It feels surreal to say that Stranger Things is ending. For a lot of people, it’s just the final season of a really popular Netflix show, but for so many of us, especially the ones who started watching as kids, it feels like something much bigger. I’ve been watching Stranger Things since 2016, when I was 10 years old, and now I’m 19. I’ve grown up with this show. Knowing that it’s coming to an end feels like a part of my childhood is ending with it. It’s heartbreaking, it’s nostalgic and honestly, it still hasn’t fully hit me.
What made Stranger Things so special is that it managed to stay relevant for almost a decade. That barely happens anymore. Most shows come and go, but this one stayed fresh, exciting and talked about for years. The writing was sharp, the world-building was unmatched and the 80s aesthetic somehow felt both nostalgic and brand new. It was a show about monsters, but the real story was always about friendship, fear, curiosity and growing up. That’s what made you forget the monsters weren’t real.
And the cultural impact was insane. It shaped internet culture in a way very few shows ever have. Iconic Halloween costumes, viral TikTok edits, fan theories, a full Kate Bush comeback; Stranger Things did all of that. It brought 80s music into modern playlists, reintroduced younger audiences to sci-fi and gave us characters people genuinely cared about. Even if someone never watched the show, they still knew who Eleven was or what the Upside Down looked like. That’s how big it was.
And for me, the characters are a huge part of why the ending hurts. Max Mayfield, Lucas Sinclair, Steve Harrington and Nancy Wheeler have been my favorites for years. I still flip back and forth between Stancy and Jancy. But that’s the thing about Stranger Things: even the relationships that only exist on-screen feel like something you spent your whole childhood rooting for. These characters grew with us. We watched them get braver, get messier and get older, all while we were doing the exact same thing in our own lives.
The timing of every season made the show feel even more personal. It was showing up during real seasons of our lives. Elementary school. Middle school. Freshman year. COVID. High school. College. When you go from 10 to 19 over the course of a single series, it becomes more than entertainment. It becomes a timeline.
And then there’s the cast. Watching them grow up on screen made the show even more meaningful. The kids who started as literal children are now adults, and we grew up right alongside them. It created a bond that’s honestly impossible to recreate. It’s the same feeling people had with Harry Potter; you’re not just watching a story, you’re watching people grow up.
The end of Stranger Things also feels like the end of one of the last truly universal streaming shows. With the TV world so broken up, this was one of the few series almost everyone kept up with. When new episodes dropped, the internet exploded. People stayed up until 3 a.m. to watch it the second it was released. Group chats went dead until everyone caught up. Spoilers, memes, theories, there was no escaping any of it. It created a sense of community that’s really rare now.
And once it’s over, there’s going to be this weird mix of gratitude and heartbreak. We’ll be thankful we got something so special, but sad there won’t be another season to look forward to. It’s going to leave a real gap, not just because of the story, but because it brought people together in a way that almost nothing else does anymore.
I’m not even trying to predict how the show will end because I’m terrified I’ll accidentally manifest the death of one of my favorite characters. I’d rather go in completely blind than speak something into existence and see it actually happen. But no matter what happens, it’s going to be emotional because of what it means to say goodbye.
And now that it’s ending, it’s okay to feel heartbroken. It’s okay to feel nostalgic. It’s okay to feel like you’re closing the final chapter of your childhood. In a way, you are. But that’s also what makes it such an important show, very few shows get to mean this much.