Saying Goodbye to Stranger Things

    There's a quote from critic Mark Caro that I think about a lot. I shared it back when I did my critical survey of Pixar movies. Writing about Finding Nemo, Caro wrote in the Chicago Tribune in 2003, "Classic film eras tend to get recognized in retrospect while we take for granted timeless works passing before our eyes. So let's pause to appreciate what's been going on at Pixar Animation Studios."

    I think that captures the aspirations of all active-minded media consumers. Or at least, it ought to. "This good thing won't last forever, so savor it before the sun goes down." 

Modern Times (1936)

    But this is also a very hard mindset to access in an online culture that is always seeking to stamp labels and scores on a thing before we shove it on the conveyor belt and move on to the next parcel. 

    It's something I have been thinking about for the last year or so as the completion of the Stranger Things saga crept ever closer, and it was definitely on my mind as I watched the last season unfold over the last month or so. And I'd wondered what exactly I was going to do to commemorate this graduation.

    Entertainment or stories are often discussed as little more than pleasant auxilaries, things we dive into because we imagine they will somehow distract us from the ache of modern living, not serving any real social utility. If anything, it's kind of a vice.

WandaVision (2021)

    But while that may be transitorily true, my observation is that we get invested in stories because we believe that they offer us something concrete, something useful. This claim that fictitious narratives acted out by imaginary characters could materially change our own stories on the opposite side of a screen ... is a little too large for me to prove in this space, but if you've gotten this far, I'm going to guess you've heard this idea before. 

    Because for all we hear about a show like Stranger Things being "escapism" or "nostalgia," the series is itself built around a deep aching. While the show is embraced by a wide range of audiences, the show's deepest fans don't really look much like the kids playing D&D every weekend. The show's deepest fans tend to come from children of the 80s and 90s who watch the show and see something that they once had, and no longer do. 

    We follow a story like Stranger Things because we recognize ourselves in the characters and in their hurt, either because they have lost something or they themselves feel lost. And we enjoy the fun antics they get into and the company they enjoy with one another along the ride because they remind us of passages in our lives where we not only felt bliss, but felt like it could go on forever. This is especially true for a show such as Stranger Things which enshrouds itself in such richly nostalgic drapings as childhood.

    And so here in their closing statements, shows that have captured not just the attention but the hearts of the masses, these walk a tightrope between nihilism and saccharinity. How are you honest to the demands of the reality these characters are settled with while also daring to challenge the futility that threatens to absorb us all? Well, I think the answer lies largely in reckoning with the honest reality saying goodbye. Stranger Things may be "just a tv show," and these characters may be "just pretend," but the experience of having to close a book absolutely stirs real feelings. 

    I want to explore some of those feelings that are wrapped up in the conclusion of a pop culture juggernaut. Why was Stranger Things so popular in the first place? What should other prospecting storytellers take from this show's success? And what is Stranger Things' ultimate statement on moving on and growing up?

What's So Strange About The Things Anyways?

    I was going to devote a part of this to running through a regular review. But ... that became a lot less interesting to me as I went on writing this. While I had some notes, I think this season did a fantastic job both as its own unit and as a closer to one of the most beloved shows in television history. 

    And I think the reasons for this are, on the whole, very easy to articulate. The show has just always understood how character, action, and theme interact and fit within the vessel of science-fiction/fantasy, and that was true here as well. And more, the writers understood the expectation that this is meant to close the door on these characters, and so this time is best spent seeing the characters claim the victories that have been teasing them for the last nine years. So in lieu of a report card, I guess I will give an overview of what the strengths of the show have been.

    For the last ten years, Stranger Things has been the face of millennial nostalgia. A lot has been written about the 30 year nostalgia-cycle that would naturally make a show like Stranger Things with its '80s-palooza very tasty to the 2010s American audience. But I'd argue that the '80s setting has held more than just nostalgia for such things as walkie-talkies, video stores, or roller-skate rinks. And neither is it just that the tide cycles of nostalgia are presently favoring this specific moment in the timeline, also gifting us such landmarks as Rampage, Terminator: Dark Fate, or Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire ...

