Netflix’s iconic sci-fi series “Stranger Things” wrapped up its five-season run Wednesday with a finale that answered questions and provided happy endings for most of its characters.
Spoilers ahead.
The party of heroes confronted villain Henry/Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) one last time.
After learning Henry had been possessed by something evil as a young boy, Will (Noah Schnapp) implored him to join his group and fight the darkness together.
When Vecna refused and hid inside the giant Mindflayer monster, Will and his friends and family attacked it with Will’s mom Joyce (Winona Ryder) delivering the final devastating blows and killing him.
The team saved the young kids that Vecna had kidnapped, got them back home to Hawkins and blew up the alternate reality, the Upside Down, behind them.
Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) appeared to be sucked into the explosion, an apparent sacrifice made so that the U.S. government soldiers and scientists occupying Hawkins and weaponizing people with supernatural powers like hers would leave.
The episode then jumps ahead 18 months to a peaceful and prosperous Hawkins where Will and his best friends are getting ready to graduate high school in 1989.
Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Max (Sadie Sink) are still in love, but Mike (Finn Wolfhard) is continues to mourn the loss of Eleven, who had been his girlfriend for years.
At their commencement ceremony, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) is valedictorian and delivers a warm and funny speech about all that the townspeople had endured over the last six years.
He takes off his graduation gown to reveal he is wearing his Hellfire Club T-shirt, a tribute to his friend Eddie (Joseph Quinn), who was killed by Vecna’s monsters in Season 4.
Afterwards, Will, Dustin, Lucas, Mike and Max play Dungeons & Dragons one last time in Mike’s basement.
When they are done, Mike reveals what happened to the character Eleven had always played: she escaped and is living a peaceful, happy life far away from Hawkins. The friends agree they believe this is what really happened to Eleven, too.
As the friends emotionally head upstairs, a sign that they have grown up, Mike’s little sister Holly (Nell Fisher) and her friends take over the basement and start playing their own D&D game.
Elsewhere, Joyce and her beau Hopper (David Harbour) finally made it to Enzo’s restaurant after years of putting it off so they could save the world.
Harbour proposes marriage, Joyce accepts and it looks the couple are heading to Montauk, Long Island, so Hopper can be police chief and Joyce can be near Will and his brother Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), who will be in college in New York.
Jonathan, who wants to make films, is also seen meeting up with baseball coach Steve (Joe Keery); his ex-girlfriend, reporter Nancy (Natalia Dyer); and disc jockey Robin (Maya Hawke) on the roof of Hawkins’ WSQK radio station.
The group agrees they are happy with their boring-by-comparison new lives, but they miss each other deeply and promise to meet up every month so they don’t drift apart.
#era #Stranger #wraps #nostalgia #tears #laughter
