I'm not going to even waste any time with this review as it's already pretty long, but if you want to know my thoughts and concerns on the first batch of episodes from Season Five, I covered Volume One here. 

That being said, I'm going to continue immediately with Volume 2 with my thoughts on the finale concluding this review.

The Verdict: 

Volume Two: Episode Five - "Shock Jock"

Volume 2 continues where Volume 1 left off from the revelation that Will is able to tap into Vecna's powers. The group encourages him to take advantage of this by using a dead Demogorgon to tap into the hive mind while Max and Holly are attempting to escape from "Camazotz" AKA Henry's mind prison. This ends up being convenient as hell timing in terms of Will showing up to intercept Henry as he is able to kill Max. Will foolishly just breaks Henry's leg, but he collapses from the strain before he's able to finish him off. Can someone explain to me why he doesn't just snap his neck or something instead?

Eight/Kali reveals to Hopper and Eleven that Dr. Kay has been draining her blood and using it for her experiments in her failed attempts to create more children with powers like herself and Eleven. Kay is convinced that Eleven is the key. 

Meanwhile, Dustin, Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan are investigating Hawkins Lab where they have theorized destroying a shield can weaken Henry in a metaphor to Star Wars. Unfortunately, Dustin stumbles across Brenner's journal and notes after a skirmish with Steve and realizes that he has been horribly wrong about that assumption. It's too late as Nancy, who is being gung-ho as ever, shoots first and asks questions later when her and Jonathan reach the cloaked sphere at the top of the laboratory. 

The sphere detonates, causing the building to melt, thus trapping Nancy and Jonathan within a room that is quickly filling up with molten wax from the remains of the building. This perilous situation causes Nancy and Jonathan to finally be honest with each other in terms of how they have been slowly drifting apart in their relationship. Jonathan goes as far as whipping out the wedding ring that Murray smuggled in for him in one of the most confusing scenes ever to the point where the Duffer Brothers had to clarify on social media that they broke up in this scene. Their break-up was for the best as their relationship felt so forced as this show moved on from its earlier seasons. Nancy and Jonathan getting together felt like it was a natural progression from demands of both the plot and television cliches from this time period. The longer we saw them together, the more it felt like it wasn't working. We saw Steve grow and become a better person over these five seasons. Jonathan felt the same person that we saw from the start with little drive to aspire for anything more than having Nancy. 

I'm going to be perfectly honest. I was mentally prepared for Jonathan to sacrifice himself by possibly dying Titanic-style (drowning within the wax and frozen like the corpses of the soldiers they saw as they made their way up to the sphere) to save Nancy, who would pass the engagement ring onto Steve as he entrusts his rival to take care of Nancy from here on out. Instead, we got a cop out (one of many in this last season) where we don't get the death of a major character and merely a lame escape from a deadly situation that they had absolutely no business being in the first goddamn place. Nancy isn't punished for her recklessness in the least as this situation merely encourages her to make more bold choices like this without completely thinking them through. I don't mind the parallels of Nancy's courage and heroism mirroring Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley from that same time period of films, but this season it felt like she threw all logic out of the window and turned into Rambo. I thought the narrative would have taken a moment to teach Nancy that there is a price to pay for reckless behavior without thinking about the consequences.

Henry uses his link to the unconscious Will to track Max in the real world and sends Demodogs to kill her at the hospital. The absurdity of this scene made me furious. You're telling me that this fool could have done this at any given time, especially over the past 19 months since Hawkins has had those rifts throughout the goddamn town and he waited until now of all times to do this? Henry/Vecna's scheming comes off as Saturday morning cartoon level villainy at this point. He's allowed her to hide within his dreams all of this time without killing her/finishing her off without any sort of consideration to kill her after the events of Season 4. It just comes off as stupid and careless. Fortunately for Will, Hopper, Eleven, and Kali all reunite with the others in Hawkins and Eleven is able to free Will from Henry's hold on his mind. 

