Stranger Things Season 5 Totally Wasted One of the Show’s Best Characters

Criticism surrounding Stranger Things hasn’t slowed down, especially after the release of the show’s documentary. And among the many reasons fans point to when discussing flaws and inconsistencies here and there, there’s something frustrating about reaching the final season of a long-running series like this and realizing it simply didn’t know what to do with some of its best characters. Issues with arcs have been discussed by fans ever since the series finale aired, but one case in particular is hard to swallow, mainly because it feels like it was outright forgotten. And no, this isn’t about budget constraints, nor a lack of big ideas (though that argument could be made to some extent).

The real issue here is choice. And when that choice involves sidelining someone who carried much of the show’s emotional weight over the past few years, it becomes impossible not to talk about. Season 5 of Stranger Things promised closure, impact, and resolution, but it became clear that not everyone who deserved attention actually received it. It feels like a crucial piece was simply left off the board.

Max Was Badly Underused in Stranger Things‘ Final Season

From the very beginning of the season, back in Volume 1, Max (Sadie Sink) is basically not there. And sure, given what happened to her at the end of Season 4, that’s understandable. Before Stranger Things returned, there was a lot of speculation about what would actually happen to her. But time passed, and she remained in the same state. While every other character was moving forward, reacting to the fallout of the previous season’s chaos and preparing for the final confrontation with Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), her absence was deeply felt. And this isn’t a mysterious or intriguing absence — it’s an uncomfortable one (especially considering she’s also a fan favorite).

Max was introduced back in Season 2, grew gradually in Season 3, and then exploded in importance during Season 4, where she was practically the emotional focus of the entire batch of episodes. To put it into perspective, her iconic scene running through the Upside Down to Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill is widely considered the peak of the entire show. Naturally, she became one of the strongest characters. Yet despite everything she endured at the hands of the villain, she’s left in a narrative limbo for far too long. It takes a while for the audience to even fully understand what’s happening to her during her coma, and considering her arc and buildup across multiple seasons, it’s fair to ask whether it was really necessary to keep her so disconnected from active participation for so long.

What ends up happening is that Max’s arc is effectively paused at the most crucial possible moment. Episode 3 of Volume 1, “Chapter Three: The Turnbow Trap,” is where she finally reappears, guiding Holly (Nell Fisher) through Vecna’s mind and explaining to the audience what happened to her during all that lost time. In that sense, she becomes a key piece in understanding the villain’s weakness. But that’s where it stops. And sure, that’s an undeniably important role — but it never goes beyond that.

This was a situation that could have been used to explore her psychological state in a transformative way, rather than a purely informational one. Instead, she’s treated as an exposition bridge to explain how Vecna works, when the story could have explored her survivor’s guilt, her fear of losing her place within the group, her frustration over losing control of her own body, and her growing sense of becoming irrelevant. It’s easy to argue there wasn’t time for that, but the truth is that all of this could have been achieved through small writing choices within scenes she already had. There was room.

Season 5 finds plenty of time for long exposition scenes, interactions that don’t move the plot forward, and characters rehashing emotional beats we already understand. If there was time for that, then there was time to give Max at least one clearly defined internal conflict and a real emotional consequence for what she went through. We never even find out what she wrote to her friends in Season 4 before visiting Billy’s (Dacre Montgomery) grave. What was going through her head? And considering this was the final season, the bar should have been higher.

If a series chooses to keep a character alive, present, and important enough to explain the villain, it also takes on the responsibility of giving that character a satisfying conclusion. Otherwise, what we’re left with is someone who exists in the story but doesn’t evolve within it — and that’s a serious failure.

The Series Finale Shows How Stranger Things Gave Up on Max

What makes it worse is that when Max finally wakes up and returns to the real world, the issue still isn’t resolved — it just changes shape. Instead of reclaiming a meaningful role, she becomes a passive presence. She’s there, but she doesn’t interfere. She observes more than she acts. She participates emotionally, but not narratively. Within the story, it makes sense to approach her recovery with caution, given how long she was unconscious and bedridden (something the show even spells out through a line from Vickie (Amybeth McNulty) to justify it). Still, the overall feeling is one of regression, as if she already did her part and is now being given a well-earned rest.

Yes, her physical limitations would prevent her from being highly active, but there’s a difference between physical action and narrative agency. We’re talking about a character who spent a significant amount of time inside Vecna’s mind. While the show places more emphasis on Will (Noah Schnapp), Max is just as capable of recognizing traps before anyone else or sensing when something feels off and warning the group. She could have been the one deciding whether it was worth risking someone on a dangerous mission, whether a specific memory should be weaponized against the villain, or even whether it was ethical to exploit the weaknesses she uncovered herself. The only real opening the writers gave her was helping Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) locate Henry and the other children. But is that really enough?

The script tries to make up for this with a handful of emotional moments, particularly involving Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin). Those scenes work in isolation, largely because the actors deliver what the material asks of them. But they don’t fix the larger issue: Max has no real impact on the final events. She’s practically irrelevant. She’s there, but she could just as easily not be. And for a character who survived so much and came to symbolize the fight against trauma, fear, and guilt, that’s deeply disappointing.

And much of this frustration comes exactly from direct comparison to the previous season. Max was the emotional heart of Season 4, and it genuinely felt like Stranger Things knew exactly what to do with her moving forward. Her relationship with the fear of death gave the show a dramatic weight it had rarely reached before. It seemed like the series was positioning her as a key piece of the story, and audiences responded to that. Everything worked. Turning her into a nearly decorative presence in the final season makes it feel like the show didn’t know how to handle the success of its own arc. Instead of evolving it, it froze it in place. That’s not just disappointing — it’s borderline nonsensical.

In the end, Stranger Things delivered an emotional finale and remains, overall, a strong production whose success makes sense. Still, it’s impossible to ignore its flaws in the conclusion — especially a misstep as big as Max’s arc. What becomes clear is that her underuse wasn’t driven by malice, but by indecision. And that’s what makes it so frustrating. The show always sold the idea that every member of the group matters, and it was usually very good at giving narrative purpose even to characters without powers or obvious roles in the mythology. Here, that logic disappears, and it disappears specifically for one of the show’s most interesting and beloved characters.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!

5 Greatest Performances in Stranger Things (#3 Was Wasted in the End)