Welcome to 2026 and the conclusion of the series that put Netflix on the streaming map. It’s hard to believe it’s over, but here we are. We made it to the end of the rabbit hole (or should I say wormhole). Fan reactions for this season have been mixed, but before I get to my take, we should be grateful that a show like this exists. What makes this show special is that it can be enjoyed on so many levels, and that’s because the Duffer Brothers are amazing at what they do. I’m not here to knock them or how they decided to end their series. I am just throwing out ideas that might have improved the experience of the finale.
If you were hoping for more than a safe ending to a show that once pushed the boundaries of our imagination – then you were probably disappointed by the finale. This season and the finale felt “off” to me. It felt like so much more could have been explored, but it wasn’t. I am definitely hoping that Conformity Gate is real.
Instead of complaining about the ending, I thought why not re-write it. And so I did. What follows in a re-imagination of the ending. Not word-for-word, but just enough to give you an understanding of what story elements I thought could be tweaked to give us a more satisfying finale.
I am not as talented as the Duffer Brothers and I do not have any artistic abilities. Therefore, the writing is mine (as crude as it is), but the depictions were generated by me using ChatGPT to help you visualize my words.
My story picks up where Agent Robert Akers and his group intercept Hooper, Murray, El, and Kali at Hawkins Lab.
Enjoy!
Get to the Choppa!
After Hooper realizes he was tricked by Vecna to think he killed El, the camera cuts to Murray witnessing Agent Akers and his men descending upon Hawkins Lab with humvees and helicopters. Murray radios to Hopper, “Um, I don’t want to sound too panicked or anything, but we got RAMBO AND THE WHOLE GOD-DAMNED ARMY ON THE WAY! So, if you could so kindly, GIVE ME A STATUS UPDATE!”
Hooper tries to quickly talk El out of her suicide pack with Kali, but Hopper is stopped by El when she says, “We don’t have time for this. I love you and I need to…”
Kali takes El’s hand and El finishes her thought, “WE need to end this.”
Hopper: “I know, I know. I just. Kid, there is so much MORE to live for. This doesn’t have to end the way you think it does.”
Hooper’s radio squeaks with a desperate Murray on the other end yelling, “Hopper! They’re here.”
Hopper: “HOLD ON. I’m coming! Listen, El, I’m…”
El and Kali have disappeared.
Hopper: “…sorry.”
Will, Eleven, and Eight Against The Mind Flayer
The Mind Flayer (MF) is now slowly re-animating as we saw in the finale. It’s long legs are beginning to move and it is starting to adjust to being back in its physical form. How is the MF re-animating? It’s using the fears of the 12 children and Henry to energize itself.
This is why Henry slowly pursues the children in Camazotz (in addition to being injured) – to keep them scared for a long period of time. This is also why Henry enters the cave. He knows full-well what awaits him but he knows he has to experience his fears in order to take the MF to its fullest potential.
We see Vecna inside the MF hanging below its beating heart saying, “Fear me. FEAR ME! We are now fully one, once again!”
The heartbeat of the MF is getting stronger and louder as we see energy moving from the tubes connected to the children and Henry into the heart of the MF.
Will tries to reason with Henry through their hive-mind connection as we saw. However, Will is unsuccessful and the MF begins to descend upon the group. The group stands in awe at the monstrosity of the MF. They weren’t prepared for something like THIS.
Will drops to his knees and utters, “I’ve failed.”
El and Kali appear next to Will. El and Kali each place a hand on Will and embrace him. Will looks to see who has joined the fight and a smile slowly crosses his face.
Robin, in shock, questions, “How did you guys get here?”
Kali: “If we survive this – we’ll tell you.”
El whispers to Will, “You didn’t fail. We are here. We aren’t afraid anymore. Show us the way. Let’s end this.”
Will echoes, “Let’s end this, but how?”
Dustin, Will, Mike, and Lucas discuss their prior D&D campaigns and D&D lore. Steve, Johnathan, Robin, and Nancy look on confused by what they hear as non-sensical. The audience sees various flashbacks to the boys playing D&D with the audio overlay of the boys discussing their plan.
Will shouts, “I got it! Kras!”
The boys begin to debate the idea of Kras against Vecna but are interrupted by the MF letting out an ungodly howl and begins to race at the group, and Steve exclaims, “Shit. Shit. We gotta move!”
The group begins to run off but remaining behind is Nancy. She begins firing at the MF to be a distraction so her friends can find cover.
Jonathan: “NACY! We got to go! NACY!”
