When you accidentally ruin your show

0:00 Hey, guy.

0:00 I talked a little bit about season five of "Stranger Things"

0:03 in my last video right before the final episode came out.

0:07 At that point, I was so underwhelmed by the season as a whole that I

0:11 didn't expect the finale to sway my opinion

0:13 about it that much in either direction.

0:16 But everything that has transpired since then is so fascinating

0:21 to me that I simply have to talk about it.

0:24 A finale so tepid, so unsatisfying that it caused millions

0:29 of fans to craft conspiracy theories about a secret ninth episode,

0:33 followed by the show's creators going on a generationally bad press run.

0:39 I needed some fucking money.

0:40 [Drew] And a behind the scenes documentary that more than

0:43 anything else only made the two of them look dumb.

0:47 I mean, the thing that's cool is the giant monster.

0:49 Let's start with the finale itself,

0:51 which was released the night of New Year's Eve.

0:54 That's fine.

0:54 It's not like I had plans or anything.

0:58 I don't know why I said it like that.

0:59 It was fine, and I didn't have plans.

1:01 Here's everything that pissed me off in the finale.

1:03 One, the long-ass cut to black when Steve fell.

1:06 Oh no!

1:08 Oh, oh!

1:09 Oh.

1:10 Thank God.

1:11 They caught him.

1:12 This was the most SpongeBob rollercoaster-ass moment of the entire show.

1:17 I did not think for one second that Steve was gonna die

1:20 here because nobody with significant screen time ever dies in this show.

1:25 They didn't even kill off one of the Wheeler

1:27 parents who got brutally attacked by monsters.

1:30 Everyone will die!

1:31 It's gonna be okay.

1:32 Or Murray, who has no personality and speaks only in quips.

1:36 You get too loud in the sack, she shush you.

1:38 If he died in some embarrassing and hilarious way,

1:42 everyone would've given you a standing ovation,

1:45 but they didn't even have the balls to do that.

1:47 So I'm supposed to think that we're gonna come back

1:49 from this blackout with fan favorite Steve Harrington just dead on the ground?

1:54 No.

1:55 This is the cinematic equivalent of playing peekaboo.

1:58 You're treating me like a baby.

2:00 The idea of him saving Steve.

2:02 You know, this is gonna really mess with people.

2:04 Unfortunately, one person that does die is Kali.

2:07 Rest in peace.

2:08 Not that this contradicts my point at all,

2:10 because I'm pretty sure she was on screen

2:12 for a total of like 10 minutes, the entire series.

2:15 She was in one episode eight years ago,

2:18 and they brought her back just to kill her.

2:20 This was played like it's supposed to be this really emotional moment,

2:25 but I'm sorry, I don't care about this character.

2:29 She's not part of the show.

2:31 It actually makes me kind of mad because the Duffers

2:33 clearly are trying to have their cake and eat it too.

2:36 They want us to be sad when they kill someone,

2:39 but they don't want to kill anyone who would actually make us sad.

2:43 And even if they do, they'll follow it up with, "Or maybe we didn't." Guys,

2:47 please don't be mad at us.

2:48 The one cool moment that actually shocked me

2:51 in this finale was when Vecna tricks Hopper into shooting El,

2:55 and for a few seconds we think something terrible just happened.

2:59 It's so jarring and unexpected and serves as this temporary

3:03 reminder of how powerful the villain is supposed to be.

3:06 But nothing really comes out of it.

3:08 I mean, sure it throws a little bit of a wrench in their plan,

3:11 but they figure everything out anyway.

3:13 [Matt] This is gonna really mess with people.

3:14 Really this just feels like a big missed opportunity.

3:17 Why wasn't Vecna doing shit like this the whole season?

3:20 This guy can give people vivid hallucinations.

3:23 He could have spent the past few months slowly eroding everybody's trust,

3:27 making them question what's real,

3:29 even to the point that they start turning on each other.

3:31 Think of how much more tension that could have added,

3:33 how much more formidable it would've made your main villain.

3:36 Instead, he spent the whole season running a daycare.

3:40 We spent more time watching him intimidate

3:41 a bunch of random kids that we don't know

3:44 than we did watching the relationships of the core

3:47 characters actually get developed in a meaningful way.

