Spoilers Stranger Things Season 5 - SPOILERS

[Ryujin]

I have one huge gripe with the finale - Mike undermined his players' agency by having an NPC finish off Strahd! Yes, they had to remember a poem to summon her, so it's not a terrible move, but it still left his players watching someone else win the fight!

For me, nothing is going to let me down the way that the last published adventure for TORG did, after they had done cinematic so well up until then. Player characters had to sit back while what was essentially a script played out in front of them, for the whole thing.

The anachronisms around D&D don't bother me. For something like that, getting a resonant reference to D&D as people play it today was probably a lot more important than getting the details right. The Demogorgon miniature from season 1 was not available IRL at that time, so it's something the show has always played with.

Overall, a good send off to the series. Easily the best part for me was the second half of the episode, where we got to say goodbye to everyone and see them get their happily ever after.

Same with the wrap-up. Some complain that it was too long. After 5 seasons and as a final farewell, it hit me just right.

 

[HatWearingFool]

I liked the finale, it wrapped up the series in a satisfying way. I'm guessing we're just going to skip or gloss over the legal ramifications, because the gang racked up an impressive body count on Kay's seemingly endless supply of soldiers.

It's funny, in discussions, a lot of my friends were predicting a much higher death count, but I was right to assume almost everyone was going to get out of the series alive and get their happy ending. I love that Steve became a coach, though I assumed more schooling was necessary before teacher, but ... still happy for him.

Around my parts in the 80’s you could teach as long as you were attending university for education at the same time.

Now, in many parts in Canada they will hire any warm body to teach regardless of qualifications due to the shortage or teachers/people that want to teach. Most people with teaching degrees get out of teaching their first 5 years.

 

[Belen]

Around my parts in the 80’s you could teach as long as you were attending university for education at the same time.

Now, in many parts in Canada they will hire any warm body to teach regardless of qualifications due to the shortage or teachers/people that want to teach. Most people with teaching degrees get out of teaching their first 5 years.

He could be part of an alternative certification program that allows you to teach while being in school.

 

[HatWearingFool]

I have one huge gripe with the finale - Mike undermined his players' agency by having an NPC finish off Strahd! Yes, they had to remember a poem to summon her, so it's not a terrible move, but it still left his players watching someone else win the fight!

To me there is t a difference to any other summon spell that could have finished Stradh off, or really reading any spell off a scroll.

The player read a scroll and the monster died. I would like more details on how the suppression stone didn’t prevent it though, ( j/k) sometimes you have to nudge things for the players to have their big moment.

 

[Belen]

Overall, S5 was mid. It was plagued by a lot of boring filler with a few memorable moments. The main cast seemed to take a backseat to new characters that got more screen time.

I enjoyed the wrap up for the most part but I was left radically not caring when 11 bit it and nor did I care when she made it.

• Dr. Kay had zero backstory and very few lines.
• Where were all the demogorgons etc on Planet X? They could have had guards.
• What was the motive of the Mind Flayer?
• The team was spread out over the entire season again.
• Hawkins is not that big. They could have found 11 if they really wished.

It was not a terrible season but it was just average considering how long we waited on it.

 

[Ryujin]

Around my parts in the 80’s you could teach as long as you were attending university for education at the same time.

Now, in many parts in Canada they will hire any warm body to teach regardless of qualifications due to the shortage or teachers/people that want to teach. Most people with teaching degrees get out of teaching their first 5 years.

He's a coach, gym teacher, and sex ed teacher. Back then, at least, only doing those things would likely only require some sort of course/certification for the last.

 

[Basic Expert]

I think the ending episodes were satisfying enough and in keeping with the ultimate overall tone of the series, despite some clumsy writing.
*I never vibed with Henry/Vecna as a villain. I don't think his Vecna appearance was weird or scary enough. They should have dialed it up like 300% on the Cthulhu meter. I thought he was much more effective (and creepier) as just a human.
*My favorite part of the show was always having legitimate (if obscure) rules to their supernatural elements that could be discovered or reasoned out by the mundane characters and exploited. From the using lights to communicate with the missing Will in season one to scenes like creating the demogorgon trap in season five. Love it! Let's A-Team this thing!
*They ended up with way too many characters. Seriously, 20 characters is a good 10 too many.
*Everyone had too much plot armor. Stephen King wouldn't have been so kind. Obviously, with the close connection between the core characters, any loss would have been devastating to the survivors, and seriously changed the tone of the series and I can understand not wanting to go there, but man...they couldn't even kill off Moms Wheeler (and she gets a post-crippling hero moment!).
*The Dr. Kay/military side of things was underdeveloped. The government seemed to have invested a lot of money, effort and lives in this project. Why exactly? To make more Elle's I guess. Why do they need more Elle's? What would they do with them? Why do they think it won't all end in disaster again? They could have easily had a scene wherein Kay explains her "vision" and what she's fighting for, but we get nothing. They also let all of the main characters go at the end, even the ones that straight-up gunned down a bunch of their fellow soldiers. That was nice of them.
*I did like the ending D&D scene. I think it's obvious that Storyteller Mike later becomes an uncredited creative consultant for TSR and WotC. That explains the D&D-anachronisms perfectly.
*I loved the D&D module art style for the ending credits. Worth the price of admission for that alone.

