Stranger Things (2016-2025) Part 3

“Farewell My Friends; Eleven, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will and Max”

We previously shared our reviews of the series’ 3rd and 4th seasons in an article published on December 24, 2025. In this article, we will review the 5th and final season, thereby completing the Stranger Things series.

After an exceptionally long wait of nearly three and a half years, we were finally reunited with Season 5, which—due to Netflix’s release strategy—was distributed across three different dates in an “4–3–1” format. In this review, we will first examine the initial four episodes released at the end of November, followed by the three episodes released at Christmas, and finally the concluding episode released on New Year’s Day.

One of the most striking aspects of the first two episodes of Season 5 was the following: most fans of the series first met the main characters when they were still children. The show’s nine-year broadcast span naturally resulted in these characters completing their journey as young women and young men. While this growth worked against the series in the previous season, the Duffer Brothers managed to turn it into an advantage by adopting a much darker tone and transforming nearly every episode into something resembling a horror film.

That said, the excessive amount of dialogue in the first two episodes of the final season—and the way they were filled with unnecessary exposition in preparation for the great war—led to the perception of this season as a kind of “excess” season, consisting largely of filler episodes that feel like a forcibly expanded extension of Season 4. At least with regard to the first two episodes, this assessment can be stated quite clearly. This overly talkative tone marked, in my experience, the weakest season opening in Stranger Things history. Therefore, expanding Season 4 with three or four additional episodes might have been a more accurate choice in terms of narrative coherence.

Fortunately, starting with the third episode of the season—directed by Frank Darabont, the legendary filmmaker behind The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile—viewers began to truly feel once again that they were watching Stranger Things. The episode “Turnbow Trap,” which clearly showcased all the show’s strengths, served as a promising sign for the direction of the season. Standing out with its successful editing and solid narrative structure from start to finish, this episode also functioned as a harbinger of the major rupture to come. Indeed, the fourth episode left an enormous mark on the history of the series.

“Sorcerer,” the final episode of the first batch released on November 26, has already secured its place among the strongest episodes of the entire series. This episode, in which the meticulously developed Will Byers character reaches his peak, is especially notable for the intense tension it creates in its final 20 minutes. It became the episode that truly deserves the label “legendary” in Stranger Things history. “Sorcerer” can be regarded as the final major peak reached at the midpoint of the final season. Such a peak occurring halfway through the final season represented a challenge that would be difficult to replicate. Therefore, it would be fair to say that the final two episodes of the first part redeemed the sins of the preceding two episodes.

From the second part onward—where theories and scientific explanations became increasingly prominent—a clear reality emerged: as the screenplay moved toward the finale, it failed to take sufficiently impactful steps. The momentum and climax achieved in the first part gradually transformed into something resembling a Marvel-universe “Avengers”-style spectacle in the second part. This approach can be criticized as being incompatible with the core spirit of Stranger Things, which had fundamentally positioned itself as a universe shaped around 1980s horror cinema.

The fact that no major character was heroically sacrificed made it difficult for the narrative to sustain a finale of this scale. Furthermore, the seventh episode becoming one of the most disliked episodes to date and receiving extremely low IMDb scores cannot be explained solely by the focus on Will Byers’ sexual orientation triggering a homophobic segment of the audience. In fact, the declining quality of the writing—already showing signs of regression in earlier episodes—unfortunately hit rock bottom with the seventh episode.

Author: Volkan Çağlayan

Editor: Zehra Eda Sert