First Watch (in the theater) of 2026: A Return and Farewell to Stranger Things

It’s been awhile since I wrote about the Netflix phenomenon Stranger Things. The main idea was to look at the series as a long-form narrative film, where that one - or others like it - had a definite end in sight as stated by the show runners. I touched on Twin Peaks: the Return later, but for the most part, I don’t review or analyze series here. That said, the first theatrical experience I’ve had this year is the series finale to Stranger Things, Stranger Things: the Rightside Up.

This time, I’m treating it like a film because it got a cinematic relearn and I think it deserves a look as the series has maintained a significant cultural profile. The monkey wrench is that it is just one episode from a series and therefore, were I to do a recap, I would be here far longer than I care to be. Instead, I’m going to critique it like any other film based on thematic and narrative content but without much in the way of describing the action; so  - SPOILERS.

One fo the primary issues with writing about anything you are fond of critically, is that you should have some idea of story structure and character development that doesn’t rely on whether you like a character or not. The Duffer Brothers and their writers have done an excellent job over the years of creating solid, believable, and well-rounded characters. Even the villains feel genuine and in the pwresten case, I’m hard-pressed to think of many villains as well-drawn as Vecna/Henry Creel/001/Mr. Whatsit (various names for different variations of the same character; Vecna, his final incarnation contains multitude - he is Legion, if you will).

As played by Jamie Campbell Bower, Vecna is dread walking in a humanoid form comprised of writhing serpentine roots, like a malevolent Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. He induces a kind of nightmarish fear equivalent to Freddy Kruger in the first Nightmare on Elm Street, fittingly, since Henry Creel’s father was played by Robert England in the fourth season. Vecna takes on an almost Thanos-like stature as his endgame is to draw the planet where he transformed into what he has become down to Earth via the wormhole created when Millie. Bobby Brown’s El basted him into it from the Hawkins National  Laboratory years before. 

Over the course of time from November 6, 1983 to when ST:TRSU takes place four years later, Vecna has been behind the assault on Hawkins in general and the Byers family in particular. He make it clear that he chose Will Byers because he saw Will as weak-willed and easily manipulated, a perfect vessel for his plan to transform the broken world we inhabit. Of course, things didn’t go as planned and it is with this central conceit that, if we look more closely at it, holes begin to appear. 

I don’t believe that the Duffers retrofitted anything to allow for shifts or changes in plot, but I question why if - powerful as Vecna was and yet still defeated by Will, and his friends and his former inmate at the Hawkins Lab, Eleven, whose powers are at least as great as his - he still carried with him the idea that Will was so weak or vulnerable. Or Sadie Sink’s Max Mayfield, or any of the kids who had stymied his efforts to literally bring down a new world to Hawkins. That this is a quibble, I’ll happily admit, but it is one that lingers. 

What we see over the course of the fourth season is Vacna targeting other kids. He started with Will Byers, Vecna moved onto other citizens in Hawkins in season 3, before returning to going after older kids like Chrissy and some others as well as Max, to open “gates” like the one at the lab (later closed in season three) and its corollary in the Soviet Union. Opening these gates to the Upside Down, the mirror world that seems to be the opening area of the wormhole connecting our Earth to the world that produced the demodogs, the demogorgon, and the Mind Fllayer, was key to Vecna’s plan and also shifted something about the thematic aspects of the series.

For example, prior to finding out that everything we thought we knew about the Upside Down was wrong, the assumption was that it might have been an alternative dimension that had existed for millennia parallel to ours. This was a Lovecraftian idea somewhat like the Old Gods, the Ancient Ones, and so on. When Henry is blasted into the Upside Down, that interpretation underwent a realignment in the fifth season since Henry, in becoming Vecna is a new being and the various aspects of the Hive Mind were, technically, extraterrestrials. 

If the idea of an ancient, primordial alternate reality is replaced by a quantum disaster, does that change much in the narrative and how we interpret it thematically?  In one critical way, yes. The idea of an ancient, evil malignancy evokes the idea that there is an innate rot somewhere in the center of humanity. We struggle to come to terms with our dark side because we feel it is something that has been with us since time immemorial, in us. Positing the development and evolution of a being created by a disruption in physical reality at what seems to be the quantum level to open a wormhole, lends the sense that that being is a one-off. Where later in the episode, Will can attempt to draw Henry out of his Vecna persona, sets up a situation perhaps more philosophically meaty than the idea that Evil is something innate and ancient to be personified and exploited to cause destruction of the world as we know it.

