Stranger Things: Every Main Character Ending, Ranked

Contains spoilers for "Stranger Things" Season 5, Episode 8 — "Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up"

"Stranger Things" tried its best to give every main character the send-off they deserved in "The Rightside Up," but not everyone enjoyed a satisfying conclusion in the highly anticipated series finale. Thankfully, most of the party ends up doing okay for themselves. However, some of the show's heroes became victims of the many dumb things that are hard to ignore in the "Stranger Things" finale. But who had the best conclusion and who had the worst? Who suffered for nothing? Who finally emerged from the darkness to get what they deserved? And who got stuck with a middling ending — not great, but not horrendous? Here's Looper's ranking of every main character's ending in "Stranger Things."

The final episode of "Stranger Things" takes Henry Creel, aka Vecna, through a series of traumatic memories before killing him. The audience and Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) alike learn that Henry was just an innocent boy scout when he came across a scientist hiding a rock containing a piece of the Mind Flayer. After defending himself against that scientist, the scared youngster took on the Mind Flayer's power, heeding its call.

Will tries to plead with Vecna, telling him that Henry had no choice when the Mind Flayer took control and that he could still turn over a new leaf now. But the antagonist says they are one, and that they need each other. That doesn't turn out well for him, as the Mind Flayer and Vecna alike are promptly stomped into the dirt by the Hawkins gang and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown). It's Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) who delivers the final blow as Vecna lies impaled on a spiky rock. Vecna is decapitated, and with that, his quest to remake the world in the image of his overlord dies.

It's hard to have a worse ending than the one Vecna meets, and, according to Jamie Campbell Bower, that last moment is made even more poignant if you listen closely. "As I'm coughing up this bile, yes, I'm coughing, but the feeling that I want to convey and the words that I'm trying to get out are just, 'Please don't.' It was one of the more human moments of playing Vecna," Bower revealed to Netflix's Tudum. That adds another layer of sadness to an already tragic ending.

The ending of Linda Hamilton's Dr. Kay is barely an ending at all — she's one of several characters that the "Stranger Things" finale forgot about. After spending an entire season running Hawkins with an iron fist and trying to drag Eleven back in so she could continue the experiments of Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine), Kay just seemed to vanish without much of a fuss. She doesn't even hold the members of the Hawkins gang she managed to capture. After an 18 month time jump, the town is no longer militarized and everything's getting back to normal, and she has simply disappeared.

Kay's vanishing act is one of several "Stranger Things" finale plot holes that are hard to ignore. She doesn't seem too upset that she's lost an entire building filled with pregnant women carrying Kali's (Linnea Berthelsen) DNA, nor that Kali herself is now dead. Perhaps she has been transferred to somewhere else. Maybe she's running another operation in another state or country. No one gets to attain the satisfaction of killing her, much to the storyline's detriment. It's a neutral ending that's unsatisfying and ultimately belongs near the bottom of the list.

Erica Sinclair (Priah Nicole Ferguson) has a lot to do during the first half of "Stranger Things" Season 5. She helps out Murray (Brett Gelman) and Mr. Clarke (Randy Havens) as the party tries to develop a way to breach the Upside Down and rescue the kids Mr. Whatsit has kidnapped. She jams signals, performs surveillance, runs interference, and is generally a solid ally to the team. That's why it's disappointing that she pretty much disappears from the plot during "The Rightside Up."

It was definitely disappointing that this fan-favorite character had such an underwhelming ending. Still, at least Erica survives the events of the series finale. She's last seen at Lucas' (Caleb McLaughlin) graduation with their parents. What happens to Erica later in life? According to series co-creator Matt Duffer, the sky's the limit. "She's absolutely going to be valedictorian. That is for sure. What happens beyond that, I don't know. She can go where she wants to go," he told People.

Jim Hopper's (David Harbour) ending is a mixed bag. While he fights tooth and nail to stop Eleven from sacrificing herself in the explosion at the Upside Down, she ultimately seems to go through with her plan. Jim is devastated by the loss of a second daughter, having lost Sara — his biological daughter — to cancer years earlier. On the plus side, things turn out pretty peachy for Jim and Joyce.

The two finally get to go on a romantic dinner date at Enzo's. After the meal, Jim proposes to Joyce, who says yes. With both of her boys matriculating outside of Hawkins, Jim tells Joyce that he's been offered a new job — chief of police in Montauk, New York. When offered the chance to start over again in a fresh state, Joyce gleefully agrees to move with Jim. It's the somewhat-happy ending they both deserved.

