Stranger Things: Season 5, Volume 3 Review

There’s no such thing as a good story with a bad ending. The ending is the conceit; it’s what pulls the curtain back and unveils the entire point of what you’ve been spending your precious time watching. So it goes with this Stranger Things finale, a two-hour conclusion whose conceit proves shallower than its die-hard fans might have hoped.

We pick up the moment we left off, with the gang running headfirst into the final inter-dimensional, CGI-heavy battle against Vecna (an outstanding Jamie Campbell Bower), determined to save the children he has captured and prevent the apocalypse. To be clear, the series of events that ensue are no huge disaster. There is no great betrayal, no bizarre twist, and the Duffers know how to tie a satisfying bow on the gift that this series has been. But they have also produced an ending so safe it feels like an algorithmic assignment designed to annoy as few viewers as possible.

The needle drops continue to utterly rule, and the Duffers truly understand the power of coming-of-age tales, where characters evolve and pass the baton to the generation after.

Despite the inordinate number of threats faced across myriad schemes and dimensions, the death count is pitiful. Having watched a gloriously gory massacre in episode four, this world seems rather baby-proofed. Characters bounce away from terrible danger without so much as a scrape; a joke about someone now smelling kind of bad post-battle reiterates just how little they endured at what should have been the apex of a decade of suspense. There is also an agonising best-friends duologue in the first act where Noah Schnapp and Finn Wolfhard barely convince as human, and one can only assume Brett Gelman must've (figuratively) helped someone bury a body somewhere along the line, as his tired schtick continues to reappear. Also disappointing is the realisation that Linda Hamilton’s hiring ultimately amounts to dust — and not a single Demogorgon makes the cut.

But forgiving those faults, and writing that includes clunkers such as a dying character literally stating, “my story was always going to end here”, there is plenty to love, too. The needle drops continue to utterly rule, and the Duffers truly understand the power of coming-of-age tales, where characters evolve and pass the baton to the generation after. In the case of Hawkins, this happens threefold, and each step into adulthood is heart-wrenchingly lovely. The acting shines best in moments of silent agony, but a conversation between the remaining young adults of the group proves the most profound, with elegantly performed and sincere speeches deftly layering in the inevitable broken promises that lie ahead.

Ultimately, the promises the audience were sold — that this would feel truly final and complete — were not overstated. And though the core group grew into an ensemble of wildly disparate dramatic abilities, they largely cohere when it counts at the epilogue. This could have all been bolder, could have tried to be revealing rather than only cathartic, but to all intents and purposes we can still safely say that a disaster in Hawkins, Indiana, was averted.