Vecna becomes, then, a kind of übermensch, but also, extremely fallible because he is still - underneath it all - human, all too human. He tells Will that he wasn’t lured into this evolution by the Hive Mind; he chose it. Knowingly. He sees the world we inhabit as broken and one that needed to end. This sounds familiar to anyone who listens to dictators or leaders who profess to lead us to new, better worlds. It also draws us into discussions about free will in the series and that as much as Vecna might see himself fulfilling some kind of cosmic destiny, much boils down to his own vision for what reality should be.

Over four years, Vecna had been laying the foundation for his scheme and had been thwarted by El, the Byers family, the Wheeler siblings Nancy and Will, Dustin Henderson, Max Mayfield, Steve Harrington, Lucas Sinclair and his sister Erica, Jim Hopper, Murray Bauman, and Robin Buckley with assists from many along the way. By the fifth season, Karen Wheeler joins the fray, as well as her youngest daughter Holly, who is one of Vecna’s chosen. Max is in a coma until mid-season, and as Vecna ramps up his recruitment, we have a roiling tension that in itself would gin up suspense.

However, there is also the matter of the U.S. Army or a division thereof, dedicated to finding El and weaponizing her or siphoning off her blood to create a race of super-children like her. This may be the weakest link in the series narrative. The military is presented as almost too incompetent to take more seriously than as an inconvenience in the battle to save life on Earth. After the demise of Dr. Brenner in season 4, Dr. Kay is brought onto the scene as the main driver to capture El; apparently, another faction of the military led by Lt. Colonel Jack Sullivan wanted to bring her to justice because he sees El as behind all the “murders” and disappearances in Hawkins through use of her powers. To be fair, Sullivan was an officer in the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command whose job is to investigate crimes against military personnel. Nevertheless, he’s an idiot.

For that matter, so is Dr. Kay. So, for that matter, is most of the military as presented in the series. Despite reams of documentation, despite testimony by Drs. Brenner and Owens, these esteemed members of Army brass determined that the Upside Down was a cover story and that El was a rogue asset that needed to be brought in and if not in, then down. 

This is my major beef with the series as a whole and much of the last two seasons. That they would want to weaponize El is one thing; but to summarily dismiss evidence that would have been uncovered from just about any investigation, even the most superficial, is utterly implausible and idiotic. When Dustin finds Brenner’s notebooks in the Hawkins Lab, my first thought was, “so when the Army left Hawkins at the end of the third season, they just left all documentation behind? Gee, that’s stupid.” And that sense only grew over the past two seasons. 

The military might be violent and full of assholes who want to blow shit up, but given a situation like this, one that would have been Top Top Secret and the background of which would have been super-classified, there would have been a serious wash of any and all documentation relating to this operation, if only for national security purposes, let alone with an eye to recreating the project later down the line. But no, a high school kid finds a source text of theoretical data that leads to an even greater threat.

In my rewrite, the military branch that did support Brenner and Owens and that seemed to be at odds with Sullivan and Kay, would have gone to whoever in government signed off on this (there had to be someone in Congress involved), and would have pushed for more funding to work with the girl to a) get more data about the wormhole, b) help her close it down, defeat Vecna, and save the kids he’d trapped and was using for his vessels. Then they’d turn on El and the pursuit to imprison her would begin again or she’d just waste them all then and there. However, that would not give us the same storyline here and while it might open up possibilities of spinoffs, it would not give us the episode at hand.

And what of this episode? It’s overstuffed with exposition which might have worked for people seeing it in the theater who had never watched the series, a semi-thrilling battle with a kaiju (the Mind Flayer, bigger and badder), emotional beats that landed, and plot beats that did not. It is a messy if exciting and occasionally dragging film. 

Everyone gets a moment to shine and while I was expecting a major character to die, I almost fell for the fake-out of Steve being the one when he falls off the tower in the Upside Down as it begins its collapse under the weight of the abyss. Obviously, it had to be Kali/008 and El. 

Everyone also delivers. There is not a bum note in any of the performances and it’s difficult to single out one from the rest, but the deepest and most resonant moments are between the OG kids. We’ve watched them all grow as characters and actors and Noah Schnapp, Gaten Matarazzo, Finn Wolfhard, and Caleb McLaughlin deserve accolades all the way through. That said, Sadie Sink’s Max repeatedly stole my heart through the season; while she may have come on in the second season, without her, this show would be considerably less. 

