Stranger Things 4 ending, explained

[Ed. note: As you might’ve guessed or hoped for, this post goes into detail about the end of season 4 of Stranger Things.]

It was released on April 1, 2005. Stranger Things 4 Part 2 was an absolute disaster, not only because it ran for so long. In the final run of episodes, the whole cast of characters finally converged on Hawkins and beat Vecna — sorta.

Though they survived the battle, the war still looms in a very real way, as Vecna’s efforts to merge the Upside Down and regular world are a bigger threat than ever now that four rifts between the worlds scar the town they love. Plus, there’s still the Upside Down particle monster/shadow that Joyce and Hopper glimpsed in Russia.

All this sets up a pretty major final season for the streaming juggernaut, in which I’m sure the Upside Down monsters will be worse than ever. Because the ending is close at hand, every question that remains feels more significant than usual. Although Stranger Things is known to inflate some episode lengths, there’s still a (relatively) limited window to wrap up the journeys of everyone in the cast. And that’s all before we get into solving their latest Upside Down problem.

Vecna: What’s the matter?

Vecna? Is that you, with all the drippy gubbins and weird scars? A still from the most recent trailer.

Image courtesy of Netflix

Although Nancy, Robin, And Steve’s ground offensive successfully incapacitated Vecna — they both shot him out a window and burned him extensively — by the time they got outside he had vanished, leaving just a soot mark on the Upside Down ground.

This means that Vecna may be dead. Will doesn’t think so. He was able to sense his Upside Down Spidey feelings and know that One/Vecna/Henry still exists. “Now that I’m here, in Hawkins, I can feel him. And he’s hurting, but he’s still alive,” Will told Mike. “It’s strange, knowing now who it was this whole time. However, I still recall what he thought. HowHe thinks. And he’s not going to stop. Ever. Not until he’s taken everything and everyone. We have to kill him.”

Hawkins: What does this mean?

A few days after Vecna’s attack, many of the people of Hawkins are already moving away from the “earthquake” that caused the massive rifts through town. As vines grow through the rifts, up buildings and into the sky, the Upside Down appears to be leaking through. Electric storms are common, Upside Down dust begins to fall, the ground becomes infected, and all the surrounding plants die.

Will’s Upside Down Spidey sense lets him know the storm clouds are setting in. Soon everyone is trying to understand what’s happening now. Though our cast of main characters certainly knows better than the regular townspeople what’s spreading through the air and beneath their feet, they don’t look any more capable of stopping it — yet. When Eleven looks back at the town in the final moments of episode 9, it’s clear the Upside Down is starting to take over Hawkins. As Vecna told Eleven: “This is only the beginning. It is only the beginning. You have already lost.”

Is Max dead?

Max sitting in front of Billy’s grave

Netflix Photo

No, but Eleven can’t find her, even in her own headspace. Max held out for as long as she could, but Eleven’s victory in the psychic duel and Steve, Nancy, and Robin’s victory in the Upside Down came too late. Max was already in a trance and had been suspended from the air, with him systematically breaking her bones. Once Vecna was dispatched, Max fell and woke up from the trance, but told Lucas she couldn’t hear or feel anything. Soon after, she died.

El refused to accept this and used her powers to bring Max back to life — to a point. We last see Max in the hospital, where she’s in a coma the doctors aren’t certain she’ll wake up from. When El touches her hand to mind meld with her, she finds Max’s brainspace totally empty. Where Max’s mind has gone — and if it can return to her body again — is one of the biggest questions heading into the final season. Though I’d be hard-pressed to believe this is the last we’ve seen of Max on Stranger Things.

Will El and Hopper still sport matching hairstyles in Stranger Things 5?

It’s possible. Maybe they’ll really bond over it during this period and grow it out together. The look could be completed with matching outfits for father and daughter.

Ok, serious: What the heck is happening with Will?

Will’s painting in close-up as he unrolls it

Image courtesy of Netflix

Will showed Mike his artwork and tried to talk him up. But it nearly immediately caused Will to laugh out loud as he looked outside the window. Will described his thought process for the painting and expressed emotion about being different from other people.

