The ending of Stranger Things is looking like Game of Thrones all over again — heading straight for disappointment.
Netflix dropped the first four parts of Vol. 1 on Wednesday. I’ll save you the trouble: just watch the second half of Episode 4, and you’ll get everything you need. Really. That’s it. Review over.
Everything you’ll skip is a mix of bad acting, useless filler dialogue, and “woke” moments that have no business being in a kids’ 1980s adventure series. There are way too many characters, and it all plays like a giant mess.
It’s also obvious Netflix forced them to stretch the episodes to squeeze out as many viewing minutes as possible, just like they did with Squid Game Season 2, which wasn’t good either.
Forced Politics and Unnecessary Scenes
One scene takes a shot at Republicans for absolutely no reason.
A wealthy family sits at dinner, the doorbell rings, and the mom tells her kid to be polite “unless it’s a Mormon [the mom then eyerolls (which she was likely directed to)] or a Democrat.”
Rich white mom #StrangerThings5 pic.twitter.com/aABg7vpkDa
— Cosmic Book News (@cosmicbooknews) November 27, 2025
Obviously, she’s coded as a Republican, and the scene bends over backwards to mock the whole family. Then Lucas cracks a line about the daughter wanting fur coats. We know what this means.
Talking about the rich white mom’s daughter #StrangerThings5 pic.twitter.com/XODUShsbJn
— Cosmic Book News (@cosmicbooknews) November 27, 2025
And it gets worse.
The Forced LGBTQ Insertions
It feels like half the writers and producers “self-inserted” the LGBTQ elements, or because Netflix paid for DEI quotas. Likely both.
Robin should’ve been cut entirely. Every line she delivers is annoying and too much, and she exists only to fulfill checkbox requirements. Robin’s gay, the actress is gay, and the writers give her a scene where she calls people “rich white douchebags” for no reason other than projecting their own views.
Rich, white, douchebags says the lgbqt character. Why is this in the show??? #StrangerThings5 pic.twitter.com/eB5AeJIMJz
— Cosmic Book News (@cosmicbooknews) November 27, 2025
Then there’s the bizarre “I don’t like dick” exchange. The entire moment exists solely so she can announce she’s gay — even though everyone around her apparently already knows but won’t say it out loud. Oh, this scene was created for her, too, obviously.
They created this entire scene just so the lgbqt character can say I don’t like dick#StrangerThings5 pic.twitter.com/h9NxvkQrSG
— Cosmic Book News (@cosmicbooknews) November 27, 2025
That leads to Will. I guess Noah Schnapp is gay in real life. He recently revealed that the woke media was hitting on him when he was 13 years old by asking him if he was gay. Buncha weirdos.
Anyway, Will saw Robin and another girl kissing — the only kiss between any of the characters in all four episodes, and the only characters in a relationship, even though the chances of that happening are only around 2%. Obviously, we know what Will was thinking. Well, Will and Robin have a “heart to heart” about what it feels like to be in love or whatever. This ties into the end, which is more garbage.
Overstuffed Plot and Stale Dynamics
So the plot is pretty good. They could have cut a lot out and probably made this a good 2-hour movie, not four overstretched and overdrawn out episodes. Venca is still alive, and now he is kidnapping young kids just as he did with Will years ago. Again, all you have to do is skip to the last half of Episode 4. Nothing else matters.
The Steve-Jonathan-Nancy situation gets old fast. The Steve-Dustin stuff gets older even faster. The Hopper-Eleven relationship is just as old. They’re trying to keep Mille Bobby Brown like she is still ten years old. She obviously isn’t.
Annoying Real-World Mistakes
Some other things that bugged me: The flag UP on a mail box means you have OUTGOING mail. It’s used to tell the mailman to pick up the mail. It doesn’t mean YOU’VE GOT MAIL. Once the mailman picks up the mail, he will lower it, signaling that he has picked it up.
Or how about when they were jumping the cars? This bugged me, too. So the Jeep driver should have revved the engine and kept it steady to charge the other battery (pro tip!). Also, turning the engine over and over and over before the battery is charged would have further drained the battery!
Yeah, I notice these things.
The Forced Ending and Season 2 Callback
Or how about that ending? So you want to tell me they always planned from day one that Will was going to be gay? That the writers knew, back when Schnapp was a little kid, that this is how the story would end? BS! Doubt me? The woke media is already celebrating it. So, Will being gay suddenly turns him into Neo? WTF, LMAO.
And look at that… Bingo!!! pic.twitter.com/5RSgJnMGfV
— Cosmic Book News (@cosmicbooknews) November 27, 2025
The ending also drags back a character from the dreaded Season 2 — the season everyone hated — when Eleven ran off with that group of goth kids. Just garbage. I think she’s LGBTQ, too.
None of it feels organic. It’s all shoved into the plot. A big, forced mess.
The Few Things That Actually Worked
So what I liked was the Vecna stuff, the little girl, and Sadie Sink stuff was interesting and revealing.
They should have cut out or significantly cut down on Robin, Joyce, and Jonathan. What they really should have done is just focused on the core group of kids, 11, and Hopper.
The Verdict
Vol. 1 is bloated, forced, and full of pointless filler.
The Vecna material is the only part that works, buried under an avalanche of bad writing, shoehorned politics, and characters who should’ve been sidelined seasons ago.
The show has lost the spark that made it special, and if this is the direction for the finale, Stranger Things is ending with a whimper. 4/10