Meanwhile, Lucas and Robin race to the hospital to protect Max, but Robin gets into an argument with her nurse girlfriend, Vickie, about cancelling all of their dates and stealing drugs over the course of the past few episodes. Robin confesses and tells her the truth about everything that has been going on with Hawkins with all of the supernatural/demonic crap and Vickie doesn't believe her at all, thinking that Robin is under the influence of drugs or other illegal substances that she stole from the hospital. Robin's presence is detected by the military looking for her, but the Demodogs kill them before they could apprehend her. I thought it was some of this season's ultimate display of plot armor when the Demodogs completely ignored Robin and Vickie in favor of going after Max upstairs, even though I would have been pissed off if they killed off my favorite character (Robin). Lucas, Vickie, and Robin protect Max by hiding in the laundry room, only for Karen Wheeler to save them in the ultimate act of bad-assery where she detonates an oxygen tank in one of the washing machines to kill all of the Demodogs in one fell sweep. As cool as that was, how come Henry couldn't just send more of those things? Plus, let's not forget that we saw the normal Demogorgons show up wherever they wanted to emerge into Hawkins from in terms of tearing rifts into our world, so why in the hell couldn't they have just popped up in Max's room on any given day prior to this point? It's careless, lazy writing like this is why I was getting so frustrated watching this. 

If this episode couldn't get any more careless in terms of its writing, Max and Holly have what feels like an eternity of a conversation while the others are protecting Max's body while she stands in front of the exit that frees her own consciousness. Out of all of the other times where Henry has intercepted people from returning back to their bodies, he didn't do all of shit to stop them here. The more I think about it, the more I feel like Max was being selfish when it came to this exit. I can understand her frustration of being trapped here for so long, but at the same time, telling Holly to just escape when she would be alone without any help and not the slightest idea of how to navigate wherever she was going to wind up in the Upside Down (a place that she wouldn't have any experience navigating unlike her siblings and the rest of the group) was the ultimate act of carelessness. The best course of action would have been to tell Holly to stay in the safe zone of Henry's memories until they found where all of the children were being held.

My god does this show paint the picture for Henry being the ultimate pedophile in this season. Between the tentacle porn/fetish imagery to the creepy stranger that everyone is trusting above all use beyond reason, Henry inviting all of these kids to live in his "home" residing within his own personal mindscape is next level creepy. I get that the writers presented this as a new take on his benevolent demeanor that was an act to gain the trust of the "experiments" when he was a part of Hawkins lab with Dr. Brenner when Kali and Eleven were children, but it paints a pretty bad picture in 2025. Henry comes off as the poster child for those disclaimers to not talk to strangers. 

Episode Six: "Escape From Camazotz"

Max and Holly escape back into the real world, but Holly is in a different realm altogether. She breaks free from her restraints and escapes out into this barren wasteland that is surprisingly vacant of any of the Demogorgons or other creatures that we have seen across the past five seasons. (Laughs) Vecna/Henry came marching out of his lair, stalking Holly slowly like Piedmon during the finale of Digimon Adventure. Seriously, go back and watch that and tell me that it's not the same vibe here. Holly slips through a rift between the pile of rocks and seems to be pummeling to her death in the Upside Down. Dustin's group at Hawkins lab see her falling from the sky, only to be yanked back up to the sky by Henry's telekinesis. I think Wheelers should be thanking him for not allowing Holly to become street pizza. Everyone reunites back at the radio station, where Dustin attempts to make sense that the Upside Down - now referred to as "the Abyss" is a separate dimension. Max adds that she learned that Henry plans to merge it with their world.

After this explanation, Dustin opens the floor to suggestions of how to proceed forward and Steve actually takes the floor with a great plan of action. He suggests allowing Vecna/Henry to draw the dimensions close enough to allow Eleven to confront Henry while the others blow up the Upside Down from within once the top of the radio tower gets close enough to cross over. Kali reminds Eleven that even after Henry is defeated, Dr. Kay (or anyone else for that matter) won't stop hunting them down to repeat/continue Brenner's experiment. This plants the seeds of a possible "suicide mission" between the two with Hopper seemingly privy of what they have in mind. I found it amusing that Hopper was seething with anger knowing what they had in mind when that was the plan of action that he had when they were in Kay's lab roughly 2-3 episodes prior. He comes off as a hypocrite in this situation that it is suddenly okay for him to recklessly sacrifice his life but it's not for Eleven and Kali to throw theirs away as martyrs for this circle of pain would be unable to continue. I'm not justifying suicide in any capacity either; I'm just failing to understand how these people can casually bring this serious subject manner into the context of this show and they don't have a powerful statement about it. 