3:50 Anyway, eventually the gang moves from one blue screen to another,

3:54 only this one looks worse.

3:57 And we get to see them walk and talk, and they walk and they talk.

4:01 And now it's finally time for the ultimate battle.

4:04 10 years of "Stranger Things" has led to this moment.

4:08 A climactic showdown between our scrappy

4:10 group of teenagers and Winona Rider versus

4:13 one of the most dangerous and evil freaks the world has ever known,

4:17 taking the form of the Mind Flayer,

4:19 a hundred foot tall beast with sprawling tentacle arms.

4:23 They killed him.

4:26 They just jumped inside and chopped him up.

4:27 The final battle was so quick and easy and so

4:31 early into the runtime of the episode that I thought,

4:33 surely the other shoe is about to drop.

4:36 It's classic misdirection.

4:37 You think you beat the boss only to realize there's

4:40 actually a second phase and you already set down your controller.

4:43 But no, that was it.

4:45 No Demogorgons to deal with.

4:46 No Demodogs.

4:48 Demobats.

4:49 Not even like a Democockroach?

4:51 Nothing?

4:51 A group of 16-year-olds with a spear and a flare

4:54 gun took down Satan himself without even getting a scratch.

4:58 Dustin has a bigger scar from getting punched by another

5:02 teenager than any of these people do from fighting this.

5:07 You know the saying about how if you wanna boil a frog,

5:10 you have to like slowly turn the temperature

5:11 of the water up to keep him from jumping out?

5:13 Kind of a weird way to describe that specific phenomenon,

5:16 but almost exactly how I felt watching "Stranger Things" in this moment.

5:20 I don't think it truly set in how far we strayed from where we started

5:23 until the water was already 200 degrees

5:26 and my little frog ass was getting boiled.

5:28 But if you showed me this clip in 2016

5:31 right after I finished watching the first season,

5:34 I would be like, "What the fuck?

5:35 "I just finished watching "this small town sci-fi mystery noir,

5:40 "and this looks like a scene from 'Avengers:

5:43 Endgame.'" And you'd be like, "Wait,

5:44 how do you know what 'Avengers: Endgame' looks like?

5:46 "That's not coming out for another three years." And I'd be like,

5:48 "Eh, I don't know." The trajectory this show went on is baffling.

5:52 The dialogue got dumbed down to appeal to a younger audience,

5:56 even though, in theory, the audience should have just gotten older.

6:01 'Cause that's how time works.

6:02 And for a series that was filled with so

6:04 many cool elements of sci-fi and horror to all

6:08 culminate in this ugly green screen action sequence where

6:12 one character does a big jump is such a letdown.

6:15 Because of how lackluster this all was and because

6:18 we were still like halfway through the episode,

6:20 I thought, surely there's going to be something more.

6:23 My anticipation slowly grew into disappointment as I

6:26 realized the hour of runtime remaining was

6:29 just a gratuitously long epilogue filled

6:31 to the brim with what this season did best,

6:35 characters in a circle talking about the things they're going to do.

6:39 Thank you?

6:39 (characters laugh)- After all this time, years of investment into the show,

6:44 and the final word of legible dialogue is "fart."- Fart.

6:50 [Drew] No, this can't be right.

6:52 I don't believe it.

6:53 What about all the clues?

6:54 The set pieces, they were the wrong color.

6:56 The song at the end has only been used when something on the show isn't real.

7:01 Steve wouldn't coach baseball.

7:03 He was on the basketball team.

7:05 And what about the clocks and all of those weird Will lines where he

7:08 would insist on being cold and he would get facts about his memories mixed up.

7:11 He must be under Vecna's control.

7:14 Maybe we're under Vecna's control.

7:16 And there's a secret ninth episode dropping tonight.

7:18 If you type secret ending into Netflix,

7:20 it takes you right to "Stranger Things." The Morse code literally translates

7:23 to "you did not stop me."-

7:25 The Duffer Brothers wear two very particular t-shirts.

7:27 Right after Steve falls, the screen goes black for seven seconds.

7:30 Why did Netflix release a trailer?

7:32 Their graduation colors are orange.

7:33 And why are they selling a flashlight?

7:35 Did we just predict the biggest plot twist in television history?

7:38 That's right.

