Nancy Wheeler and the Miswriting of Female Independence
Do the Duffer brothers even know what an independent woman is? That’s a genuine question after what they did to Nancy Wheeler in season 5, the final season of Stranger Things.
Nancy Wheeler is first introduced as Mike’s older sister and Hawkins High’s picture-perfect girl. Her personal conflict in season one is precisely about trying to fit in and conform socially to the point where she stops acting like herself, something that’s pointed out repeatedly throughout the season, especially by her best friend, Barb.
After Barb’s disappearance, Nancy teams up with Jonathan Byers, who is dealing with his own personal and family conflicts due to Will’s sudden disappearance, to search for answers and hunt monsters, a role that sci-fi media traditionally frames as masculine. Nancy constantly pushes against these gender paradigms, proving herself to be a capable leader and an effective fighter. She earns her agency not by severing emotional bonds, but by demanding to be taken seriously within them.
Their romantic relationship that begins in S2 works because it does not erase these realities, it acknowledges them. Nancy does not shrink Jonathan, and Jonathan does not cage Nancy. They meet as equals across difference: class, gender, temperament. They challenge each other without undermining each other. Love, in their case, is not a detour from growth, it is the environment in which growth becomes possible.
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Nancy is no longer the delicate princess who needs protecting, she becomes Nancy MotherFucker Wheeler.
The relationship dynamics in seasons three and four are realistic and make sense for who they are as a couple. And yet, the Duffer brothers repeatedly frame Nancy as confused, subtly implying to the general audience that she might still be reconsidering her feelings for her ex-boyfriend, Steve Harrington.
In season five, she’s even more badass. She literally shuts Steve down. And then, out of nowhere, she and Jonathan break up to supposedly serve Nancy’s “independence arc.”
But she’s already independent!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nancy’s independence is flattened into solitude. Jonathan’s responsibility is punished rather than transformed. The complexity of their bond, one that held space for ambition and care, is reduced to a false binary.
Do the Duffer brothers know that women can be independent and have a boyfriend who loves them, respects them, and treats them as an equal, despite differences in gender and class? Have they ever actually talked to a woman in their lives? (Their mum doesn't count.)
Because nothing about this choice reflects independence. It reflects a shallow, outdated idea of feminism, and a fundamental misunderstanding of their own character.
In doing so, the series abandons its own thematic foundations. Stranger Things once understood that love was not a distraction from survival, but its engine. That partnership could exist without hierarchy. That a woman could be formidable without being alone. That a boy shaped by sacrifice deserved rest, not narrative abandonment.
By the final season, none of that remains.
Nancy is not made more independent by losing Jonathan.
Jonathan is not made freer by losing Nancy.
They are simply stripped of the relationship that once allowed both characters to be fully seen.
And that isn’t realism. Just bad writing.
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