Like lots of other people across the country, I spent my New Year’s Day watching the series finale of Stranger Things at a local movie theater.  It was a great way to wrap things up: big screen, comfy seat, a $20 food voucher (which took the sting out of adding a hot dog to the mix).  Sure, there’s always the fear that people will treat the the theater like their living room, but that wasn’t the case much for my experience (except for a few times with the people to my left who came in late and who whispered through things a bit more than I liked).

I’ve only talked to a couple of people about the show’s ending.  I do find it important to tell remind people that I’m of the (seeming) minority of viewers who loved the series finale of LOST.  At the end of the day, it’s not about the mechanisms or the mysteries that moved things forward so much as it’s about relationships and resolution, which “The Rightside Up” had in spades.  (Perhaps the biggest surprise for me was that I was able to get through the experience without having anything spoiled beforehand- it’s nice to go into a movie experience where everyone is as surprised at things as you are).

A couple of reflections and a closing thought (without much spoiling, I hope):

1.  The concept of alienation is a vital thread to the story.  Granted, that’s true for almost every horror-centric story (including stories like It: Welcome to Derry and almost every story Stephen King tells).  There is always someone one the “outside” in one way or another.  In the case of Stranger Things, the alienation comes from internal and external realities that mostly are dealt with by the reassurance that “it’s not your fault- you didn’t chose this- this is something that was done to you.”
2. Which leads to the series’ insistence on the importance of acceptance. That’s the necessary internal element that frees different characters from being frozen in victim-mode.  But it’s also an external, communal reality.  Because even if it’s not some deeply personal issue, it’s still true for the entire town of Hawkins (even most of the town seems to have little idea about what has been happening in their town).  It’s in moving from alienation to acceptance that anything good is able to happen.
3. What then, is on the other side of alienation and acceptance?  Well, there’s revenge on one hand and justice in the other.  Closure, if one gets it, is usually temporary.  Grief, of course. Resolutions to do or be better, to never let “something like this” happen again.  A major plot point of the show’s ending is exactly that question.  And it’s a question that has no easy answer.  Which makes you wonder about the broader framing of all of these stories (and the place of anything like faith or Anyone like God).  It’s an odd mix of a porous self/existence (we are being acted on by [evil] outside forces) while still remaining oddly buffered and existential (we must do our best and act as best we can because there is no one [or No One] else to help).  What lies on the other side of alienation and acceptance for the Christian (and for the world full of people in the Christian Story)?  What is there besides courageous, existential Stoicism? If we can answer that well, we’ll find ourselves with the beautiful, strangest thing (and the thing the world deeply needs).

Did I like the finale?  Yes.  The story has always been at its best when it was about families and friendships and that wonderfully weird patch of time knows as the 80s, which can be easily lost in the “bigness” of the story that’s been built over the last nine years.  The Duffer Brothers “stuck the landing” and left things open for interpretation in a way that almost (almost) matches the final scene of Inception.

(image from rottentomatoes.com)