10 Things That Still Don’t Make Sense After That ‘Stranger Things’ Finale

Well, folks, it’s finally here. After nearly a decade, Stranger Things has come to a close with the series finale, “Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up.” Concluding the fifth and final season, the end of the Netflix original — which has become something of a cultural phenomenon since it first hit the streamer in 2016 — was a highly-anticipated event that has been a long time coming. But while there were some things about the series finale that we liked, it also left us with many questions left to be answered — and several things that don’t make a lick of sense.

Whether it’s the ease at which our heroes defeat the otherworldly monsters hell-bent on annihilating Earth, the strange absence of certain characters, or the dropped story points that seem to matter but aren’t done justice on the screen, there are a few things about “The Rightside Up” that left us scratching our heads. For how uneven Season 5 was as a whole, the series finale did a decent enough job bringing everything to a definitive close, but that doesn’t mean we can forgive every loose end and apparent continuity error. So if you also felt like things weren’t fully wrapped up after that Stranger Things 5 finale, this one’s for you.

10

The Connection Between Earth and Dimension X

From the moment we saw Henry Creel/One/Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) get blasted through a rift in our world by Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) back in Season 4, it seemed as if there was more out there beyond the Upside Down. But it wasn’t until Season 5 that we learned that this other world, labeled Dimension X or “The Abyss,” is the true home of the Mind Flayer and every other monster that’s come crawling in through the Upside Down, which is nothing more than a bridge between worlds. But what connects Earth to The Abyss in the first place? Never is there an explanation for how the Mind Flayer first became interested in Earth.

While one might think that Eleven’s sending Henry through an interdimensional rift was first contact with Dimension X, “The Rightside Up” proves this false when we see a young Henry (Maskin Blatt) grab a mystical-looking rock that connects him to the Mind Flayer as a child, absorbing itself into his skin. But where did this rock come from? We never get any real answers, and although the prequel stageplay, Stranger Things: The First Shadow, offers some clues in its brief examination of the disappearance of the U.S.S. Eldridge, no definitive answers are given on the show. We know how Henry got to The Abyss back in the day, but we still have no idea how the Mind Flayer crossed over first.

9

The Lack of Monsters in the Abyss During the Final Battle

Speaking of The Abyss, it was stated earlier in the fifth season that Dimension X is the true home to most of the creatures in the Upside Down. Since they all come from the hive mind that is the Mind Flayer, it makes sense that Demogorgons, demo-dogs, demo-bats, and other monstrous entities would exist within the Upside Down, if not just to guard their home dimension. But when the party travel through the Upside Down and into The Abyss, not a single monster apart from Vecna and the Mind Flayer are to be found. Not one.

We know that Will (Noah Schnapp) killed several Demogorgons at once in “Chapter Four: Sorcerer,” but that couldn’t be all of them, right? Considering Vecna has been building toward his assimilation with Earth for quite some time, you would think that he would send some monsters to guard Dimension X (or at least the Upside Down) until he could achieve his goals — not unlike how the demo-bats guarded the alternate version of his childhood home in Season 4. In the end, the lack of monsters just feels like a massive oversight, though some have explained this away as the Mind Flayer using its offspring to build its monstrous body. Still, we don’t buy it.

8

The Mind Flayer Was Killed Way Too Easily

That all brings us to the Mind Flayer, who has been the big bad at the center of Stranger Things since the very beginning and more explicitly since the second season. This dark entity has hung over every evil that’s crawled throughout Hawkins, and its ultimate defeat couldn’t come soon enough. The revelation that the Mind Flayer and Venca have been working in an almost symbiotic relationship answered many of our questions about their partnership, but for a being that has existed for who knows how long, it sure ate the dust pretty quickly.