For the record, I loved the scene where Eleven confronts Hopper about his choice to sacrifice himself in Kay's laboratory. Someone had to point it out that Eleven wasn't his dead daughter and never will be. As harsh as it was to hear, it needed to be said. Hopper's daughter didn't have a choice in her fate as a victim who died at the hands of cancer; Eleven does. Much like a lot of constants and obstacles in Eleven's life that stood as challenges throughout this series, it comes down to control. Dr. Kay wants to control Brennen's experiments (specifically Eleven) and use them to control the future evolution of humanity while possibly bending the Upside-Down to her will. Hopper wants to control Eleven's fate as some sort of a means to repent for failing his own daughter by "saving" his surrogate daughter. Sadly, that was a choice that was never his to make in the first place. Say what you will about Will's journey in this story, but Eleven is the biggest victim in all of this. From the moment that she was born, she was controlled and manipulated, first by Brenner, then by Mike's group to aid them in fighting the Demogorgon and the creatures like it, again by Kali when she ran away from home as part of her "gang", and finally Hopper himself to create a faux family to replace the one that he lost. Eleven's "death" could have been the greatest "fuck you" to all of these puppet masters by denying all of these people of the fates they had laid out for her. I have to admit that Kali comes off as a master manipulator in terms of skewing Eleven's mindset to mirror her own. In a sense, Eleven devoting herself to being a martyr is another act of control with Kali controlling Eleven to share her own fate. We're getting ahead of ourselves, but in the end, Kali's change of heart allows Eleven to actually obtain some sort of freedom. 

(Sighs) Hopper and Kali both have good intentions, but it sucks that Eleven is caught in the middle of having to choose between her old family (as one of Brenner's experiments) and her new one.

It sucks too as this moment is supposed to be the icing on the cake in terms of giving Mike a significant part to play in this final season where previously he was just on the sidelines barely doing anything or standing as a spectator. He's actively contributing to the action and overall narrative for this season and that's a great thing for his character development that hasn't seen little to no growth up to this point. It blows my mind when this is the same show that had a powerful and deep coming out scene with Robin when her character was introduced, but they made Will's coming out like he was having a town hall meeting while standing on top of a pedestal. Noah Schnapp has commented on the scene saying that even he was questioning if this was going to work with the entire cast standing there like a press conference. Like I said before, this scene would have been perfect if it was just between Will, Joyce, and Jonathan with Mike walking in on it.

The climax of this episode doesn’t really land either if we’re not kidding ourselves as the entire group breaks into the military base with an assist from both Erica and Mr. Clarke running recon and hacking their gates to get the truck that Murray was driving straight into their open rift into the Upside Down. I found it hilarious that Rambo Nancy has better aim than Hopper and not a single person was harmed in that truck as it’s being filled with bullet holes from the soldiers as they pass by. Plot armor was at an all-time high at this point.

The episode ends with Holly awakening back in Henry’s mind prison, where she frantically tries to tell the children the truth but they don’t listen since Henry convinced them that Holly was tricked by Max. The kids savagely beat her up in a scene that is both disturbing and comedic in the manner of how outlandish it was. Holly looks to Derek as a voice of reason, but he remains silent after reflecting on Henry's threats to kill his family. The final image of this episode sees Henry gather all of the children at the dinner table, only to place them into a trance to execute his plans to bring the two realms together. 

At this moment, I think we need to talk about the messed up imagery and symbolism here from Henry’s plans and actions in this season. How can anyone see Henry as anything more than a creepy pedophile. As a “big boss” of this series, his master plan comes off as extremely underwhelming going into this finale. What was going to be the plan after he crashed the two worlds together? It didn’t seem like a lot of this was well-thought out.

