The Bittersweet Reality of the Stranger Things Finale (SPOILERS)
Bandwagon Jumpers Anonymous
Like many people around the world, I sat down on New Years Day and watched the finale of Stranger Things S5. I’m going to say here and now that I came to Stranger Things very late – ‘kids on bikes’ is my least favourite genre and I bounced off s1e1 twice previously. However, I gave it another go and I was sucked into the show and the characters just in time for it to end. This gives me a different experience, I would suggest, to those who have waited to watch it on and off for ten years. For me, it was one month of glorious submersion in the Down Below.
On watching the lengthy denouement to the show, I couldn’t help but feel a bittersweet pang when it came to the fate of the main characters.
Warning now – Spoilers exist after the next image so read on with care.
The show suggests that just about every character gets their happy ending. I couldn’t help but thing ‘…for now’, especially as those kids are exactly the same age as I was then. I ‘graduated’ (in British: left) high school in 1989, to then go off to college (in British: university), so I know what they’re about to go through…
Max and Lucas
On paper this seems like the least problematic one, a young couple who have survived through trauma and seem very much in love nearly two years later. However, in the 1990s, Indiana was still very much dealing with issues of racism, hypersegregation, racist police (especially as a new police chief looks to be on the cards), white supremacist groups and the spectre of the LA race riots in 1992. Their relationship has a lot of potential road-bumps along the way.
Steve, Robin, Nancy and Jonathan
The four 20-somethings share a reflective reunion and remarkably, pledge to meet monthly to not let their friendship fade, even arranging a ‘neutral’ meeting place at Robin’s uncle’s house in Philadelphia. That sounds great until you think about the reality. Jonathan and Robin are both at university, and Nancy is a trainee news reporter. They’ve all got their own time pressures and growing lives. Steve – well, we will come onto Steve later. Their meet-ups may continue to a couple of months, but we all know that eventually someone will ring to let them know they can’t make it, and then someone else will have a work deadline and then the weather will be terrible and suddenly, only one of them turns up. It’ll be Steve. Think about your great friends from school and uni? How many do you see regularly? Especially if you grew up together without the internet or social media? Chances are, these friends will grow apart and their good intentions will be frittered away…
Mike
Mike becomes an author, telling adventures like theirs. That’s kind of cool, but also it isn’t because you have to think about the time he’s in. If he’s writing RPG material, he’ll be leaving university at the tail end of the popularity of AD&D, so he might have to look for work elsewhere. Can you imagine after all Mike has seen and gone through, that the pull of the World of Darkness would be something he could resist? No, I could easily see Mike becoming a house writer for White Wolf, finding an outlet for his loss and trauma through the pages of Vampire splatbooks. Not the worst outcome.
Dustin
Again, I don’t see Dustin having the worst outcome, but I can see the knock-on effects being punishing. He’ll be amazing at university and as the story suggests will still find some time to meet up with Steve, but those times will diminish as he gets further into his studies and expands his newly found confidence with women. I can easily see him going on to do further studies which leaves him deep in higher education when Richard Garfield unleashes Magic the Gathering onto the world. Catnip for a nerd like Dustin, this will become his life as he obsesses over the game. Maybe his studies falter? His relationships certainly might … and he’ll never have a full wallet again.
Steve
Oh Steve. His is a tale we have seen before. He doesn’t move on and stays to teach sex ed and acting as high school baseball coach, as part of life at Hawkins. He’s a busy man though, with his commitment to a monthly meet-up with his friends, and ‘adventures’ with Dustin, and possibly the raising of some little nuggets with Crystal (or whoever). However, his estranged friends – Nancy, Jonathan, Robin and Dustin – will all fade away. He’ll be left in Hawkins, a town that he saved from destruction many times, but where no-one acknowledges him for it, and instead look at him sideways because he’s a male sex ed teacher. The world moves on and Steve stays the same… and maybe he reverts to his old self. He cheats on Crystal, he womanises, he throws his weight around. One too many barroom brawls and that new Police Chief might be seeing Steve behind bars!
Will
And finally Will, living his best gay life in New York, in 1989 … and if that isn’t setting off some alarm bells, it should be. Towards the end of the 1980s, AIDS became the leading cause of death in New York City for men between the ages of 25 and 44, and while it was not a disease restricted to gay men at all, a disproportionate number of victims of the disease were gay men. 1000s died in New York during that time and wonderful Will the Wizard was walking into the middle of it. You would hope that someone who has gone one-on-one with the Mind Flayer would be aware of the safe sex messages that were everywhere during that time. Otherwise, there is the possibility of the saddest ending for Will amongst the whole gang.
And that’s why I hate Kids on Bikes
The romanticisation of the 1980s always sits weirdly with me, because I was there and I remember the highs and the lows. It wasn’t a good time for so many people and when it is painted as some sort of throwback innocent nirvana, it makes me laugh. Between the constant prejudice, the brutal economics, the constant threat of terrorism, and you know, the spectre of total nuclear annihilation it was just fun, fun, fun! I guess that’s why so many of us found other things to do to take our minds off it. For some it was drink, for others drugs and for a small section, it was that strange game called Dungeons and Dragons.
At least the show got that spot on. Except for when they didn’t, right?