Back when the Mind Flayer used Billy (Dacre Montgomery) to help it create a physical avatar on Earth in the third season, it took the combined efforts of everyone to defeat the beast in the Starcourt mall. In fact, the Mind Flayer was seemingly weaker that season than it would’ve been in The Abyss. But in the series finale, the party was on the creature’s own turf, and somehow it felt as if it was a lot easier to beat than it should’ve been. Sure, the show wanted to get to the last 45 minutes to wrap up all the character arcs, but we’re still wondering how they took down this Godzilla of a creature with simple flamethrowers and a firearm…

7

Blowing up the Upside Down Killed All Those Pregnant Women, Right?

When Kali/Eight (Linnea Berthelsen) returned earlier in Season 5, she revealed to El that the project that Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) started had continued. Using her blood as a new template in lieu of Henry’s, Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton) has been experimenting on pregnant women, hoping to infuse their unborn children with the same interdimensional DNA that gave Kali her abilities. While El and Kali believe that blowing up the Upside Down will help stop the U.S. government from their continued experiments, we never hear anything about these poor women again.

Some have pointed out that this flashback could have taken place a considerable amount of time before Season 5, as we don’t quite know how long Kali had been kidnapped by Dr. Kay and her minions. Based on that, some believe that, since these women were dying anyway, they were already gone by the time the party hatched their death-to-Vecna plot. Of course, Stranger Things never confirms this one way or another, which doesn’t help the show’s case very much. If our heroes ended up detonating the Upside Down with these innocent women still in there, well, that’s exceptionally problematic.

6

Do the Turnbows Know Why They Were Drugged and Kidnapped?

In order to save Derek Turnbow (Jake Connelly) from the clutches of Mr. Whatsit, the party drugs and kidnaps the whole Turnbow family to steal them out from under Vecna’s nose (or, lack of one in his case). Having taken the Turnbows to an abandoned barn for safekeeping, they leave them there for their safety, with Derek helping the rest of the group save the other children in question — well, try and save them. But when did the Turnbows wake up? How long were they out? Did they ever find out who took them, and what trashed their house? The whole ordeal must’ve been terribly unsettling.

Obviously, Derek was missing for at least a few days before he returned to Hawkins, and in all that time we heard nothing about his parents or if they’d been searching for him. We can assume that Derek doesn’t tell them everything that happened to him, and when he returns home, they seemingly have no trouble with him hanging out with Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher), so clearly they don’t suspect Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and his friends. But it’s still a bit odd that they’re taken and left without the series ever addressing them again — especially since Erica (Priah Ferguson) would be suspect number one.

5

Hopper and Joyce Knew Henry in High School but Never Mentioned It

We shouldn’t have to watch a stageplay to fully understand Stranger Things 5, but in the case of this point, it’s quite relevant. We know from The First Shadow that Joyce (Winona Ryder), Hopper (David Harbour), and even Bob Newby (Sean Astin) all went to high school with Henry Creel. The same is true, based on the flashbacks to 1950s Hawkins in Henry’s mind, of the Harringtons and the Wheelers. But not once do Joyce or Hopper mention that they knew Henry back in the day, nor do they mention the strange events of Joyce’s play (the same one referenced in Henry’s mental flashbacks) where Henry nearly killed Bob’s sister. Yes, seriously.

While it’s possible that Joyce and Hop didn’t actually know Henry personally, it seems like an odd thing to reference on more than one occasion (and for them to be included in The First Shadow) if there was not some personal element to explore there. Even when Venca enters Hop’s mind, the villain only preys upon his fears, never addressing their shared history in Hawkins. When Joyce finally beheads the monster, she does so for the sake of her children and their friends, but still doesn’t acknowledge the person he used to be. Given how much Season 5 references this time in Henry’s life, it doesn’t really track that Joyce (at the very least) wouldn’t remember anything of him from high school.

4

A Few Things About Max Don’t Quite Add Up

There’s no denying that we were all thrilled to see that Max (Sadie Sink) would not only escape Vecna’s grasp alive, but that she would eventually return to the land of the living after the end of Season 4. Her story with Holly in Henry’s mind was arguably the best element of the fifth season, and she really has proven herself to be one of the most important characters in Stranger Things. But after having all her bones snapped as they were, blood coming out of her eyes, and being unable to see, it seems highly implausible that she could make a complete physical recovery, even 18 months or more later.

