My full review of the Stranger Things finale and Eleven’s ending:
A thread 🧵:
The Stranger Things finale is an absolute gut-punch betrayal-a cowardly, soul-crushing cop-out that damages the legacy and spits in the face of everything this show once promised its fans.
He found her, lost her every season but waited for her for 353 days, sensed her even she’s faraway, and she always return and run back to his arms everytime. They always find each other. That’s how their story goes one way or another
Again, I never care what actors have to say about the show as they’re allowed to have their own opinion. But his answer is genuinely disgusting. “Can’t have a girl with powers running around so she HAS to die”. This is the problem with Els s5 arc, and ending. It reflects the same harmful rhetoric that the Duffers continued to push after the finale, that she was merely "the magic of childhood that had to go”. She wasn’t a machine, she was a child. A human being. She was a deeply traumatized and abused girl who spent her entire life being exploited, controlled, hunted, and forced to sacrifice so much for others. All she wanted was to just have a life with some degree of normalcy. Reducing her entire character to just her powers (which is what happened in s5) is so dehumanizing.
What makes it even worse, is that this reduction is applied to a character whose narrative has always been rooted in surviving abuse and RECLAIMING her identity (s4). To frame her death as an inevitability simply because she possesses powers dismisses and diminishes everything that made her a person beyond them. Her value was never in what she could do. It was in who she was.
not choreographed, kiss not scripted, finn and millie did the best they could for what mike and el were given. now they arent giving stranger things the time of day. they both posted mileven and dipped. i firmly believe that they are gonna make something happen for mike and el in the future
I fear loving or caring much about fictional characters now, and I don't want to. I really believed that they would make it out after being through so much. Their story has always been about hope to me more than anything else. (With the ending they got) they are part of me now ❤️🩹
i genuinely think mike and el’s story at its core is one of the most beautiful love stories, just two kids who learned to care and love each other under such a difficult circumstances and backgrounds
A friendly reminder that Mike kept El's photo on his night stand and the first thing he did in the morning is lying in bed rereading her letters with a dreamy smile on his face completely lost in time