Stranger Things season 4 ending explained Reddit

I finished watching last night. Eddie was already distracting the bats, on the bicycle (if we buy him riding faster than they fly, but that was shown). Why stop to die? Dumb. Best new character ever. Deserved a more logical heroic death (or better, to live).

El only vanquishing Vecna after Mike’s love speech. Hated that. Max about to die wasn’t enough but Mike’s love was? And why didn’t she dismember him then and there?

Nancy Robin Steve vs. Vecna. Chop his head off already. Steve needed to charge burning Vecna and use that axe. The two girls used their weapons and Steve’s the bomb - could have closed the deal.

You are right. That beast was too fast for sword wielding Hopper. Step aside and unleash Murray & the flamethrower. Hopper was already awesome but overpowered. This was not believable.

Was otherwise riveted by this season and impressed with the writing and production. Could have done with less Mike and Will, with how they were written.

Eddie rocking the guitar. Epic.

Max’s ‘Death’

Totally agree. Seeing her getting the old ragdoll treatment was pretty gut wrenching and would have been a good ending but it ended up being a total wuss out. And regarding her brain death i'm sure Eleven and gang will come up with a way to bring her back, "Super easy, barely an inconvenience!"

Eddie’s death: ...his death felt very contrived and predictable.

Yep. Seems like there's always some low effort, "Well i guess i'll just die moment". Reminds me of Bran's Direwolf right before Hodor scene where they just sacrifice him to zombies in 5 secs for absolutely no purpose besides the CGI for direwolves budget was looking low.

What should have happened (or something similar): Dustin and Eddie are getting attacked in the trailer and have to retreat. As they are running away Dustin gets grabbed by multiple bats. It looks like Eddie bails but he comes back and has his "No running away!" moment and fights off the bats long enough for Dustin to get away but is killed.

The portal in Hawkins: Ok, how on earth did people think that was an earthquake.

The motif since the beginning is that the military/secret government organizations are always keeping this stuff hidden from view ala X-Files style. What they didn't do well was actually show that to the viewer by forcefully keeping people out and/or showing the full cover story. I agree that the show writers probably got a little rushed and cut some corners during this 2nd parter.

Also, why did they open 2 days later.

I had the impression that they were opening during that period while Max was dead and then stopped when Eleven healed her. The spreading sickness that's going on is the same thing that was happening with the breaches before the big opening.

I was very agitated after watching the season finale because I recall feeling very toyed with in a way? Between Max and Eddie’s death, it just felt like you took a supporting character and a new character and gave them lots of writing love just to use that emotional connection to kill them off / hurt the audience. I think I wouldn’t have been so mad if we had a character who had an arc like Eddie’s, but maybe built over multiple seasons, then the turn from coward to hero. Or something like that, rather than have it all set and up built so immediately. And yeah I felt the discord with Max’s story at the beginning. It’s like we got that great, meaningful character moment only so it could be more upsetting in the end. I don’t know if that makes sense. It just felt kinda inorganic and like I could see the writers moving little chess pieces on a board to get the emotional reactions they wanted, so it took me aback a bit.

[spoilers for The Walking Dead]

Especially what they did with Max reminded me a bit of Glenn from TWD, in that you take a character that you’ve built up a lot elements of hope into and that the audience seems to like pretty well and then use those emotions to toy with the audience with multiple almost death scenes and then a really brutal death scene ( they even used the elements around her death to drive a cliffhanger ending lol). On top of the audiences’ growing sense of frustration and distrust of the writers given how they handled Glenn’s death, TWD was just worse without Glenn. His whole demise was a shocking spectacle, but ended up hurting the show, even a bleak / shocking show like TWD, more than it helped. But at least there’s still a little hope with Max, in that she’s not fully dead, so I hope they don’t go full Glenn with her. Lol.

But yeah also I felt like the ending was a bit odd. Max suddenly loses all agency, and becomes a total damsel in distress. And I don’t know how we get there. I’m assuming based off the context that she just lost all hope. But there’s really not any character beats in the show to tell us that. I just felt like I was watching her death rather than understanding what was going on inside her head.

And Els face off with one was a little underwhelming too. I loved it when he threw the splintered wood at El, and I thought we’d get a really dynamic mind fight. But then it was just them throwing watch other around. I’m not super mad at it or anything, just felt a little longing for what could have been haha.

So yeah. I can see where you are coming from. I loved Vol. 1 and I’m not sure Vol. 2 stuck the landing for me as much as I wanted it too. They did leave some interesting narrative doors open. I think there’s a lot they could do in season 5 that would make the S4 finale work better for me, so I’m interested in where they go with it. But depending on how I’m feeling in two years, I might tune in on premiere night… or I might wait and read some reviews first. Haha. Just to make sure I don’t feel jerked around again.

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