The One Mistake That Could Make Stranger Things Go Full Game of Thrones

Stranger Things, once untouchable, may be veering toward the very fate fans feared, with Season 5 Volume 1 sparking Game of Thrones-level jitters despite cast assurances.

Spoiler alert for Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2. The last stretch of Stranger Things just doubled down on the stuff fans were hoping it would avoid. Volume 1 landed on November 26, Volume 2 arrived on Christmas Day, and a supersized finale is queued up for New Year's Eve. It should feel like the victory lap. Instead, the warning lights are very much on.

The big problem: the show keeps contradicting itself

People have compared this slide to what happened with Game of Thrones for years. I get it. Stranger Things built a dense mythology around the Upside Down, then kept tweaking it until the rules feel wobbly. The Duffer Brothers spent years making the lore feel specific; now the revisions and retcons are starting to undercut the whole thing the way Benioff and Weiss's shortcuts did to Westeros. The Duffers teased a "Dark Christmas" for Volume 2, but the episodes rarely felt dark so much as messy.

Volume 2 feels like a stall, not a push

Story-wise, Volume 2 barely moves the ball. Instead of escalation, we get long monologues, exposition stacked on exposition, side quests that fizzle, and acting choices that don't always match the stakes. It plays like an overlong bridge to the finale rather than the penultimate surge.

The head-scratchers

• For the third time, demogorgons slip into what's supposed to be one of the world's most competent military installations. At one point, highly trained soldiers literally form a circle, pour high-caliber fire into the middle, and hit neither the creature nor each other. It looks wild, and not in a good way.
• A hospital gets overrun in Volume 2: elite ops teams are erased like nothing. Minutes later, an injured Lucas manages to boot a raging demogorgon out of an elevator. Meanwhile, back in Volume 1, a single beast wipes out armed guards. Pick a power level.
• Nancy's truck-top set piece is straight out of a video game: she pops up through a DIY roof hatch in Murray's truck and snipes multiple special-ops guards with sniper-level precision while the vehicle plows through a fortified checkpoint. It's slick, but completely divorced from realism.
• Karen Wheeler gets doused in creature goop, then immediately walks it off, whips up an on-the-spot plan, slips past prowling demodogs, and times an explosion to perfection. Sure.
• Nancy and Jonathan confess their love while stuck in Vecna's melting goo, then are conveniently saved the second it solidifies. No mechanism, no cost, just emotional beat achieved.
• Max's revival lands with a thud: Eleven barely reacts to her survival despite their bond; Will gets choked up even though he and Max haven't shared much this season; Mike shows almost no notable response to Nancy making it through, and she's his sister.
• Hopper spares Dr. Kay, and when Eleven sees her in Episode 7, she does nothing. The show keeps introducing authority figures as moral complications, then deflates the tension by shrugging them off.

The Will Byers backlash

Will has long worked as one of TV's best queer characters precisely because he read as a real kid first, not a checkbox. Volume 2 undercuts that in one swoop with his coming-out scene. It happens in the final minutes of the penultimate episode and, instead of being intimate, it's a group confession to basically everyone present — even characters on the fringes of his life like Kali and Erica. The kicker: he does it because he believes Vecna is using his secrets and insecurities against him via psychic visions, so he tries to cut off that leverage. He ties the reveal to his unrequited feelings for Mike, frames it as tactical, and then we move on.

The result: a moment that should be personal and character-driven gets turned into a plot device in the middle of an apocalypse. After years of nods and slow-burn hints, a lot of viewers — especially LGBTQ+ fans — are calling foul. It reads like queerbaiting: hold the payoff for maximum engagement, then rush it when the plot demands it, too late for depth.

Where this leaves the finale

Right now, the show feels stretched thin by retcons, big speeches, and rules that only apply when convenient. Maybe the New Year's Eve blowout threads all these choices into something satisfying. It needs to. The Stranger Things Season 5 finale drops December 31, 2025 on Netflix and in select theaters in the US and Canada.

What did Volume 2 do for you — thrilling, frustrating, or both?