Why The Demogorgons Vanished In The Stranger Things Finale, According To The Showrunners

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• Science Fiction Shows

The following contains heavy spoilers for the "Stranger Things" series finale, "Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up."

"Stranger Things" captivated audiences for nearly a decade. It put Netflix on the map as a big player in pop culture and made an absurd amount of money for the streamer. It helped bring "Dungeons & Dragons" to a new level of popularity, and reminded everyone that Winona Ryder is a national treasure. Now, the dice are put away, the table is cleared, the adventure is over.

The finale was, unsurprisingly, quite polarizing. It is no secret that "Stranger Things" was not planned to be a five-season series, so as the show grew in popularity and plans changed and morphed into the story we now know, trying to satisfy every single viewer became less and less likely. Some fans have taken to social media to voice their anger at the fate of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) in the finale, while others are complaining about the many unanswered questions and supposed plot holes in the final season.

One of these unanswered questions has to do with the demogorgons. After being the primary antagonists for most of the series, the actual grunts that the kids fight on and off for five seasons (alongside the demodogs and demobats), they all kind of disappeared by the time the gang reaches Vecna's (Jamie Campbell Bower) layer in the final episode. Now, the Duffer brothers explained this mystery to TheWrap.

"Vecna was not expecting this sneak attack on his home turf. Never in a million years could he even imagine that. They're there somewhere," Matt Duffer said.

Where did the demos go?

"We obviously discussed having a demo battle on top of the Mind Flayer battle, but it felt more right to us that why does he need the demos when the Mind Flayer is this giant thing and can attack them?" Duffer continued. "He doesn't need his little ant army to attack, he's going to take care of this himself. It's a giant, desolate planet." He also points out that we do briefly see a demogorgon far in the distance during a scene in season 4 when Henry is wandering this strange planet, but says, "There's not like a giant civilization of demos up there."

So, if the demogorgons and other creatures aren't living in large groups, how are they always attacking in packs? How long does it take for Vecna to summon his minions, gathering them up and then sending them over to Hawkins? Are they on the polar opposite part of the planet and travel days and days just to go attack some kids in Indiana? Do they just die after the Mind Flayer is destroyed?

According to Matt Duffer, the writers did come up with a scene where we'd see some of the other creatures. "They were going to come across a giant field of demo eggs in kind of an 'Aliens' thing, but you can't get all your ideas in there," he said. In addition to time constraints, Duffer blames the absolute and total lack of non-Vecna and non-Mind Flayer creatures on "demo fatigue."

"I felt like we did everything we wanted to do with them in [the last episode of the first part of the season] and wanting to keep the focus on Vecna and the Mind Flayer, who's been absent this season," the co-showrunner said. There you have it.