This article contains spoilers for the Stranger Things series finale.

Lots of things went down (or Upside Down) in the Stranger Things series finale, from the reappearance of the Mind Flayer and Vecna’s death to Eleven’s (apparent?) sacrifice and even the gang’s high school graduation. The final episode’s nearly hour-long epilogue takes us into the final battle’s aftermath, running down the fates and futures of pretty much every major character before passing the torch — and the Dungeons & Dragons game — to a literal new generation. It’s heartwarming, bittersweet, and hopeful by turns, and (for the most part at least, if we ignore the Eleven of it all) as satisfying as anyone could have hoped for. 

Lucas and Max finally get their movie date. Dustin resurrects Hellfire to tell the system to go [expletive] itself one last time. Joyce and Hopper get engaged. Will (presumably) moves to a city that actually has an active queer nightlife. Mike keeps telling stories, of both the fictional and the perhaps not-so-much variety. Nancy drops out of college to chase her journalism dreams, while Jonathan sets out to make what sounds like the most pretentious horror movie on Earth. Everyone appears to be relatively happy and surprisingly well-adjusted, even if most are wrestling with the same bittersweet existential questions that most young people face at such a major transition point in their lives. But only one character appears to be genuinely thriving, both confident in his own identity and secure in the choices he’s made: Steve Harrington. 

Steve’s journey over the course of Stranger Things’ five seasons is a fairly remarkable one — particularly considering that he originally wasn’t even supposed to survive its first. A literal zero-to-hero narrative on steroids, Steve’s evolution from selfish jerk to selfless leader is a deeply satisfying ode to the power and possibility of change, a reminder that we can all be something more today than we were yesterday. That he should wind up with the show’s most satisfying ending feels not just right, but earned, a payoff for the years of work he’s done to become something more than he once was — a better leader, a better friend, a better person.

Sure, on paper, it may not seem like much. Steve, after all, not only stays in Hawkins when characters like Nancy, Jonathan, Robin, and Will leave their former lives behind, but he’s literally still employed at the high school they all once attended. But arrested development this is not. In fact, Steve is the character who, by the story’s end, seems most at peace with himself, who is content in a way that it’s not entirely clear any other character on the series’ canvas has yet managed to achieve. Perhaps this is because the events of Stranger Things have already required Steve to confront the person he’s been and the one he wants to become in more direct ways than some of his friends, or maybe it’s just because he’s the kind of person who was always meant for a simpler kind of life. Either way, it works. 

Yet, while Steve’s life is perhaps smaller than he once thought it would turn out to be, it’s rich in meaning (and apparently also cash, if he’s already planning to buy real estate at the ripe old age of maybe 20 years old). He’s a teacher and a coach, helping to shape the youth of Hawkins in ways that are less directly related to the potential end of the world but that are no less impactful.

It’s not an accident that pretty much every kid on his baseball team is one of the 12 Vecna kidnapped, meaning that Steve is still shepherding and protecting those who need his help. (His six nuggets have essentially become a dozen at this point.) He’s going on road trips with Dustin during his summer college breaks. He’s dating, frequently and unsuccessfully it seems, but still with an eye toward settling down. (Presumably, he still wants those six nuggets of his own.) And despite everything that’s happened there, he’s still able to see the beauty in Hawkins, enough that he never seems to have even considered making his life elsewhere. 

There’s plenty of stuff to nitpick when it comes to the ways that the Duffer brothers chose to wrap up this show. (See also: Eleven’s ambitious disappearance, the inexplicable MacGuffin space rock that corrupted Henry, the over-the-top violence of Vecna’s death.) But the fact that the show does so right by one of its most beloved fan favorites goes a long way to making this finale a success, even if it might leave you wondering why everyone couldn’t be afforded this same treatment.

All of Stranger Things is now streaming on Netflix.

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