Crafting a truly satisfying series finale is no small feat. Fans have spent years investing in these characters, each with their own vision of what a perfect conclusion might be. A finale must not only resolve key storylines but also honor the show’s tone while giving characters a fitting farewell that feels both unexpected and inevitable. So, where does the finale of “Stranger Things” stand in this spectrum? That’s for you to decide.

While the conclusion of “Stranger Things” featured several significant character deaths, it wasn’t the carnage some might have predicted. Most characters finally appear to have a chance at a normal life, free from battling demons or worrying about Vecna (played by Jamie Campbell Bower) invading their minds. However, despite the apparent closure, the finale leaves us with several lingering questions.

The series, particularly its final episode “Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up,” is rife with plot holes and narrative conveniences. Even though “Stranger Things” has wrapped up, these inconsistencies will likely fuel online discussions for a long time.

In Season 5, Vecna emerges as the primary villain, with Dr. Kay (portrayed by Linda Hamilton) and the military serving as secondary foes. Having sealed the Upside Down rifts at the end of Season 4, they remain active in Hawkins, aiming to capture Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and harness her blood to create more psychically gifted children like her and Vecna. Their actions often hinder the Hawkins gang’s efforts to stop Vecna and the Mind Flayer from bringing Dimension X, known as the Abyss, into their town. Dr. Kay seems oblivious to Vecna’s existence, an oversight that raises even more questions.

Vecna may be the big bad of Season 5, but Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton) and the military function as secondary antagonists. They closed up the rifts from the Upside Down at the end of “Stranger Things” Season 4 and remain a presence within Hawkins, because they want to capture Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and use her blood to create more children with psychic powers, similar to her and Vecna. The military tends to get in the way a lot while the Hawkins crew is trying to prevent Vecna (and the Mind Flayer) from bringing the Abyss, aka Dimension X, directly to Hawkins. Dr. Kay seems completely unconcerned about this and appears unaware that Vecna’s even a thing — but that’s a whole other issue. 

To reach the Abyss, the team mows down plenty of military personnel. Nancy (Natalia Dyer) shoots a bunch of them while they’re still at the military base, and Hopper (David Harbour) blasts a ton more while in the Upside Down. Dr. Kay does see the team’s plans to enter Dimension X and stop Vecna from merging the two realities, which might be enough to overlook the numerous crimes they commit, including murdering all those soldiers.

It’s possible Dr. Kay overextends her authority and does some illegal things herself in her quest to capture Eleven, so she may just want to bury everything that happened in Hawkins, which also means overlooking Nancy and Hopper’s actions and just letting them go. 

We’ve learned previously that Demogorgons and all of their variants (Demodogs and Demobats) originate from the Abyss, and once this other dimension merges with the real world via the Upside Down as a wormhole bridge, they are then able to invade our reality. However, throughout Season 5, the Upside Down is pretty bereft of any creatures. People just kind of hang out in the Upside Down without worrying about monsters too much, so where did they all go?

Even when the crew travels into the Abyss, there aren’t any Demogorgons to be found. One possible explanation is that the military has already killed off a bunch of the creatures, making the Upside Down more hospitable. But that’s still a bit disappointing. Everything may have been leading to a final confrontation between Vecna and the Mind Flayer, but the Demogorgons are definitely poster children for the series as a whole. It would have been great to see them factor into the final battle. 

Another theory to explain the Demogorgons’ absence is that the Mind Flayer absorbs them to create a physical body. Previously, the Mind Flayer appeared as a collective of shadowy particles, but in the finale, it has a physical form that actually serves as Vecna’s lair. It’s probably the best explanation we’ll get for why there are no Demogorgons, but it only raises more questions.

Given that the “Stranger Things” series finale was over two hours long, fans might have naturally expected some kind of epic, extended final showdown between Eleven, Vecna, and the Mind Flayer. Instead, the fight’s over somewhat quickly, with nearly an hour left to go in the episode. Eleven battles Vecna inside the Mind Flayer while the rest of the crew tries to weaken the Mind Flayer from the outside, using guns and flamethrowers to damage it. That in turn hurts Vecna since the two are symbiotically linked. 

When all is said and done, both creatures — who have been built up as these Lovecraftian abominations that are extremely difficult to kill — are pretty easy to defeat. It’s true that Eleven gets an assist from Will (Noah Schnapp), who throws Vecna off balance with his psychic link, but it all seems too simple. The guns really shouldn’t do anything to the Mind Flayer. Assuming its body is comprised of Demogorgons, we’ve seen previously how they shrug off gunfire, although they are vulnerable to flames. In that case, it really would be better for the Mind Flayer to keep a Demogorgon army. Instead, the Mind Flayer gives the team a single target to focus on, as opposed to hundreds of monsters that could overwhelm the teens. 

Such an easy defeat raises the question of how much damage the Mind Flayer could have done on Earth. If it’s weak against flamethrowers, surely a nuke or two could take it out, right?

Hopper was presumed dead by the end of “Stranger Things” Season 3, but of course, audiences learned he was alive in Season 4 and had been captured by Russian forces. It took the main characters some time to realize he was alive, but most of the world, and surely the Hawkins community, probably assume he’s still dead since that was the official story. How did they explain his return to the residents of Hawkins when he came back?

Not only that, but despite being MIA for the past couple of years, Hopper is able to get his old job back as the chief of police during the series finale’s epilogue. Someone else definitely had to hold that position down during his absence. When he “came back to life,” did the other guy simply step down so that Hopper could resume his duties? If he started at the bottom and worked his way up again, there are only 18 months between the destruction of the Upside Down and the epilogue, so that would make for a quick turnaround. 

Additionally, Hopper must be good at what he does, because he receives a job offer in Montauk, New York, which just so happens to set the stage for a potential “Stranger Things” spinoff. Maybe this is all just commentary on how much easier it was to navigate the job market in the 1980s compared to now. 

Not wanting Dr. Kay to create another Vecna with her blood, Eleven chooses to stay behind in the Upside Down as it collapses. We assume she dies, but in the epilogue, Mike (Finn Wolfhard) provides an alternate ending for her. He posits that Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) didn’t actually die when she was shot, surviving her wound while creating the illusion of Eleven standing by the gate so that everyone would think they saw her die. In actuality, according to Mike, Eleven is able to slip away from the military and finally find peace in a place with several waterfalls. 

The main issue with this is that Kali would have been at the lab where the bomb initially went off to disrupt the exotic matter. If she didn’t die immediately from the gunshot wound, she surely would have died in this explosion well before the collapsing wormhole would have caught up with Eleven. She couldn’t have maintained the illusion that long. 

To be fair, instead of a plot hole, this may be a grieving boyfriend trying to hold onto some semblance of hope. If Eleven is actually dead, then it’s understandable that Mike’s story doesn’t make sense. He’s the dungeon master — the master storyteller. He’s invented a narrative he can live with so that he can accept Eleven is gone. With Dungeons and Dragons factoring so heavily into “Stranger Things,” it’s nice that the concept of inventing stories plays into the final scenes, even if it does give the audience false hope that Eleven could still be alive.