The Stranger Things series finale had an 18-month time jump — but was there a post-credits scene as well?
Netflix’s hit series concluded on Wednesday, December 31, with Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) finally being defeated and the Upside Down getting destroyed. There were a few casualties however with Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) dying on screen … although the latter is up to debate depending on who you ask.
The battle wasn’t the final scene of the show. In the aftermath, viewers got a time jump over a year into the future where we caught up with each group (from the kids to the teenagers to the young adults to the adults) before Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dusin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Will (Noah Schnapp) and Max (Sadie Sink) played one final campaign together.
Mike predicted where he saw his friends end up — and even shared a theory on how Eleven could still be alive. Then they left the basement to head to their lives outside of Hawkins, as Mike’s sister Holly (Nell Fisher) and her friends went downstairs to take their place.
That was the last scene in the fifth and final season of Stranger Things. Despite the opportunity for an open ended conclusion, Stranger Things didn’t hint at more danger, a spinoff of story lines still eft to be told. There was also no post-credits scene that indicated where the Stranger Things franchise goes from here.
Created by Matt and Ross Duffer, Stranger Things focused on a fictional town where a series of supernatural events took place and caused mystery and mayhem. The hit Netflix series become a pop-culture phenomenon — but it was also known for long gaps between filming and lengthy episode runtimes. Season 5 concluded nearly a decade after Stranger Things originally premiered.
“Seven years ago, we planned out the complete story arc for Stranger Things,” an open letter from the executive producers stated in February 2022. “At the time, we predicted the story would last four to five seasons. It proved too large to tell in four but — as you’ll see for yourselves — we are now hurtling toward our finale. Season 4 will be the penultimate season; season 5 will be the last.”
The duo continued: “There are still many more exciting stories to tell within the world of Stranger Things: new mysteries, new adventures, new unexpected heroes. But first, we hope that you stay with us as we finish this tale of a powerful girl named Eleven and her brave friends, of a broken police chief and a ferocious mom, of a small town called Hawkins and an alternate dimension known only as the Upside Down.”
The Duffer brothers later confirmed that they were working on a spinoff.
“So we have an idea but the idea is to ultimately pass the baton to someone else who is hopefully talented and passionate. Even the idea of Ross and I doing a pilot and then leaving it, it just feels silly to me. You need to be there from the beginning to the end. We need to find a partner to help us with that,” Matt explained during an episode of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast in July 2022. “I don’t want to do another decade in the Stranger Things universe. [But] we do want to be very involved.”
The writing duo added: “It is 1000 percent different from [Stranger Things]. It is not following [any of the main characters]. That is not interesting to me because I feel like we have done all that. It is very different. But it shares a connection with Stranger Things and the most connective tissue is the storytelling sensibility of it. There is story that connects to Stranger Things.”
Stranger Things is currently streaming on Netflix.
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