7:39 This finale was fake.

7:40 They made the whole season bad on purpose to get us to let our guard down.

7:44 But the real ninth episode is coming out on January 7th, or I mean January 18th.

7:51 Sorry.

7:52 What I meant was during the Super Bowl halftime show.

7:56 His face goes dark at eight.

7:57 Super Bowl halftime starts at eight o'clock.

8:00 We're gonna see the real ending.

8:01 So this is on bck.lt, which is like a casting website.

8:03 The ability to wear costume that fully covers the body.

8:07 My brain went right to Demogorgons.

8:09 You know, at first I watched that and I was like,

8:11 does she think the only full body costume on Earth is Demogorgons?

8:16 That there's not a single other character they could possibly be dressing up as?

8:20 But then I went back and watched the show and I noticed something.

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9:52 Honestly, I have to hand it to some of these TikTok editors.

9:54 These videos are so well put together,

9:57 for about a day and a half, I was fully on board.

10:00 I don't want it to seem like I'm making

10:02 fun of these people because really they were just

10:05 disappointed in a thing that they love and they

10:07 were still in the early stages of denial about it.

10:10 If you go back throughout the show,

10:11 there's so many lines and visuals that seemed to be foreshadowing something.

10:17 That's why people had such high expectations, not because they're delusional,

10:20 but because they thought that all the time they spent paying close

10:24 attention and analyzing every little detail would be rewarded at the end.

10:28 But once the time passed and it became clear

10:30 that episode eight was in fact the true finale,

10:33 all of these secret hints that everyone hyper-focused

10:36 on turned back into what they always were, bad writing and production errors.

10:41 And all of that charged up excitement and anticipation turned into rage.

10:46 Fuck the Duffer Brothers.

10:47 These guys aren't playing 4D chess.

10:49 They probably don't even know how to play checkers!

10:51 It was so interesting to watch all of this unfold because at its core,

10:55 Conformity Gate was not that different than a lot of other conspiracy theories,

11:00 almost all of which are simply born out of dissatisfaction with a given answer.

11:04 I'm probably paraphrasing that Contra Points video here,

11:07 but as human beings, we don't like randomness.

11:10 We would rather ascribe intentionality to something than accept

11:13 that the world we live in is just full of chaos.

11:16 It's scary to think that a random person could assassinate a president,

11:20 so there has to be more to the story.

11:22 The show I've loved for half my life can't have a bad ending.

11:26 There has to be more to the story.

11:28 But sometimes there isn't.

11:29 Will saying he misses drinking milkshakes at Melvald's even though

11:34 they don't sell milkshakes is not some 200 IQ misdirect.

11:37 It was just a writing mistake.

11:39 The color of this dial changing from gray to red was

11:42 not an Easter egg for the audience to pick up on.

11:44 It was just a continuity error.

11:46 Maybe they shot it one way and then decided that red would pop better

11:50 on camera and assumed nobody would care enough to make a viral TikTok about it.

11:55 Regardless, the obsessive nature of Conformity Gate and the collective

12:00 anger that ensued when these admittedly cool fan

12:03 theories turned out to be fake almost definitely would

12:06 not have happened if the finale was just good.

12:10 If this final episode wasn't so underwhelming,

12:13 it wouldn't have given millions of fans the motivation to go digging for clues.

12:18 So while I'm sure the Duffer Brothers never expected all of this to happen,

12:22 it is still kind of their fault.

12:24 And now they'd have to deal with the consequences.

12:27 So then comes time for the press tour where Matt

12:29 and Ross would go from podcast to interview to television appearance,

12:34 addressing everyone's burning questions with answers like, "We don't know.

12:38 "We never thought about it like that.

12:40 "And if that did happen,

12:41 it happened off screen." Every day for about three weeks,

12:45 I would wake up and see some new quote

12:47 from the Duffer Brothers that had absolutely no substance.

12:51 What is even the point of doing all

12:54 these interviews if you're not going to say anything?

12:56 What happened to Robin and Vickie?

12:58 That's a good question.

13:01 I don't...

13:01 God...

13:02 Certain things are open to interpretation.

13:03 I don't know.

13:04 I don't know.

13:05 I don't, I truly don't know.

13:06 I don't know what happened to them.

13:07 Ross and I know.

