so. i've given it more thought. i am still probably the most disapointed i've ever been in a tv show finale (and entire last season to be honest). it feels as though they must have purposefylly tried to write the most dissatisfying ending they could. they dropped the ball on so many different fronts i might as well just list them out
throughout the entire season, everything felt extremely disconnected. even looking past them sepparating them into different volumes and releasing them separately (which i also take issue with; if i got to choose i think it would be better to either drop an entire season, or to have them drop weekly), the plotlines did not seem to have the same consistency in comparison to earlier seasons in the series.
the final fight. why was it so fast? why was it easier to do that than to defeat the mind flayer/billy in season 3? what was the point of making the musical and fleshing out henry's backstory if it wasnt significant to helping defeat him (everything they had to know about henry was pretty easily explained in the scenes they had already)? somehow, although el and will were the ones to initially take him out, why did they feel so sidelined? I'm glad they finally decided to remember that joyce existed as a character, but i do not think she should have been the one to finally kill henry. i think it should have either been el or will, they should have been able to be the ones to kill the man that has made their lives a living hell and stealing their opportunity to experience a (semi) normal childhood.
everyone and their mothers have commented on the absurdly large cast, but i have to mention it. the entirety of the younger kids' plot with holly could have been cut out. it seemed like a last ditch effort to appeal to the nostalgia of the party being very young in season 1, but somehow they forgot why people liked it in the first place. their cast is so big, they want to give (at least most of) them something to do in the big finish, but it just results in no one doing anything significant or anything with emotional weight because as soon as someone might start feeling something, they have to move onto the next character's cringe one-liner.
very few, if any, of the characters have a satisfying ending
joyce and hopper: it's nice i guess that they got engaged, but how the hell is hopper the police chief again? forgetting the fact that the entire town has believed he has been dead for years, he VERY OPENLY killed MANY soldiers in the last couple episodes. i have a feeling they wouldn't just let him go after that.
erica and vickie: erica gets a couple shots in the epiloge and vickie doesn't even get a specific mention
steve and jonathan: to be honest, theirs is not that bad. i liked that jonathan ended up going to nyu and is finally able to be is annoying pretentious self (affectionate). steve's ending feels fitting, and he definitely seems like the kind of guy to keep trying to convince his friends to move back to their hometown so they can hang out more
nancy and robin: i'm pretty neutral on their endings, could be better could be worse. i have thoughts on what they did to robin in the very end and a line she says that was a choice. but i'll get to that later
dustin: probably the best ending of the group. his feels fitting and i appreciate that they kept his connection to steve, while not writing him to be too codependent with steve that he never leaves hawkins.
lucas and max: they are sweet together, but thats just the thing, they dont exist outside of eachother. max got a lot of development in season 4 (one of the best things they've done in the last 3 seasons), but lucas has lost any sense of self as a character and solely revolves around max. he was one of the more interesting members of the party in the first couple of seasons, but that slowly just faded away.
mike: what can i even say here. i guess everyone was just lying when they said he 'fell into his leader role' and 'carried a lot of emotional weight' because if it happened, i missed it. he hasn't had any interesting character work since season 2. he might have had it in the seasons since, but all of that is immediately erased if not looked at through the lens of internalized homophobia. without that aspect of his character, mike is literally just an asshole and kind of stupid. no explanation as to why he was an ass to his friends (ESPECIALLY will) during season 3, no (meaningful) reason as to why he couldn't say i love you to el s well as why he also was a terrible friend to will in season 4. in the end, he just exists. things happen around him, he has little reaction, and then moves on. his ending leaves him turning into his father, repressed and stuck in his own little dnd world (and not in a good way)
will: the entirety of the struggles and absolute abuse that he has had every single season is completely disrespected. swept under the rug, hoping that you don't notice that he would not be okay after all this. his coming out was horribly executed (as many have said) and is barely related to him as a characer at all. the entire time he just bends over backwards to reassure everyone that he's still normal and to please not leave him. having a panic attack around everone who supposedly loves him, and jonathan is the only one that has any kind of meaningful reaction to it. to follow that up with the conversation between him and mike, where he yet again reassures mike that its not his fault just feels like a slap in the face. he's yet again sepparated from his friends because apparrently the only character he can be paired up with at the big age of 16 is his own mother. one of the most eggrigous parts to me is how they had this boy tell his abuser (and the purpatrator of the most obvious CSA allegory i have ever seen) that he's just like him'. i understand that being forgiving and empathetic is a part of will's character, but it is a scene that leaves a disgusting taste in my mouth. especually after they made the decision to include the first 5 minutes of the season. it feels even more slimy after henry's further lines about how he wasn't made to do anything by the mind flayer, it was all his choice to do it. this feels like an incredibly insensitive and tone deaf way to approach their dynamic and the few lines that they shared. i haven't even touched on the fact that they then topped this all with giving him a last minute throwaway npc implied boyfriend that may or may not exist. i'm going to talk more about the issue of how they treated their queer characters and the queerbaiting later.