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

    The 1980s was also the birth of what we now consider to be "pop culture" or "fandom." There were obviously media that captured the attention of the masses before the 1980s, but developments like home media allowed people to interact with artifacts of culture in a way that had been previously unprecedented. This also shifted the kinds of stories that were allowed to take hold in the zeitgeist. And it was into this landscape that properties like Star Wars and experiences like Dungeons and Dragons were born, allowing them to profoundly influence the modern mediascape. 

    What makes the setting of this show special is that the protagonists of this series, living in 1980s America, are the first people to experience what has now become integrated into so much of modern living--Mike, Dustin, Will, Lucas, El, and Max are the forebearers of contemporary nerdom. This nesting ground is almost as fertile in and of itself as any of the pop culture landmarks it nurtured. Thus, Stranger Things has offered something of a pilgrimage for the modern movie-nuts to pay homage to pop culture-ism in its cradle. This is something most of 21st century media has attempted to do, with something like a literal reboot or sequel of a specific property, but I think David Harbour nailed it when he described what it is that makes Stranger Things so effective--and what other storytellers ought to aspire to achieve, 

    "I think what 'Stranger Things' is trying to do is, instead of rebooting 'Star Wars' or 'Lord of the Rings,' they're taking the archetypes or the tropes - or the words and the letters, let's say, and creating new sentences out of them. Hopper is Han Solo, is Indiana Jones, is Gandalf the Gray. There are these archetype tropes that just live in our subconscious cinematic lexicon and we love them. 'Stranger Things' just reinvents them with Eleven, Hopper, Max. It's not afraid to play those really strong power chords." 

    So, the real revelation in Stranger Things ... a part of it is wrapped up in the allure of retreating to "a simpler time," a time when apparently all kids did was watch Star Wars, but its appeal to childhood runs a lot deeper than just the optics of childhood or a pre-9/11 world. It's not enough to reanimate the bodies of our childhood heroes. You have to know why these stories and these types are worth revisiting.

    As I discussed in my analysis of The Night of the Hunter, childhood is more than just "innocence" or an absence of responsibility. It is a state of existence independent of the chains of adult evils such as complicity. Kids haven't entered that battlefield in which they fight to earn their keep by saying the right things to people in power. Kids don't have the same incentives that adults do to shirk on their principles in exchange for the possibility of some material gain or security. That's the real scary thing about growing up--once you have to keep your head up in the "real world," it's easy to shed those altruistic impulses because "that's just how the world is."

    But the show has always tracked how a gang of outcast middle-schoolers might maintain this childlike virtue despite the pressures to conform or do away from childish things. The main way we've explored that has been in the way these friends have always gone to any length to save one another--whether that be a literal rescue mission or simply refusing to detach from them even as they appear to be drifting away. This is also something we have seen with the adult and teen characters of the show. These are people who have already been integrated into the systems and beliefs of the world who learn to reclaim what used to come naturally to them. 

   Another way this show has explored this has been in teasing these characters with some supernatural mystery concealed behind the curtain of suburban equilibrium--behind the lies they want to tell themselves because it makes everything simpler ("your best friend wasn't taken by an evil monster, she just ran away--see? we found her car and everything"). What lies behind that curtain is always terrifying, but it's in choosing to confront those very monsters that these friends and these parents and these older siblings are able to access unimaginable reserves of bravery and faith. And in doing so, they join a rank of herodom matching anything Hollywood was premiering during this pivotal time in pop culture history.

    It has been a point of discussion for a while now (a tired point of discussion) that "Wow! these actors sure have grown up, haven't they? What are these twenty-year-olds doing playing a bunch of kids?" 

    And yeah, they aren't kids anymore. The kid who brought a wrist-rocket to fight the demogorgon will grow up to hold daily vigil at the bedside of his comatose girlfriend for over a year. And the kid who brought snacks? He will get to tell the uncle of the town freak that whatever else the community believes, his nephew died a hero. These are adult things they get to face.