13:08 I don't know.

13:08 Oh, for...

13:09 Yeah, I don't know.

13:10 We just don't know.

13:11 And to be fair, not every question demands an answer.

13:14 You should certainly be allowed to let your art speak

13:17 for itself and leave some ambiguity in the things that you create.

13:21 But some of these questions do raise some pretty good points.

13:26 Like, I thought it was weird that after

13:28 blowing up the portal to the Upside Down, the military seemed to just go away.

13:33 Like, sure, they're not chasing Eleven anymore,

13:35 but the rest of the kids did kill a bunch of 'em.

13:39 So I think this is a perfectly fair question for an interviewer to ask.

13:43 Here's Ross' answer.

13:44 "My guess is they just sort of left." Your guess?

13:50 Brother, you wrote the show.

13:52 Hey, what happened to Murray?

13:53 I don't know.

13:54 And why did Vecna need exactly 12 kids?

13:57 No reason.

13:58 And how come Will didn't feel anything while the Mind Flayer was getting killed?

14:02 He just wanted to focus on the other guys.

14:04 Even when they did give answers,

14:06 there certainly doesn't seem to be a lot of confidence in them.

14:09 A lot of people wanna know about who unlocked the door in season one,

14:12 episode one and let the Demogorgon in definitively?

14:15 Say now?

14:18 Yeah, I mean, that was, that's...

14:21 Vecna using psyonic, his psyonic abilities through the Demo.

14:28 Oh, okay, yeah.

14:29 I guess that makes sense.

14:31 Although Vecna didn't exist yet at the time.

14:34 Sure, he canonically was alive during that scene.

14:38 But when they were writing it, they hadn't come up with him yet.

14:41 So what was the justification at the time?

14:44 It kind of feels like you're just retconning a mistake you

14:47 made and trying to act like it was the plan all along,

14:50 which, to be honest, is not that big of a deal.

14:52 I'm not gonna grill them on every

14:54 little inconsistency from season one to season five,

14:57 because at the time, they never expected the show to go on as long as it did.

15:01 The only reason I'm annoyed about this is

15:03 because they said it would be answered.

15:06 Months ago, unprompted, they were like, "In season five,

15:10 you're finally gonna know "who opened that door."

15:13 I was willing to move on from this.

15:14 You're the one who brought it up.

15:15 Is this what you meant though,

15:17 that that question would finally be answered on a podcast?

15:21 I guess I thought you meant you were gonna do it in the show.

15:25 Cut me some slack.

15:26 I think generally speaking,

15:27 the reason why people are so bothered by these errors, even the minor ones,

15:31 is that the Duffers have spent years

15:33 telling everybody to pay attention to everything.

15:36 There are no such thing as coincidences.

15:38 These details that seem random might not be random at all.

15:43 They're actually small pieces woven

15:45 into this intricate fabric we're waiting to unveil.

15:49 And then the show ended with the most cookie cutter ending of all time.

15:53 So what the hell were you talking about?

15:54 Another disappointment with the overly simplistic final fight sequence is

15:58 that all of these creatures that have terrorized these people

16:01 the entire show that we know live in this abyss

16:04 just completely disappeared when it came time to fight Henry.

16:08 It feels like such a huge missed opportunity.

16:11 So why weren't any of them there?

16:13 Well, it's because Vecna wasn't ready.

16:17 How was he supposed to know they were coming?

16:18 It's not like he's some kind of mind reader.

16:21 Oh wait, I guess he is.

16:22 I'm sorry, the omnipotent,

16:24 telepathic devil creature who can see into people's brains from anywhere

16:28 in the world didn't know what they were up to?

16:32 They spent half the season talking about their plans.

16:35 You didn't wanna pop into one of those meetings and take some notes?

16:38 I'm pretty sure the only time he actually used

16:40 this power was to figure out where Max was.

16:43 She was in the hospital, Henry.

16:45 He knows where she is now.

16:47 I don't think you needed telepathy to find the girl in a coma.

16:51 Where the hell else would she be?

16:53 I remember liking a lot of what they did with Vecna in season four,

16:57 but by the end, this became such a stupid character.

17:01 He's all powerful and all knowing, and yet he got tricked by a bunch of kids.

