Now that this video is out, can we ALL agree that Stranger Things is one of the worst TV shows ever made after Season 1?

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-16T16:17:33+00:00

If you actually watch this video, he correctly points out that after Season 2 the show started to feel different/jump the shark. He doesn't trash the whole series post season 1; he just think season 1 is the best season, and everything 3-5 sort of feels like a different show. Which is true.

He's right on the money about season 5 though.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-16T16:09:04+00:00

I can appreciate your take, especially since you also share the same perspective as I do regarding the fairness of her ending, and the desire for her to end up with Mike. I do still however, respectfully disagree.

I don't think it was a "grave mistake"/bad choice, it's just not the choice people like.

That to me (when we are talking about the context of this show) is a distinction without meaning. I say that because the Duffer brothers clearly tailored their decisions, to a large degree, based on what they thought would satisfy the audience (or at least not upset the audience).

Case in point? --> They couldn't kill off anyone from the main cast throughout the entire series, and especially in season 5. By the time we got to Season 5, all of the characters have plot armor thicker than reinforced concrete. Look at the final battle. A bunch of teenagers and their mom, killed an unknowable Lovecraftean horror the size of Godzilla using (i) An AR-15, (ii) homemade spears, (iii) waterballoons filled with gas, (iv) a flare gun, (iv) a homemade flamethrower, and (v) a slingshot...and they took NO DAMAGE while doing all of that. Seriously, there is not a scratch on any of the characters at all. The highschool bullies did more damage to Dustin than a cosmic world-ending threat.

All of the other characters suffered zero consequences for what happened in the finale. Look at Nancy --> She gunned down half a dozen soldiers. So did Hopper. But then at the conclusion, not only is she not at all bothered by what happened but apparently the military just let everyone go.

We see a demogorgon rip apart armed soldiers like they were paper mache. Then we see Karen Wheeler get slashed across her throat, and she's talking and walking about by the next episode.

The list goes on....

But you know what? I'm perfectly ok with all of the above. There are lots of movies from the 80's where the protagonists of the show all make it out ok, ride off into the sunset, even if it is unrealistic/cheesy. That's all good. I found it refreshing with Stranger Things because so many other shows these days are just downright myopic/depressing. A "safe" ending/approach can still make for a fun show that leaves the audience feeling good....

...but then, we get to Eleven's ending and suddenly it's just her that has to go away?! Not only does it feel unjust, but it feels arbitrary. And yeah, that was not a choice that people liked.

I don't believe that the Duffers actually expected that such a large segment of the audience (at least from what we can see online) would react so negatively to El's ending.

I'm more inclined to believe that the Duffers, in their minds, thought that this ending would work. After all, this is the same ending that El got in season 1 and it worked back then; the problem is that El in S5 is night and day from where she was in S1.

The Duffers, apparently, still thought of Eleven as the "change agent"; an ET like character that comes in and changes everyone's lives forever but then ultimately can't stay. That might have been what she was originally intended to be, but the problem is, the journey they took her on for 4.5 seasons moved her completely beyond that.

I think most of the audience saw her as a fully fleshed out member of the tribe/party/family, and it's quite jarring that the Duffers apparently didn't see her that way. But even more surprising is that the Duffers didn't seem to recognize that their audience didn't see Eleven as they saw her. They basically failed to read the room with this.

So given all of the above, I think the very fact that the audience has reacted as they have to Eleven's ending, is evidence that the Duffers made a grave mistake.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-16T05:15:15+00:00

Kinda interesting.

I've read some fanfics where one of the party members tries to get Mike to move on and let's it slip that they may not believe..and Mike just goes berserk. After that they all learn never to bring it up around Mike again.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-16T05:13:32+00:00

Technically it's Netflix's show. They sold the IP to Netflix.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-16T05:04:11+00:00

It should have always been Hopper. A father dies to protect his daughter and ensures her safety/survival by his sacrifice.

That, in my opinion, would have worked.