    This is another reason why it worked so well that the targets of this final season were a bunch of kids. This allowed us to see the journey these heroes have taken. In addition to supreme stress, I watch something like the attack at the MAC-Z with something a lot like pride seeing Mike, Will, and Joyce prove themselves once again as protectors of the vulnerable.

    They aren't kids anymore. Not anymore than Harry, Ron, and Hermione were when they took their last stand at Hogwarts against Voldemort. In choosing to hold on to stay true to these childlike ideas, they have evolved that could only be described as heroic.

The Duffer Brothers Touch

 

   I think one of the best things I can say about this show is that I've never been able to guess where the story was going, yet each time a new story-arc is under its belt, I couldn't have imagined it any other way. The synchronicity between the escalations of the plot and the growth of the characters have always been tight. Even now I feel only partly equipped to guess at why or how, but I feel like a lot of it has to do with The Duffer Brothers knowing not just what specific boxes they wanted to check off, but what experience they wanted to create. 

    I remember as far back as at least 2017, Matt and Ross were saying they knew how the show was going to end, so they were obviously building toward something specific. But consider also that characters like Steve or Bob were originally written to be tremendously unlikeable. But the showrunners weren't so committed to their original plan that they weren't willing to pivot when they saw new opportunities. The result was two of the most beloved characters on the show.

    There are a couple of threads we could follow here. But let's take probably the biggest twist of the season, or the entire series for that matter: Will Byers, the kid who everyone has needed to rescue all series long, has powers and has had them for a long time. How did this manage to take all of us off guard while still feeling like the perfect capstone? 

    It helps that this development had basis within the rules of this universe. A great deal of the plot has hinged on the lingering effects of Will's time in the Upside-Down, and this has often manifested in him somehow being a reflecting glass for the great big shadow in the dark netherworld. There's already strong precedent for The Upside-Down enforcing its power through Will. Is it so hard to imagine that, following some specific shift, this kid could run that equation in reverse? 

    This idea has also been reinforced symbolically. The boys have always sort of identified themselves by their D&D counterpart, and that connection has always been clearest with Will. For most of this show, I'd have to pause to try to recall what class Dustin & Lucas are, but "Will the Wise" had been deeply impressed upon the show's consciousness: we have been emotionally preparing for the party's wizard to step into himself.

    Historically, Will has been the actant for the greater force afflicting its agency onto him. That is why Vecna saw Will as a suitable tool for his purposes. And in some ways, that's exactly what Will was at the start of the show--he was a scared little kid who didn't know how to fight for himself. What Vecna didn't count on was something as fragile as Will ever attaining enough confidence to use that connection to his own advantage. Thus, Will's natural progression as a character gave way to him unlocking very real power. Ross Duffer explains, 

"Throughout the seasons, he's been a little more fearful than the others. He hasn't been a leader. He hasn't accepted himself in the way that some of our characters have. So I think it was really talking about if he really is able to at least start to accept himself for who he is, will that give him the kind of strength that he needs in order to access these powers? That's really where Episode 4 - and really the arc of the first four episodes - led for him." 

    This idea that Will has been underused is one that had been aired within the fandom. But I don't think that the writers were neglecting him, even accidentally, and decided to course correct here in the final lap. All the time showcasing Will as being forlorn, as being traumatized, as being generally helpless even compared to other kids, that has all built Will up as the kind of victim Vecna would mark early on as a safe target, the kind of person that Vecna could absolutely underestimate. And this built to a profound sense of reclamation once Will finally feels comfortable in his skin. 

    And Will's gradual ascent from anonymity, enabled in part as he saw his friends continually reach into the shadows to pull him out, has seen him emerge from that cocoon. I believe the Duffer Brothers when they say they always had designs for Will getting superpowers and have just been sitting on this until Will had progressed to a point where he'd earned them.