Nancy looks over at Will and sees his eyes go white and him slowly levitating from the ground. His arms are now outstretched as he holds hands with El and Kali. From the sky a white, crackling light descends on Will, El, and Kali. Nancy runs off to be with the remaining group.
As the group watches in disbelief, Dustin exclaims what everyone is thinking, “Holy He-Man shit!”
The light grows larger and larger and out of it emerges a psychic manifestation of Kas from Dungeons and Dragons. Will controls its body, El controls its sword, and Kali controls its shield.
Kras charges at the MF.
The battle between the MF and Kas is epic. El, Kali, and Will feel every blow that Kas endures during the battle. Will also feels the pain that is inflicted upon the MF due to his connection to the hive-mind.
Will screams in agony, “I can’t. I feel it ALL!”
In this moment, Kali shows fear knowing that if they loose Will the battle will be lost. This creates a moment of weakness in the trios connection, and the MF strikes a blow to the shield shattering it, and sending Kali to the ground. Her body is lifeless.
Will looks at El and a flood of memories rush Will of all the good times he had with her, the group, and especially Mike. These memories energize Will and a bolt of energy shoots out of Will’s outstretched hand and into El. She begins to glow bright white and emanating rainbow lens flares.
Will falls to the ground lifeless.
Kas’ sword explodes into flames and El/Kras swing the sword with all their might and deliver the fatal blow to the MF.
El falls to the ground lifeless and Kras fades away.
BUT, what about Vecna?
The Demise of Vecna
After Eleven strikes the final blow to the MF, it hardens back into its dense, gray form.
The gang rushes to see if there is still life in Will, El, and her sister.
El slowly opens her eyes to see Mike trying to help her.
Bursting from the carcass of the MF is Vecna.
El and Vecna lock eyes. Both are in bad shape but are ready to face-off.
Eleven and Vecna battle do battle like Luke and Darth Vader in Empire Strikes Back. Just as Eleven is about to skewer Vecna via a sharp piece of the dead Mind Flayer, Vecna utters, “Jane, I am your father.”
This gives Eleven pause allowing Vecna to reach out with his clawed hand and open up Eleven’s mind to how she came to be, which is this:
Jane’s mom, desperate for money, decided to volunteer for the MKUltra program run by Dr. Brenner. Dr. Brenner is seen artificially inseminating Jane with Henry’s sperm, and to conceal his actions, Dr. Brenner turns Jane’s mom catatonic.
Eleven is mind-blown by this revelation allowing Vecna to get the upper-hand, and he begins to dig his claws into her head, and eyes. Eleven starts to become one with Vecna and is flooded with Henry’s memories that we see as quick flashbacks.
Eleven then takes Henry into her Void and begins to play all the pleasant memories Henry had of his family and his girlfriend, Patty Jenkins. El goes on to show Henry how he used Patty’s love for the sole purpose of re-animating the MF. You see, Patty, the current school consoler, helped select the 12 kids for Vecna, while under Vecna’s influence.
Henry starts to become overcome with guilt, just for a second, and his physical form as Vecna becomes paralyzed.
Seeing Vecna paralyzed and El in his clutches, Mike takes the axe from Joyce and runs at Vecna. Mike uses the axe to sever Vecna’s clawed hand, which snaps him out of the El’s Void.
Vecna grabs ahold of Mike and Eleven and tosses them to the side as he sees the rest of the gang rushing toward him.
Vecna lets out a thunderous battle-cry and in the distance we see a horde of demogorgons, demo-dogs, and demo-bats assemble and begin a charge towards our protagonists.
Sensing impending doom, our band of heroes make one last-ditch effort to attack Vecna. Each member of the group is recalling a moment of pain that Vecna brought upon them, and those memories are used as fuel to face him. They aren’t afraid anymore.
The horde is getting closer and closer, and all hope looks lost. Until…
A section of Dimension X explodes right underneath the approaching horde, and a vast opening into the Upside-Down is created. Demogorgons and demo-dogs tumble into the the Upside-Down.
Then, slowly, rising from the opening is a military chopper piloted by Hopper. That’s right, Hopper was a pilot in Vietnam. Accompanying Hooper is Murray “Bald Eagle” Bauman maniacally laughing as he fires the attached mini-gun at the demo-bats and throws hand grenades at the unearthly beasts below.
(The inspiration for this scene comes from a sketch that the Duffer Brothers did of the Abyss (Shadow-Fell) and its connection to the Upside-Down and Right-Side-Up. You can see that they show “Hopper’s Chopper” in the picture).
While Hopper and Murray take care of the approaching horde, the remaining protagonists minus Mike, El, and Kali fight Vecna.
