Spoilers follow for Stranger Things, up to and including the series finale.

Stranger Things burst into the pop culture zeitgeist 10 years ago to become an instant global phenomenon that captivated audiences for five seasons and 42 episodes. An original story from then newbies Matt and Ross Duffer, the Netflix series wore its ‘80s nostalgia on its sleeve, but it gave us indelible characters and performances that grabbed our collective hearts. As it wound down to its final two hours on December 31, the expectations for Stranger Things to stick its landing achieved the same fever pitch as Game of Thrones and Lost had in the lead-up to those shows’ endings. As we know, there’s no pleasing everyone, but the Duffers’ series finale focuses on its characters first and in doing so delivers emotional closure that makes up for some of its less satisfying choices.

While the two-hour and eight-minute runtime of "Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up” implies a movie-length conclusion, the finale is really the sum of two parts modeled much like Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Here, the first hour functions as a mega-budgeted, mashup homage to some of the great action classics of the ‘80s era — Red Dawn, Aliens, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, and even TV miniseries IT. While the second hour serves as an extended epilogue that gives almost every significant character in the ensemble a goodbye moment of note. As a piece, the action resolution portion hits its high point early when Vecna’s the Abyss descends into Upside-Down Hawkins, dislodges beloved Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) from the WSQK radio tower and then goes to black. After a dastardly extended beat, Steve is revealed to be alive and snatched back from certain death by Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton), which goes down as the biggest rush of the whole episode.

After that, the scale of several battles culminating in the Abyss are tense and effective. What happens to Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) is particularly painful, especially in the wake of Hopper’s incredibly poignant speech to Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) about their suicide pact. But her need to give El a life beyond their shared pain adds resonance and purpose to her character. On the other hand, as expected the unrepentant ire and sadism of military figures Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton) and Lt. Akers (Alex Breaux) never gets contextualized in the time allotted, which makes them the most throwaway characters of the series. Hamilton deserved better.

Otherwise, all of that leads into the Abyss where the melee between Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bowers) and Eleven is designed to be personal and intense. And the mega-Mind Flayer Boss Battle plays out like a D&D campaign moment on steroids. For all the bullets and Molotov cocktails, the most satisfying scenes come when Nancy (Natalia Dyer) frees her exhausted little sister Holly (Nell Fisher) from her Vecna cocoon, and then when Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) gets her moment, putting the death-rattles of the villain to an end by hacking him to pieces, intercut with a deeply moving montage of all the pain and death he rendered on the residents of Hawkins. The Duffers did very right by the whole cast of characters by not just reducing that moment to the cathartic act, but by reminding us of the tremendous cost levied on this town and its people.

In terms of bang for our buck, the finale season was a feast for the eyes and ears. In the last episode, the tower sequence, Max, Kali and El finally infiltrating Henry’s mind in the Creel house and the tension-filled standoff in the Upside Down Hawkins lab with Kali, El, Hopper and Murray (Brett Gelman) are excellent set piece sequences. And I’m not disappointed that a big piece of unanswered lore was dropped with that mystery Mind Flayer rock because it led to Bowers’ masterful performance as Henry watching his younger self embrace the evil within after murdering that mystery man in the cave. It wasn’t the circumstances that made Henry into 001 into Vecna; it was Henry connecting his darkest heart with the Mind Flayer’s intentions, and that’s way better than a redemption arc when this much damage has been wrought.

And let me add that the Duffers better be prepared for real-world music licensing realities post-show because the chances of getting a budget again to use the kind of quality needle drops they did in this series may never come again. The episode is bursting with great choices even outside of Prince’s “When Dove Cries” and “Purple Rain,” including sprinklings of Cowboy Junkies, Pixies, Fleetwood Mac and the final emotional blow of David Bowie’s “Heroes.”

Heading into the final hour, if you weren’t a fan of the multiple endings of Return of the King, you likely felt every minute of the successive chapter endings. If anything feels like it overstays its welcome, it’s Robin’s (Maya Hawke) radio narration and the graduation sequence. Yes, they function to give everyone in town a last moment in the sun, but by the end, it does start to feel like we’re all in those bleachers squirming under the hot sun. Much more successful are the intimate goodbyes — the older kids embracing their futures while still wistfully wanting to hold onto their bond, Hopper and Joyce getting engaged at Enzo’s, and the final campaign for the OG D&D gang.

I’m particularly happy that the Duffers didn’t buy into the series finale bloodbath methodology where swaths of characters have to go down to elicit audience feelings. Instead, they stayed true to what counted most in their show - their characters and the deep relationships they forged over five seasons. Life has already been intensely unkind to Hawkins and every one of its citizens. Giving our heroes and their extended circles some momentary peace and a sense of victory is what a D&D campaign is all about. You spend time building your character up and discover each other’s talents and put them into action when needed most. In the end — often hit points deficient and battered — you come out together victorious and ready for the next adventure. The Duffers never lost sight of that from beginning to end.

And that’s perfectly expressed in Mike’s (Finn Wolfhard) Stand By Me-style roundup of how he saw his friend’s futures. It was a sob-inducing, bittersweet way to tie up the profound importance of storytelling that remains the beating heart of this series… although the Duffers’ cake-and-eat-it-too closing on El is less satisfying the more you think about it. If you’re a realist, then Kali’s sacrifice didn’t give her sister a future and El’s choice means she really did live a terrible life of loss and didn’t get a happy ending for herself. If you’re an optimist like Mike, then you can imagine she lives, but what a bittersweet existence to live alone. However, Stranger Things has always been a modern-day fairy tale rooted in Gen X memories of unencumbered childhoods threatened by the realities of imagined evils. That the mythic heroines of the tale — El and Kali — were the means by which all of the Hawkins characters (except Ted) were able to grow into their best selves, that’s a story grounded by life’s truths and one that was well worth the journey.

Verdict

Stranger Things was a generational event that barreled into a series finale with almost impossible expectations surrounding it. The Duffers certainly evolved into the successful blockbuster directors they so admired in their childhoods, but their enduring legacy will be mostly doing right by a cast of characters who beguiled the globe.