“When they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side; they were alarmed. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he told them. ‘You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they put him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, “He is going ahead of you to Galilee; you will see him there just as he told you.”’ They went out and ran from the tomb,  because trembling and astonishment overwhelmed them. And they said nothing to anyone, since they were afraid.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Most streaming services aim to have at least one series that defines them. Hopefully they manage to land more than one, but they want—they need—to have something that proves to be enough of a cultural phenomenon that subscribers will sign up for the service just to be able to watch that. For Netflix, that series is indisputably Stranger Things. After much hype and anticipation, the final season is out in total, I’ve finished watching it, and we’re going to talk about it.

Before you even ask about it, I’m not going to try to do any kind of a plot summary. If you haven’t watched the final season yet, go watch it. If you haven’t seen any of it yet, what are you waiting for? You can binge the whole series now from start to finish. Get on it. I’m going write under the assumption that you have seen it. If you haven’t watched it and don’t want to be lost, go ask ChatGPT to give you a full series rundown along with short descriptions of all the main characters.

Let me actually start here: the final season is so very good. It didn’t resolve everything, and the farther out from the premiere we go, the more critical ratings and reviews are popping up, poking holes in the plot. If you’re not up for monsters, a bit of gore, and some frightening sequences, buck up and try it anyway. It really is that good. The production quality is feature-film quality. The acting was terrific. The writing was excellent. The story is compelling and surprising. It leaves open the door to a spin-off series with a whole world of mythology to explore if Netflix wants to do that (and given how much money the franchise is making them, I find it hard to imagine they won’t want to do that, especially if the Duffer brothers remain connected to it).

Pretty much the only thing I didn’t care for was the scene when Will comes out to the group as gay. From reading some reviews, it looks like a whole lot of folks didn’t like that scene. That one episode’s Rotten Tomatoes score nosedived because of it. I personally don’t love when shows include homosexuality storylines generally, but this was more than that. It felt forced. It had absolutely no meaningful impact on the rest of the plot. It felt like they were just checking the representation box (even though they already had a lesbian character in Maya Hawke’s Robin). The way they approached it felt unnecessarily preachy. And it felt dated. A scene like that I would have expected to see featured so prominently ten years ago. Maybe 15 now. But today? They were preaching a message the culture has (unfortunately) long since accepted. Now, from a purely acting standpoint, the scene was excellent. I can imagine Noah Schnapp’s winning a Golden Globe for it and not just because of its unnecessary agenda pushing.

I loved the fact that they finally connected Henry/Vecna’s background with the Mind Flayer. The big set final fight scene against the two felt well-earned after five seasons spaced over ten years. The complete disappearance of all the other monsters that have otherwise played central roles in the story was a little too convenient, but the cinematography and CGI of that final battle were incredible. I’d put them on par with one of Marvel’s big hits. And, that connection and background are almost certainly to be the main fodder for future related storytelling. It opened up a whole other world of possibilities (literally).

I think what I liked most about that bit of exploring Vecna’s background is that they didn’t try to redeem him. There was a moment that looked like they might, but that’s as close as they got. It was revealed that Henry was once just a normal human kid. His powers came from this mysterious rock that became smoke in his hand and entered his body giving him his powers. That still doesn’t explain how he came to look like he does now, but there was a moment when he had the chance to resist this evil force that had come into him from the outside.

But in a move that rings with Gospel truth, Vecna reveals to Will that he didn’t want to resist it. The evil was already inside of him. It was augmented by this external force, but he was already a sociopath. His coldblooded, violent murder of the mystery man who had the rock pointed in this direction in the first place. While there may be a flash of regret at the choice he made, it wasn’t enough to convince him to turn back from it. This is consistent with the Gospel in that the evil of Satan works to lead us astray, but the brokenness of sin is already in us. Satan doesn’t make us do anything we don’t already want to do. The hope of the Gospel is that when we place our faith in Jesus, God’s Spirit comes to dwell in us to transform us from the inside out so that our deepest desires match His.

The one other thing that so caught my attention was the final sacrifice of El, and the hope-filled explanation of it in the series’ closing moments. At the end of the big set battle, when the group arrives back in Hawkins, but before bomb detonates to destroy the Upside Down, El somehow escapes and remains on the other side of the portal as the military stops the convoy and frantically looks for her so they can continue to attempt to weaponize her powers. One by one, the main characters notice her standing there and try to get to her to pull her back to their side so that she doesn’t perish along with the rest of the Upside Down.

In a touching moment, she explains to Mike that she has to sacrifice herself to save all of them, and to stop the evil military from being able to continue to keep a connection open to the dangerous Upside Down and the evil of The Abyss. Her sacrifice to save the rest of the world rings with echoes of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross to save all of the world from the powers and effects of sin.

In the closing moments of the series, though, Mike reveals to the group a hope he has. He doesn’t know if it’s true, but it is something he chooses to hope. El’s sacrifice was an elaborate ruse that began much earlier with the apparent death of her sister Kali. In truth, El managed to escape and is living somewhere else in the world—a little town with two waterfalls. But because they don’t want the military to go looking for her in order to capture her and start their awful experiments again, they can’t tell anybody. The moment rings with echoes of the resurrection. The echoes stop cold at the notion that Jesus didn’t actually die (the Swoon Theory which has been around for a long time and is thoroughly discredited as a “natural” explanation of the Gospels’ presentation of the crucifixion), but in giving some hope to El’s “resurrection,” those echoes are nonetheless familiar.

In thinking about this closing scene, I’m reminded of the haunting ending of specifically Mark’s Gospel. It is hopefully because Jesus is alive again, but it leaves this tension in place that Jesus’ followers really didn’t know yet what to make of the news and were terrified at what it might mean for them in the short term. After the group of women entered Jesus’ now empty tomb and encountered the angel with his instructions to go back and tell the group what they had discovered, “They went out and ran from the tomb, because trembling and astonishment overwhelmed them. And they said nothing to anyone, since they were afraid.”

Now, we know from harmonizing Mark’s presentation with the other three Gospels that they did indeed go and tell the rest of the group. His note there at the end that they didn’t tell anyone is referring to their not shouting the news from the rooftops of Jerusalem. That time would come, but it was not yet. The Hawkins’ crew receive this hopeful perspective from Mike, but they refuse to tell anyone about it for fear of the implications of their telling.

While Stranger Things ends at the point of Mark’s original ending, as followers of Jesus, our story doesn’t have to end there. In fact, it shouldn’t end there. We don’t have to be afraid of the implications of Jesus’ rising from the dead. We can embrace them with gusto. We can share them with boldness. We can live in light of the fact that He is alive forever and that in Him we will one day be as well. Like El, He is our connection to a whole other world, but this other world isn’t like the Abyss. This other world is the kingdom of God, and it is good. It is the place we were always meant to live. As a result, we need to share this news. The whole world needs to hear it. It needs this hope and a clear pointer to the life that is truly life.

In the end, Stranger Things was really good. You should definitely go and watch it. But the Gospel is even better. It is the source of all of the best stories. Indeed, the more our stories echo with its truths, the better they are. Why not align your story with the greatest of all stories? You’ll be glad that you did.