There were tears shed, bated breaths, elevated heart rates, and a fly could’ve flown into with my mouth thanks to how low it was hanging (luckily, that didn’t happen).
Anywho, it’s safe to say that finale was bonkers. And if you’re still in denial about the colossal Netflix series being over, you’re not the only one. The entire Stranger Things crew doesn’t want it to be over, either.
“We were really emotional for a few weeks and then we just sort of went into denial and just buried ourselves in the work because post-production was so much work,” co-creator of the show, Ross Duffer said in an interview with PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“We’re all feeling the same. We’re like, ‘It’s not over yet! We still have press to do, the show’s not even out!’ So we’re all in a bit of denial, but I think come January first, it’s going to hit us all like a truck.”
Noah Schnapp, who plays Will Byers, said watching the finale was going to feel like a punch. “We’re just sad. It’s bittersweet.”
Same, Noah, same.
“Everyone’s grieving the end of the show, for sure. Everyone is also excited about doing new things. So I’m excited to see what these actors do next. I’m excited to see them play different characters. I know what incredible actors they are and what incredible range they have,” Matt Duffer said.
But before we let the cast move on to their next adventures, we need to talk about WTF happened in that finale. Some loved it, some hated it, and some are still confused about half the shit that went down. If you’re one of the latter, you’re not alone — the finale was the length of a bloody feature film, so it’s pretty likely you missed some stuff along the way. So let’s get you up to speed, shall we?
It goes without saying, this article contains spoilers — and there’s gonna be plenty from here on out. So if you haven’t watched the final episode yet, I’d pop a pin in this and circle back to it later.
You’ve been warned.
The Stranger Things season 5 finale explained
What happened to Eleven in the Stranger Things finale?
The biggest part of the Stranger Things season five finale that undoubtedly left a few question marks in everyone’s heads is Eleven’s death.
After defeating Vecna and the Mind Flayer, the whole gang are captured by Dr Kay (Linda Hamilton) and her army once they return to Hawkins from the Upside Down and The Abyss.
In order to save everyone else, El (Millie Bobby Brown) sacrifices herself, escaping capture from the military and going back to the gate that leads to The Upside Down. However, the Hawkins crew has just blown it up, and everything within the wormhole we know as The Upside Down is being destroyed and sucked into outer space… and El goes along with it in a torturous goodbye scene that has Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Hopper (David Harbour) screaming — and us absolutely bawling.
That was the end of Eleven… or so we thought.
In the final scene of Stranger Things, Mike, Will, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Max (Sadie Sink) are playing their final Dungeons and Dragons campaign before heading off to college. Max begs Mike to continue on with each D&D character’s stories, so they each know what happily ever afters they get — which are all a littleee too closely connected to each Stranger Things characters’ real lives. Max and Lucas get their movie date, Will moves to a town where he’s accepted for who he truly is (and from the looks of things, has a boyfriend!!!), and Mike becomes a writer.
And El is alive.
While Mike refers to her as ‘The Maje’ in the kinda-fictional-but-definitely-talking-about-their-real-lives campaign theory, I’m gonna stick to everyone’s names rather than D&D characters, so it doesn’t feel like I’m speaking in tongues.
Mike theorises that while they all saw El die, it didn’t actually happen. How? Because as her sister, Kali (Linnea Berthelsen), succumbed to her wounds in The Upside Down after being shot, she cast one final illusion to help El disappear. Since those God awful sirens were ringing and El couldn’t use her powers to make herself invisible and escape the soldiers in time to get over to The Upside Down’s gate, Kali did it for her — out of earshot of the sirens.
While Kali cast the illusion, El made it to a hiding place, where she exited through a secret passageway. Dr Kay and her army wouldn’t stop looking for her unless they watched her die, and the experiment would restart with unless El vanished… so that’s exactly what she did.
TBH, Mike’s theory makes sense. El was just standing in the gate with all that crazy amount of debris flying in the background, and not a single thing hit her. And how was she just standing there, holding her ground, with that sheer force threatening to suck her away into an abyss? Not to mention when she did ‘die’, we didn’t actually see the wind suck her away — her body just vanished into thin air. In my opinion, her ‘disappearing’ was actually the moment Kali died, and her illusion stopped being cast.
With not a dry eye around the Dungeons and Dragons table, Mike tells his friends that Eleven (still using code name ‘The Mage’) escaped to a small, far away town. The camera cuts to El hiking towards a big canyon with two waterfalls, and a town on the other side.
She made it out!!! (in theory, of course)
Just saying, that town she wound up at only had two waterfalls, not three like Mike promised her…justice for El and the missing waterfall.
After the group emotionally shelves their D&D clipboards and Mrs Wheeler (Cara Buono) AKA mother of all the baddies calls them upstairs for dinner, Holly (Nell Fisher) and her friends race down into the basement to take over her older brother and his mates’ positions around the game table. Mike watches nostalgically as Holly wrangles her friends and explains to them how to play Dungeons and Dragons.
It’s a bittersweet end of an era and the start of a new one — a true full circle moment. It all ends how it began.
Let’s just hope there’s no more supernatural shit to tear up their lives again. I think these guys have all gone through enough, okay?
That last thing we see in Stranger Things…
Genuinely a perfect ending 🥲 pic.twitter.com/gllvHZGId9
— Relay (@RelayTS) January 1, 2026
Image credit: Netflix