17:05 He's bulletproof and indestructible until he merges with the giant monster.

17:10 Then you just have to jump through his neck hole and hit him with an axe.

17:12 I like the show a lot better when the antagonist was more mysterious,

17:16 when the threat was a demonic alternate dimension,

17:20 and not just the Grinch but evil.

17:23 Does not bite me in the ass.

17:24 But as bad as all those interviews were,

17:26 nothing made the Duffers seem more incompetent than

17:29 the documentary that Netflix released about season five.

17:32 Today's a very interesting day.

17:33 We are shooting episode eight, which isn't completely written yet,

17:37 so we don't even fully know what's going on.

17:40 We went into production without having a finished script for the finale.

17:44 Oh, okay.

17:45 Well, that makes sense.

17:46 The reason everything seemed unplanned and rushed was because it was.

17:50 It's so funny that they're like, "Man, a lot riding on this finale.

17:54 "We cannot fuck this up."- [Matt] You see these shows that people love,

17:58 and the ending falters, and they just discard the rest of the show.

18:03 You can't leave anything dangling.

18:04 You have to wrap everything up.

18:06 And then they wasted all the time they had to write

18:08 the script and had to rush it out after they started filming.

18:12 I never read eight through.

18:14 And we're just shooting it.

18:15 I mean, they know how it's gonna end.

18:17 They just have to, you know, write it down.

18:19 It's not like we don't know what the ending is.

18:21 It's like, it's all plotted out.

18:21 I just have to write it.

18:23 [Drew] There are multiple crew members stressing out about the timeline

18:26 that's been thrust upon them because Matt and Ross have procrastinated.

18:31 [Interviewer] Do you have a script?

18:33 No.

18:34 We don't.

18:35 [Drew] They have all these meetings to try

18:36 to get some idea of what they need to do,

18:38 but since none of it is set in stone yet,

18:41 they might end up wasting a bunch of time.

18:43 Inevitably it's gonna change as we keep writing in.

18:47 (sighs) All right.

18:48 And they just threw a whole new concept of like what the floor is like.

18:50 We're gonna get a script and it's gonna be like, "Oh,

18:52 there's the other like 70% of business

18:54 "that we couldn't account for."- I feel like

18:57 there's moments where you can even see

18:58 the actors starting to lose faith in the show.

19:01 Like, Natalia asking if there's any scientific logic behind something.

19:05 It's all very realistic.

19:06 Are you consulting somebody?

19:08 [Drew] Or this clip of Maya giving the blankest

19:11 stare while watching the footage they just shot.

19:13 It's really funny to juxtapose some of the responses

19:16 they've given in interviews with footage from this documentary.

19:20 Like, the answer about there being no Demogorgons

19:22 in the final fight because Vecna, you know,

19:24 didn't think to ask for their help is only an attempt

19:27 to justify the fact that they just didn't wanna write about them anymore.

19:31 Yeah, I guess like I maybe wonder about Demo fatigue at the...

19:36 [Matt] Yeah, I mean, that's fair.

19:38 That's such a funny thing to say because like, no.

19:41 I'm pretty sure anyone who's stuck around this far into the show is

19:45 not tired of seeing the creatures that have been in it since the beginning.

19:50 That would be like spending the entire "Star Wars" trilogy

19:53 building up to a fight between Luke and Darth Vader,

19:55 and then right when you get to the end,

19:57 you're like, "Wait, don't you think people are gonna be kind of bored

19:59 "of lightsabers at this point?" And then Darth Vader turns into a spider.

20:02 I love their response when one of the writers tries to point this out.

20:06 There have to be some monsters in the abyss.

20:08 [Matt] I agree.

20:09 There has to be Demogorgon, bat, dog, like something.

20:12 It's crazy if there's nothing there, I think.

20:17 Hm.

20:18 Hm.

20:20 Wrong.

20:21 Okay, well guess that's the end of that conversation.

20:23 I mean, the thing that's cool is the giant monster.

20:26 [Drew] Of course, as with most behind the scenes documentaries,

20:28 it is really cool to see how a show this big gets made,

20:32 the amount of time and physical labor,

20:34 the creativity from so many different departments,

20:37 the extremely delicate balance required to maintain all of these moving parts,

20:42 and in this instance, how these two doofuses fucked all that up.

