Stranger Things was never meant to end like this, largely because it was never meant to go on the way it has. The first season was conceived and written as a limited series, with the possibility of succeeding other, entirely different seasons, similar to True Detective or American Horror Story. Someone at Netflix decided during filming that the story should be extended, and so it was. Cue a never-ending series of gaping plot holes, awkwardly introduced new characters, and enough absurd retroactive continuity to make the producers of the Fast and Furious films blush.

Yet none of this has managed to address the show’s primary weakness, which is a complete and utter lack of original thought. The guiding concept of “children playing Dungeons & Dragons encounter something real” is, of course, borrowed from E.T., while the general look and feel of the monsters and evil spirits is best described as “community-theater H.R. Giger.” By the third season, the identical-twin directors Matt and Ross Duffer did little but pander to Generation X and millennial nostalgia. The plot was incidental; the real joy was in admiring the verisimilitude of the Starcourt Mall, which contained actual ’80s retailers like the Gap, and became so popular as an idea that there is a thriving online community dedicated to creating perfect 3-D renders of the mall in various programs and video games. If you ask a true member of the fanbase, they would tell you that all of this is both deliberate and extremely delightful. It’s a tribute show, you see! 

Some percentage of those folks would no doubt have been thrilled just to watch a half-dozen more tepid seasons of shopping malls, D&D games,........

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