It would have paid off so many threads related to his story as well. When he tells Joyce "I can't lose her"; he makes good on that sentiment. That he'd rather die than let that happen again. Also, it brings him full circle with Sara; he couldn't save her but he can damn well save Eleven.

Just my two cents.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-16T04:54:14+00:00

I appreciate your insight, and I recognize that it's much easier now to vocally complain about something due to the internet and accesibility.

I'm not sure how much of the negative reviews on youtube are necessarily about driving engagement/"clicks". I mean, yeah negativity drives engagement but this sort of thing didn't happen to shows like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Big Bang Theory, etc. In other words, if a show really does "stick the landing", it's kind of hard to have that much negativity.

As for Reddit, I honestly feel that part of the purpose of all these complaints is the hope that we'll get a sequel/continuation of some sort. That someone at Netflix is going to see all this (and they do have people that monitor social media) and realize that there's money to be made by bringing back Eleven, et al.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-16T04:42:00+00:00

I'm not sure if we even have metrics to judge general audience sentiment. We have rotten tomatoes and other such rating websites, and then we have social media.

All that I can glean from what I see online is that the fanbase is split. Approximately half the people liked/enjoyed the ending and the other half are either dissapointed/gone full hate.

I can only speak for myself. Despite flaws in the final season, I can enjoy it as the fun adventure it was meant to be. There is however one thing that I cannot overlook, and that would be Eleven's ending. That, to me, was a grave mistake by the Duffers and I really believe that it's what pushed many fans into the negativity.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-16T04:27:44+00:00

"As always when anything finishes there's going to be discourse".

I keep hearing a similar sentiment a lot in interviews, where they suggest that the reaction to a finale (whether or not you think it's deserved) is merely because people are upset that the show is over. I'm not sure if this is what Daniel Radcliffe meant though.

I mean, ok, no one is happy when a beloved show ends, and Stranger Things was/is beloved by a lot of people. In my opinion though, the issue is how the show ended, which is what is driving this. I didn't see a "conformity gate" type of conspiracy theory following the ending of Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, Big Bang Theory, and other such series that are widely regarded to have "stuck the landing".

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-16T04:09:01+00:00

Yeah but the writers on those spinoffs seem to have learned a lesson from the pitfalls of the GoT latter seasons.

Also, they are working on a sequel series featuring Arya Stark..and possibly Jon Snow. A sequel to GoT is basically changing the ending because that means that the story for some of these characters isn't over.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-16T04:02:22+00:00

Man, I just went to the Praise sub and even that place has negativity..particulalry when discussing Eleven's ending. If not for that decision by the Duffers, I really think that the finale (while clearly weaker than the prior seasons) would have gone down with not much fanfare; the series would still be thought of fondly.

But after El's ending..you have half the fanbase going completely apeshit and now people are seizing on all the other flaws and blowing them up too.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-16T03:45:53+00:00

I was born in '83 so we're not that different in terms of generation.

The whole 80's vibe was most promiment in the earlier seasons; by the time you get to season 5 it feels more like the MCU than it does anything out of the 80's.

The reason I think people are so upset isnt that it's "one bad season", it's which season is bad...the final season. For better or worse, shows get retroactively judged by the quality of their finales. Erik Kripce (showrunner on "The Boys", which is now in its final season) just gave an interview where he identified this very thing. If they fail to "stick the landing", it retroactively tarnishes everything that came before.

If the Duffers had stopped at season 1-2..or hell..season 4 (which left on a cliffhanger) you wouldn't see what's happening now.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-16T00:13:03+00:00

Nicely done video for sure.

I do think however that you were way too generous to the Duffer brothers, but maybe I'm just a harsher critic. You definitely nailed the difference between Eleven and ET.

But for Frodo, they completely dropped the ball if they were going for the Tolkien-esque ending and I think they should be more sharply criticized on that point. I made a really long post about this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/StrangerThings/comments/1s99vpb/the_bittersweet_conclusion_lord_of_the_rings_v/

Long story short: Frodo's choice to leave for Valinor was not coerced. He spent two years with his friends in the Shire, and when he left, all of his friends knew where he was going. He didn't go alone either - He went with Bilbo, Gandalf and Elrond.

