stranger things season five: the sloppiest money-grab you've ever seen

going into the fifth season of stranger things (via a pirating service for movies & tv shows, these zionists are not getting a cent from me!) as someone who had been keeping up with each season release since 2017, my expectations were impressively low. i remember after the release date for season five was penned and posted, i was a little freaked out! i was sixteen, and the concept of being twenty legal years of age by the time the final season was available for viewing was an insane concept to digest. i had no idea what on earth i would be doing as a twenty year old. would i even still like stranger things by the time season five came out? 

i also remember considering a possibility that i was (& still am) all too familiar with-- what if they butchered it? what if they pulled a voltron: legendary defender (2016-2018) on us? what if they pulled a killing eve (2018-2022) on us? what if they said "haha, sike, we don't have artistic integrity! we don't care about anything but that paycheck, baby!" now, being twenty legal years of age, i can say with 100% solemnity that they got us good. but why were my expectations so low to begin with? 

matt duffer quote via NME & the guardian

when this NME article hit the presses in 2023, alarm bells immediately started ringing in my head. "season one on steroids"? did he mean that this season would be similar to season one? "in terms of scale" could mean about fifty different things in the context of television production. did he mean that the episodes would be longer? would there be bigger, flashier special effects? more cgi? i wasn't sure, but something about the immovable confidence with which they spoke about the final season of their show was triggering my spidey-sense. 

the comment he made about scale turned out to be the only one that held any real ground. the episodes were in fact painfully long, and there was a frankly cringe-worthy amount of cgi. but when we're talking seasons that have any similarities to the first one, season five does not come to mind. 

nancy wheeler & jonathan byers in season 1 of stranger things (left)
vs. max mayfield & holly wheeler in season 5 of stranger things (right)

i think these two screencaps speak for themselves. the difference in color grading, set design, makeup and even the styling of the characters would make it difficult to convince someone who has never seen stranger things that these two frames were taken from the same show. i could write entirely separate blog posts on why i think holly wheeler didn't need to exist in the first place, why i think vecna didn't necessarily need to exist either, and why the fact that max was left miraculously without even an ounce of vision impairment or disability speaks to the duffers' astronomical level of ignorance. but, for now, we'd better continue on! 

another factor behind my subzero expectations for season five was byler. not necessarily the notion of byler becoming vs. not becoming canon, moreso the horrifying notion of being queerbaited for the second time in my life (see the previous mention of voltron: legendary defender). prior to november 26, 2025, i had gone on many close-friends-instagram-story rants about how byler just wasn't going to happen-- stranger things was the biggest show on netflix, no way they were gonna chance that success by making a ship canon that was popularized largely from over-analyzation. i ended up only counting this season and the way they handled will's queerness/his attraction for mike as a partial queerbait, for a few reasons. 

various clickbait-y headlines of statements made by the duffer brothers
after the release of season five

1) the popularity of byler has been in the duffers' field of awareness for years now. years!!! they have shown us within the past few months just how willing & ready they are to make public sidebar statements that confirm or denounce fan theories (or retroactively fill in plot holes; see above). after the release of season four, byler had a resurgence so huge that it was attracting insane amounts of bright-eyed fans who had never interacted with the show previously. if you liked a video on tiktok that had anything to do with stranger things, a video about the blue/yellow byler color theory was guaranteed to be a few scrolls away. byler was making the show more popular, and therefore lining the duffers' pockets with more cash. why would they even attempt to let us down easy? 

2) within the same vein of the previous paragraph, the duffers also did absolutely nothing to prevent or prohibit the cast members of stranger things from teasing/hinting at byler. this problem was particularly prevalent during promotion for season four. "if you've watched the show, you know that will isn't interested in el, he's interested in someone else in the group." -david harbour, 2023. "byler is just at its peak right now. they're building that up. so, definitely ship that." n*ah schn*pp, 2023. those are the two most obvious instances i can think of, but i'm positive there are many more out there. 

