you can go back and observe that season 1 of stranger things actually had kinda decent, dark brooding true detective vibes. then each subsequent season, it basically morphed into marvel avengers universe slop. this kind of slow, boiling frog pot bait and switch is everywhere now.
Duffer Brothers say Eleven had to go so the other characters could move on.
"There was never a version of the story where Eleven was hanging out with the gang at the end. For our characters to move on and for the story of Hawkins and the Upside Down to come to a close, Eleven had to go away."
S1 was clearly written with an adult audience in mind. It has a lot more grittiness and emotional maturity than the later seasons. S2 does as well but S3 is when they started writing for the 15 year old Twitter fans and it’s been all downhill from there
so you’re telling me it basically boiled down to dan being too in love with phil to let his fears take away the love of his life and phil being so in love with dan that he was willing to wait however long it would take for those fears to go away……