Stranger Things Finale Cops Out With The Most Obvious Character Deaths Possible

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This article contains spoilers for "Stranger Things" season 5, episode 8 — "Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up."

After almost a decade, "Stranger Things" ends with a supersized season 5 finale that more or less conclusively settles most things the show can possibly settle. Regardless of how "Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up" will end up measuring against the best TV series finales of all time, one thing already seems pretty certain: The episode played its hand very differently than expected when it comes to character deaths. 

"Stranger Things" had tons of characters who seemed likely to die, and season 5, volume 2 seemed to specifically set up two characters to perish: Kali Prasad (Linnea Berthelsen) and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), who agreed to die to stop the cycle of more psychokinetic kids potentially tapping into the Abyss. In the end, however, Eleven is effectively confirmed to have survived her apparent death (or else the "Stranger Things" gang are lying to themselves to cope), leaving the series finale with just two major character deaths, both of which are extremely predictable. The first is Kali, who was always a minor enough character to be essentially doomed the second she returned for season 5, and the second is series big bad Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), who never had a snowball's chance of surviving the finale. 

While the latter did deserve his gruesome demise, the optics of bringing back season 2 character Kali — one of the handful of characters bringing racial diversity to the show — after a lengthy absence just to serve as a sacrificial lamb are ... really not the best. 

Stranger Things is known for impactful death scenes, which makes the finale feel like it's lacking

Of course, I'm not saying that the show should have just ruthlessly killed off half the main cast for shock value. However, "Stranger Things" is a victim of its own brand here. From Barb Holland (Shannon Purser) and Bob Newby (Sean Astin) to Billy Hargrove (Dacre Montgomery) and Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn), every single season of the show has featured a truly pivotal death that has either surprised the viewers or been impactful enough to haunt us. This is more than enough to condition fans to expect similar things from the show's endgame, especially considering the massive amount of characters season 5 is juggling.  

While touching, Kali's death is far too telegraphed to fill this particular role. Likewise, the half-hearted attempts to humanize Vecna in the cave don't take away the countless atrocities he's committed, which the show takes care to remind us of during the villain's gory final moments at the hands of Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder). As such, the true stakes lie on the shoulders of Eleven, who gets no fewer than two separate death fake-outs before her "happy" ending — that is, a voluntary exile from everyone she's ever loved — is revealed. But hey, at least she got to see those waterfalls, right?

"Stranger Things" season 5 is streaming on Netflix.