3) although the previous two paragraphs compile pretty damnable evidence towards the textbook definition of queerbaiting, the main reason i consider byler to be a partial offense is as follows: the fanbase. by the time season four was released, you would have to be watching the show with a blindfold & earmuffs on to not pick up on the fact that will was down horrendous for our boy micheal wheeler. i'm placing the blame on the fanbase for picking apart mike's character so much that we blamed the incredibly shitty way he treated his girlfriend on comphet. (comphet! ask the duffers to define that one for you!) mike was never the misunderstood, repressed homosexual that we thought he was, and he therefore never had any canonical romantic feelings for will. he's just a guy whose canon self ended up being dumb as bricks & honestly kind of a weirdo. just like his dad! sorry, micheal. 

4) the way the duffers' handled will's sexuality & simultaneously dismissed his attraction for mike lends more evidence to the astronomical level of ignorance that i mentioned earlier, so i'm gonna talk about it. there is not a single universe where mike is 'will's tammy'. tammy was robin's hallway crush, a girl who she had spoken to maybe once if at all, and will has been mike's best friend since kindergarten. nikki carreon talked about this in their byler deep-dive video essay: i love robin, but she truly had zero business saying that to will. prior to season five, she had never even spoken to this kid! the fact that she was so fervently trying to convince will to let mike go, trying to convince him that his feelings were only infatuation and not the result of 5+ years of pining frustrated me endlessly. not only because robin was projecting her own experiences onto will, but because her misinformed advice was so clearly the duffers puppeteering her dialogue in a pathetic attempt to kill the byler hype. 

 everyone & their mom, including people that will has
never had a full conversation with, listening with
 rapt attention as will comes out of the closet

5) where do i even start with the godforsaken coming out scene. the fact that it was the exact polar opposite of everything i had envisioned for will? the fact that they couldn't even give us a quiet, intimate conversation that really should've been between will, joyce, jonathan and no one else? the terrible lighting? the statistical improbability of it being the 80s and every single person in a room of 15 people being 100% okay with the concept of homosexuality? this scene was overall reprehensible and a perfect visual representation of everything you should never include in a coming out scene. i might be setting my standards too high by even mentioning this, but the fact that they can't/didn't/won't even say the word gay has always pissed me off. and that radio rebel moment towards the end of the scene was straight up laughable, it is so apparent that not a single queer person was consulted during the writing process. 

robin buckley coming out to steve harrington in 
season 3 episode 7: the bite

robin's coming out scene juxtaposed with will's provides a truly staggering sense of perspective. it provides a visual representation of the fact that the duffers are capable of writing an objectively good coming out scene, they just decided will didn't deserve to have that. where robin's conversation with steve is motivated by her trust for him, her willingness to share this part of herself with him, will's seminar with nearly every character in the show is motivated by the fear of vecna using his secret against him. robin comes out to steve in a private setting, sequestered from the rest of the characters, and the only fear in the room is her fear that steve won't want to be her friend anymore. shoutout maya hawke for talking some sense into the duffers-- who would've had steve & robin get together if maya hadn't said 'actually this character is 100% a lesbian'. we owe it all to you, ms. hawke!

on the subject of conformitygate, i am no stranger (ha) to the concept of fans theorizing about a secret second finale to amend the horrible writing decisions made in the real finale of their favorite show. in 2022, the final season of killing eve ended with a truly terrible decision. considering the amount of catholic themes & plot points that had been hammered in throughout the course of that final season, fans started to speculate about a secret second finale centered around the concept of easter sunday, in which a certain beloved character would rise from the dead, jesus style. someone even made a phony imdb episode listing! so, yeah, this ain't my first rodeo...

but conformitygate is the consequence for the duffers' brutal massacre of nearly every core theme, character pairing & original idea that they'd ever cultivated in the story of stranger things. they absolutely deserved to have each minor production error blown up and picked apart, and they absolutely deserved the amount of heat they got from fans when they released that godawful documentary instead of the ninth episode everyone craved. honestly, if the duffers did have a secret ninth episode in their back pocket, i wouldn't want it. with season five, they showed the whole world how little they understand their own characters, how little they care about the very world that they've constructed beyond the revenue it generates. i'm still waiting for the fandom to marauders-ify stranger things; that is, to completely rewrite or rework a story via fanfiction due to crappy source material. 

this post ended up being a very thorough roast of matt & ross duffer with a few of my opinions and previous queerbaiting trauma sprinkled throughout. but, whoever may read this, i hope you enjoyed yourself regardless! this is the first but definitely not the last blog post i will make about stranger things-- i haven't even mentioned eddie munson yet, which feels very wrong. i'll be fixing that asap!