I wish season 5 never came out

I’m going to be so honest off the bat. I care a lot about television and movies.

I started watching Stranger Things during quarantine and it very quickly became one of if not my favorite show of all time. I can sit here all day explaining why but I’m sure if you’re reading this you know why Seasons 1-3 were so good. I was so hyped for season 4 that when it dropped I stayed up till 3 am EST to instantly start watching. I’ve probably seen Stranger Things 1-4 50+ times all the way through. Anyways I did the same when volume 2 came out a month later and had finished season 4 before any of my friends even woke up. Season 4 produced my three favorite episodes of all time. Dear Billy, the volume 1 finale and the season finale. I’m normally very good at predicting what’s going to happen but I was floored when it was revealed that Henry was Vecna. It was the best reveal I’ve ever seen. Also the music!!! The remix of Running Up That Hill that plays when Max is running out of Vecna’s mind gives me chills to this day.

Now this brings me to the overall point/disappointment

I couldn’t wait for Season 5 to drop. I was watching theories and rewatching the seasons once a month I was so geeked waiting. I want to add that I’m born and raised in Atlanta so I’ve been to all of the filming locations as well. I moved to NJ for college and went to my first ever broadway show, the Stranger Things one. While I have my gripes with it not being at all connected to the show with a lot of continuity errors, I was able to enjoy it as its own thing. When season 5 finally dropped I was so excited and watched it right away. As the episodes kept going I was more and more disappointed and frustrated. They took a perfect show, literally a perfect show and butchered it. The finale of volume 1 was so predictable I was astonished that there were people who didn’t see it coming. I remember I said to my friends, “It was good but didn’t hit like 4. 4’s volume 1 had a cliffhanger that I desperately needed answers to and this did not.” Okay so volume 1 was mid hopefully volume 2 will be good…😐. To tell you I was stone faced I was watching it would be an understatement. There was no hype. When I was watching Season 4 I was out of my seat jumping around like holy shit this is a television masterpiece. My friends and I had booked tickets to see the finale in theaters on New Years and I like, “Okay as long as this is lit af, I don’t care.”

Something I should mention is that while Steve is by far my favorite character, I was hoping for the death. Literally after watching season 4 I was like, “The sacrifice he is going to make for either Dustin or Nancy will be the greatest scene in cinematic history.” The fact that NO ONE DIED bummed me out to the point I walked out of the theater numb and lowkey in tears. Now before you clown on me for crying over a finale being bad I want to say that Stranger Things became more than a show to me. I have talked about my issues with depression and my strained relationship with my father on my profile before so if you really care you can go read that, but I’ll give a sparknotes version in regards to it relating to Stranger Things. I truly escaped my life with the show. When everything was going bad in my life, my mom took me to all of the filming locations, the Stranger Things experience in ATL, she got me merch and we ate the Surfer Boy Pizza from Walmart. I can go on and on. When everything with Vecna ended and we got the last hour of wrapping things up, I realized in that movie theater that it was over. The show that had helped me cope with so much had ended. The person I was when I first watched had taken a nose dive mentally over the years. While everyone around me was happy to see all of these characters resolutions, I was sitting there sad because there was so much and so many questions that would never be answered. I haven’t rewatched Stranger Things since that day. Everytime I go to I just lose interest because I know that the ending isn’t what I wanted it to be. I’m not saying it needed to be perfect, but it needed to be better than whatever dogshit they put out on New Years.

If you’ve read this far I really appreciate it. It feels good to put my thoughts into words and send it out into the universe. I am prepared for comments making fun of me for being this emotional over a TV show.