How A Bad Finale Can Ruin An Entire Series

Will, your action

I don't know! Fireball! I didn't have to roll a 13 or higher! Too risky, cast a protection spell

Don't be a ! The Demogorgon is tired of your silly human bickering

This was how the world was introduced to Stranger Things in July of 2016

The show enjoyed a decade of cultural significance, but now that it's over, it'll likely be remembered for having a finale so terrible that it sent fans into a collective state of denial

They spun a wild conspiracy theory to cope and were doubly disappointed when that conspiracy wasn't proven true

But Stranger Things fans aren't the first to be scorned. They're the last in a long line of voracious viewers

who switched off their TV with a heavy heart and an active imagination

Which begs the question, why can't fans accept when the ending of their favorite show is bad

This is just a theory, right? How do we know it's true? We don't

For almost 10 years, Stranger Things mania dominated the pop media landscape

The Netflix production helmed by the Duffer Brothers was saturated with 80s nostalgia

and polished with a thin veneer of geek and outsider culture. Ironically, it had mass appeal

Its popularity helped to bring Dungeons & Dragons into the mainstream, and basically everyone made the trick to Hot Topic

to purchase their very own Demogorgon Funko Pop. It's really difficult to overstate just how big the show was in its prime

Netflix was suddenly being viewed as a legitimate studio capable of producing quality content

and Matt and Ross Duffer were the heroes who heralded in this not-so-new age of big hair, shoulder pads

and fantastical monstrosities. After all, as the showrunners, directors, and head writers

Stranger Things was the Duffers' creative vision through and through. Fans swarmed the budding franchise

and waited with bated breath for each new season, even when those seasons took years-long breaks

between airing. It didn't matter that nobody remembered what happened between seasons three and four

It didn't matter that the kids were suddenly old enough to have their driver's licenses. We were just happy to see how our favorite characters

would solve the next supernatural mystery. and then everything turned upside down

The eagerly awaited fifth and final season of Stranger Things premiered in November of 2025 and things were immediately strange and not in the way we become accustomed to Fans noticed quite a few odd details about the new episodes

things like logical inconsistencies and backtracking on established facts from previous seasons

major changes in character personalities, and just general issues in the production quality

For a show that was beloved for its character work and careful construction of its narratives

this was more than a disappointment. It was unbelievably bad. Literally, fans started to theorize

that the show couldn't be this awful. Something was intentionally amiss. The Duffer brothers know what they're doing, right

These dips in quality were all leading to some grand reveal where everything would turn out fine

and the show they put a decade of their lives into would be redeemed by the finale, right

Surely this terrible final season wasn't the end, right? This is where Conformity Gate comes in

Birthed across various social media platforms simultaneously like a mind flayer hive mind

Conformity Gate is the fan conspiracy theory that Stranger Things 5 was bad

because the villain Vecna was secretly controlling the characters and by proxy, the audience

He was forcing them to live socially acceptable or conformist lives. And another more powerful monster from D&D lore

was going to be the true antagonist for the finale, one that would tie into Eleven's penchant

for spiral pattern clothes. Believers genuinely bought into the idea that all the worst offending problems with the show

would be revealed as intentional clues to Vecna's manipulations. Robin's character assassination

Vecna. Joyce somehow forgetting how old Will was when he disappeared? Vecna

A weird editing mistake where Mike climbs the ladder three separate times in the same scene

Vecna. This extra in sunglasses staring off into space? Yep, Vecna. Even the awkward acting of most of the cast could be explained away by them being unknowingly

controlled by Vecna. The constant exposition dumps? Those are a little harder to explain away, but who knows

Maybe Vecna's just an inexperienced storyteller. Just wait until the finale, guys

You'll see it'll all come together. And then the finale came and went

Vecna was dispatched in a fairly unceremonious way. Our core cast graduated high school and their D campaign came to a tearful end Several mysteries were left unanswered None of the conformity gate theories were confirmed and yet fans still refused to accept reality

When Netflix posted a cryptic Instagram reel hinting at something big coming on January 7th

it only added fuel to the already raging fire of denial. Clearly, there was going to be another episode or even a whole new season

that would retroactively fix everything wrong with Stranger Things 5, and it would be dropped on the 7th of January

And then the seventh also came and went. Netflix put out a trailer for its upcoming slate of projects

but none of them had anything to do with a super secret episode or additional season of Stranger Things

Some fans chose to cling to the ever-dwindling possibility of redemption, but most moved on to properly mourn the fact

that they'd never get the satisfying ending they dreamed of. The show was well and truly finished

What's worse is that it was terrible. And while Conformity Gate may be the most intense case of fan denial we've seen

it's not even close to being the only one. Back in 2007, The Sopranos ended so abruptly that some

viewers called their cable or power companies, assuming there was some kind of outage. How could

the show just cut to black without resolution? What happened to Tony and his family? Weeks of

rage-filled reviews ensued, and while the ending has been largely recontextualized in the nearly

20 years since its debut, some fans are still bitter about it. Fast forward to 2014, How I Met

Your Mother's final season was met with such ire that an alternate ending had

to be added to the DVD release of the show's final season to silence the backlash

Then in 2017, Sherlock fans were left aghast at the atrocious final episode. They too theorized

that the show wasn't over before succumbing to their immense disappointment. And of course, in 2019, Game of

Thrones ended in the worst way imaginable. With this show, there were no conspiracy theories

about secret episodes and no bonus alternate endings were added to DVDs

It simply ended and fans were left heartbroken. The story is always different, but the emotions

are the same. When you put so much energy into watching and engaging with a piece of art

it becomes part of you You care for the characters and their struggles You want to see the world flourish and the story resolved And you probably have your own ideas as to how to wrap everything up in a satisfying way When the reality doesn match up with your expectations it perfectly understandable to feel a little shaken up by it

It's a little less understandable to investigate every frame of the entire series, searching for

clues as to why the finale was bad. But hey, we won't judge you. Sometimes it's more exciting to

believe in the conspiracy because the truth is mundane or downright depressing. In the case of

Stranger Things, the truth seems to be that the Duffer brothers felt pressured to deliver a good

last season and drag their feet on the writing process. The script for the last episode hadn't

even been finalized by the time they began shooting it, which probably explains a lot of

the inconsistencies. When you're laying the tracks directly in front of the train, you're bound to

miss a few nails. Additionally, the Duffers' lives have changed a lot since they originally pitched

Stranger Things to Netflix as a limited single-season series. They're in their 40s now and in 2024

four, while building out seasons four and five, Ross went through a divorce, the child actors were

no longer children, and everyone was ready to pack it in. You can't discount the possibility that some

of these supposed clues were literally just added to manufacture buzz online. The only conspiracy

here seems to be Netflix callously conspiring to milk this strange cow for as long as humanly

possible by any means necessary. And still, fans were so dedicated to the show that they made up

their own arguably better ending because they adored Stranger Things that much. So whether

initial reactions to the show's finale were overblown or fans were correct and the ending

will go down as one of the worst in TV history, one thing's for certain. Fandoms are full of people

who are passionate, creative, and maybe a little too invested in their chosen media. Nobody loves

or hates a show as much as its fans, not even its creators. And that is both a blessing and a curse

You obviously can't have a successful TV show without fans, but the more eyes you have on your project

the more they demand of you, and the harder it is to please them all. You can call that entitlement or devotion

or an unhealthy obsession with fantasy media, but whatever you want to call it

you've got to admit that Conformity Gate would have been pretty cool if it was real