One last trip to the upside down. 

Stranger Things ended their show with a two hour long finale that was released on December 31st 2025 at eight pm (eastern time) and five pm (pacific time) on netflix along with in over 350 movie theaters. 

The eleven theories. The party facing adulthood. The three worlds. 

In the end of Stranger Things season 5 we see eleven pull Mike into her mind to talk to him once last time before her disappearing. We see eleven stay into the upside down world while closing the last gate. The gate closes, giving the audience and everyone else around eleven to think that she’s gone with the upside down; however, we see Mike telling the party about his theory about eleven finding a way to escape to a magical land far away. Mike explains that before Kai died, Kai played one last trick for everyone to see. That eleven really escaped but everyone saw a vision of eleven getting stuck into the upside down. However, the show left us with the question if she is really alive. 

Over the years we see the party maturing into different situations. In season 5 they graduate high school and are ready to move onto the next chapter of their lives, which hints at the door shutting at the end of the series. Everyone in the party has to deal with being devastated due to the loss of eleven. Being thai far into the show it’s clear that the adults can’t be the only ones to save people, they all have a part in saving the world. They have a mixture of the different possible teenager feelings shown in friendships, relationships, hardships, and even sexuality. They all have their own issues with facing adulthood that gets shown in the show. 

There are three worlds that we learned in the Stranger things universe. There’s the normal world which is one that we live in. It would be called the “ordinary life”. Then there’s one below that world called the upside down which is where it’s all dark, veiny, the monsters live there, the air and even time is different there. The upside down is stuck from the day that Will Byers went missing. There’s a lot still unknown to this world that not even the cast of Stranger Things knows about. The upper side is where Venca’s body lays and the mind lays.  They all interact with each other by the upside down bleeding into Hawkins meaning that you can jump from place to place. Eleven can connect her powers from the upside down and the real world. Choices in the other world can interfere with all the worlds.