Noah Schnapp and Winona Ryder in 'Stranger Things.' COURTESY OF NETFLIX Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment [This conversation includes spoilers for the series finale of Netflix's Stranger Things, which was all about making difficult choices and respecting other people's difficult choices. We recommend you make the easy choice to watch the finale before reading our thoughts.] DANIEL FIENBERG The first season of Stranger Things, a little coming-of-age pastiche of Stephen King and Steven Spielberg marketed around co-star Winona Ryder, premiered on July 15, 2016, three days before the Republican Party formally coronated Donald Trump as its presidential nominee. Related Stories TV Netflix Crashes Again as 'Stranger Things' Season 5 Finale Premieres TV 'Stranger Things' Star Noah Schnapp on Will's Coming Out Scene: "It Was Perfect" After a prologue suggesting that creepy things were happening at a government lab, the pilot was mostly introducing viewers to a group of nerdy friends who would soon be joined by a mysterious telekinetic girl with short hair in Hawkins, Indiana, circa 1983. Beginning with a heated game of Dungeons & Dragons, it had almost no special effects, but was charming in its hinting and insinuating about all the weird stuff to come, neatly contained in 49 minutes. The series finale of Stranger Things, airing on New Year's Eve 2025 and taking place in May 1989, runs a neatly contained 45 minutes and also contains almost no special effects, concentrating on the fate of those friends and climaxing with a game of Dungeons & Dragons, like the first one interrupted by Karen Wheeler (Cara Buono) summoning the kids, now recent high-school graduates, for dinner - this time lasagna instead of pizza. A fine piece of symmetry. Wait. No. That was the EPILOGUE to the finale of Stranger Things, the 45-minute wrap-up to a 128-minute episode, a special effects-free resolution set 18 months after the world-saving orgy of digital trickery - some cool, some really awful, honestly - that the show built to in the second of three parts in its final season. Got that? The epilogue, which will henceforth replace The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in all conversations mocking protracted franchise wrap-ups, was probably a worthwhile decompression after well over an hour of action, ill-timed conversations and lectures about choices, many of which either undermined or repeated aspects from the best parts of the penultimate episode. The finale was big and loud and, depending on your perspective, either rousing and emotionally operatic or incoherent and less effectively mawkish than those key beats from "The Bridge" - Will's coming out, Nancy and Jonathan's breakup-engagement in the Goo Escape Room and Steve and Dustin's reconciliation. As somebody who loved the first couple of seasons for their less-is-more ethos and DIY charm, I fit more into the second perspective. Sure, I admire the Duffer Brothers and Netflix for ponying up for not one but two big Prince needle drops, but I didn't feel much when Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown, finally freed from the cruelty of the show's costumers and stylists) made her choice and seemingly sacrificed herself. The fact that we got two full rounds of individual close-ups for every character both when they realized what Eleven was about to do and then when she did it added little. I was just exhausted, which probably had the benefit of reducing my irritation when the show undid much of what was noble about Eleven's choice (in the latest of several reminders that when it came to making choices themselves, the Duffers generally chose to accumulate characters instead of being ruthless). That's why, when we were treated to a montage of deceased characters as motivation for Joyce (Ryder) beheading Vecna, I was like, "Eddie! That Guy Sean Astin Played! Two frames of BARB!" Sigh. So, Angie, where do you want to start? Or, rather, where do you want to end? ANGIE HAN I'm with you in feeling more frustrated than satisfied by the finale. There were moments that worked for me in spite of my overall exhaustion with this show in general and this season in particular (among them: El asking Hopper to believe in her; El's teary goodbye with Mike; Mike watching Holly and her friends take over the basement that was once his territory). But they were scattered among long stretches of ugly CG nonsense, repetitive story beats and montages to earlier seasons. I don't entirely begrudge the show wanting to take a victory lap, but did it have to take over two whole hours? Like so much else in season five, this episode felt like it was serving up a lot of stuff but very little emotional or thematic substance. Then there's the fact that a lot of the moments it clearly wanted to hit hard ... just didn't, at least for me.