Vecna strikes again. And this time it also crashes Netflix. The streaming platform experienced a brief blackout on Wednesday night just as the latest, highly anticipated episode of was debuting Stranger Thingsthe final chapter in a decade-long saga that has become a global cultural phenomenon.
The outage started at 5pm sharp (Pacific time), coinciding with the release of the fifth season finale. For about a minute, some users were unable to access the platform: after a few refreshes, everything returned to normal. As has happened in the past, the error was accompanied by an image of “Nailed It!” and Netflix’s standard apology message. It is the second time in a few weeks: on November 26, when the first episodes of the season were released, the service was offline for about five minutes.
But this time the blackout had a different flavor. Why Stranger Things it wasn’t just “another successful release”: it was a final goodbye. No open ending, no “goodbye” disguised as a possible spin-off. As the Duffer Brothers, Ross and Matt have made clear several times, the goal was to truly close the loop. And so it was.
The last episode came in the middle of the night and it hurt, emotionally. Between sacrifices, farewells and irreversible choices, the series bids farewell to fans by returning to what made it special from the beginning: friendship. Hawkins, the Upside Down, bicycles, Christmas lights and that Eighties aesthetic that defined an entire generation of spectators are consigned to the collective memory with an intense, definitive ending, without narrative shortcuts.
The fifth season starts from a devastated Hawkins, literally split in two. The border between reality and Upside Down has collapsed, Vecna is still a threat and the final battle is inevitable. Fans knew that not everyone would make it to the end unscathed: Stranger Things has never been afraid of pain, nor sacrifices. And this time too he kept his promise.
At the center remains Eleven, the emotional heart of the series: not just a girl with extraordinary powers, but a young woman in search of her own identity. Her narrative arc leads her to a crucial choice, which summarizes the profound meaning of the series: what are we willing to lose to save those we love?
Alongside her, the historic group – Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Max and Will – face their last battle together. Will returns to have a central role thanks to his bond with Vecna, Max surprises with an unexpected evolution, Joyce confirms herself once again as an emotional pillar of the story. They have grown up in front of the public eye, and watching them fight side by side for the last time is both devastating and necessary.
Spoiler alert
The structure of the final episode also makes the farewell even more impressive. With a duration of over two hours, the last chapter of Stranger Things is a real film, full of narrative points and sequences designed to pull the threads of a mythology built over the course of five seasons. The story picks up exactly where it left off with Il Ponte: the Party enters the decisive phase of the plan and splits in the Sottosopra to carry out a strategy that is as ambitious as it is desperate.
On the one hand, Eleven, flanked by Kali, Hopper and Murray, returns to Hawkins’ laboratory, a symbolic place of the origins of the trauma and the powers that marked her destiny. On the other, the rest of the group faces a climb towards the tower, in a sequence that mixes physical tension and emotional charge. There is also space for a parenthesis suspended in the Void, where Eleven, Kali and Max share a crucial moment by entering Henry Creel’s memories: a trip down memory lane that brings the story back to its darkest and most childish core, before Vecna manages to turn the tables once again.
The finale accelerates after a very hard blow that changes the balance on the field and pushes Eleven to join the others in the Abyss, the scene of the great final battle. Here the series plays all its cards: the definitive clash between El and Vecna, the return of the Mind Flayer in its most authentic form and a long action sequence that does not give up the spectacle, but remains anchored to the bonds between the characters. The Party manages to react, to resist, to once again find strength in union. But the final battle – as well as the epilogue – goes beyond simple victory or defeat: it is a symbolic closure, which deserves to be read and reread, while the main story of Stranger Things really comes to an end.
Record numbers
The numbers, meanwhile, reveal an unprecedented success. Between December 22 and 28, the fifth season totaled 34.5 million views, becoming the most watched title in the world that week. When it debuted in November it reached 59.6 million: the best opening ever for an English-language series on Netflix. The episodes released on Christmas pushed the platform to its highest level of viewership ever recorded on Christmas Day.
The finale also had a cinematic dimension: the last episode was screened in the USA in selected theaters on New Year’s Eve. Over 1.1 million people booked the special screenings, with 3,500 shows sold out in 620 cinemas.
