If I had a nickel for every time I cried as “Heroes” by David Bowie played over the end credits of one of my favorite pieces of coming-of-age media, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.
Yes, it’s true. I loved the last season of “Stranger Things,” and I loved the final episode, too. It’s clear, however, that I hold the minority opinion, or that’s what it seems like after a quick scroll on TikTok, where users responded en masse with a wave of instant outrage, directing their hatred toward the series’ creators for “ruining their own show.”
I’ve come to realize that the discourse around “Stranger Things” season five signals something broader than just an outbreak of cynicism. It reflects how quickly we as a society have become conditioned to move from watching to judging, from feeling to dissecting. People’s impulse to so immediately critique media deprives us of the opportunity and the space to experience joy — or any authentic emotion, for that matter.
It’s important to say upfront that criticism itself isn’t the problem. Critique, as a practice, is an absolutely essential part of our culture that has existed for as long as art itself. Criticism is how things improve, and how society learns and grows — without it, art stagnates.
In that rush, emotional responses — joy, sadness, nostalgia — often get cut short, replaced by quick judgments and definitive takes before the experience has even had time to settle.
The problem is also not that “Stranger Things” is too beloved a show to receive any criticism. I actually agree with quite a few critiques I’ve seen on TikTok. Yes, I think all signs pointed to Byler — a ship for the characters Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) and Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) — and their storyline seemed to be quickly written off, handled with little care. Yes, I think it made no sense that the demogorgons, once so central to the show, were somehow absent in the final battle. Yes, I think more characters should have died to reflect the weight of what was at stake. Loving something doesn’t mean it’s beyond criticism.
The ultimate problem at play here is the immediacy with which people take to TikTok to deliver critique. Instead of sitting with a story, we’re pushed to react instantly. In that rush, emotional responses — joy, sadness, nostalgia — often get cut short, replaced by quick judgments and definitive takes before the experience has even had time to settle. And anger, one of the most immediate emotions humans experience, often drives these initial reactions.
When I set out to write this article, I wanted to explore the widespread outbreak of cynicism that seems to have taken over our society. We are living through an incredibly tumultuous moment in the world, and especially in our nation — politically, economically, culturally and socially — and I think a lot of people cope with this by approaching things with a pre-determined sense of hatred, or at the very least, with an instinctive skepticism. The minds of our generation have been trained to respond this way to news and social media, and now that same instinct has bled into the way we engage with media meant for entertainment.
In a world that constantly demands immediacy from us, we instinctively turn to social platforms to share our initial reactions.
However, as I delved deeper into the “Stranger Things” discourse online, I realized that the anger, hatred and cynicism weren’t present because those are the only emotions we know how to feel, but because we’ve been conditioned to feel them first. Then, in a world that constantly demands immediacy from us, we instinctively turn to social platforms to share our initial reactions. That rush often makes our responses seem harsher than they truly are.
The problem is not that we feel anger, but that we stop there. We don’t give ourselves the time or the space to sit with something and to feel everything we are meant to feel before rushing to judgment. I think about that scene in “Barbie” (2023), where Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman) asks Barbie (Margot Robbie) to take her hands and close her eyes, then tells her, “Now feel.” We could all learn a little from this moment. It’s important that we relearn to take our time with media and art.
Our relationship to emotion, after all, is not instantaneous. Behavioral science explicitly tells us that feelings unfold in stages: Think the five stages of grief. We register sensation first, then emotion, then meaning. Often, we don’t fully understand what we’re feeling until time has passed and reflection has had space to occur.
If “Conformity Gate” isn’t the clearest example of the five stages of grief, I don’t know what is. If you aren’t chronically online and don’t know what I mean by “Conformity Gate,” allow me to enlighten you. “Conformity Gate” is a viral “Stranger Things” fan theory that emerged from viewers noticing continuity errors, awkward dialogue and an ending that felt simply too good to be true. The theory suggests that the show’s happy ending was a fake reality created by the villain, Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). Fans believed there was a secret ninth episode yet to be released that would reveal this twist and prove that everything they felt was “wrong” with the final season was actually intentional.
I think that when a series like “Stranger Things” comes to an end, we inevitably experience a kind of grief. For Gen Z, especially, we’re grieving a show that we’ve grown up alongside of. The young actors were only 11 or 12 when the series began, just as many of us were when we first watched season one, and now they’re 21 or 22, stepping into adulthood at the same moment we are. Because of that parallel growth, the show became more than just something we watched; it became a touchstone that marked who we were at each stage of our childhood. Letting go of it, then, isn’t just about saying goodbye to a piece of media, but to a version of ourselves that existed along with it.
Expecting fully formed critique the moment a piece of media ends isn’t just unrealistic, it misunderstands the emotional labor that good critique requires.
The first few stages of that grieving process — denial, anger and bargaining — were unmistakable in the videos and “hot takes” that fans flooded TikTok with. They refused to accept the ending, so they created a new one, one that allowed the story to continue, that kept it from truly being over. They poked and prodded at everything they could find to be frustrated with, at every small inconsistency or perceived misstep. They begged and pleaded with showrunners and actors, insisting that this couldn’t be the final word, that there had to be something more.
When we don’t allow ourselves the time and space to sit with our emotions as a process, the default response is this hostility. The problem arises when this instinctive reaction becomes our final response rather than our first. Expecting fully formed critique the moment a piece of media ends isn’t just unrealistic, it misunderstands the emotional labor that good critique requires.
I’m not saying you had to sob like a lunatic as Prince’s “Purple Rain” transitioned to Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” and I’m not saying that there’s a certain tightness in your chest you should’ve felt as the party put their Dungeons & Dragons binders away one last time. Experience things on your own terms, but don’t let the pressure to judge get in the way of truly feeling everything it has to offer. Vecna’s clock is not counting down the minutes you have to post your “hot take” on TikTok. Listen to the soundtrack on a walk, have conversations in real life, put pen to paper in a journal. Just make sure to let it linger.
