Editor's note: This piece discusses the finale of Stranger Things, so
there are obviously going to be spoilers. Consider yourselves warned if
you are, like this author, a dork and plan to watch the show.

Stranger Things concluded its fifth and final season with a two-hour New Year's Eve release, nearly a decade after the vanishing of Will Byers
launched a new era of Netflix original programming.

Expectations for the final season rose to the heavens in the four years
since the fourth season of Stranger Things. Fans were almost certain to
be disappointed - and boy, were they.

Initial waves of criticism gave way to a truly strange mass psychosis
wherein superfans have convinced themselves that the series finale was actually a fake, and that creators Matt and Ross Duffer were waiting to
drop the _actual_ finale in the coming days.

Those of us who did not develop a parasocial relationship with Gaten
Matarazzo realized this was bunk from the start. But for those really
pinning their hopes to these theories, Netflix has made it clear that
Stranger Things is done. The finale we got was the finale we're going to
get. And yes, there are plenty of things to criticize with that episode,
as with the whole final season: the bad dialogue, the continuity errors,
the lazy acting.

But I don't want to talk about any of that. I want to talk about Steve Harrington.

The fan-favorite character has gone on quite a journey. He began as a stereotypical 1980s jock, Nancy Wheeler's unlikable boyfriend who
bristles at her intelligence and beats up the nerds. The Duffer Brothers planned to kill him off at the end of season one, but they found
themselves so charmed by Joe Keery's performance that they reversed
course.

And then they did more than that: they gave Steve warmth and depth
unmatched by any other character. Over the course of the show, he not
only accepts Nancy's independence but also her relationship with
Jonathan Byers, one of the dorks he once beat up. He becomes a friend
and mentor to the younger children, constantly putting his life on the
line for their safety. And he grows close with Hawke's character, Robin, accepting her quirkiness without a second thought.

This character development was so effective that, in the run-up to the
finale, fans made it clear that Steve's death was the outcome they most feared. Fortunately for the legions of Harringtonians out there, Steve survives his final journey to a parallel dimension and makes it safely
back to Hawkins.

But that's where things go off the rails.

In the show's penultimate scene, we see the cadre of older Hawkins kids reminiscing on the rooftop of the town radio station. Jonathan is making anti-capitalist films at NYU. Robin is dating girls at Smith. Nancy
reveals that she's dropped out of Emerson to work as a journalist full-
time, and has a girlboss haircut and blazer to prove it.

And what of Steve? Did he settle down and start having the six children
he's been so vocal about wanting? Did his repeated encounters with the supernatural inspire him to seek out a change of scenery? Or did he join
up with the Hawkins police department as Hopper's deputy, harnessing the skills he honed defending the world from Vecna?

No, while all his friends move on to bigger and better things, Steve is
still in Hawkins, coaching the high school baseball team. And lest it
seem like Steve's adventures with all those plucky kids had inspired him
to pursue a career in education, the finale makes it clear: this is just
the path of least resistance. Steve Harrington is a loser.

As he grabs another beer in his poorly-fitting suit, his friends mock
the fact that, in addition to his coaching duties, Steve is also
teaching sex education. Steve gives them plenty of fodder for their
ribbing, noting that he has "a strict A policy, B if you're a real knucklehead."

There are jokes about him cycling through a series of vapid women, so
clearly his plans for domestic bliss haven't panned out. And lest you
miss the point, he delivers this sad little monologue to all his posh
friends in which he expresses his _utter disbelief_ that they would ever
want to leave Hawkins!

"Come on, I mean, look at this place!" Steve bellows while looking
wistfully at the horizon. "The sunset, the view. Woo! You guys are
seriously telling me you don't miss any of this? The forest, the quarry? Family Video?"

This is the most unforgivable part. We're meant to believe that after
all this time - after years of personal growth and confrontations with mortality, to say nothing of countless trips to an alternate dimension -
Steve Harrington is just another hometown hero who can't fathom why
anyone would want to leave the glory days behind.

The problem isn't that Steve didn't want to leave Hawkins, or that he
wanted to become a coach. Those are both fine choices for a young man to
make, and consistent with the character we've grown to know and love.
It's the myopia, the pigheaded jock mentality that makes everyone roll
their eyes, that feels like a betrayal. Steve doesn't like the community
or the fact that Hawkins is his home. He likes the quarry and the video
store, the two lamest and most generic things you could think to name.
It's a last-second reversion to Season 1 Steve, a fundamentally
uncurious brute whose gaze extended no further than the Friday night
lights at Hawkins High.

To the Duffer brothers' credit, Steve's ending isn't entirely
inconsistent with the show's finale. The epilogue is very John Hughes,
an effective tonal shift back to the 1980s nostalgia that launched the
show, vibes that played second fiddle to the supernatural in later
seasons.

But the return to authentic 1989 didn't stop the Duffer brothers from
showing two openly gay characters living easy lives, or a girl
graduating high school despite having spent the past two years in a coma
- to say nothing of, you know, the aliens. Disbelief can be suspended,
it seems, so long as it serves the narrative. And that narrative can't countenance the jock being anything other than kind of sad.

To be clear: I don't think this is some grand neo-Marxist conspiracy to
make kids eschew small-town life in favor of more degenerate pursuits
like journalism. This is just another instance of a tiresome Revenge of
the Nerds mentality we see all the time among creatives.

It doesn't matter that the Duffer Brothers created one of the most
popular shows of the decade, one that largely owes its popularity to the shocking transformation of its stereotypical jock character. They
probably got bullied for making home movies in high school, and so the
cool guy had to be a loser in the end.

Maybe it isn't that malicious. Maybe the Duffers really did just get
lazy, and making Steve a stereotype was just one of several ways they
phoned in this final season. Either way, it's a disappointing end to the
best character arc in a mostly great show.

Steve deserved better, and so did we.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)