Mike continued to ignore Will throughout the entire season. Jonathan, fresh off the marijuana, finally caught on. While prepping the sensory deprivation tank/pizza freezer for Eleven, Jonathan told Will that he’s sad about how distant they’ve been. “I don’t want you to forget that I’m here. I’ll always be here, no matter what, because you’re my brother, and I love you,” Jonathan said. “There is nothing in this world — absolutely nothing — that will ever change that.”

Unfortunately, after a hug, Will went back to playing a supporting character and we didn’t get any resolution for whatever was going on with him throughout the entire season. He spoke about El again in Part 1 when he melancholically consoled Mike. It felt almost like he was speaking about his own fears. “Sometimes it’s just scary to open up like that and say how you feel,” he told Mike in a charged moment in episode 5. “What if the people you care about the most don’t like the truth?”

Although he Might just have been that bent out of shape about the issues in Mike and El’s relationship, is it possible there’s something more happening with him and his own coming-of-age story? Some feel that it’s building up to a story about Will coming out to his friends and family. However, as of Stranger Things 4, it’s unclear.

Is Nancy and Steve going back together?

The Hawkins group of Stranger Things 4 looking disturbed and skeptical

Tina Rowden/Netflix Photo

It’s just what you think Stranger Things was done with a love triangle, we’re back studying amorous trigonometry again. Steve had spent the season looking for the perfect girl. Nancy finally accepted that she was his dream woman. Nancy was intrigued or flattered when Nancy heard this.

She certainly was interested in defending how much Steve had “grown up” to Jonathan, her boyfriend she’d been estranged from (physically and emotionally) throughout Stranger Things 4. They were reunited at Hawkins and they danced awkwardly around to see if it makes sense. Nancy received a sincere apology from him for his distant behavior, and he also lied about plans to attend the same college with her. And it’s clear the events of this season left Nancy reconsidering her feelings toward Steve. All in all, it doesn’t seem like it’s clear skies for Jonathan and Nancy, Vecna or no.

How will Russia play a role in the future?

It took the entire season for the children to learn that Joyce, Murray, and Hopper were in the Soviet Union, let alone that they were aiding the fight against Vecna’s forces by attacking monsters connected to the hive mind. Although the rescue mission of Hopper to Russia proved vital in the end, it felt a little ancillary to the other episodes.

But there are important findings: Soviets have continued to communicate with the Upside Down. It seems that they made more progress than Brenner to figure out its purpose and harness its monsters. Joyce and Hopper stumbled on a (now gone) lab of Demodogs, other Upside Down monsters, and a “particle monster” that resembled the primitive form of the Mind Flayer.

Do the American forces still want Eleven?

Although they had been wiped out as plot elements after Eleven shot down their helicopter in Nevada desert, the crew was still concerned for Eleven’s handling of her power. Now that she’s come into her own And Hawkins, Indiana has seemingly turned into one massive gate, one would think the military would have a bone to pick with her — and/or an apology note for not helping her stop this! There is no better time than now to repair fences and collaborate with others, the end of this world.

Is there a time jump for season 5?

Eleven recoiling from her reflection of her younger self in the Rainbow Room

Netflix Photo

Even though the last moments of Stranger Things 4 seem to set up going right back into battle, it’s likely that there’s going to be a time skip. For starters, Mike said El didn’t feel she was ready to fight Vecna again, and so she might have to train with Yoda more to access the true depth of her powers. Vecna still needs to recover, and Max might need her body to heal.

The Duffer Brothers Interviews have indicated that they believe a time jump will happen, partly because it is necessary to compensate for the growing cast. “I’m sure we will do a time jump,” Ross Duffer told TV Line in June 2022, noting the fact that the young stars are aging rapidly. “Ideally, we’d have shot [seasons 4 and 5]It was not possible to go backwards, so it wasn’t feasible. So these are all discussions we’re going to have with our writers when we start the room up.”

While it’s hard to imagine the foundation of Hawkins can withstand TooMuch time spent lagging in between seasons would give El and Max more time to train, and Max the time to recuperate.

No seriously — will we ever get “Running Up That Hill” out of our heads?

Now there’s a heavy synth remix in the mix? Ooh! Here’s to the Kate Bush resurgence!

#Stranger #explained