final episode of the show<\/a>, titled \u201cChapter Eight: The Rightside Up\u201d, debuted on the streaming service during the early hours of New Year\u2019s Day (in the UK), a week after the previous batch of episodes dropped.<\/p>\nSpoilers follow for the Stranger Things finale… you have been warned!<\/p>\n
In the final episode of the show, the heroes from Hawkins, Indiana, ultimately manage to defeat Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), thanks to the supernatural abilities of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Will Byers (Noah Schnapp).<\/p>\n
After Joyce (Winona Ryder) cuts off the villain\u2019s head, Hopper (David Harbour) and Murray (Brett Gelman) rig bombs on the interdimensional bridge to the Upside Down, with Eleven seemingly staying behind in the nether world to sacrifice herself.<\/p>\n
With a large chunk of the episode still remaining, there is then a time jump to the year 1989, and we are shown what has happened to the remaining characters \u2013 the crew has started to move on from the traumatic events of the series, and Joyce and Hopper get engaged.<\/p>\n
![\"\u2018Stranger](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Screenshot-2026-01-01-at-09-08-38.png\")
<\/p>\n
open image in gallery<\/p>\n
\u2018Stranger Things\u2019 ended with a feature-length finale on New Year\u2019s Day (Netflix)<\/p>\n
In one of the final scenes of the show, Mike (Finn Wolfhard) claims that Eleven had actually faked her own death, and had managed to make it out of the Upside Down. As he speaks, we see an older Eleven wandering through a faraway place, before reaching a town.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear whether Eleven really survived or not, with series co-creator Ross Duffer stating that \u201cshe lives on in their hearts, whether that\u2019s real or not\u201d.<\/p>\n
Many viewers were critical of the finale, with the decision to eliminate Vecna so early in the episode frequently criticised on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cMain villain killed halfway in, nobody important died, no explanation on henry creel origin story, & only 18 month time jump. Stranger Things finale was the stupidest f***ing ending i\u2019ve seen right up there with The Umbrella Academy,\u201d read one widely shared post on X\/Twitter.<\/p>\n
![\"Eleven](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Screenshot-2026-01-01-at-09-09-11.png\")
<\/p>\n
open image in gallery<\/p>\n
Eleven in the finale of \u2018Stranger Things\u2019 (Netflix)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest mistake they made was a whole 50 minutes of the episode just being the epilogue, could\u2019ve used at least 30 of those 50 minutes to make the fighting scenes better,\u201d another fan wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cAm much disappointed to that extent that I don\u2019t even want to talk about Stranger Things,\u201d someone else remarked.<\/p>\n
Others, however, were more positive on the conclusion, with one person writing: \u201cAm i the only one who enjoyed that stranger things ending?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMe being happy with the stranger things finale and coming on twitter to see everyone complaining,\u201d someone else joked.<\/p>\n
Stranger Things is available to stream on Netflix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-215026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}