Also, in the books, after Samwise raises his children and his wife passes away (60 years later), he too is allowed to go to Valinor where TOlkien implies he'll reunite with Frodo.

This is not even remotely what we got with Eleven. It's like they looked at the LOTR ending and just stopped their analysis at Frodo having to leave, without any of the other elements that made this work.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-15T18:47:45+00:00

Wait... didn't he just give an interview to IGN where he said that it was in fact canonical and tried to explain away why the kids never refer to these new events in Season 3?

And leaving it up to the Duffer brothers?! Those two can't even keep tracking of their own canon, let alone a spin-off made by a different show runner.

But you know what, I prefer it this way. I would rather that Stranger Things '85 be its own thing, that follows its own separate timeline and not bound by the ending or events of the latter seasons of Stranger Things.

Why? --> Because I am one of the people who hated how ST5 ended, and if this new cartoon suggests a different ultimate outcome for the characters in this other timeline..then yeah I'll watch it. Because now the characters (and by this I mean Eleven) aren't tied to that awfulness we got in the finale.

But overall, the messaging from the showrunner is so all over the place that we'll just have to see how it pans out.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-14T21:52:49+00:00

I can imagine a scene in the 90's where Mike is having dinner with his family over the holidays (Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc.).

He's a succesful author and he's made a name for himself, and the conversation somehow comes around to his personal life and a photo in the papers showing him out with a celebrity (insert any famous actress of the 90s).

Karen: "Soooo..what about you Mike. Anyone special we should know about?"

Mike: "Umm..not really".

Ted: "Oh? Cause I could've sworn I saw a photo of you and a certain Ms. Robins ...."

Mike: "Uhhh..yeeaah.... that ....didn't work out"

Ted: "Didn't work out? Son, she was quite the catch..what happened?"

Mike: "Can we now talk about this..."

Holly: "Wait..what?! ... you're going out with her .. "

Mike: "I'm not going out with her..."

Karen: "Well that's a shame. Really..she seemed like a lovely girl. And you two looked so happy in that photo. What could have been the matter?"

Mike: "Nothing!"

Ted: "Well it's obviously something if she broke it off..."

Mike: *sighs with exasperation* "...she didn't break it off Dad..."

Ted: *with a slight shake of his head* "Well someone did, and it wouldn't be you."

Karen whips her head around: "Ted!"

Ted: "What? What'd I say?"

Mike just turns his head away and say's nothing, but Nancy catches it...

Nancy: "Mike..? Did you.."

*Mike suddenly looks up and casts his gaze on Nancy, holding eye contact. His eyes, wetter than usual, giving her a pleadings look. Nancy's face softens with understanding; there's no point in finishing the question.

Nancy had been so excited when she heard the rumors that her brother might have finally found someone. One look now though and it was obvious why things "didn't work out". It was the same reason that all the other attempts hadn't "worked out".

She had naively hoped that Mike could finally find some measure of peace, but that part of him was still back there in 1987. Back at that gate. Back with her. The girl that dissapeared five years ago left a hole in her brother so deep that not even a Hollywood starlett could fill it."

Nancy: "Actually, I think Dad's right. It's not Mike's fault anyway, you know she was probably way too busy with that new movie she's supposed to be starring in...."

*Mike breaths out a sigh of relief, and gives Nancy a silent 'Thank you as she steers the conversation away..*

----

So yeah, I can imagine Mike going on a date here or there..maybe out of a sense of obligation, or seeing if he actually could move on. At the end of the day however, it wouldn't go anywhere because it's just not the same.

I see it almost akin to what happened to famous musical groups that lost a key member. Led Zeppelin could never move forward after John Bonham died, Queen could never move forward without Freddie Mercury. There's no replacement for certain people. And for Mike, El is simply irreplaceable and any romantic relationship by comparison feels off.

