I think what’s most frustrating about that ending is not that “oh, I have to have a happy ending to enjoy myself.” To be clear, yes, I prefer them. But I wouldn’t damn a story to get one.
For the Duffers to say, this was the only ending or everything falls apart if they’re able to contact her…. if a main part of your storytelling, of your established and foundational themes, motifs and/or world building rules was realism or something like it, I’d say okay, fine — El living after closing the wormhole or the military letting El have a life outside of captivity is a pretty hard sell.
But this is not a show based in the rules of our reality. It’s fiction.
There’s a symbiotic spider monster that has flower humanoids as its hive mind pets. The government discovered a whole other planet that can be bridged with a wormhole. You think they’re gonna let that go? You think other governments are gonna let that go?
But it’s realistic because the wormhole is science, the kids only used DND lore to understand. And the Duffers called El magic. So? Which is it?
Like, the established rule for this story is that El is a powerful weapon. Each season she learns how to build on that strength. She more or less created the wormhole without dying. So why would she need to die to close it? Especially when she has future Wormhole expert Dustin at her side?
Not to mention, this is a story about overcoming hardships, found family, stepping out of the dark and into love. It’s about hope.
In a season rife with conversations about self sacrifice vs suicide (see: Steve about Eddie or nearly all of Hopper and El’s dialogue🙄), how are you going to confuse the 2.
Mike was right. A fantasy about 3 waterfalls was childish. But it wasn’t his job to come up with contingency plans. It was Hopper’s. It was Joyce. It was Dr. Owens(who I’m pretty sure was never confirmed dead).
Mike’s job was to maintain the flame of hope in El. It was to keep her tethered.
Hopper’s job was to instill her with the necessary strength and skill to stay alive. To make her a capable soldier, one who could withstand her final fight. And in doing so, he also to got to rebuild her childhood. Ultimately giving them back the thing taken from the both of them: A family.
Both of these people gave her every tool she could need against the literal depression monster: Vecna. They gave her the tools to *literally* fight against the dying of the light.
Not “well El is magic so she can’t be in this world.”
She’s not magic….the government literally tampered with her. She’s a government project.
All of that to say, a better ending, wherein we’re following the preset themes, would have seen Kali (who’s what? without her found family. why? bc she’s a gov. project not magic and they kidnapped her again) and El fighting against the instinct to suicide pact their way into “self sacrifice.”
They would have listened to Hopper when he said to live. Because they deserve it. Because they had to earn it. Because they had to scrape for it.
Instead though, we take Kali (who had the opportunity to make a case for the necessity of her role in the story/justify episode 2.7) and make her the catalyst for “inevitable” death. She’s forced to be bizarro jimney cricket. The voice in El’s ear telling her to end it all. I just….
This is where redemption arcs become a necessity. Because Creel could easily have been torn between his penchant for evil in the Vecna persona and his lost humanity in Henry.
It could have been Kali and El coming together to try and pull Henry from Vecna. It could have been Will pleading with Henry— telling him that they’re the same, that they deserve more. That Will could have been just like him if not for all of the people standing in the carcass of the mind flayer right now. If not for all of the unfailing love in his life. That Henry doesn’t have to be alone anymore. They could have had Holly, the girl who Henry’s face appeared to first, who mourned his lost childhood in the cave, reason with him. Tell him they could love him, too. He could be part of their family, too.
And then there’s your self sacrifice in death: Because Henry has to know, there’s no coming back from this body. There’s no returning to a world that he was never really apart of. Not since that day in the cave.
So, with what little he has left, he lets them through the wormhole. He ushers them back into Hawkins. He covers El and Kali while they try and make it around the suppression radio waves bc let’s be honest Vecna’s definitely stronger than those waves, probably.
Then, in those final moments, when he knows his girls are safe, he looks Dr. Kay in the eyes and blows it all up with the false images of Kali and El at his side.
The core group believes El’s dead. Mike and El still get their final moment. Mike does say I love you. And El says, I know. And Mike’s begging, pleading.
Then don’t do this, please, Mike cries.
And then she’s gone. Vanished in the explosion. No bodies or trace that those 3 or the Upside Down ever existed.
Dr. Kay is livid and is about to take it out on our main group when Dr. Owens shows up with his own cadre and there’s about to be an internal military war while they figure out why Dr. Kay was allowed to go rogue like that. (Personally, I like the idea that the other government agencies aren’t privy to what’s happening here, a la Independence Day). Dr. Owens is not about to deal with another Brenner. But this story’s not about the military so we don’t need to stick around for it (but trust I have a lot of ideas). It’s enough to know everyone was forced to sign NDAs and it’s implied they’ll spend their lives surveilled with a little wink from Owens bc they’ve been through this before. He mourns El with them, but it’s implied he might have an idea she lived bc, again, he’s been through this and he knows El’s powers better than anyone else here.
Over the next 18 months, while everyone tries to cope with the loss of El, it turns out Owens did find El and Kali. They’d been living in Canada. Trying to make it on their own, hiding out. But it’s hard. They’re living not that dissimilar to how Kali was in season 2. They take what they need and hunt the rest. They’re isolated, if not a little lonely despite having each other. Owens helps them create new, legal identities. He tells them wait, to be patient.
Meanwhile, Mike has it in his head El is alive:
She didn’t say I love you. She said I know. You guys! She said, I know! Like Han Solo! Right before he gets frozen. I made her watch that movie like 50 times. It was like a code word. I know it!
But as time passes he gets bogged down by the idea that he’s wrong. He’s heart broken.
When he gets home from graduation, the guys head downstairs to play their last game of DND. Karen tells Mike he’s got a bunch of mail and that there’s probably graduation money in there. Everybody’s excited bc there’s some new game they’re gonna blow it on.
In the middle of the pile is a letter. The return address is fake. The one Owens uses as his quarterly reminder that they’re still being surveilled. It’s usually some cryptic message, written like a letter from a great aunt he never had. He opens it to make fun of it like they always do, but instead he pulls out a postcard.
On the front is a picture of Niagara Falls. On the back is a single sentence.
The gang crowds around Mike as he turns it over.
The writing is small and slanted, if a bit scribbled. It’s familiar.
Does this count as 3 waterfalls?
Mike looks up in shock. He makes eye contact with Max who already has the car keys. They grin at each other.