 

[HatWearingFool]

Overall, S5 was mid. It was plagued by a lot of boring filler with a few memorable moments. The main cast seemed to take a backseat to new characters that got more screen time.

I enjoyed the wrap up for the most part but I was left radically not caring when 11 bit it and nor did I care when she made it.

• Dr. Kay had zero backstory and very few lines.
• Where were all the demogorgons etc on Planet X? They could have had guards.
• What was the motive of the Mind Flayer?
• The team was spread out over the entire season again.
• Hawkins is not that big. They could have found 11 if they really wished.

It was not a terrible season but it was just average considering how long we waited on it.

I agree the final fight seemed a bit lame. No giant mindflayer cloud, no demogorgons, and the bad guy(s) went down pretty easy.

But again I don’t think it could have lived up to the expectations.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think the ending episodes were satisfying enough and in keeping with the ultimate overall tone of the series, despite some clumsy writing.
*I never vibed with Henry/Vecna as a villain. I don't think his Vecna appearance was weird or scary enough. They should have dialed it up like 300% on the Cthulhu meter. I thought he was much more effective (and creepier) as just a human.
*My favorite part of the show was always having legitimate (if obscure) rules to their supernatural elements that could be discovered or reasoned out by the mundane characters and exploited. From the using lights to communicate with the missing Will in season one to scenes like creating the demogorgon trap in season five. Love it! Let's A-Team this thing!
*They ended up with way too many characters. Seriously, 20 characters is a good 10 too many.
*Everyone had too much plot armor. Stephen King wouldn't have been so kind. Obviously, with the close connection between the core characters, any loss would have been devastating to the survivors, and seriously changed the tone of the series and I can understand not wanting to go there, but man...they couldn't even kill off Moms Wheeler (and she gets a post-crippling hero moment!).
*The Dr. Kay/military side of things was underdeveloped. The government seemed to have invested a lot of money, effort and lives in this project. Why exactly? To make more Elle's I guess. Why do they need more Elle's? What would they do with them? Why do they think it won't all end in disaster again? They could have easily had a scene wherein Kay explains her "vision" and what she's fighting for, but we get nothing. They also let all of the main characters go at the end, even the ones that straight-up gunned down a bunch of their fellow soldiers. That was nice of them.
*I did like the ending D&D scene. I think it's obvious that Storyteller Mike later becomes an uncredited creative consultant for TSR and WotC. That explains the D&D-anachronisms perfectly.
*I loved the D&D module art style for the ending credits. Worth the price of admission for that alone.

Kay did explain, but if you blinked you missed it. The original goal was to open gates and send demogorgans into Russia.

 

[HatWearingFool]

I think the ending episodes were satisfying enough and in keeping with the ultimate overall tone of the series, despite some clumsy writing.
*I never vibed with Henry/Vecna as a villain. I don't think his Vecna appearance was weird or scary enough. They should have dialed it up like 300% on the Cthulhu meter. I thought he was much more effective (and creepier) as just a human.
*My favorite part of the show was always having legitimate (if obscure) rules to their supernatural elements that could be discovered or reasoned out by the mundane characters and exploited. From the using lights to communicate with the missing Will in season one to scenes like creating the demogorgon trap in season five. Love it! Let's A-Team this thing!
*They ended up with way too many characters. Seriously, 20 characters is a good 10 too many.
*Everyone had too much plot armor. Stephen King wouldn't have been so kind. Obviously, with the close connection between the core characters, any loss would have been devastating to the survivors, and seriously changed the tone of the series and I can understand not wanting to go there, but man...they couldn't even kill off Moms Wheeler (and she gets a post-crippling hero moment!).
*The Dr. Kay/military side of things was underdeveloped. The government seemed to have invested a lot of money, effort and lives in this project. Why exactly? To make more Elle's I guess. Why do they need more Elle's? What would they do with them? Why do they think it won't all end in disaster again? They could have easily had a scene wherein Kay explains her "vision" and what she's fighting for, but we get nothing. They also let all of the main characters go at the end, even the ones that straight-up gunned down a bunch of their fellow soldiers. That was nice of them.
*I did like the ending D&D scene. I think it's obvious that Storyteller Mike later becomes an uncredited creative consultant for TSR and WotC. That explains the D&D-anachronisms perfectly.
*I loved the D&D module art style for the ending credits. Worth the price of admission for that alone.

I was sad they didn’t go into the miltary aspect as much either.

I haven’t seen the play that was labeled not required to understand the series, but I think it was kind of required. Since as I understand it it explains how the military got involved.

The military was trying to cloak a ship with special technology and ended up sending the ship to dimension x. Which is how that rock got i to the scientists case in that cave.

So the military was involved for decades and were trying to learn more about dimension x. And they knew something from dimension x created Henry and used him to make more psychics.