Volume Three (Two-Series Finale): Episode Eight - "The Rightside Up"

The two hour finale starts with the group splitting into two teams. Eleven’s team, consisting of Hopper, Kali, Max (technically), and Eleven enter Henry’s mind by using the submission tank in the ruins of Hawkins Lab. Meanwhile, the other team enters the Abyss from one of the tears once it gets close enough from the top of the radio tower. There’s a jump scare early on in this episode where it seemed like Steve was going to fall to his death from the top of the radio tower until Jonathan grabs him at the last second. Talk about playing with people’s emotions where it was looking like Jonathan’s whack ass was going to outlive him in this show and that right there put me into a bad mood watching this finale. I haven’t even touched the tip of the iceberg where I was infuriated watching the military suddenly and magically become competent  at this stage of the plot. It comes off comical when they have been marginally neglected and ignored for the majority of this plot. Dr. Kay didn’t even receive any sort of a backstory to justify her presence in this season (nor for even needing to cast Linda Hamilton outside of desire for an 80’s era cameo). Lt. Robert Akers (commonly referred to as the “scarred guy” online) didn’t fare any differently as he was the butt of several encounters with Hopper and Eleven where he failed to capture Eleven on multiple occasions. Dr. Kay and Akers clash in this finale, causing Akers to take matters into his own hands as he decides to confront Eleven’s team on his own without any back-up. Once again, I’m getting ahead of myself so let’s double back a little bit. 

The military finally shows competence and intelligence in this finale on multiple levels. First, they figure out that the main group’s base of operations is the radio station that has been broadcasting “Rockin’ Robin’s” pirate radio streams that have been criticizing the military’s occupation of Hawkins since the start of this season. Vickie manages to elude capture with the wheelchair bound Max as she is leading Eleven and Kali through Henry’s mind after undergoing another trace of sorts with Eleven's help. Another team determines that the hacked signal that opened their security gates to allow the main group to enter the base and venture through the rift into the Upside Down was still stationed on top of the nearby church, thus capturing Erica and Mr. Clarke. I was like damn, talk about a lot of convenient moments for these soldiers to suddenly acquire a BRAIN and stop getting outsmarted by mostly children and teenagers. This is some Scooby Doo-level fuckery and silly writing in terms of writing your characters to only be smart enough until the plot demands it. It comes off as extremely lazy, especially for a show that has had a history of clever writing for several seasons up to this point for the most part. Unfortunately, all of this didn’t have that much of an impact on the final battle.

Eleven, Max, and Kali confront Henry in his mind and expose his true identity/self as Vecna to the horror of the children, thanks to Kali’s hiding them from view with one of her illusions. Here’s the thing that I really don’t get about all of these psychic and telepathic powers in this season. If everyone is freely roaming around in Henry’s mind and he is seemingly all-powerful then how in the hell isn’t he aware of their presence nor can’t just confront them in any given point of his own mental prison? Is his powers only limited to that “home” that he created? If so, that is even sillier in hindsight. You’re telling me that Eleven can allow multiple people to piggyback on her own powers AND still have enough power to fight Henry to a standstill for the most part in his own mind? And how would Kali’s powers of illusion work in Henry’s mind, especially in his sanctuary when he should be very aware of what he created in his own safe haven? I will say that I was impressed with Vecna/Henry’s ability to fend off Eleven and Kali in his mind while simultaneously taunting Hopper in the real world with his own mind game. Hopper is convinced that he is being attacked and shoots the tank with Eleven inside, causing him to rip her out of Henry’s mind prematurely. Instead, this ends up being an illusion, causing Hopper to confess that he was painfully aware of Eleven and Kali’s plans to sacrifice themselves with the Upside Down when Henry is defeated. I will admit that this is my favorite scene between Eleven and Hopper in the entire show, despite how brutally honest Eleven is with Hopper here. She was right. She has allowed others to decide her fate throughout her entire life and she deserves the chance to decide her own fate instead of allowing others to write the end of her story. It’s poetic in a sense but this moment is interrupted by Akers’ team attacking them with the “kryptonite” weapon attached to a helicopter. Hopper prioritizes saving Eleven and carrying her a safe distance away, only to go back to get an injured Kali and confront the rest of Akers’ team. Akers threatens to kill Kali at gun point and it looks like Hopper is going to let him do it, only for Murray to pull off the save of a lifetime by destroying the helicopter with a well-placed and well-timed grenade attached to the brick of C4. That gave Eleven the opening she needed to kill Akers and all of the remaining soldiers, but not before Akers shot Kali in the abdomen. Kali is bleeding out with Hopper leaving Eleven alone to say her goodbyes. Once back on the rooftop, Eleven proposes another plan to confront Henry since she was locked out of his mind - by climbing the formation of rocks leading up into the open rift into the Abyss where the rest of the team is heading towards Henry’s lair. 

