Stranger Things‘ final season will forever be remembered as a major pop-culture milestone, for many reasons. Season 5 completed a nearly decade-long run for Netflix’s sci-fi/horror/coming-of-age series, and that passage of time definitely showed in the once-young cast of stars in the show. The Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve release dates were each record-breaking milestones for streaming content, while many moments and scenes from the final season have already been cemented in viral memes and clips that are flying around the internet.
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However, one thing that no Stranger Things fans or even the best industry analysts could’ve predicted was the kind of major resources the show would pull for its final episode. Aside from having the budget and scale of a feature-film, Stranger Things Season 5 Episode 8 also had two needle drops that almost no other TV show or movie could hope to imitate.
Stranger Things Final Episode Shocked the World With Its Prince Needle Drops
Stranger Things Season 5 Episode 8 “The Righside Up” saw the Hawkins gang going into the Upside Down one last time for the showdown against Henry Creel/Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). The plan was a two-pronged attack: the older and younger kids in the group headed for Vecna’s base in the Abyss realm to rescue the kids the villain had snatched to be his vessels. The other group (Eleven, her “sister” Kali, and Hopper) stayed in the Upside Down, setting bombs that would destroy the bridge between Earth and the Abyss for good, while Eleven jumped into a sensory deprivation tank to battle Henry Creel psychically.
The plan works: Vecna is killed, the Hawkins gang all survive and rally to make a hasty retreat out of the Upside Down before it blow up. It’s revealed that, as the gang is fleeing, Hopper’s eccentric friend and smuggler Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman) had set the bombs to go off on a timed delay, setting the trigger to ignite after Prince’s Purple Rain album was spinning on a record player for a few songs.
The sixth track on the album, “When Doves Cry”, plays over the footage of the Hawkins Gang’s convoy speeding back to the portal. However, the militant Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton) has her goons waiting on the Earth side to capture our heroes, so that she can reverse-engineer Eleven’s blood to create a new generation of psychic soldiers. But when Kay’s forces move in for the capture, everyone realizes that Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) has already made her move and escaped. Mike (Finn Wolfhard) spots Eleven in the portal gateway, about to sacrifice herself to keep the world safe from any potential new Henry Creels. The song that plays as Eleven and Mike have a final tear-filled rendezvous on the psychic plane is “Purple Rain”, which provides powerful Prince sonics over a montage of Mike and Eleven’s journey together from Season 1 to the finale.
Why “Purple Rain” Is a Bigger Easter Egg Than Fans Think
Prince once described the song “Purple Rain” as being the description of a moment where it looks like the world is ending. “When there’s blood in the sky… red and blue = purple. Purple rain pertains to the end of the world and being with the one you love and letting your faith/God guide you through the purple rain.”
Obviously, the meaning of the song fits perfectly as a metaphor for the divide between the real world (blue sky) and the Upside Down (red sky). The “world” that’s ending in that moment is the Upside Down, which is totally annihilated by the bombs the Hawkins Gang detonates. By staying behind in the breach, Eleven is (seemingly) about to die, and chooses to spend her final moments with Mike, echoing the song’s depiction of a tragic, doomed romance celebrated in the final moments of existence.
MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW! We could take the metaphor a step further: the final part of Prince’s explanation, “letting your faith/God guide you through the purple rain,” speaks to the final big reveal of Stranger Things: that Eleven may have faked her death with help from Kali’s illusion abilities, escaping into the real world to live an anonymous, normal life. It is left to Mike to keep the faith that Eleven is out there and happy, even if he can never know for sure.
Given the context of Mike and Eleven’s tragic split, there truly is no better or more fitting song than “Purple Rain” to help depict their final goodbye.
The Significance of Prince’s Music In Stranger Things, Explained
It’s wild to think that a sizeable majority of the audience who will claim Stranger Things as their generation’s Lost or Game of Thrones probably don’t know who Prince is, or his musical impact. That said, Prince is still one of the greatest modern musical composers and performers, and his musical influence is still being discussed, analyzed (and of course played) nearly a decade after his death in April of 2016.
Purple Rain was a revolutionary project when it was released in 1984. Prince had pushed for a feature film project that could take his fame to the next level, and Warner Bros. delivered in the form of a loosely autobiographical film, which also doubled as a “romantic rock musical drama.” Prince’s sixth studio album became a tie-in concept album/soundtrack for the Purple Rain film, and featured songs that are now regarded as some of Prince’s most successful ones. That includes “Let’s Go Crazy”, “Darling Nikki”, and the two aforementioned tracks used by Stranger Things, “Purple Rain”, and the smash-hit single, “Doves Cry”.
The unique synergy (at the time) between film and soundtrack resulted in Prince achieving the milestone of having the first-ever no. 1 movie, album, and single at the same time. While the Purple Rain movie would peak as a cult-hit, the soundtrack became a much bigger achievement, winning both an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and two Grammy Awards for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, and Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media.
Since Prince died in 2016, his estate has been notoriously fickle about licensing his music for commercial or promotional purposes. Stranger Things is the first TV show or film to use “Purple Rain” in its soundtrack since the Purple Rain film was released, and showrunners/creators the Duffer Brothers understood the significance of getting that greenlight from the Prince estate, and not wasting the opportunity.
How Stranger Things‘ Creators Got Prince’s Music in the Show
“Once we came up with the idea that the record was going to be the trigger for the bomb, we knew we needed an epic needle drop, and so many ideas were thrown around,” Ross Duffer told Netflix’s Tudum. “I think there’s nothing really more epic than Prince.”
“What is … very exciting about it is it just has not been used. [Prince’s] estate does not generally allow that song to be licensed outside the Purple Rain movie,” he added.
Interestingly enough, it seems that it was the achievement of Stranger Things Season 4 that moved Prince’s estate to change its licensing policy. The show’s fourth season cracked the novel milestone of taking a decades-old song – Kate Bush’s 1983 track, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) – and making a featured part of the seasonal storyline. The effect was Bush’s song leaping out of more than three decades of pop-music obscurity to become a worldwide streaming hit, almost overnight.
Apparently, the potential for a resurgence with old fans and attracting a new generation of listeners was great enough for Prince’s estate to give its blessing to Netflix and the Duffer Brothers.
The gamble seems to have paid off: Variety now reports (at the time of writing this) that Prince’s “Purple Rain” song has seen a whopping 243% increase in Spotify streams – and a massive 577% increase in streams among Gen Z listeners. “When Doves Cry” has similarly seen a 200% boost in global streams, while Prince’s overall discography is up 190% and climbing (88% increase among Gen Z). There’ no doubt those kinds of numbers, and the new relevance (and leverage) they bring are exactly what Prince’s estate hoped to gain from being part of this massive moment in pop-culture. And if this is one benefit of Stranger Things’ nostalgic indulgences, the world is only better for it.
Stranger Things is streaming on Netflix. You can discuss the end of the show with us on the ComicBook Forum!
