Lena Glikson, the musical editor of the series, who liked the comment about the music in the scenes with Mike and Will, talked about the Purple Rain record and its significance. I decided to do a little recap of what she said and find out what you think. Link to the full video: https://www.youtube.com/live/332H2dnwwQU?si=lsPV01KMOCS1X6k0. I must say that this doesn't look very promising for Mike and Jane, and it seems that this is not fully about them. I think that a lot of people don’t pay enough attention to the fact that this is not just one song, but an album, which is important, because the first and last songs on it play in the finale.
Purple Rain is an iconic record and its significance is overlooked by fans. This song is from the movie of the same name with a complex plot, a complicated main character, and a tragic path, apparently.
The Duffers had been looking for a record for a long time that opened with a track capable of moving the story forward, and it seemed that the most difficult part was already over, but it turned out it wasn't. When Doves Cry plays in the truck scene when all characters are coming back from the UD. It was important for the Duffers that the record should end with a song that could match with the drama of the moment of destruction of the UD. This song was also supposed to be suitable for El and Mike's farewell scene. Lena says that the Duffers had a lot of options, but they stopped on Purple Rain.
When Doves Cry is a song about duality. It seems that you can dance to it, it creates a sense of relief, but the lyrics has an almost opposite meaning. It's about conflict, misunderstanding, and separation. The track musically contrasts with Purple Rain and is a complex and unusual song for the finale.
We're getting to the point where Purple Rain is playing, which is quite melancholic. The scene was originally longer, but not because more scenes were built into it. Longer scenes do not always mean that the viewer learns more information. It’s the static nature of the scene that makes it longer. If something was cut from the series, it was the pieces that slowed down the pacing. As you could guess, Lena is commenting on the rumors about the cut scenes here. Originally, the Purple Rain scene was longer and it was difficult to watch. The Duffers had compressed the song so that the meaning would remain clear.
Purple Rain is not just a beautiful song. It's about vulnerability, about acceptance, about love. It was difficult to get. Lena says it's almost as difficult as Kate Bush, but for different reasons. Prince’s rights are held by several copyright owners who doesn’t really get along with each other, which made it difficult to reach an agreement. Just like with Kate Bush, they wrote to them about where the songs would be used. At the end of post-production, according to Lena, there was a crisis moment when they didn’t know whether they would be allowed to use the song or not. This was due to changes in the editing that called into question the possibility of using the track.
Purple Rain has a much greater emotional weight in American culture than it does for people from different cultural contexts. In America, this song is almost played at funerals, it has so much meaning. It's about cleansing (a place for your joke about Mike not showering). Purple Rain is red blood and blue sky. This song is about the end of the world, the end of an era. It's about what we see on the screen after the explosion.
In the end, I want to add some of my thoughts on this. Purple Rain is a song about the end of the world, about grief. It's very interesting to think about costume design and how many characters wear a combination of red and blue (Mike, Will, Jane) or purple (Hopper, Robin, Erica, Nancy). Am I the only one who thinks about Hopper’s sweater at the beginning of the season? That bright purple haunts me. It seems that the characters throughout the season mourn the end of the show, the approaching finale for the characters and the team creating the show. It's strange to think about it, knowing how many details were abandoned. Maybe it doesn't make sense because we don’t know when they found out that the use of Purple Rain was approved. Maybe it's all just an accident? Also, considering all this, the choice of a song for Mike and Jane's farewell feels… somewhat secondary? Yes, the Duffers said that the song was supposed to be right for their farewell scene, but it seems to me that this track is about much more. I see it as saying goodbye to Jane herself, to the UD, to the end of this story. Perhaps this is not the case... What do you think?
What really seals this for me is that the mike/el farewell wasn’t just mismatched with purple rain, it was narratively unneeded. their dynamic in season 5 is almost entirely absent, and when it does appear, it reads unmistakably platonic. there’s no emotional scaffolding to justify giving them the climactic farewell beat of the season, let alone anchoring it to a song as thematically massive as purple rain. It feels like the show is insisting on a moment the text itself hasn’t earned.
and that’s why the void scene collapses. it’s already a structural mess, the blocking is confused, the emotional beats don’t build, and the cross cutting undercuts any intimacy the scene is trying to manufacture. then purple rain drops in, and instead of elevating the moment, it exposes the hollowness of it. the song is too big, too elegiac, too mythic for a relationship that the season has framed as… friendly at best. It’s like scoring a handshake with a funeral hymn.
which is why the farewell should have been el/hopper or even el/max. those are the relationships the seasons actually invests in. hopper and el share the emotional history, the thematic weight, the father daughter arc that purple rain could have amplified beautifully. el and max have the grief, the longing, the unresolved ache that aligns with the song’s emotional register. those scenes would have held the song instead of being swallowed by it.
your colour theory point makes this even clearer. red + blue = purple isn’t just aesthetic; it’s narrative foreshadowing. mike, will, and jane in red/blue combinations read like characters suspended between selves. the purple coded characters, hopper, robin, erica, nancy, occupy a space of anticipatory mourning. hopper’s sweater is practically a thesis statement. the season is visually grieving long before the song arrives.
so when purple rain finally plays, it doesn’t feel like it’s scoring mike and el at all. It feels like it’s scoring the end of the UD, the end of Jane as weapon, the end of the show’s first era. The mike/el moment becomes a footnote inside a much larger emotional collapse.
whether the duffers planned this or stumbled into it doesn’t change the effect. the season is already speaking in the language of endings, and if apparently purple rain is the only song they thought could translate that grief into sound.
it fits everything except the relationship it was supposedly chosen for.
