Five Thoughts on the End of Stranger Things
- I could not tell you why, but watching the final season, and especially the final episode, I kept thinking to myself Avengers: Endgame has ruined pop culture. Again, I am not entirely sure where this thought came from other than how exhausting the whole thing felt, and how familiar that was to the way I felt about Endgame — and perhaps also the way that both narratives went from a cliffhanger of “this is an unbeatable, existential threat” to “if we just hit these bad guys with sticks, everything will be solved” in a way that felt utterly unearned — but I’m standing by it.
- My God, but the final season of Stranger Things was a slog to get through. It’s a good thing it was on Netflix, because that allowed me to continually walk away from episodes and return to them when I’d regained the strength to go on. It took me three days to watch the finale, all told, including watching three full other movies in between. (Each of which was more entertaining.)
- Why, exactly, was Linda Hamilton there, aside from the paycheck? What purpose did her character serve? (For that matter, what was her character’s motivation? That was never explained, beyond other character’s guesses. Isn’t that kind of thing important?) I think back to her giving interviews where she’d say things like, “I’d more or less retired, but Stranger Things made me believe in acting again,” and all I can imagine is that she’s being polite about an experience that feels like it must have been someone saying, “Can you frown again, but do so while looking in this direction?” and then she went back to her trailer and looked up her bank balance again.
- If you told me that the writers room knew what they wanted the last hour of the show to be, and basically went, “Eh, we’ll wing it until we get there,” I’d believe you; the epilogue/last half of the finale felt more concrete than any of the eight-or-so hours that preceded it.
- I wanted to walk away from this show before this final season, having lost interest in it… somewhere at the start of the fourth season, maybe? Perhaps not, I remember getting to the cliffhanger and going, I wonder how they’ll pull this off. But I stuck with the entire final season out of a sense of obligation because it was so big culturally that it felt like work, and in part because I was hate-watching by the second half. All things considered, I should have listened to that initial impulse and stayed away; there wasn’t anything here worth the investment in time, and I feel like I could have done so much better with those hours even if I’d just laid on the couch and did nothing. A lesson to bear in mind throughout 2026, perhaps.
This isn’t a Pessimistic House
It struck me the other day that we were collectively at the 10 year mark of ending a year/starting a new one by going, “Well, the last 12 months have been fucking rough, here’s hoping the next year is going to be better.”
By that, I don’t mean that everything has been getting progressively worse since 2016 — thankfully not; just imagine! — but that, by the time the end of the year eventually rolled around each and every year for the last decade, I found myself thinking what so many people in my social circle were saying out loud: the last year has felt like it’s been trying to grind me into paste, and I just want the next year to be a little easier.
It felt like everything was on a downhill slope from, what, 2016 through 2020, 2021, perhaps…? Perhaps that whole “global pandemic that up-ends life as we knew it” was enough of a downer to leave us in such a space that almost anything would have seemed like an improvement, but sure enough, 2022 felt a little better than what came before, and every year since then has had highlights as well as crushing disappointments and difficult moments. (Those last two have seemed to be a permanent fixture for the past decade, at least.; maybe it’s getting older, maybe it’s just that things really did seem to turn to shit at some point.)
That said, 2025 felt like one of the rougher years I’ve had for awhile, and I found myself glad to leave it when January 1 rolled around, as much as I continually tell myself that New Year doesn’t really mean anything and it’s all entirely arbitrary. The placebo effect of thinking I could package that period away in my memory as “another of the shit ones” and move on is a permanently attractive one even if I know better, and I’ll grab onto any straws in the hopes of things turning around soon.
All of which is to say: 2026, I might be asking a lot, but let’s try to not metaphorically kick me in the balls as much as 2025 did. I know that history and experience haven’t particularly demonstrated such a request will be successful, but if there’s one thing the last 10 years of new years have taught us, it’s that hope springs eternal. After all, what’s the alternative?
It’s A New Dawn, It’s A New Day, It’s A New
The End of the Line, 2025 Music Edition
I’m writing this up a week or so ahead of when it runs — the holidays are the holidays, so I don’t want to wait until the last moment and then miss my chance, you know? — but, as things stand right now and probably will through the end of the year, these are the last songs on my 2025 playlist. (Earlier installments can be found here, here, here, and here.)
I actually intended to end with the “Final Form”/”Stay Away From Me” pairing, because I liked the idea of the last song on the playlist being called “Stay Away From Me,” but then I found some more songs that stuck in my head and, anyway, plans are there to be changed. So, here are the final 20 songs from the playlist, which you can find here if you still have Spotify; otherwise, most of December was spent listening to Christmas songs or Suede’s “Elephant Man,” for reasons that escape me.
Still Around The Morning After
To this day, I can remember my first December 26th in the United States. It wasn’t just the day after spending Christmas Day at home for the first time since moving, it was also the first time I fully realized what it meant that Americans don’t do Boxing Day… a realization I came to by the fact that I found myself on a bus to work at 7am that morning, appalled and incensed at the injustice that Americans were somehow expected to just go straight back to work the day after Christmas.