el: she received the worst ending of all of the characters by far. she spent the entriety of the season being mostly sidelined, out of characer, and largely inconsequential. they gave her back her sister, one of the only people she has ever purposefully chosen to look for and be with, just to kill her off before the actual climax of the fight. whether or not she did actually survive (if we are to believe the theory that mike had), she is completely alone. she was told that the only way for her to stop the cycle of abuse is to kill herself, and then she does? what kind of message is that? tv shows don't always have to be moral beacons and i understand that tragic stories exist, but that is not how they framed her ending. they seem to genuinely believe that this is the best ending she could have had. the abused girl that had to claw her way throughout her entire life, sacrificed herself for a world that never treated her fairly. if she is alive and is in iceland or wherever that was supposed to be, she is entirely alone. honestly i have no words for how they treated her. somehow they made her death more focused on mike, rather than herself. at the end of the day, she was nothing more than a vessel for the boys to come in contact with fantasy and magic, not a person to be considered.
5. the queerbaiting. and yes, that's exactly what it was. promotional material, interviews, copious amounts of hints even the GA picked up on, all to culminate in the most offensive ending i could have imagined. will's coming out being framed as something he has to 'get over' and that ok yeah, you can be gay, but you always need to remember that other people aren't Like That, and that you need to make sure that everyone else is comfortable around you at all times. redusing will's decade-long love for mike to a hallway crush, that it hurts that he doesn't feel the same, but come on, you couldn't have seriously thought he ever could have, right? will, the only character in the entire cast to not have a romantic interest (that was reciprocated) in the whole show, gets a (potentially not even real) random epilogue boyfriend that has no speaking lines whatsoever. will, the character that adamantly thinks that he won't ever fall in love, that its not meant for him, is essentially proven right. what? why have will see robin and vickie in ep1 if thats just to taunt him and show him the thing he never gets? what was the line about the snowball becomming an avalanche as a way to recognize queer signalling in the 80s, then proceeding to show will and mike do those things, for it to go nowhere? robin isn't treated that much better either. vickie isn't mentioned once in the epilogue, unless you count the vague reference to 'overbearing significant others' that robin has, which in itself is so wildly out of character and is an immediate tell that she was written by two middle-aged straight men. they didnt even follow up on the explicit mention of robin taking vickie to enzo's, when we HAVE AN EXISTING SCENE IN ENZO'S. also, robin's completely out of character look and upped femininity in the epilogue. this alone wouldn't be a glaring issue, but that paired with everything else seems like a deliberate sidelining of queer identity.
6. finally. the conformity of it all. i found it incredibly ironic that in dustin's speech, he calls back to eddie's line in season 4 about how conformity is killing the kids, and yet, the entire ending is entirely conformist. its the safest, most suburban, domesticized ending they could have come up with. this ending, more than anything, has reminded me that the duffer's idea of who an 'outcast' is, is just nerdy straight white guys that get teased for playing dnd. by the finale, they have either completely forgotten (or killed, in kali's case) the individual character and story of every single character that is a poc (which was an incredibly limited number in this enourmous cast by the way), they allowed characters to be gay, but only if they didn't show it and kept it tame for the GA, and they mistreated their main female character in one of the most eggregious ways i have ever seen.
yeah. the finale isn't good.
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