"Goodbye, Mike"

    I had this discussion with a fellow Stranger Things-enthusiast some three days before the finale where I posited that, despite it being the major point of speculation among the fandom, none of the poster cast was going to die. The basis for my theory? Largely, because it would be tremendously out of character for the show to drop a major death without giving the characters sufficient space to grieve. Barb, Bob, Eddie, Billy. Each of these major deaths had at least one season's worth of decompression for the people they left behind. And it's for this reason that I was thinking there was no way they were going to kill anyone, least of all the cornerstone of the entire series. 

    I ended up being half-right. None of the main cast died, exactly, but the show's deepest cut comes here at the end when El allows the herself to be swept away as The Upside-Down collapses once and for all, and all her friends watch helplessly. When I talk about this season forcing us to say real goodbyes, and the show exploring real emotions, this is certainly the epicenter of what I mean.

    But as with something like Will eventually discovering he has superpowers, Eleven disappearing from the group is a development with a lot of thematic backing behind it. She has been this group's tether to this dark other-world, and so to believe that this dark other-world is truly beyond retrieval, she needs to disappear too. 

    More optimistically, and also importantly, as Ross Duffer has explained, she represents the magic of childhood. If she is this Peter Pan/E.T. personification of childhood magic, and we are watching this all from a world that is hostile toward such things, then we'd expect her to be somehow expelled by adult greed, or else we've veered too much into saccharinity or pure wish-fulfillment. This is how the show proves to us that it has that tether to reality--it reminds us that all precious things are impermanent. Thus, when Mike and the others look back on their childhood, they'll remember it as the time marked by the miraculous presence of a girl who not only had literal fantastic abilities, but whose courage and love also confounded the world she graced.

 
  And despite the inherent loss of the situation, I take some measure of peace in El's ending--not because it is what I would wish for her or her loved ones, or even because I personally think it was the only way to balance the equation. (I mean, this is the same girl who brought her friend back from the dead. Are we really going to put a box around what she can or can't do?) But I see the choice the Duffer Brothers were making. My only gripe with this ending is that Hopper should have gotten to know about his daughter. He deserved to know that his "fight for the days on the other side of this" speech absolutely altered her destiny.

    And yes, while I do think the situation derives much of its power from the absence of definitive proof, I also believe that in-universe, Mike's story is true. Not just a trauma cope or a symbolic statement. I think the evidence on the table supports the truthfulness of Mike's hypothesis. 

    Even in the midst of that first viewing, I caught onto the way that Kali's dying words felt unfinished, and I had guessed they had something to do with El's story not ending here. Mike did not see that exchange, even the small part of it that Hopper did, so we can't assume this was him mythologizing the moment or anything. And there's the valid question of how on earth El was able to talk to Mike in the void if the kryptonite was actually focused on her. And moreover, it fits with the composition of the larger story that this is yet another improbability that turns out true. Mike's story is far less outlandish than the idea that "our friend was abducted by a monster and needs our help to rescue him from the dark dimension." 

    Some will say that projecting a final escape for Eleven is some kind of deliberate frustration of the maturation process, that a person might believe in Eleven the way they might believe in Santa Claus. But to me, the "Eleven lives" interpretation is the reading that does the most to reveal the human intellect at its most developed, its most refined. There's a lot more going on here than a bunch of kids not wanting to face harsh truths. 

    This entire show has built itself on this idea that life, even in a small town in the middle of nowhere, is laced with contradictions and things that don't add up, and the world will always try to supply them with explanations that assuage their unrest, that give them an excuse to not get their hopes up. But in choosing to question the official story, in letting themselves believe in impossible things, these kids have discovered things the real world would never offer naturally, and that has made all the difference. This ties back to what we were looking at earlier with childlike faith being a valid force with living application. 

    It is consistent within the attitudes and behaviors of the show to conclude that, yes, one last miracle did happen. This girl who has been the face to childhood magic did somehow elude the forces determined to exterminate her. And that as long as some vestige of that magic exists within our hearts, we are free to understand that this girl, whose life was anything but sheltered or innocent, finally found a happy ending--happiest most of all because it guarantees safety not only for herself, but for the people she cares about. 