As someone who’d spent more than a quarter century in the UK to that point, I understood that Christmas isn’t a one-day thing. Even for those who don’t buy into the idea — like I do — that Christmas is really all about the build up to December 25th and the season as a whole as opposed to the presents and the food and all of that, there’s a general understanding that Christmas is at least a three day event: Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. You need a day after the one with the family and the presents and the food to recover; it’s entrely necessary, and suddenly, it didn’t exist anymore.
That day at work, I was sullen and sulky, there under unspoken protest. I remember so clearly that I wanted to silently go on strike because it felt inherently unfair that I was there in the first place, as if something had been taken from me by simply having to work, and feeling all too conscious of the fact that I could have taken the day off if only I’d thought to plan ahead. I was mad in the kind of scattershot, indiscriminate manner that means that I was actually mad at myself but unable to accept that, but looking back, a lot of me still thinks, sure, but in the defense of past me, why the fuck are offices open on the day after Christmas?
I’ve learned my lesson since then, and if you’re reading this when it goes live, I’m very purposefully not working. I hope your Christmas was/is a good one, if you celebrate, and if you don’t, I hope everyone has at least left you alone enough with the holiday cheer that you don’t resent it the way I resented working those many years ago.
You Already Missed The Spring
Also known as Blofeld
“Hey, man!” yelled the dude standing outside the various restaurants on Mississippi Avenue. “Hey, man!”
Look, I’m not one to randomly start conversations with strangers yelling at me on streets as I try to walk past, especially when I’m visibly listening to music on my phone. (For reference, it was “Night Vision” by Super Furry Animals.) It’s not that this guy looked like he was about to start a fight or cause trouble or anything; if anything, he looked like The Dude from The Big Lebowski if he’s started working out a little bit and was trying to take care of himself more these days, but had also gotten really into buying his entire wardrobe from the local military supply store. Still, he was yelling to get my attention and for some reason, I figured that I should probably see what’s up before things got out of hand.
I took my earphones out, and the dude happily — gleefully! — announced, “If it wasn’t for your beard, you’d look like the twin of Telly Savalas, man.”
I’ll be honest; I had no idea how to take this. On the one hand, I didn’t think I look anything like Telly Savalas, for any number of reasons, not least of which the fact that I rarely think of the man who was once Kojak because, really, who does these days? On the other, Telly Savalas was a sex symbol back in the day, so perhaps the comparison was a good thing and a sign that I should pick up a lollipop habit as quickly as possible, just in case it helps my appeal. (On a third hand, Telly Savalas was a sex symbol in the 1970s. That was a decade when plenty of not-entirely-attractive people were considered sex symbols for some inexplicable reason. Did I really want to be likened to a man beloved by a decade with questionable taste?)
I laughed, nervously, and replied, “I’ll take that as a compliment” as I hurried away, hoping that would be the end of the discussion, feeling other people watching the two of us. “Who loves ya, baby!” yelled the man as I walked away, seeming affirming that it was, in fact, meant to be a comparison that worked in my favor. A woman smiled at me in sympathy as she walked past me: “I think you look great,” she said.
It was an unusual start to the afternoon, at least.
So, Be Good For Goodness’ Sake
Reading about the business of Christmas TV movies the other day, the thought occurred to me: I watch enough of these to probably be able to pitch some, right? I know the formula: a title that refers to a Christmas song everyone knows, some actors you’ve seen in other things, and a plot that won’t surprise or threaten anyone but entertain just enough to make those 90-120 minutes go down as easily as the egg nog everyone is likely drinking as they watch. So, with literally zero minutes forethought, I came up with the following:
I’m Tellin’ You Why: Opposites attract at Christmas when two leading social media content makers — what we used to call “influencers” before that term went out of fashion, which was round around when people started using the term “slop” freely — find themselves fighting to be the face of their hometown’s holiday parade! Are holiday parades a real thing? Would social media people care about them? Who cares?!? Let’s have whoever played Archie Andrews in Riverdale as the male lead, some kind of Joe Rogan with a heart, and Nancy from Stranger Things as the female lead doing some PG-13 twist on the Call Her Daddy kind of podcast thing.
I’ll Be Home for Christmas: There almost certainly has to be multiple movies with this title already, right? Well, this can be another one, but it’s just a rip-off of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles that works in some gags about self-driving cars and Ubers because the gig economy is a cheap punchline, am I right? Nicola Coughlan can take on the Steve Martin role and she’s paired with Aidy Bryant in place of John Candy, and the whole thing can be a slow motion version of America Ferrera’s monologue at the end of Barbie about how difficult it is to live up to multiple warring expectations at once, but with all the edges softened and a finale that lets everyone have a happy ending, because let’s not upset people too much at the holidays, everyone. Let’s get these viewing figures up.
With Your Nose So Bright, Won’t You Guide My Slay Tonight?: A drag-themed retelling of the Rudolph story that’s also a cautionary tale about cocaine addiction, and — okay, maybe this one is a bit of a stretch. I’m sorry. (I will rethink this if someone offers an option, however.)
Netflix, call me.
