#Joyce and Nancy are probably safe but if they die I’m pretty sure it’d be a more respectful ending than what I’ve described

[heavencasteel420]

Okay, so these are the worst endings I can think of for each character (within the universe of what I think is even slightly probable—there’s some characters I don’t think they’ll kill, and some character assassination they won’t stoop to):

Joyce: She continues to act as a sidekick to Hopper, but she doesn’t even have comedic material to work with because it’s the last season and everything’s serious. We continue to learn nothing about her past or her interests. She has minimal interaction with Will, and somehow none with El or Jonathan. One or two of her kids die and she seems only a little sad. She goes out on the note of making a New Start with Hopper and the remaining kid(s). They also make her more of Traditional Good Housewife for some reason.

Hopper: They really double down on making him a renegade cop who solves all problems with violence. He has not learned shit since Season 3. His interactions with Joyce and El are underwritten, and no one ever really acknowledges that he’s close to being Will and Jonathan’s stepfather. He has some interaction with Mike but spends more time validating Dustin or Steve, which is nice but why is that the focus?

Murray: he shows up, flails around yelling at people to kiss, shares a very heteronormative and not very revealing back story (college girlfriend killed by a wheat thresher?) that we don’t really have time for, and dies.

Jonathan: he is forced to play the Romantic Comedy Fiancé in the dreaded love triangle, and is framed as and vilified for thinking that he’s better than Steve. Nancy gives a speech about how Steve has changed so much while Jonathan hasn’t. His history of trauma and poverty is either ignored or presented pretty unsympathetically as stuff he needs to get over. For maximum ill effect, his real problem is that he needs to forgive his father. He has minimal interaction with his family and none with anyone else. He dies saving Nancy and/or Steve, and is therefore redeemed for his heinous crimes of smoking pot and not fellating Steve. Will’s pretty sad; Nancy and Joyce are lightly misty.

Nancy: She ends up with Steve, and all of her character development throughout the show is framed as the misguided actions of a scared little girl. Now that she’s over her trauma, she’ll no longer need to date a person not of her social class or seriously pursue a career or pick up a gun ever again. She has “matured” enough to realize that life on the cul-de-sac is actually great if your man is good enough. This is presented as her being at peace, but it comes off as very sexist. The last shot of her has her riding beside Steve in an RV with a couple of kids in the backseat. It’s 1995 but her hair is very 2023. Steve is also a cop in this scenario. She doesn’t interact much with anyone outside the love triangle, especially not her own family.

Steve: he loses all his brain cells and devotes all his non-action screentime to mooning over Nancy, even ignoring Robin and Dustin. He gets to look badass in the action scenes from time to time, but he suffers from Late Game Jon Snow Syndrome, where he’s presented as a super-competent guy but all his plans are bad. Outside the action scenes, he’s either comically stupid or everyone acts like he is. He does not figure out anything about himself, and there’s no delving into anything psychologically interesting (is he at all fucked up from the events of past seasons? What’s his family like?). He dies saving Nancy. She, Robin, Dustin, and maybe a few others mourn him, but the way they talk about him sounds suspiciously close to the way you’d eulogize the family golden retriever.

Robin: she’s completely reduced to comic relief and cheerleading Steve, and all the characters act like she’s annoying. She’s extremely inept at all things, to the point that it seems like the show is engaging in mean-spirited mockery of a disabled young adult. She mentions Vickie once and otherwise might as well not have a sexuality. She becomes really hostile towards Nancy for “breaking Steve’s heart,” and overall is much more invested in Steve’s love life than her own. It becomes clear that Maya Hawke has opted to portray her this season by doing a Phoebe from Friends impression the whole time. Her hair is also very 2023.

Argyle: he’s just not there, and no one ever mentions him again.

Mike: he spends most of the season getting dumped on for being a bad boyfriend to El and a bad friend to Will and the rest of the party, in a way that would kind of make sense if he was a thirty-five-year-old man but is pretty ridiculous in light of him being a fifteen-year-old boy. He “redeems” himself by sacrificing his life for El’s. We never get to find out what his whole deal was; the whole thing is vague enough so that it feels sort of homophobic but we’re not exactly sure why. He does not interact with Nancy.

Will: he is tempted to join forces with Vecna, and finally succumbs specifically because he’s jealous of El’s relationship with Mike. He’s saved from himself at the last minute by El, in a way that feels pretty impersonal; she’s doing it less because she cares about him specifically and more because she’s the hero. Breaking away from Vecna costs him his life, however. Joyce pretty much tells El that she’s a replacement for Will. The other characters honor his memory but in kind of an infantilizing way; they either don’t know about or awkwardly ignore his sexuality.