20:45 And then I don't know what the fuck happens to 'em.

20:47 I found this quote from them in an LA

20:49 Times article that I thought was pretty funny.

20:51 They were talking about how they went

20:52 into production of the finale without finishing the script,

20:54 and obviously they're describing it like it's a good thing,

20:56 because they have to defend their process.

20:59 But they say at the end, "We're not sure if this is our fault,

21:01 "but Netflix won't let anyone do this anymore.

21:05 "They don't wanna start filming before the script is done.

21:09 "Surely that has nothing to do with us though." Now look, generally speaking,

21:12 I'm gonna take the side of a creative team over the studio that they work for.

21:17 I think a lot of what these executives push

21:20 can be antithetical to the process of making art.

21:23 In almost every other situation, I would put more of the blame on the studio,

21:27 but they're talking about how Netflix is breathing down their necks.

21:33 [Matt] We were getting hammered constantly

21:35 by production and by Netflix for episode eight.

21:38 It's like, yeah.

21:40 You had two years to write it, and you didn't.

21:43 [Matt] It was the most difficult

21:45 writing circumstances we've ever found ourselves in.

21:47 The only reason there's this much of a time pressure

21:49 is because they wasted 80% of the time they were given.

21:53 This isn't like a workplace comedy where you could leave a couple

21:56 scenes open-ended because you're gonna leave room for your actors to improvise.

22:00 This is the grand finale of a high budget narrative-driven sci-fi show.

22:06 No matter what you write, there is so much production work that goes into it.

22:10 There are giant sets to build, visual effects to bring to life,

22:14 the quality of which will almost directly correlate with how

22:17 much time the artists are given to create them.

22:20 There are hundreds of people who work on this show,

22:23 and none of them can do their job until you finish yours,

22:26 and you've been dicking around for two years.

22:29 I've seen a lot of people be like, "Why would the Duffers even put out

22:33 this documentary "when it makes them look so dumb?"

22:36 And an important thing to note here is

22:39 that they're only credited in this for their appearance.

22:42 They're not listed as editors or producers.

22:45 I don't think they had any control over what was shown here.

22:49 Obviously the show itself is their creative vision,

22:52 but it certainly seems like this documentary was done entirely by a separate

22:56 crew who came in just to film some of the process.

23:00 And who knows what their motive is behind this.

23:02 Going forward, the Duffers are no longer a part of Netflix.

23:06 They signed an exclusive deal with Paramount that's about to kick

23:10 in, so Netflix really has no reason to be loyal to them.

23:14 In fact, I'm sure they loved the idea of sabotaging them a little

23:17 bit before they left to go work for one of their competitors.

23:20 Watching this documentary through that lens,

23:23 it really seems like they did everything they could to blame

23:26 the issues of season five solely on Matt and Ross,

23:29 because really there are so many things

23:31 in here that make the Duffers look awful.

23:34 One of the hardest to watch is

23:36 this conversation where one of them is talking about

23:38 how he hasn't had any time to work on the script because he has kids now,

23:41 and he asked one of the other crew members if he has kids,

23:44 and he's like, "Yeah."- I was working when they were young.

23:47 And, you know, I mean...

23:49 That's never stopped me from doing my job though.

23:52 Dude, I don't think anybody should be forced to work seven days a week.

23:56 And that's awesome that you wanted to spend some extra time with your kids.

23:59 But like, I can't stress this enough, you had two full years.

24:04 I'm pretty sure there was room in there for some work life balance.

24:07 You know, I think the reason I'm so drawn to this, the common thread between

24:11 the Duffer Brothers and some of the other people I've talked about on my channel

24:15 in the past is I think I'm just fascinated seeing someone get too successful

24:19 for their own good and then end up way out of their depth because of it.

24:24 Like, just because Jake Paul was good at making YouTube

24:27 videos for nine-year-olds doesn't mean he should write a book.

24:30 Just because Ninja was really good at "Fortnite" for a couple

24:33 years doesn't mean he should teach a masterclass about it.

24:36 My hair was blue.

24:37 [Drew] And just because the Duffers are pretty good directors,

24:39 which I do think that they are, doesn't mean they're great writers.

24:43 They talked pretty openly about how that was never what they wanted to do.

