With Stranger Things not returning until 2025 at the earliest due to studios and writers/performers clashing over pay, there’s a lot of time for fans of the show to theorize what will happen in the final season.
And a lot of those theories are bad — intentionally so.
On the Stranger Things subreddit, user Tiutautikli asked, “What would be the worst possible ending for Stranger Things 5?” For them, it would be “they use tropes that are way too overused and boring. Like Will sacrificing himself and then in the epilogue Mike and El have a son that they name after Will.” If Stranger Things has a Harry Potter-ass ending, it should never comes back.
Others shared their worst-case scenario predictions:
The whole series was a D&D game played by Wills friends in his memory after his passing.
El and Mike use the power of friendship to send Vecna back to the Upside Down.
Eleven dies/ loses her powers forever.
It was all a dream.
Will dies (“bury your gays” trope) while all the straight characters live happily ever after.
Along with the things that others have said, I’d hate to see a time travel story where they fix their problems by going back in time and changing their history so the events of the series never happened.
But the most upvoted terrible ending belongs to Sweetbeans2001:
You really want the worst possible ending? Vecna possesses Will without anyone’s knowledge. Will spends all season 5 picking off the others one-by-one like a bad 80’s slasher movie, starting with Jonathan and Joyce.
Only Will, Mike, and El are left in the final episode. All of Hawkins had been consumed by the upside down. El figures out that Will is possessed and knows she has to kill Will in order to kill Vecna. She struggles to find the courage and strength to attack Will. Mike encourages her to do so in order to save the world. She is heartbroken and crying when she kills Will.
Immediately, the scene brightens and the surroundings start coming back to life. Mike embraces El in a hug, whispers to her that he is Vecna and stabs her in the back. She dies with her eyes open showing despair and betrayal. Vecna returns Mike to normal long enough to show him the vision of what he did to El. He is then horribly killed Chrissy-style.
The final scene is Max waking up from her coma, still blind and crippled, calling out the names of everyone (starting with Lucas) while the hospital and all of Hawkins outside of her window are turned back into the upside down.
Honestly? I don’t hate it. Someone should pitch it at Horror Nights.
(Via Reddit)