Eventually, Vecna is overpowered by the group as they work together to chop, burn, and shoot him. By the end of it all, Vecna is crawling towards Will slowly saying, “We did such beautiful things together, Will. All for this. All for…our master”
The camera pans over to Will and his face is badly scarred.
Joyce exclaims, “You bastard!” and delivers the final blow to Vecna.
Joyce and Johnathan run over to Will to check on him. By now, Mike has crawled over to El and holds her telling her “don’t go” and “I love you.” Nancy fires shots into Vecna’s lifeless body and continues to pull the trigger even after running out of ammo. Steve pulls Nancy aside, and says to Lucas, “Burn the son-of-a-bitch.” Lucas fries Vecna’s body with a flamethrower. Dustin, and Robin enter the MF and pull the kids out.
El and Will are slowly returning to normal but barely.
El: “How is sister?”
Just then, the sky begins to darken – but not all of it. It is almost like a shadow is falling upon the sky. It is the red three-headed dragon in Will’s painting. It is enormous.
Dimension X begins to shake unable to handle the presence of the beast.
The beast grabs up El, Will, and Kali.
All this time, Venca/the MF were working for the beast, and it wanted/needed El, Will and Kali to come to Dimension X. But for what purpose? These are the children of Vecna/the MF, an unholy trinity made up of humanity and dimensional entities. A green orb begins to to grow around the three as the beast suspends them between its clawed hands.
The opening in Dimension X created by Murray begins to grow and the dimension quivers and cracks.
Hopper lands the chopper and he and Murray run to the remaining group. They all see that things look hopeless.
As the beast continues to do its dark magic the camera cuts to the wormhole (Up-Side-Down) and it is vibrating and sending out waves of energy.
The gang below shakes and convulses, and they “flicker” changing in age. We see them as their younger selves, then back to normal, and what they would look like as old versions of themselves.
We also cut to flashbacks of things that never lined up in the show. Like the radio tower electric switch changing from gray to red, inside the scientist’s case the black and red rock changes to a weird-looking alien technology, and all the other inconsistencies fans have discovered.
Additionally, we see Karen Wheeler dying instead of living, Steve falling from the radio tower, Dustin being crushed under the MF, Hopper blowing himself up in front of the door that held Kali, Eddie dying of an overdose, Mike falling to his death in Season 1 instead of being levitated by El, Joyce in a straight-jacket, Murray drowned in a bathtub with empty bottles of his favorite drink, Billy never sacrificing himself, El being captured by the military and locked away with Kali getting their blood drained, Hopper cutting into Will’s body in the morgue and the body bleeds, Robin looking unhappy in a relationship with a guy, and Lucas missing the winning shot in the basketball game.
Goodbye Cruel World
Dr. Kay and a huge military force can be seen entering the Upside-Down. The military force establishes a blockade so that no one can exit the Upside-Down. In the sky they can see all kinds of flashing lights and parts of Dimension X falling.
Army person to Dr. Kay, “This is a suicide mission! We got to retreat.”
Dr. Kay, stoned-face, responds, “We aren’t going anywhere until we get the girl. Get all of our units in here. THAT’S AN ORDER!”
We cut back to Dimension X, the dragon let’s out a huge roar that vibrates and pushes the group back and towards the hole that has grown between Dimension X and the Up-Side-Down.
Hopper looks around and sees everyone in peril. He then looks at Murray. They lock eyes. Nothing is said. Instead, Murray nods to Hopper understanding what must be done. Murray closes his eyes and hits the detonator.
The bombs above Hawkins Lab detonate and the exotic matter expands and explodes outward.
The dragon’s faces recoils in pain. The green orb fades and we see El, Will, and Kali fall.
Everything fades to white and then black.
Time is a Flat Circle
After the above title card, we are back in the Wheeler’s basement with Will, Lucas, Mike, and Dustin. They are frozen in place, and then, instantly animated again playing D&D as we first saw them in Season 1.
The camera pans down below the floorboards and into the ground. The camera travels for awhile until it turns right-side up and comes out of the clouds and we see an arial view of the Pentagon.
Cut to an interior shot of a room full of computers, scientists, army generals, etc. An alarm sounds in the room and lights are flashing from the computer displays. A reading is printed out, ripped off and handed to a high ranking official. The high ranking official picks up a red phone and says, “Sir, another wrinkle in time as occurred.”
Credits roll.
CREDITS
Well, I tried my best. I hope you enjoyed this fan-fiction of a story. If you are interested, my best friend and I do a podcast where we talk all kinds of things, especially strange things. Here is our most recent episode we did about the finale.
I blog and podcast with my life-long friend. Enjoy the ride before it’s over!
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