The adults recede as they needed to. Joyce gets to deliver the finishing blow to Vecna, and she and Hop get their date at Enzo’s finally (and engaged, also, finally!) The parents have their kids back (another winner this season is Cara Buono, the other badass mom after Joyce Byers; and yes, her saving Robin, Nancy, Lucas, and Max in episode 7 might have been a major stretch requiring suspension of disbelief, but the show takes place in a world where the United States military can’t be arsed to do due diligence.) Seeing Mrs. Henderson again was a treat (I relate to being raised as an only child with a single parent, though Mrs. H. Is a bit of a far cry from my mother). Everyone graduates from high school in a ceremony that is no doubt every teen’s wish fulfillment. Seriously, Dustin’s speech is one for the annals. And then, there are the follow-ups with the older quartet now living in different places, with Steve staying in Hawkins, coaching P.E., sex ed, and softball (and apparently, taking Derek under his wing - kudos are also due to Jake Connelly for rendering Derek as a real kid, a dipshit and a bully, but definitely okay in the end). 

When Steve, Nancy, Jonathan, and Robin say that they’ll meet once a month in a neutral place like Philly, you know that won’t be the case. It might happen once or twice, but life will happen. They’ll stay in touch, forever, we hope, but we know how a monthly meet-up is unlikely.

But it’s our core group. The four boys and Max convene for one last Dungeons and Dragon campaign and it’s wonderful. They’re wrapping up their childhood as we wrap up the show. When asked what’s next, Mike sees Will happy in Milwaukee, finding love and acceptance, Dustin thrives in university and still finds time to hang out with Steve, and Lucas and Max forge ahead, together. For himself, well, Mike will continue telling stories and we see him at a typewriter in author mode, turning out novels, we may presume, detailing the adventures of four plucky boys and how they grow. But one tale he cannot tell is the truth of the what happened to the Mage (El). In his ending, Kali was able to project one more illusion before the Upside Down collapsed in on itself from the C4 detonation planted by Hopper and Murray. It appeared that she was destroyed along with the Upside Down, but in reality, El had made good her escape and found a remote land with a small town and three waterfalls and lived there peacefully and undisturbed by military or other forces.

As these now older teens head upstairs, Holly Wheeler leads the younger generation to the table where the DnD tradition will continue with a younger set sharing their adventures into the wee morning hours and years to come.

So much worked despite the need for a larger suspension of disbelief than usual and just plain hard not to notice plot armor. A reference was made by Robin at KSQK doing a guest stint that the military had left Hawkins. Swell, but that’s it? After being another source of terror and obstacle for our heroes, Dr. Kay gets no comeuppance? I was hoping that there would be at least one scene where she’s chewed out by her superiors for blowing the mission, going over budget, and in general, screwing the pooch to where she’s told she’s being reassigned to a research project somewhere out on the Aleutians. Also, again, how is the military covering its tracks? How did they keep people away from seeing the main gate for 18 months? Well, enough about the military. Let’s get back to the relationships.

I say this every so often that in many cases, I don’t need big battles, lots of action and suspense; that I would love to have one episode where people just hang out. It wouldn’t make for compelling viewing but good drama, well-written plays and films work a magic. When the stars align and characters are developed and the actors embody them more than “play” them, they read as human as you or I. You feel empathy for them, worry about their story arcs, and are happy when they win whatever victory is at hand. Stranger Things, the whole series, succeeds in this aspect in a way that few others have. 

Through the trauma and loss, the theme of coming through it with your friends, because of your friends, supersedes just about any plot hole or overlong act or scene (mostly true for the past two seasons). There is not a human character in the  

world that I’ve not been drawn to or held dearly. Well, Dr. Brenner is an exception, but I class him with all the other baddies who, by the way, are well-drawn enough to read as seriously flawed, if insufferable people. And let’s face it; it’s been a rogue’s gallery of talent there, too. Matthew Modine, of course. Cary Elwes, Linda Hamilton. If you’re going to hire major 80s figures to play major bad guys, you could do worse. Also,, RIP to Sean Astin’s Bob. If Jim Hopper hadn’t made it and Bob had, there’d be the Will and Jonathan’s step-dad. Paul Reiser as Dr. Owens played the ambiguity perfectly and I’m still not sure how Owens didn’t just clock Brenner at one point. 

Dacre Montgomery was a great find, and of course - of course! Joseph Quinn as Eddie Munson is an astonishing performance. Both those guys have already done great work since their turns on the series.