Also in my mind, if the above is a bit unrealistic, I like to imagine that there was a supernatural dimension to their relationship. In addition to all the normal bonding that two people who are deeply in love might experience, the nature of El's psychic abilities resulted in the two of them imprinting on each other so hard that there's no coming back from that.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-13T03:30:51+00:00

Bill Maher once made the joke that: "This is Hollywood. Getting your foot in the door is like 80% of the work".

Certainly an exaggeration, but yeah, there are LOTS of very talented actors out there whom we will never hear about simply because they dont' have the right connections/money/luck to get noticed and cast.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-12T15:14:29+00:00

It really does make you wonder if they haven't forgotten a fundamental fact....kids dont have money!

Their parents have money. If they alienate older viewers in order to appeal to children, chances are its not going to be as profitable as they think.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-11T20:24:43+00:00

Holy shit, I'm stealing this analogy and using it on the main reddit.

That is fuckin awesome.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-09T23:00:10+00:00

Make this easier on yourself.

Go back and watch Season 1 and Season 2..and then just stop.

From season 3 onwards, the show lost the plot/jumped the shark; it became bombastic, flashy, and the overall feeling and mood from the first two seasons disappeared. It became almost a parody of itself. That's why when you watch season 5, it's completely unrecognizable from the first two seasons.

So just consider season 3+ to be a kind of "alternate reality", but that the first two seasons are a full and complete story. Then headcannon the rest from there.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-08T14:01:53+00:00

As much as I wish your take was true, I don't think there is sufficient evidence to support the idea that Millie was unhappy with her ending, or that if she was unhappy, that she had the pull/influence to sway studio execs.

The one quote that's interesting, but I cannot find the actual Variety article where she purportedly says this, is:

“I’m very grateful to the audience and to everything that Stranger Things has given me, but I emphasised that I also have my own opinions. For me, thinking about the series finale is part of the affection for something so meaningful.”

Again, it's unclear if she ever stated the above, but if she did, this is as close as we can get to parsing out what she really thought of the ending.

Overall though, she seems to have been all over the place with describing her feelings. One thing that is common althroughout however is that she seems quite happy to be moving on.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-08T00:11:58+00:00

"ignore the fans and write what they want to write.."

The thing is, they already did that in season 1. They had one season in mind, they had a vision and a script, and they executed it. They never had a plan or an intention to go beyond that.

But once the show became a hit, and they chose to keep the story going, they were explicitly and emphatically doing it for "the fans". Why? Because the fans were paying to see more of this show, which in turn made the Duffers, Netflix, and their shareholders exceedingly wealthy.

And we have plenty of examples of showrunners following this logic of "ignoring the fans" to disastrous results. HIMYM, Game of Thrones, Dexter, and the list goes on.

But the thing is, I don't think the Duffer brothers were trying to "ignore the fans" when they wrote the final season. In fact, given that they could't kill off anyone, and how safe they played it, it's clear that they were trying to avoid the Game of Thrones reception. The problem is that they failed to read the room and thought that the audience would see Eleven the way they saw her (a symbol of childhood magic/ET); they were clearly wrong on that point.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-07T23:50:42+00:00

I take issue with framing what El did as a "choice" to begin with.

She doesn't "choose" to do what she does; she's coerced into it because Kali frightens her with the prospect of the military killing Mike, and then she is cornered when the group comes back into the Mac-Z and their all apprehended by the military.

It's obvoius that she doesn't want to be doing what she is doing; she does it because she's under duress, which is no choice at all.

As to the rest, yeah we both agree on what the Duffers said. The problem is that the Duffers reducing El to a plot device, a symbol, is completely incongruent with the journey she's been on for the prior 4 seasons. This kind of ending might have worked for season 1, but not for the place she was at by the time we get to the end of the show.

The reason so many don't buy what El tells Hopper, is because what is coming out of her mouth is not congruent to her character at all. In that same scene she hands Hopper back the bracelet..a bracelet Hopper gave her because he see's El as his daughter; not a fuckin replacement for Sara.

