All unanswered questions after divisive Stranger Things season finale
You can't please everyone with the ending, but there are some dangling threads
Warning! This article contains spoiler discussions of the final episode of Stranger Things
Well, that was Stranger Things. The Netflix series which started in 2016 with a bunch of kids trying to figure out a supernatural mystery in their town and ended in the first hours of 2026 with a bunch of people who look much too old for school is over for
It was all building up to this as our core cast of characters took one final shot at taking down the evil Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) and a world ending event which continued to be polite enough to allow our characters to have several heart-to-heart conversations.
Reactions to the finale have been mixed as some fans loved it and others found that it didn't live up to their expectations after the Duffer brothers promised an 'emotional New Year'.
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There were some big twists and turns, perhaps not as many deaths as some fans had been expecting, and a big epilogue where we got to catch up with everyone some time later and see how they were doing.
Well, almost everyone, as there were some questions fans have which appear to have been left unanswered.
Where did all the monsters go?
On previous expeditions to the Upside Down the place has been fraught with peril to the point that in season four a major set piece involves Eddie (Joseph Quinn) playing the Metallica song 'Master of Puppets' to draw off a massive swarm of bat-monsters.
However, on the final voyage into other worlds these legions of foul terror were nowhere to be seen. For a series known for Demogorgons, Demo-dogs and Demo-bats, it suddenly seemed to run out of them.
The characters themselves even wonder aloud about where all the monsters are since the Mind Flayer is apparently left just standing by itself.
While we're on this subject, how come the Demogorgons can basically eat bullets from the military and be alright but the Mind Flayer gets shredded by the protagonists?
Where is Vickie?
Seriously, what happened to Vickie? She was Robin's (Maya Hawke) girlfriend and the final season spent a decent amount of time developing their relationship as the pressures of trying to deal with all the weirdness of Stranger Things became too much.
Poor Vickie (Amybeth McNulty) got one of the most sudden introductions to the truth that monsters and strange powers were threatening Hawkins when the hospital she was working in was attacked.
However, come the end of the finale she was nowhere to be found as a character reunion involving Robin didn't have her featured.
Perhaps the writers thought she didn't know Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Steve (Joe Keery) and Nancy (Natalia Dyer) well enough to be part of their 'friends forever' agreement, or perhaps Robin's reference to 'overbearing partners' means they broke up at some point in the timeskip.
Or maybe she was just busy at work.
What's up with the Turnbow family?
Remember when these characters drugged and kidnapped a whole family? That seems to be something you can do and just get away with in the world of Stranger Things.
The Turnbow family got abducted and tied up in a barn by Joyce (Winona Ryder), who wanted to stop Vecna from kidnapping their son Derek (Jake Connelly) by kidnapping him first herself.
By the way, props to Derek in that final episode for being stronger than Vecna and winning the tug-of-war over Holly (Nell Fisher).
The family kidnapping sort of worked, but we just have to assume that at some point the Turnbow family were released from the barn and got very cool about a lot of stuff very quickly.
Why does the military just let them go?
Remember when these characters literally kill US military personnel? Because apparently the US military doesn't, or if they do remember they don't seem to care all that much.
Our core cast interferes with military operations on several occasions and Hopper (David Harbour) kills numerous soldiers, but nobody seems to face any serious repercussions from this.
At one point in the finale our beloved heroes end up running right into the arms of the US military and get captured but then we just skip to over a year later and apparently they just left.
They're damn lucky this seems like a 'sweep it under the carpet' job, and perhaps the Duffer brothers thought an ending where several characters ended up in prison for the various crimes they committed would be a bit of a downer.
What happened to Dr Kay?
Speaking of the military just sodding off, Dr Kay (Linda Hamilton) spends the whole season trying to get involved and then she just disappears with no resolution.
They hired a big actor, made a big deal of her character and by the end she'd basically evaporated without a mention as to what became of her.
Maybe we don't need a resolution to everything and our protagonists wouldn't be kept in the loop about where she ended up but fans might have appreciated some kind of sign.
Why is Will alright?
One of the big plot points for the final season of Stranger Things was Will (Noah Schnapp) getting powers of his own and being able to tap into control of the Demogorgons to save his friends.
Will getting nabbed right at the start of the first season really kicked off the plot of Stranger Things and it's been clear for a while he's linked to the hivemind.
We see the hivemind in action in the finale as hurting one of Vecna or the Mind Flayer makes the other feel it, but Will is also connected to them and doesn't feel it.
This is despite him feeling other things Vecna was experiencing earlier in the episode and actively tapping into their connection to help defeat him.
Perhaps it just doesn't work like that. Or maybe they didn't want to lose many of their main characters since the villains fumbled horribly and got absolutely clowned on in the finale.
Topics: Stranger Things, Netflix, TV
Joe Harker