Stranger Things Season 5 Finally Reveals Dustin and Suzie’s Fate

Stranger Things wrapped up, but one dangling thread has fans circling back: whatever happened with Dustin and Suzie? The finale doesn’t spell it out, which is wild considering how much else gets tied off. So Gaten Matarazzo stepped in with his own read on where that long-distance nerd romance landed.

What the finale shows (and doesn’t)

The Netflix series officially ended on December 31, 2025, and most of the core crew gets some form of closure. Dustin is clearly moving forward by the end. Suzie, on the other hand, never factors into the final stretch on-screen, which raised the obvious question.

Matarazzo’s take (not official canon)

In a chat with Business Insider, Matarazzo said there wasn’t any explicit back-and-forth with creators Matt and Ross Duffer about Dustin and Suzie’s status. This is his interpretation, not a line straight from the writers room. His logic is tied to Dustin’s headspace after the dust settles.

"I think, unfortunately, what can be assumed is that in Dustin's yearlong unhealthy grieving process — I mean, if he's cutting out the friends that are day-to-day spending time with him, you can imagine he probably cut out a long-distance relationship."

He adds that, in a perfect world, Dustin would have handled the breakup kindly. In the actual world, he doubts it, because Dustin wasn’t exactly at his best during that period. And there’s a version of this where Suzie saw the writing on the wall and ended it herself — as Matarazzo puts it, she might have been sick of his s--- and tapped out, which he says would be totally fair.

So... are Dustin and Suzie over?

Nothing is depicted or confirmed on-screen. But if you buy Matarazzo’s read: the relationship probably didn’t survive Dustin’s year of grief, and there’s a decent chance Suzie was the one to call it. He still sounds optimistic about Dustin’s future overall, though, so this isn’t doom and gloom for him long-term.

• On-screen: No breakup shown, Suzie is absent in the finale.
• Off-screen interpretation: No direct guidance from the Duffers, but Matarazzo thinks Dustin likely cut off the long-distance relationship during a rough year.
• How it ended: He suspects Suzie may have ended it, and if Dustin did, it probably wasn’t graceful.
• Where Dustin lands: Matarazzo is upbeat about where Dustin goes from here.