24:47 [Matt] Ross and I had no interest in writing at all.

24:50 To them writing was more of a means to an end,

24:52 that they would only be given the opportunity

24:54 to direct if they wrote their own project.

24:56 Clearly they're good enough writers.

24:58 They started this show with a really good idea.

25:00 But I think it's clear that the difference between a good writer

25:03 and a great writer is being able to finish what you started.

25:06 It's a lot easier to throw out a bunch of ideas early

25:09 on in a show than it is to tie them all together at the end.

25:13 In early seasons, you can do almost anything.

25:15 You can introduce whatever you want.

25:18 It almost doesn't even need to make sense yet because you'll

25:20 get the benefit of the doubt that it'll all get explained later.

25:22 You can just keep kicking that can down the road.

25:25 And that's all great, until you get to the end and you're surrounded

25:29 by all the cans you've kicked and you're like,

25:31 "What the fuck am I supposed to do with these?" It's

25:33 too late to come up with answers for all of them,

25:35 so you just have to focus on the ones you think matter

25:37 the most and hope to God nobody notices all the ones that you didn't.

25:41 And unfortunately for Matt and Ross,

25:42 this show was way too big for that to happen.

25:45 A lot of these fans paid more attention to it than they did.

25:48 They noticed so many mistakes that they convinced themselves that they

25:51 were following the intentional breadcrumbs of a massive conspiracy theory.

25:55 But watching this documentary only makes

25:57 the idea that the Duffers are some super

25:59 genius writing duo with this giant trick

26:02 up their sleeve honestly kind of hilarious.

26:05 We wanted to get it right.

26:06 It was the most important script of the season.

26:08 The thing that's cool is the giant monster.

26:11 That these guys were about to subvert the entire medium of television

26:15 by releasing a secret alternate finale in a way that nobody else ever has?

26:21 No.

26:22 It was always going to be the safest ending imaginable.

26:25 A finale meticulously engineered to ruffle as few feathers as possible.

26:30 And ironically, by being so unambitious,

26:33 they actually did make a lot of people upset.

26:35 I think what the finale and the interviews

26:38 and the documentary all made clear is that by the end,

26:41 the Duffers just didn't care that much about this show anymore.

26:45 I think more than anything else, they were just ready for it to be over.

26:48 In 10 years when we're talking,

26:50 are we talking about more stories with these characters?

26:53 If you're betting men, what do you say?

26:57 I hope not.

26:58 I don't want, we don't want to.

26:59 I mean, we really don't.

27:01 [Drew] I honestly understand the procrastination because I'm

27:03 sure it was so overwhelming to sit down and try to write their way out

27:08 of the corner that they had painted themselves into.

27:11 When you realize, "Oh wait, "people are gonna remember all the things

27:13 I've been saying "for the past 10 years?

27:15 "I don't even remember all that shit." I

27:17 think they were so stressed that they were like,

27:19 "You know what, let's just wrap this thing up, "do a big fight,

27:23 everyone will live happily ever after, "and then we don't have to think

27:26 about this show "ever again." But unfortunately,

27:28 in their rush to move on, they've kind

27:31 of retroactively damaged the rest of the show.

27:34 Turns out if you abandoned a bunch

27:36 of plot lines and butcher most of your characters,

27:38 it leaves a pretty bitter taste in people's mouths.

27:41 To this day, I've still never watched "Game of Thrones"

27:44 because I know how much people hate the ending.

27:46 No matter how good the rest of the show is supposed to be,

27:49 it's hard for me to wanna watch it when I know I'll

27:52 just be bracing myself for what's waiting for me at the end.

27:54 The Duffers said there worst fear was doing that to this show,

27:58 so it's probably eating away at them to see how people are talking about it,

28:03 especially since everybody is still judging them on the fake ending.

28:08 How are you gonna say Conformity Gate isn't

28:09 real when the evidence is literally right there?

28:12 Episode nine, Super Bowl halftime show,

28:14 stands full of Demogorgons, Bad Bunny turns into Vecna,

28:17 Sam Darnold turns into Finn Wolfhard,

28:19 and "Stranger Things" fans everywhere will finally get the ending we deserve.

28:23 Also 34-17 Seahawks.

28:25 Thanks for watching.