IMDb

This documentary exposed the Duffer Brothers and just how bad of directors they had come to be, while dually explaining why season five was horrendous.

I’m usually a quieter person when it comes to being at the hairdresser. Whether it be because I’m just naturally awkward, or that my conversations constantly feel forced, it just doesn’t happen. Though at my latest appointment, I was talking off the rails.

The subject?

How terrible the last season of Stranger Things was, and how their new behind-the-scenes documentary exposed it. 

Stranger Things is a Netflix series, whose first season was released in the summer of 2016. With a cast mostly of kids and early young adults, it surprised many with its rapid popularity among fans worldwide. When the fifth and final season was originally released, everyone watching was expecting something huge.

To say the least, it was horrendous. The documentary, “One Last Adventure,” perfectly explains why it was so bad, and honestly, was more interesting than the actual last season of Stranger Things. It takes a look at the production process and the entirety of what happened behind the scenes.

The first thing this documentary revealed was how late the script was finalized. The script was completed months after the filming of episodes one through four, which was shocking to find out. Though, it does explain why the writing made no sense at all and the correlations between the first four episodes and the last four were so awful. The creators of the show, the Duffer Brothers, were simply scrambling to figure out how to make it work, and it’s clear through the documentary that they had lost the talent that they had in the first season. Even their props designer was asking questions about the plot inconsistencies of the finale, one example being the lack of demodogs, demogorgons, and demobats during the final fight, even though it was in Vecna’s home base.

If your props designer can unabashedly point out the endless details missing in the finale you’re writing, that’s when you should realize something needs to be fixed.

Not only that, but the writing was terrible. The thing that angered me the most was their closing of Eleven’s (Millie Bobbie Brown) character. Throughout the documentary, they mentioned that the only thing for Eleven would be her ambiguous ending. They also quite bluntly explained that the entire season would just be leading to her suicide. The Duffer Brothers had no deeper thought behind her character. The complexity of the others characters all around was also lost, as their only point was being used in a single event, so they never had proper character development. It was just bad writing overall, which justifies the popular opinion of it being one of the worst finales ever.

Another reveal in One Last Adventure was the fact that the Duffer Brothers were writing the finale with ChatGPT and Reddit tabs open on their computers. You would think that for such talented writers, they wouldn’t be using such resources in their show, but alas. It’s disappointing, and even if it wasn’t used for directly writing the script, using AI is sad to begin with. They had a multi-million dollar budget, and instead of consulting good directors, they used a robot. It’s an issue that extends beyond just them; the authenticity of the art is being destroyed by the usage of AI.

Stranger Things in general used to be such a groundbreaking show. This documentary showed the real side of it, and heavily exposed the reason behind why the final season was so disappointing to watch.

From the Duffer Brothers’ lackadaisical writing to their lack of preparation, it was destined for disaster from the start.