Stranger Things 5 Backlash: Holly Wheeler Takes Center Stage While the Main Cast Gets Sidelined

Stranger Things is wrapped, which means the post-mortem has fully kicked in. Fans are hashing out everything from whatever is still unsolved to what actually went down with Eleven in the finale. But the conversation that keeps spiking is about a character I did not expect to be the lightning rod: Holly.

The Holly debate, in a nutshell

A Reddit thread that blew up to nearly a thousand comments asked a simple question: did Holly really need to be a major player in the final season, especially if it meant shifting attention from the older kids to a younger crew? The consensus in that thread leans one way: Nell Fisher (who plays Holly) is good, but the season gave her so much focus that it felt like the main cast got benched to make room.

What fans are saying

• The vibe-chasing theory: some viewers think the Duffers tried to recapture season 1 energy with a fresh set of kids, but in doing so, they sidelined the original core to service a new thread that was supposed to tie the series together.
• The plot they wanted: a lot of people argue the heart of the season should have centered on Eleven and/or Will reaching Max and pulling her out of Vecna's mind, instead of folding in what felt like two essentially new leads alongside Holly and expanding an already packed ensemble.
• Streamline it: several commenters say Holly's entire arc could have been folded into Max's journey or cut entirely without breaking the season.
• Max took the hit: the feeling is that Holly should have been secondary to Max, not the other way around, especially in the final stretch.
• Missed pairings: the extra focus meant fewer moments for the OGs, and fans pointed out some basic interactions the show never really delivered — Steve with Eleven, Eleven with Robin, Nancy with Max — plus they wanted more Nancy with Lucas and Nancy with Dustin.
• Precedent matters: people compared Holly to newcomers who clicked into the main unit, like Max and Billy. By contrast, Holly's storyline mostly ran on its own track, with only a bit of overlap with Max.

Whether you agree or not, I get why this is touchy. In a final season, the expectation is to land the plane with the characters who carried the show. Shifting significant attention this late is always going to read as odd to part of the audience, even if the performance is strong.

No, the spinoff is not a Holly show

Despite Holly's bigger footprint in season 5, she is not fronting the spinoff. The Duffer brothers have been clear the in-development spinoff is an all-new thing with new characters, a new world, and its own mythology.

"It is obviously not Holly and the kids or anything like that. It is something much smaller than that."

If you want to revisit the whole debate yourself, the complete Stranger Things series is streaming on Netflix now.