Dustin: he becomes embittered and volatile following Eddie’s death, but, instead of this being a sympathetic problem for him to deal with or a generator of conflict within a group, it becomes a source of comic relief. It’s a running gag that the other characters will turn around and see that Dustin has fucked shit up in a fit of rage. He also becomes subtly crasser and more sexist. He dies fighting against Vecna, and his friends honor his memory, but also in a pretty infantilizing way.

Lucas: he’s reduced to being quietly sad about Max and acting as a bland voice of reason within the party. He apologizes to his friends onscreen for trying to do an extracurricular activity that they weren’t into last season. He gets minimal interaction with Erica, and there’s no delving into his traumas or family life or interests. Ultimately he sacrifices himself so that Max can wake up from her coma or otherwise be saved.

El: she sacrifices herself in the fight against Vecna, after expounding at length about how she’s too damaged to live a normal life or have a relationship. It’s kind of implied that she and Vecna are, in a sense, getting married on another plane of existence. Her friends and family memorialize her, but in an infantilizing way—lots of Eggo and superhero references.

Max: she survives her coma but is visually impaired and/or can’t walk, and the show doesn’t handle her disabilities well at all. In a retrograde reprise of the previous season, she pushes Lucas away because she doesn’t want to “burden” him. He protests, but no one actually points out that people with disabilities can have full, happy lives. The defeat of Vecna magically cures her, but Lucas is dead so she has to be all Titanic about it.

Erica: the show doubles down on her jingoistic streak and also makes her a fan of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” She’s basically an evil baby genius by the end of the show. More grounded moments, like her interactions with Lucas and Dustin, are nowhere to be seen.

If any of these happen, I get a treat, to console me about the awful writing.

[tiktaalic]

Genuinely suspect they’ll kill one fan favorite main character in like the last season though and I doubt it will be a minority (I think the duffers realize that’s be a bad look) so Lucas, Erica, Will, Robin, and probably Dustin (idk if when writing him they consider him a disabled character or not especially since he’s not actively getting bullied about it now) are safe. Max and hopper already “died” recently so they’re safe. Nancy’s good because if she dies who will date boy? If they were going to kill jonathan I think they would have done it already bc no one would have cared.

I’m pretty sure that leaves Joyce, Steve, and El…

I can’t see it being Joyce for whatever reason. Maybe it’s because she is the biggest name actress in the show she is the 80s and her and hopper are the “best” couple on the show (uncontroversial, no rivals, adults so they have the best chance of going the distance) and killing her would really only make her kids sad, which yes now includes El who is Stranger Things but like. Lucas, Dustin, Steve etc will just be like “wow that sucks guys sorry about your mom”. Hopper mourning Joyce would just be a rehash of her mourning him which would kind of blow but stranger things CAN BE repetitive.

Steve would be a good bet because he’s tied to all the kids more or less, it’s resolve the love triangle they just re stressed so it’d impact all the older teens (except Jonathan maybe I’m unclear if they’re friends) and the adults would feel bad since he’s a young guy even if they don’t have much of a dynamic. But then the two biggest characters they’ve killed so far are “Steve but if he was truly an asshole” and “guy we wrote to have the same emotional impact as Steve dying” so killing him would be the same old, same old. Stranger things is a bad enough show that I suspect they might do it, but I’m not convinced it’ll definitely happen.

El though. El is the stranger thing. El was supposed to die in season one to wrap things up in a nice little bow before they decided to drag the show on to milk it dry. I can 100% see the show ending with her death because “it was always the plan” and/or “with her gone things can finally be normal” and it’d be the ultimate sacrifice narratively since she’s the main character, she’s connected to everyone (except maybe Robin, Steve, and Erica) so big emotional impact! And how else can she kill villains that she already failed to defeat? Not that I ascribe to these thoughts necessarily but I’m sure this would be the reasoning behind it. And somehow I feel like killing her would be less controversial, obsessed fandom wise, than Steve. He’s just some guy by stans love some guys. But there’s also no reason they can’t both die but like you said. Allergic to killing main characters

All of this is because they kill people for emotional impact as opposed to plot necessity

So I think there’s like. A 50% chance el literally dies midway through the last ep or whatever and in that case (and ONLY that case) byler happens and it’s the worst canonization of a gay relationship. Ever I think

Nothing to add to this I think it stands on its own.