Stranger Things 5 – The FINAL Season! Peak or Weak (SPOILERS)
January 9, 2026 2026-01-09 14:52Stranger Things 5 – The FINAL Season! Peak or Weak (SPOILERS)
By Noah Coss
Stranger Things is over and I don’t know how I feel about it, along with many other fans. About 10 years ago, on July 15, 2016, the hit show Stranger Things first released on Netflix taking the world by storm, giving the audience a binge worthy series that balances good scares, strong emotions, and intricate plots. The show has been beloved by masses, many of which grew up with the series, the characters, and the actors. People have been with Stranger Things since their childhood and it is one of the biggest shows ever made, garnering tons of hype, anticipation, and expectations, especially for the final fifth season.
When Volume 1 of Stranger Things 5 finally arrived on Nov 6th, so did the many viewers and they had high praise. “I definitely think that Volume 1, that was my favorite part.” Junior Amalie Coss explained “I thought the twist at the end with Will was amazing. I really liked the Volume” The first four episodes of Season 5 were a solid start and they do a pretty good job at giving us a good return to the series with some great moments. Unfortunately the same isn’t really said about Vol 2 which is much more imperfect. This is really where the season starts to show it’s crack because of the pacing issues.
“I feel like a lot of it was, certain parts were really long and they shouldn’t have been.” Amalie Explained, ” They would drag on certain things, but for others, I was like; ‘but what does that even mean? Why did they have that?’ Then they didn’t really explain it and they did it so quickly that I didn’t fully understand, but I still liked it.”
Then there was the Stranger Things series finale, the final episode of the show which released Dec 31st, which was met with mixed reviews online. So much so that almost the entire fanbase was convinced that the real finale was fake and that a secret 9th episode called “Conformity Gate” would air on 1/7/2026. Plot twist, that didn’t happen and Episode 8, “The Rightside Up”, is the true real end of Stranger Things, which wasn’t half bad. Senior Baasel Quraishy explained, “The final fight against Vecna and the Mind Flayer was rushed and, sure there were a bunch of plot holes, but the emotional factors of the epilogue hard carried by full circling to the very beginning of season one with the DnD campaigns and the graduation scene, which were very powerful.”
As imperfect as this season is, its still good. Despite how I felt about the season four cliffhanger being glossed over, I was still very excited and heavily enjoyed the season and it had a lot going for it. The ideas that the creators had with the Upside Down twist, the Demogorgon’s invading, The Mind Flayer’s physical form, and Will’s powers, are just some of the highlights of the Stranger Things 5. The emotional core is still strong amongst all the characters with some tear jerking moments that were shot and written with care and effort, even though many of those scenes have obvious faults.
The main issues that I see in the season is the pacing. Many scenes cut to the next so quickly while others take a long time to wrap up a conversation. Some commonly pointed out examples are how Max and Holly take forever to even start walking through Camazotz and Will taking too long to get to his point at the end of episode 7 “The Bridge”. In contrast, when Dustin uncovers what created the Upside Down we learn of exotic matter and we see what is actually behind the giant wall which is just the empty void of space. The idea of this inverse world being a wormhole between two separate worlds is a very cool idea that should’ve been explained further. It feels more important for the plot rather than meaningful world building.
What is also annoying is that the season refuses to commit to its interesting ideas and decides to stick to its formula. A common theme that gets recurred is how separated the group will get during each season. Once again, Eleven disperses from the main group and has a separate plot line with Hopper and Kali in the Upside Down. This is another example of just more Stranger Things where the series doesn’t commit to the risks that it wants to take and over commits to ideas and plot lines that could’ve been resolved much sooner than the more interesting ones.
All in all, Stranger Things is undeniably one of the biggest television series ever made, despite how mediocre the final season may be. The impact the show has had, especially this final season, is immense by providing thousands of jobs and even boosting the GPD of the USA and the state of Georgia by $1.4 billion. Many say its mid, many say its peak through and through, while others say it never got better after season 2. Whether those are your opinions or not, Stranger Things is over. What an end to an era.