Sure, Max is in a wheelchair when she wakes back up near the end of Season 5, and it clearly takes her some more time to heal before she’s able to walk again, but that doesn’t explain the sudden recovery of her sight. But that’s not even the worst of it. How in the world, after being in a coma for almost two years, does she graduate high school alongside her best friends? What does her future look like? We have no idea. Also, where was Max’s mother, Susan Hargrove (Jennifer Marshall), during this time? After we last saw her in Season 4, she never appeared at the hospital with her daughter nor at her graduation. Talk about child abandonment.

3

Everyone Still Trusts Will Even Though He Could Easily Still Have Been Vecna’s Spy

One of the biggest things that Stranger Things tries really hard to ignore in its final episode is that Will was used by Venca, again, as a spy here in Season 5. After working for the Mind Flayer unknowingly in Season 2, Will is used to find Max’s location in the real world before Venca sends his faceless, demonic hounds after her. But since Will can see through Venca’s vision seemingly whenever (so long as he’s connected to the hive mind), who is to say that this doesn’t also work the other way around? Why would everyone be so willing to talk about their final plans to destroy Venca when Will is still in the room? It doesn’t make any sense.

It would be impossible to know for sure if Venca were peering into Will’s mind at any given time, the same way that Henry has no idea when Will is hijacking his vision. While there’s no denying that Will was instrumental in the plan to save the world, the party took a big (and unnecessary) risk by allowing him to be such an integral part of its development process. Why not fill him in later when it’s too late for Henry to do anything about it? He seems like a major liability.

2

Kali Couldn’t Have Stayed Alive as Long as She Did to Help El Fake Her Death

At the end of “The Rightside Up,” Mike offers the party his theory as to how Eleven escaped Dr. Kay’s clutches and didn’t perish in the Upside Down explosion. It’s a theory that works pretty well, all things considered, and one that we certainly want to believe is true. But the whole thing seemingly hinges on the fact that Kali would have had to stay alive long enough to see this through. That means that El would not only have to make her way into The Abyss, but then also defeat the Mind Flayer, kill Henry, return with all the kids, and then get out of the Upside Down with enough time to spare before the bombs exploded and the “bridge” dimension with it.

While it’s possible that Kali’s wound wasn’t as bad as she made it seem or that her “death” was faked so that Hop would leave her there and carry on with the mission, it’s a bit of a stretch. Of course, this is still the best explanation, given that El wouldn’t have been able to slip past the soldiers, get back to the portal, and project herself into Mike’s mind with those “Kryptonite” speakers being used against her. In the end, this is one that we’re just going to have to suspend our disbelief for.

1

There’s No Way the Government Would Just Let the Party Go

Easily the biggest stretch in all of this is that the party would be pardoned by the military for what happened in Hawkins. After El, Hopper, and Nancy singlehandedly killed countless soldiers, after Mike, Joyce, and Will tried to steal children from under their noses, and after Dr. Kay lost all her research in the destruction of the Upside Down, it’s hard to believe for a second that the group would be allowed to walk away scott-free after Vecna’s demise. Even if Eleven truly was gone, Kay appears to be someone who can hold a real grudge. At the very least, the adults would go to prison and the children would be under surveillance for the rest of their lives, right?

It’s already a bit of a stretch that Hopper would get his police chief job back, but to allow the whole party to go without any real consequences? That doesn’t sound like the government to us. Of course, it could be that someone in Washington pulled the right strings, perhaps someone like Sam Owens (Paul Reiser) — who we don’t actually know if he’s alive or dead, but certainly owes Eleven big time after what happened with Brenner in Season 4. But for the sake of our heroes, we’ll let this one slide. They did save the world, after all.