The fifth and final season of Stranger Things finally brings the curtain down on one of the biggest TV phenomena of the past ten years, bringing the curtain down on the conflict with Vecna and severing the link between Hawkins and the Upside Down. But just as the series seemed to be tying up all the loose ends, one narrative choice comes along that sticks in the mind – a truly disturbing storyline that gets introduced and then sort of gets abandoned leaving a whole lot of moral and horrific implications hanging in the air – one of the most tragic stories the series has ever told.
Eighteen months after the events of the fourth season, Season 5 finds Hawkins locked down tight like a militarised fortress, cut off from the rest of the country and turned into a quarantined zone. The army’s got a big base set up not just in the city, but in the Upside Down, now revealed as a proper doorway to another dimension. Meanwhile, Eleven and the gang are setting up the final plan to take down Vecna for good, but just as things are getting serious, the show drops a bombshell – the military’s doing some pretty dodgy experiments on pregnant women in a bid to create new kids with paranormal powers.
The discovery is made by Kali, who’s being held by the scientists at the base – Dr Kay and co – and only lets it slip because Hopper stumbles upon her and the scientists while on a bit of a rescue mission. In the chaos of the escape, Kali stumbles into some sort of hidden room where you’ve got all these pregnant women locked up, just kept alive so the scientists can siphon off their blood and try to replicate Dr Brenner’s old tests to bring some new supernatural super-kids into the world. However as it turns out, Kali’s blood is a bit of a let down, and the scientists go running back to Eleven, who they reckon is the only real success of the programme.
That little sequence is super powerful but curiously, once that bombshell drops, the show just sort of forgets about the pregnant woman afterwards. You don’t find out if they got rescued, if they got out of there, or if they just got left in the Upside Down to fend for themselves. In the final episodes and the finale, their fate is never even brought up. It’s not until much later that the Duffer brothers even come clean that the pregnant women all died with the destruction of the Upside Down, which just adds to the tragedy. Even if the gang hadn’t carried out their plan, those women wouldn’t have had much of a future anyway – they were doomed from the start. It’s a silent tragedy, played out offscreen, which the show never really takes the time to confront head on.
The narrative gap surrounding the pregnant woman’s storyline weighs heavily – and especially so when held up against Eleven’s final sacrifice. In the series finale, Eleven makes the ultimate sacrifice to put a stop to any future experiments – and bring an end to Brenner’s twisted legacy once and for all. But what’s jarring is that this subplot really only shows up to emotionally justify Eleven’s extreme choice: those lives get treated as a means to an end, a tragic event that makes her decision even more heart-wrenching, but ultimately lacks a resolution that stands on its own.
As a result, Stranger Things takes on one of its darkest and most unsettling ideas without ever truly exploring the aftermath. The creators could’ve had Eleven’s sacrifice play out in so many different ways, but instead they chose to dangle this other storyline in front of us – one packed with ethical and deeply disturbing implications – only to completely ignore it when it really mattered. And that’s what makes that subplot so haunting – more so even than any of the deaths or goodbyes we saw on screen this season. It’s the most tragic story of season five.