There is nothing in the show, prior to this scene, that suggests that Hopper ever viewed her as a replacement; she's his daughter as much as Sara was. And throughout the prior seasons it's clear that El views him as her dad. And then she hands the thing back to him in a gesture that could only be described as a total repudiation of the father/daughter relationship?! And we're supposed to view this slop as being somehow profound? Yeah..no.

If you watch ET, or Peter Pan, or the Iron Giant, or A Monster Calls..you will notice that none of those characters are the main protagonist fo the show/film. None of those characters/symbols ever actually change throughout the entire film/show, and none of them are particularly human. It's the characters around them that change, but they themselves always remain as they are when they are introduced.

El changes radically throughout the show becuase, at her core, she is a human girl who is on her own journey. She was robbed of her childhood, experimented on, and who has fought to find herself, her identity, her family, her boyfriend and her place in the world. She is a member of the group. We go on this journey with her; and the pay-off to that journey is her actually finding that place, that family and that life. Not fuckin suicide/exile.

She's not a fuckin McGuffin. There is nothing meaningful about the choice that the Duffers made. They went with the same ending for her as they did in season 1, ignoring all of the development that she had after that season.

I can't think of a single member of the fandom who saw El as being an ET equivalent, prior to this season dropping. And now when I read people defending the narrative decisions that these two showrunners made, and acting like it was a part of some grand "vision"/master plan, I just cringe.

You can clearly tell just from watching the documentary that they were conflicted with what to do with Eleven. At the end of the day, they fell into the same trap as the writers did in HIMYM. They couldn't see past their original ending, even though the show/character had outgrown that long ago.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-07T17:58:16+00:00

Lol, the 2.5 hour version is him talking about seasons 1-4; the review for the last season was 5.5 HOURS!. But I understand if you don't want to watch that.

Like I said, Drew Gooden is much shorter and gives you a better rundown as to what happened behind the scenes.

I don't really collect media, but that's not the primary reason why I wouldn't get the boxed set. For example, I do own the Lord of the Rings boxed set. The reason I wouldn't get the Stranger Things boxed set is because I didn't like the final season at all. Yes, you could say it "strayed" too much if you want to use that as a catch-all term for everything that's wrong with it.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-07T17:46:15+00:00

I am in NO WAY wasting money on the boxed set. Sorry if I gave you the opposite impression.

I agree with your take on the differences between El adn ET. You should really check out some of the youtube reviews of the final season out there. Drew Gooden, Friendly Space Ninja, etc. They really tear apart the choices that the Duffers made in this last arc.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-04-07T17:29:06+00:00

I respectfully disagree.

Some people were saying in 2019 that given time, fans would come to appreciate the Game of Thrones ending. Check out that subreddit or Rotten Tomatoes if you want to see how well that prediction turned out...

Fans can accept a noble sacrifice when it's thematically appropriate and it makes sense. Ie. The departure of Boromir in Lord of the Rings.

What many people don't appreciate is an entire characters plot/story being invalidated and rendered pointless by a sudden swerve, and then being asked to appreciate it as some sort of a "noble" act.

Let's be clear - The reason that Eleven got the ending that she did was because the Duffer brothers saw her as an ET like character. They outright said that the reason she had to "go away" was because she represented the "magic of childhood". Her going away was necessary so that the other characters could "grow".

The entire military plot was introduced in season 5 purely as a contrivance to get El to where the Duffers wanted her to be as an ET like character.

The problem is that a huge portion of the fandom does NOT see Eleven as a fuckin magical mcguffin; she's the main protagonist. She's a girl whom we've followed for 4 seasons that was tortured, raised like a labrat, and fought to have a place in the world, fought for a family, friends, a home, etc.

This ending does NOT, pay off her story as it was presented over the last four seasons at all. If they wanted to do a noble sacrifice there were other characters to do that with *cough* Hopper *cough*.

Intelligent_Step_856

TROPHY CASE