Stranger Things Season 5 Is Copying a Lot From the Worst Star Wars Movie (& It Teases the Real Villain)

The Star Wars franchise has weathered its fair share of controversy over the decades, with modern entries like The Acolyte and The Last Jedi fracturing the fanbase into vocal camps of defenders and detractors. Despite these disagreements, a rare point of consensus among audiences is that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker stands as a narrative disaster. The film attempted to backtrack on the boldest swings of its predecessor, leaned too heavily on unearned nostalgia, and failed to construct a coherent story to conclude the Skywalker Saga. It is, therefore, quite surprising that the fifth and final season of Stranger Things has so much in common with that movie.

The final season of Stranger Things begins with a visual echo of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker through a training montage involving Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown). Much like Rey (Daisy Ridley) running through a jungle challenge course under the guidance of Leia (Carrie Fisher), Eleven is seen sprinting through an obstacle course set by Jim Hopper (David Harbour) to prove she is ready for the Upside Down. Both scenes reinforce the passing of time and show how the protagonist has honed their skills for the battle to come.

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The parallels intensify in Volume 2 of Stranger Things Season 5, where Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) uses engravings on a stolen spyglass to identify a precise location within the desert of Henry Creel’s (Jamie Campbell Bower) mind. This plot point is a carbon copy of the Sith dagger subplot from The Rise of Skywalker, in which a MacGuffin perfectly aligned with distant wreckage to reveal a hidden path. Fans famously hated the dagger because it relied on an impossible geometric coincidence to function. While Stranger Things places its version of the sagger inside the fluid environment of a psychic memory, the convenience of the spyglass remains an unsatisfying shortcut. The similarities between Stranger Things 5 and The Rise of Skywalker don’t end there, though, as Netflix’s hit might use a similar antagonist twist.

Is the Mind Flayer Returning Just Like Palpatine?

The phrase “Somehow, Palpatine returned” has become an enduring meme and a symbol of lazy writing due to how Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker resurrected Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) with almost no setup or explanation. It was a choice that stripped the story of its stakes and felt like a desperate attempt to create a bigger last-minute threat. Stranger Things appears to be moving toward a similar revelation regarding the Mind Flayer. Volume 2 of the final season follows Holly and Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink) as they infiltrate a suppressed memory in which a young Henry is confronted by a scientist at a secret facility. The scene ends with Henry opening a metallic suitcase, leaving the contents a mystery to the audience. However, the scene creates a bridge to the lore established in the stage production Stranger Things: The First Shadow, which reveals that Henry was a victim of an ancient evil long before he became a monster.

In The First Shadow, it is revealed that Henry was not born with his psychic abilities. Instead, his transformation traces back to 1943 and a secret military operation known as Project Rainbow. This experiment attempted to make the USS Eldridge invisible but instead transported the ship into a primordial realm called Dimension X, which Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo) identifies in the fifth season as The Abyss. Dr. Martin Brenner’s (Matthew Modine) father was the sole survivor of that mission, returning to the real world with a mutated blood type and knowledge of the Mind Flayer particles that lived within that void. Years later, a young Henry stumbled upon a piece of stolen technology in a Nevada cave and was transported to this same Abyss for twelve hours. When he returned, he was infected by the shadowy entity, which rewrote his personality and granted him the powers he eventually used to slaughter his family.

By bringing these specific childhood traumas to the television screen in Season 5 of Stranger Things, the Duffer Brothers are clearly positioning the Mind Flayer to reclaim its spot as the ultimate antagonist. If the Mind Flayer is unveiled as the true puppet master in the series finale, it risks mirroring the Palpatine twist by relegating Vecna to a secondary antagonist. To avoid the backlash that hit Star Wars, the writers must ensure this return feels like a natural culmination of the Project Rainbow mystery rather than a shock for shock’s sake.

Volume 2 of Stranger Things Season 5 is currently available for streaming on Netflix. The final chapter of the epic supernatural drama is scheduled to arrive on January 31st. 

Do you think the Mind Flayer will be revealed as the ultimate villain of Stranger Things, or should the focus remain on Vecna? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!