The Duffer brothers’ TV series ended with the long New Year’s Eve episode. Many loose ends, something still remains mysterious. Here’s what happened and could have happened
On New Year’s Eve, at 2 in the morning in Italy, the last episode of the final season of Stranger Things. Many fans of the series connected to Netflix, so much so that the platform suffered some overload problems, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. Two hours and eight minutes in which the Duffer brothers had to untie the knots that still remained unresolved and close the circle with a story lasting ten years and five seasons, which naturally moved and thrilled. In this article we try to explain the ending, so if you haven’t seen the episode yet and want to avoid spoilers, don’t read on.
Showdown in the Upside Down
The Hawkins gang enters the Upside Down, which Dustin has discovered is a bridge to another dimension known as the Abyss, to carry out his plan to kill Vecna and save the Earth from a potentially lethal world-merge. Eleven, Kali, Hopper and Murray head towards the laboratory, while the others go towards the radio tower. Max, still unable to walk, remains in Hawkins with Vickie, but from here too she will have an important role in the finale.
Eleven clashes with Vecna just before the radio tower is crushed, freeing all the children who are led by Holly towards the cave that Henry cannot enter. But a military incursion into the Upside Down complicates the troop’s plans, with Kali being killed while Murray manages to free Hopper and Eleven by detonating a grenade on a helicopter. Having reached the Abyss, Eleven defeats Vecna and the Mind Flayer (who appears here in his real form: a giant spider that appears to be a clear reference to IT by Stephen King), but when everyone returns to Hawkins, being arrested by the army, he sacrifices himself by remaining in the Upside Down until the explosion of the charges placed to destroy the exotic matter and collapse the bridge between the two dimensions.
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The origins of Vecna’s powers
In the last episode we discover why Henry is afraid of the cave and that his powers are not innate, but were originated from contact with exotic matter when he was a child, just after having committed his first murder. At that moment, Henry joined the Mind Flayer, becoming his servant or, as he himself says, one with him.
Is Eleven dead or alive?
In the finale we see Mike mourning the passing of Eleven, Hopper proposing marriage to Joyce, Dustin giving an extraordinary and irreverent speech at his and his friends’ graduation ceremony. The last part shows Mike, Will, Dustin and Lucas playing Dungeons and Dragons, as in the first scene of the first season, this time Max also joined them. At the end of the campaign, which is resolved by the intervention of a mysterious sorceress summoned by the Sorcerer Will, Mike tells his ending for each of the characters and a theory on Eleven’s fate. According to him, the girl did not die but survived and escaped thanks to an intervention by Kali, who created a projection of her on the point of death.
Mike’s theory is in fact based on evidence: while Eleven is on the threshold of the Exploding Upside Down, she does not seem to be influenced by the repeaters that emit the sonic frequencies used by the army as a weapon to neutralize her (which however are located in Hawkins, while she is actually inside the Upside Down). On the other hand, however, we saw Kali die in Eleven’s arms several scenes earlier, preceding the final battle with Vecna and the Mind Flayer, and the last images we are shown of Eleven place her in a place with three waterfalls, exactly that fantasy place where Mike had promised to take her at the end of the battle. In a certain sense it is as if the Duffers wanted to leave viewers the freedom to choose the ending they prefer, as happens with the protagonists who, unanimously, choose to believe Mike’s theory, imagining that Eleven is still alive.
