The Duffer brothers promised that Stranger Things Season 5 would answer every question viewers have, but that was always unlikely. In part that’s because it’s pretty much impossible to tie up every loose thread from a decade’s worth of epic stories, especially when the Duffers chose to tie The First Shadow – the official Stranger Things Broadway show – into the tale as well. It doesn’t help that Season 5 itself raised a lot of headscratcher questions, simply because it operated at a greater scale than anything the Duffers had written before.
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This doesn’t mean Stranger Things Season 5 was a storytelling failure, of course. The reality is that a good story is far more than just a Wikipedia entry, a checklist of facts and questions answered. Stranger Things‘ epic finale is satisfying because it just about hits all the right emotional notes, meaning none of the narrative problems and plot holes are fatal. Still, they’re all worth pulling out, simply to try to figure them out.
11. What Happened to Derek’s Kidnapped Family?
Stranger Things‘ cast continued to expand in Season 5, introducing Jake Connelly as the delightful Derek Turnbow. Targeted by Vecna, he became bait for a trap after he and his family were kidnapped with Erica’s help. The odd thing is, though, that Season 5 actually forgot all about the kidnapped Turnbow family; they were last seen still tied up in a barn, with the Hawkins heroes basically abandoning them while they chased after Demogorgons and persuaded Derek to work with them.
One thing’s for sure; Tina really isn’t going to be talking to Erica ever again.
10. Why Was November 6 So Important?
The Mind Flayer’s plans all revolved around the date of November 6, and there were hints this date was personally important to Henry Creel; it was the date of the school play in Vecna’s memories too. But Stranger Things Season 5 never really explained why that date was so important, either to the Mind Flayer or to Vecna. This question’s particularly puzzling, because the anniversary of Will’s abduction was key to the kids’ plan to counter the Mind Flayer.
9. Why is the Upside Down Frozen in Time?
Stranger Things Season 5 revealed the Upside Down is actually a wormhole between Earth and a distant planet known as the Abyss (called Dimension X in the stageplay). But the show never actually answered one of the greatest mysteries from Season 4; why the Upside Down is effectively frozen at the moment of the wormhole’s creation. It did come in useful, though, because Brenner’s notes on the theory of creating wormhole were still there – and the papers hadn’t aged at all, because of the time-freeze.
8. Where Did the Exotic Matter Come From?
Wormholes are dangerously unstable, but the Upside Down was sustained by exotic matter – the source of the strange red lightning that flared frequently across this dangerous realm. But Stranger Things never actually explained where the exotic matter came from, given the substance is highly theoretical; was it naturally-occurring, created as part of the process that led to the wormhole’s creation? Or was it somehow introduced by Dr. Brenner? The latter seems more likely, because Dustin did claim the Upside Down was “created” by science.
7. Why Did Vecna Need 12 Vessels?
Vecna somehow planned to use the twelve kidnapped children to bring the worlds together, and he claimed this is because they had latent power (it’s unclear whether he was telling the truth here, but it seems probable). But why did Vecna need exactly twelve children? Why couldn’t he just recapture a couple of them and get on with the process? It’s appropriate in symbolic terms, presenting Vecna as a cult leader, but the precision just doesn’t quite make sense.
6. How Does Camazotz Involve Things Vecna Can’t Have Seen?
Max had spent months exploring Camazotz, the psychic dimension created by Vecna’s memories. She’d learned how to navigate it, how to look for oddities and key moments that would allow her to transition from one memory to another, and she’d achieved this by exploring each memory in detail. We learned that when she met Eleven and Kali in Vecna’s school memory, and she revealed she knew what was going on in every classroom. But there was one problem with this; it makes no sense, because it meant Vecna’s memory realm included events he should have had no knowledge about. Was Camazotz about time travel after all?
5. Where Were all the Demogorgons in the Abyss?
The Hawkins kids managed to make their way to the Abyss, and the Stranger Things finale even lampshaded the fact that it was mysteriously barren. There was no real hint of the hive mind, even though the Abyss was its origin; there were no vines, no Demogorgons, no Demodogs or Demobats. It’s possible the Mind Flayer had used them to create a physical form in the Abyss, just as it used humans to do the same in Season 3, but there should have been an entire planet’s worth of creatures.
4. What Did the Mind Flayer Plan to Do When the Abyss Collided with Earth?
The Stranger Things finale revealed the Mind Flayer had been orchestrating the collision of two worlds for decades. But it was unclear what it planned to do when the Abyss and Earth merged, simply because the U.S. military was ready for it. Vecna could be defeated by the kryptonite that had such a notable effect on Eleven and Kali, while the Mind Flayer’s own body was beaten by a handful of well-armed people with flamethrowers. The Mind Flayer was actually a lot more vulnerable than we’d believed.
3. Why Was Will Okay When the Mind Flayer Died?
Will’s bond to the hive mind came in useful during the Stranger Things finale, but it didn’t quite make sense. He used to have a strong reaction whenever the hive mind was in pain, and yet the Mind Flayer’s actual death didn’t seem to affect him at all. It’s possible Will had learned how to control this when he killed the Demogorgons at the MAC-Z base, but it still went unexplained.
2. The Kali and Eleven Endings Just Don’t Add Up
Eleven’s fate was revealed at the end of Stranger Things‘ finale, but it was immediately clear the show was hiding something; there was no reasonable way she could have slipped away from the soldiers surrounding her and made her way to the gate. Mike picked up on this in the extended epilogue scene, revealing he believed she’d been concealed by Kali while she made an escape. His theory made sense, because Kali could easily have projected an illusion of her death into Hopper’s mind.
But Will’s theory doesn’t quite add up, either. Assuming she lived, Kali will have either been left inside the building that blew up, or at ground zero when the exotic matter began to flare out of control. It makes no sense for her to be able to maintain a projection right up until the moment the Upside Down collapsed. The sad truth is that neither one of Eleven’s two alternate fates actually makes any sense at all.
1. Why Didn’t Hopper and the Others Pay For Killing Soldiers?
Finally, some viewers have rightly noted that the Hawkins heroes got off pretty easily considering the sheer number of soldiers they gunned down. Hopper should certainly have spent the rest of his life behind bars, and Nancy would probably have suffered the same fate. This problem can be explained by politics; Dr. Kay’s actions in Hawkins were surely highly illegal, and there were too many witnesses (including twelve rescued children). It’s even possible the forgotten Sam Owens was able to weigh in as well. Still, it’s all a little messy.
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