    Because that's really what I fixate on in that show's tremendously cathartic final scene where the final graduating class of the 1980s plays one last game of D&D. I see a bunch of kids who have spent their youth learning that the world will always tell them that this childlike impulse to believe in impossible things is infantile and will not serve them in "the real world." But haven't they proven the futility of that argument many times over? And haven't they discovered some very precious things along the way?

    And as they each ascend out of the basement of their childhood, they are presented with one final opportunity to prove that this power to believe in things has become who they are. This is one part of their childhood they are allowed to take with them.

Where Do We Go From Here?

    Another one of those weird things that occupies so much space in the minds of fans, with almost any show, is needing some kind of assurance that the fictional friendships which exist in the universe are going to continue once we start making trips into it. Will these friendships survive once the plot is no longer herding them together? 

    And this insecurity is a big part of what drives things like needless reboots. We want canonized proof that the magic hasn't gone away and never will. But these attempts are predictably fickle. 

 

   They don't always violate their source material, but they seldom build on it. I cannot think of anything worse than ten years from now Netflix dropping Strangest Things where Mike has to race to Kalahari to retrieve El so they can stop Vecna's daughter from recreating the Upside-Down and unleashing it upon a Hawkins that is just discovering DVDs. (The Duffers cover Max's absence after Sadie Sink chooses not to come back by explaining that we were never--no, never--supposed to take Mike's prophecy that "the knight and the zoomer's love grows stronger every day" so literally ...)

    Mind you, I will absolutely be watching Stranger Things: Tales from '85 when it drops, and it is my dearest intention to see "First Shadow" on stage before my time. I'm also here for cast reunion panels and the like. There are absolutely ethical ways to franchise this thing. But honestly, I hope we as fans protect the lives of Will, Mike, Max, and so on from ever being contaminated by follow-ups. I want Stranger Things to always be a part of the cultural canon, but Mike and the others have earned the right to live their story free of the market demands. 

    What I've also heard is a lot of dismay over the unlikelihood that, say, the "teen" characters are ever going to make good on their monthly arrangement to meet up. That's just a part of the fantasy that maybe doesn't translate to real life. And honestly, there's strong basis for that. I don't keep in great touch with a lot of the people I spent time with during high school. 

    But then, I don't know if I ever had friends like this. I don't just mean like "we never launched fireworks at a giant flesh monster terrorizing the mall over the 4th of July." I never knew how to be vulnerable the way these kids were with one another. That's not a mark on my friends as human beings. I grew up around great people. But I never experienced what Will did with the party with being so accepted upon coming out. It took me until after college to be bold enough to do what Will did. 

    When I think of the friendships in my life that lasted longer than they "should have," they were with people with whom I made an above-average effort to engage with. I would describe my interactions with these people as much more than just "fun." We learned to be tremendously vulnerable with one another. We went to bat for one another. We were consistent in our efforts to reach out, even if it took a while to land something. 

    These are people with whom I put special effort into being part of their lives when it was "easy," and so I was already practiced in making that jump. Mortgages, schooling, relationships, these are real things, but they need not be impenetrable things. I guess you can read my Banshees of Inisherin essay for more musings on all that. 

    And another point in favor of these guys maintaining their bond is that the party has already experienced that great severing which covered season 4. They have faced that drift and that distance. These guys know what it's like to overcome these divisions, and there's a lot of textual evidence to support the idea that they will continue to do so as they emerge. They will be fine. And so will we.

    So, I guess I will say goodbye to this show, whatever that means, by closing out with this callback to the promises it made nearly ten years ago. At the time, some called this speech self-aggrandizing or sanctimonious. Like, who are these actors to be making such reckless declarations? But after nearly ten years of seeing this show remind us all what it means to be a hero in the real world, I want to return with the assurance to all the thousands of hands that carried it across the finish line that, yes, you all absolutely lived up to every single one of them.

                --The Professor

(Also, props to Winona for hurrying up onto the stage with the cast even though the Ambien clearly told her "no.")