Series Review – Stranger Things Season 5
Creators: The Duffer Brothers
Starring: Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Winona Ryder, David Harbour
Year: 2025
It’s over. After nine years, Stranger Things has finally concluded. The Upside Down has been defeated. The kids are grown up. The story that launched a thousand 80s nostalgia think pieces has reached its end.
And I’m. Relieved. Mostly.
Look, Stranger Things was lightning in a bottle. Season 1 was near-perfect. That blend of Spielberg and Stephen King. The synth soundtrack. The mysterious girl with powers. The Demogorgon. It was fresh and exciting and felt like nothing else on television.
But the show overstayed its welcome. Season 2 was good. Season 3 was fun but shallower. Season 4 was… long. Very long. With pacing issues that suggested the Duffers weren’t sure how to get to their ending.
Season 5 is their ending. And it’s. Fine.
The final battle with Vecna is appropriately epic. There are casualties. Some expected, some surprising. The effects work is impressive — Netflix clearly threw money at this. Emotional beats land. Characters get closure.
But the whole season feels like checking boxes. Will needs to resolve his arc. Eleven needs to have a final confrontation. Hopper and Joyce need to get their moment. Steve needs to. Exist I guess. Every character gets their scene and then the show moves to the next character’s scene and it all feels very mechanical.
The runtime is obscene. The season is functionally a ten-hour movie. Individual episodes run 80-90 minutes. There’s no reason for this other than Netflix’s algorithm favoring engagement metrics over storytelling efficiency. A tighter edit would have helped immensely.
The emotional climax involves El and Vecna in a way I won’t spoil but that feels appropriate to the themes the show has been building. It works. I felt things. I also felt exhausted.
Here’s my honest assessment: Stranger Things should have been a limited series. Four seasons max. The story they wanted to tell didn’t have enough substance for five seasons and 42 episodes. They padded. They stalled. They added characters and subplots to fill space.
But when it’s working — and it does work in stretches throughout this final season — you remember why you fell in love with Hawkins in the first place. There’s a sequence in episode 3 that’s pure vintage Stranger Things. Kids on bikes. Synth music. Monster chasing them through the woods. It made me feel like it was 2016 again.
It’s over. That’s good. Let it be over. Don’t make spin-offs. Don’t make prequels. Let these characters rest.
My rating: ★★★☆☆
Stranger Things on IMDb | Stranger Things on Rotten Tomatoes