While all of this is going on, Henry has been failing to capture the children in his own mind, thanks to Holly leading them through the caves and his memories. He allowed Max to reside in his mind for several months but chooses now of all times to be the moment where he summons the courage to navigate through his painful, repressed memories to pursue them. Will taps into the hive mind once arriving into the Abyss and learns that Henry was corrupted by a fragment of the Mind Flayer. This is something that a lot of fans predicted and figured out early on. I was honestly cringing at this reveal as I was thinking that it was going to lead to some sort of redemption for Henry’s villainy up to this point. Fortunately, this story didn’t go that route as Henry fully embraced the creature, despite Will begging him to let it go.

Henry displays his symbiotic relationship with the Mind Flayer as his entire lair is revealed to be the physical manifestation of the creature. I thought this was the same thing that Eleven defeated a few seasons ago, but I guess not. She just pushed it back to this realm like how she did with Henry when she was a child in Hawkins' laboratory. The Mind Flayer emerges as a walking giant kaiju that the rest of the group is fighting outside, but Eleven manages to plunge into it to confront Henry. The others devise a plan to keep it distracted to give Eleven an edge against Henry since they are linked and boy, we get the ultimate display from Rambo Nancy. She volunteers to be the bait as she unloads all of her guns into it while luring the creature into a bottleneck position in the surrounding cliff formations. The others pepper the creature with gasoline-filled balloons before igniting it with flares and torches while Steve and Dustin stab its exposed sections with their makeshift spears. My problem with this scene didn't come just come from the absurdity of the group being able to take on this thing with these primitive weapons without any powers and no injuries nor casualties, but the fact that they are in the Mind Flayer's home turf without a single Demogorgon, Demobat, nor Demodog in sight. Was it time for all of those other creatures that we have seen for the past five seasons to take a union break when the Mind Flayer went on the rampage? It makes absolutely no sense how non-threatening the Upside Down/Abyss has been in this season in comparison to past seasons. There's no sense of tension nor fear of the unknown. 

(Laughs) Robin had the best line during this scene anyway. I'm with her. Let Eleven handle that shit. I would've been long gone once that thing went kaiju on them.

In any case, the distraction proves to be fruitful as the combined teamwork of Will and Eleven are able to impale Henry on one of the many spikes within the Mind Flayer's inner sanctum. The group rescues the kidnapped children, who I thought would be either in agony or dead from being linked as part of Henry's hivemind with the Mind Flayer (especially once it was roasted on fire) and other creatures. The story FINALLY gives Joyce something to do this season other than silently emoting as she's the one who finishes off Henry/Vecna by decapitating him as he lies helpless. I thought that scene was shot beautifully as it focuses on each character and cuts away to show what they have all lost at the hands of Henry/Vecna to get to this point while Joyce slowly hacks away at his neck. I guess it was therapeutic to see him get his, but damn, they dragged that out.

Everything seems to be going all well and good until they escape back out of the Upside Down to return to Hawkins and Dr. Kay and the rest of her soldiers are waiting on them to arrest them on the spot. Everyone except for Eleven, who stays behind in the Upside Down to set off the bomb. The Duffer Brothers play not one but TWO phenomenal Prince songs during this sequence and the number one thing on my mind is how in the world did they afford that AND how did they convince his estate to allow it. All jokes aside, I wasn't buying that this was it as it felt like something was missing as all of this played out within the first hour of this two-hour finale and I was expecting some sort of swerve since there were 45+ minutes left on this episode.

The story skips ahead 18 months later, where Hawkins has returned to normal. The military occupation is gone. Hopper is back on his old job. The older teens reunite after going their own ways in life - Jonathan is still filming his independent movies, Nancy landed a job at a newspaper company as a journalist, Steve works as a sports coach for kids, and Robin is still doing her thing as a shock jock at the radio station WSQK in town. They are all back in town to attend the graduations of the younger teens from high school. 

