Stranger Things ends with a hefty dose of nostalgia for nostalgia

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

It was probably never meant to be that Stranger Things would end on a tone of universal acclaim. No show can sustain nearly a decade of cultural juggernaut status without accumulating more than its share of naysayers. Such has been the case following the series finale of the Netflix streaming series on New Year’s Eve, 2025.

Created by the Duffer brothers — Matt and Ross — the first season debuted in July 2016 and, since then, has achieved something rare: turned a show rooted in nostalgia for the early 1980s into an experience of nostalgia for the past decade.

When we met the “kids” of Stranger Things, they were literally kids. Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) was supposed to be about 11 years old, while the boys — Mike, Dustin, Luke and Will — were 12-ish. Their older siblings and cohorts ranged in age from 16 to 17. 

That was pretty close to the actors’ real ages; and, while the show covered a period of about four years, obviously that wasn’t reflected in real life as those 12-ish-year-olds went through the inevitable changes of life and ended up as 20-somethings portraying high school seniors.

That was tough for a lot of viewers, who just couldn’t suspend their disbelief, which is pretty rich considering that the show was about cosmic horror monsters and government conspiracies bridging multiple dimensions and amounting to the threat of a space-time apocalypse.  

Regardless, fans and critics of the show alike literally watched the Stranger Things kids grow up on screen, lending that tone of nostalgia-within-nostalgia to the finale season and especially its last episode.

After almost 10 years in the spotlight, it hardly bears summarizing the plot, but here goes: Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) and his buddies Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin) and Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) are happy-go-lucky preteens living in Hawkins, Ind., where they spend their days navigating school life and playing Dungeons & Dragons in Mike’s basement.

It’s 1984 when the events of the show begin, touched off by the disappearance of Will. His mom Joyce (Winona Ryder) goes into a panic, made more panicky by Hawkins’ history of missing kids. Her eldest son Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) worries that his mom is losing it when she becomes convinced that Will isn’t really missing — rather, he’s trapped in some unknown alternate reality but can communicate with her by manipulating the Christmas lights that she’s strung all through the house as a kind of transdimensional telegraph system.

Burned out Chief of Police Jim “Hopp” Hopper (David Harbour) has been dealing (badly) with the death by leukemia of his daughter years earlier and has known Joyce since their own high school years, so he tries to provide some comfort while still disbelieving her theories about Will’s actual whereabouts.

Meanwhile, across town, there’s a shadowy military-scientific laboratory that’s been up to some seriously twisted experiments meant to access and weaponize the psychic powers of kids. One of those kids is No. 11 — a.k.a. “Eleven” — who is more powerful than the others and busts out, eventually falling in with Hopper, who more or less adopts her as a surrogate daughter.

When Eleven also meets Mike and the others, it becomes clear that she’s much more special than anyone could imagine; and, indeed, Will has slipped into another reality that comes to be known as “The Upside Down,” which they eventually can access through portals.

Basically, “The Upside Down” is a dimensional rift that replicates Hawkins, though in its darkest, most dangerous version full of monsters and all manner of other nightmares. In true D&D fashion, Mike and company embark on a quest to save Will and Eleven and, as things transpire, save the whole world from a big-bad space demon-like creature called “The Mind-Flayer” and its minion Vecna in an epic final battle.

There’s romance — unrequited and otherwise — and a cast of characters including Mike’s elder and younger sisters Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Holly (Nell Fisher), Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink), Robin Buckley (a stellar Maya Hawke) and cool-guy-jerk who also has a heart of gold Steve Harrington (Joe Keery).

The power of their friendship, with all its strains and challenges, is the core of the story and so truthfully felt that it excuses lapses in writing and plotting that objectively pile up during the final seasons — and are on full display in the finale, which really didn’t need to be feature film-length but for the showrunners’ desire to give practically every character their own conclusion.

Still, it’s hard to hate on a series that so consistently and deftly delivered on an addictive blend of horror, comedy and genuine pathos backed by pitch-perfect period costuming, set design and art direction that felt real while also fantastical.

It’ll be missed, but it’s time had come for an ending and — as with all pieces of nostalgia — Stranger Things will reward revisiting over the years.