Joe Keery, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, and Maya Hawke deserve garlands for playing the middle ground between adolescence and adulthood. Keery’s Steve is the only one who still carried that kind of goofy sense of imperviousness that only a teenager can have, Dyer’s Nancy is the template for the badass chick, Heaton’s Jonathan is a model of empathy and longing, and Maya Hawke’s turn as Robin is a joy, both for what Robin means to so many, but also, Robin is just a stitch in herself; you want to hang out with her just to blab. 

And of course, Winona Ryder and David Harbour as the adults. The fallible, often wrong parental figures, but when they’re right, they’re right. The utter love Joyce has for her kids and then all the kids is inspiring. Hopper’s tough love is in keeping with the layer of distance he keeps between himself and others early in the series as we see him dealing over and over again with the loss of his daughter Sarah and his attempts to keep El safe, if not in check. Harbour is a find; like so many others, a trained thespian, but like all everyone else, he rises to the moment as a fully fleshed-out character. Winona does not need any words of adulation from me and I’m leery of going on with them because like everyone else, I’m a fan. I’ve watched her grow up as surely as she’s watched her younger castmates grow. Her body of work speaks for itself, but her turn here is every bit as dynamic as Robert Downey, Jr.’s as Tony Stark. She is the anchor  to the Byers boys and by extension, the series itself.

In a recent interview I watched, Ryder had mentioned that somewhere early on, she realized that she thought she was supposed to carry the series and the realization dawned on her that the series isn’t Joyce’s tale. She had said that led to a sense of lightness, a load lifted and that she recognized that the main tale is that of these four boys and what they encounter on the road to growing up.

To repeat myself, I have issues with the last two seasons, particularly the military nonsense, but also the Cheech and Chong dynamic between Jonathan and Argyle. No shade to Eduardo Franco, who I really like, but Argyle was so annoying and for that matter, so was Jonathan. That he would feel adrift or aimless away from Nancy and Hawkins was natural, but that he would go full stoner boy just didn’t strike me as something Jonathan would do. Plus, exposition dumps, scenes that dragged on and on, plot armor where in some cases, it’s just anticlimactic (look! The army just vanished!) or where it kind of makes sense? Vickie and Robin broke up offscreen, I guess. 

It all comes down to the OG4. I’m going to miss those kids. The only other group I can think of is the Harry Potter crew. Interestingly, I could see similar trajectories for Schnapp and Matarazzo. McLaughlin, Sink, and Wolfhard seem to have already hit the ground running with film projects outside Stranger Things. 

Here’s the thing: I think many, if not most of us, watch series - TV or film - for the relationships. If there is a compelling mystery, suspense, or conflict that drives that plot or even an entire series arc, so much the better. As much as I say I’d like an episode where we get to just hang out with the characters, that would be fine for one episode, maybe; but in terms of developing an interest in what next, for that, you do need all the rest.

What the series had to say about trauma and survival was very often the profoundest element and while everyone got their share, the person who got more than the rest - even more than Will, who had his family standing by him - was El. Hopper says what  we were all thinking in this  last episode, when he tells Eleven that after everything she’s been through, she deserves life. She and Kali had agreed that in order to end the cycle of persecution and exploitation by the government and the collateral damage that brings, they would have end their lives with the end fo the Upside Down. 

Millie Bobby Brown’s turn as Eleven/El/Jane through the whole series has been a master class in finding the right tones of sorrow, fear, resilience, and even happiness. If she had overdone any of these, at any given moment, our hero would have  been fraudulent. Brown is a staggeringly talented actor and what makes this work is the balance she struck when she was pissed at Hopper for interfering with her and Mike’s budding romance or when, for that matter, Mike lied to her, or any of the times when she came to the rescue of her friends. Watching her tortured at the hands of Brenner under the guise of experimentation or regaining her powers in season four, was horrifying and gutting. It was down to Brown to bring these moments to life in a way that was real, that was true.

There’s a lot of talk in acting circles of finding the truth of a performance. While everyone in this series has certainly done just that, the amount of work Brown had to put into her piece had to be substantial, but she did it, She delivered. And in this last episode, as in most of this season, she took control of her narrative and led us to its logical, if tragic, end.

I’m overall more satisfied with The Right Side Up than a number of other people who seem to feel it’s only marginally better than Lost’s finale. But two things come to mind; I care more about the characters than the situation they are placed in. I don’t want a particularly silly or inane set-up, and while I am sometimes extremely annoyed by the stretches of credulity that the material asks us to accept, that material is saved by the characters and their relationships. 

If I gave grades, this would be a solid B. Absent the weak plot devices and narrative choices, it would be an A, easily, but I think overall the Duffers and their ensemble delivered a genuinely satisfying conclusion and yes, I will be watching it again, soon.