The graduation is where I got a lot of laughs seeing everyone in this epilogue/aftermath, starting where we see both Nancy and Karen Wheeler with shorter hairstyles, looking more lesbian than Robin at this point. Robin has grown her own hair out and I should mention that Ted Wheeler survived this entire ordeal. No one seemed to care when he was hospitalized from the Demogorgon attack at the start of this season and it was never brought up nor mentioned again either, so why should the audience care when the writers have made him the butt end joke of their poor writing? 

In either case, my head canon is saying that Nancy and Robin ended up together or will end up together down the road.   That's the version of this story that I'm going with in my head canon as the ending for those two characters since no one is going to talk about what happened to Vickie. (Laughs) It's wild as hell that she disappears and yet Ted Wheeler magically reappears after missing the majority of this season. At least Vickie was involved in the final battle/mission, so I guess that's something. She deserved a reference or something to let viewers know where she ended up. 

The show's most stable couple among the teens - Lucas and Max - are still happily together, with Max making a full recovery and back to her skateboarding antics.

In an act that I thought would have happened the moment they got back from rescuing Hopper from the Russians in Season 4, Hopper proposes to Joyce and suggests that they move to a town of Montauk to be closer to the boys in college. Montauk is a clever reference as savvy viewers and fans have pointed out early on that this series shares a lot of real-world inspirations to the Montauk Project and other similar conspiracy theories in history. 

Shout-out to the many, many, MANY hilarious reaction tweets to this season. I haven't even scratched the surface from how bad Twitter/X and Facebook comments/memes have been roasting this season on social media. 

Mike had an epiphany during their graduation where he reflected back to the "kryptonite" being used by Dr. Kay and her soldiers when they were all arrested as they escaped the Upside Down, where he realized that Eleven couldn't have been nearby to use her powers. Thus he theorized that Eleven was never there at all as Kali had cast the illusion of her in everyone's minds nearby while Eleven made her escape. She couldn't tell anyone to make her death as convincing as possible. Kali was the one who decided to stay with the bomb in the Upside Down after being motivated after seeing how much Hopper and Mike loved her and determined that she deserved to live. 

This revelation is all well and good, but I feel like it presents another problem. Eleven deciding to die on her own terms was another choice that was taken out of her control, this time by Kali, thus repeating a trend of Eleven never having the means to control her own fate. Kali meant well with the gesture, but after everything Eleven endured and survived, she deserved a happy ending along with everyone else affected by Henry/Vecna, the Mind Flayer, and Brenner's experiments. Alternatively, Mike could be completely wrong about all of this and it was just a sweet lie he made for he and his friends could come to terms with Eleven's sacrifice. In either case, this closes the book on all of their collective campaigns and each of them takes a moment to store their playbooks on the shelf. It's not all tears though as Holly and her newfound friends are open to continuing the tradition in the years to come.

This revelation is all well and good, but I feel like it presents another problem. Eleven deciding to die on her own terms was another choice that was taken out of her control, this time by Kali, thus repeating a trend of Eleven never having the means to control her fate. Kali meant well with the gesture, but after everything Eleven endured and survived, she deserved a happy ending along with everyone else affected by Henry/Vecna, the Mind Flayer, and Brenner's experiments. Alternatively, Mike could be completely wrong about all of this and it was just a sweet lie he made so he and his friends could come to terms with Eleven's sacrifice. In either case, this closes the book on all of their collective campaigns and each of them takes a moment to store their playbooks on the shelf. It's not all tears though as Holly and her newfound friends are open to continuing the tradition in the years to come. 

In all seriousness, I didn't hate this ending as it was fine for what it was. My biggest problem with this season as a whole was getting here. If you've read this much of this review then you know my problems with the lazy, lackluster writing here. For a television show that was widely praised for its attention to detail and homages to 80s culture, it took an amazingly low amount of effort on this final season in terms of the narrative. For everything Season Four raised in terms of the stakes and tension going into this season, it felt like all of that momentum and potential was squandered. 

I think the biggest takeaway from this reaction from the fanbase is that there's a lot of people on the Internet who need to go outside and touch some grass. None of this stuff is ever that serious to get that enamored and addicted to it. This mess made the entire fandom look like lunatics who were following up and believing this nonsense. I won't lie though; there were a lot of great theories bouncing around online when it came to predicting the ending following Volume 2. Hell, a lot of that stuff I read was better than we actually got, which is sad on totally different level.