Of all the party members, it's Mike who is left reeling the most in the aftermath of El's departure. He finds himself grappling with her death, something that's made him a bit distant from his friends and family. He's still struggling when he leads his group in one final Dungeons & Dragons game just after their high school graduation. At the end of the session, Mike weaves a tale of happiness and joy for his players that tells them where they — and their characters — end up in the future.

Mike envisions a life for himself as a writer of fiction, weaving tales out of what he's experienced. He conceives of an ending for Eleven in which she survives and takes on a life in solitude — and the door is left wide-open as to whether or not he's telling the truth. In the episode's last moments, he watches as his sister Holly (Nell Fisher) leads a Dungeons & Dragons game of her own. He exits the basement, closing the door on his childhood. It's a bittersweet ending for Mike, who will likely never fully heal.

Eleven also has a mixed ending to her saga of revenge and struggle for power over her own destiny. While she succeeds in defeating Vecna with the help of her friends, she immediately finds herself under attack from the military. Her friends and father are cornered and arrested, and her own captivity seems imminent. Though everyone around her begs her not to, El steps toward the bomb-rigged wormhole connecting the Upside Down to Hawkins. With a sigh of peace, she allows herself to be immolated, providing one of only three character deaths in the "Stranger Things" series finale.

But Mike envisions a different end for her — one sculpted of her partnership with Kali. In Mike's tale, El and Kali use the last of Kali's energy to project an image of El into the entry of the wormhole. She has, in fact, turned invisible, which allows her to sneak out while everyone's distracted. El then goes on to hike her way to freedom in an isolated town far from the military's reach. Whether her story ends with a freeing sigh or with her starting a new life, it's hard to deny that El finally achieves the one thing she yearned for over the show's long run: peace.

The problem with Lucas' ending isn't that it's unhappy, it's that it's ill-defined outside of his relationship with Max (Sadie Sink). He manages to save her life, and the two of them are implied to have a happy future waiting for them. They even get to finally go to the movies together. Lucas takes part in the defeat of Vecna, and he successfully graduates high school, but his actual future otherwise is undefined.

Might he end up playing basketball professionally? Will he and Max make a real go of it and end up getting married at some point down the line? Lucas' happy ending isn't quite as defined as everyone else's, which means his future is left dangling to some degree. It's a better fate than Mike's, that's for sure, but a worse one than any of his buddies get in terms of closure.

Robin Buckley (Maya Hawke) finds herself playing wise counselor to numerous people while trying to keep her relationship with Vickie (Amybeth McNulty) afloat during Season 5. After she assists the rest of the gang in defeating Vecna, the finale sees her reclaim her role as "Rockin' Robin," a deejay who kept the town abreast of what was happening during the military occupation. Now that everything's settled, she has no idea what to say to her audience.

We're told in the flash-forward that she's kept her friendships with Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), and Steve (Joe Keery) alive, though they're all going to different colleges. Robin lands at Smith College in Massachusetts. There's no status update on her relationship with Vickie, though one of her requirements for the quartet's monthly reunions at the home of her "weird uncle" in Philadelphia is "no overbearing significant others." That doesn't bode well for the two of them, but the future remains unwritten.

The eternally rebellious Nancy Wheeler paints a target on her back during the gang's final battle with Vecna, much to the consternation of the entire group. Acting as bait with her flamethrower at her side, she distracts the Mind Flayer just long enough to help the rest of the team create a ground attack that's enhanced by El's fight with Vecna. She manages to make it through alive, but her companions end up quite concerned about her wellbeing. 

Nancy is later seen at her brother's graduation, and in the flash forward it's revealed that she went to Emerson College. She was a journalism major until she dropped out to take a job as a reporter with the real-life newspaper The Boston Herald. Her relationships with Jonathan and Steve remain cordial, but she's gotten back together with neither boy. Nancy's path to happiness might not be typical or linear, though it's very well-defined.

Max has an excellent final arc — after finally discovering a way out of Vecna's mind, she finds herself among the party once again, though she's paralyzed from the waist down thanks to her long coma. Captured, released, and ultimately able to fight back, Max helps the party fight Vecna and sees her tormenter defeated. After the flash forward, she has regained the ability to walk and is once again a fearless skateboarder.

Her relationship with Lucas is going well, and — despite having been in a coma for months — she graduates on time with the rest of her class. It's not explained how she manages this, but at least she has the opportunity to go to college with Lucas. Mike forecasts a happy ending for the two of them as a couple, sending them off on a magical movie date. Like Lucas, a lot of Max's future remains unspoken, which means she has a solid but not perfect conclusion.

Jonathan's main job during "The Rightside Up" is to provide backup to his team during the final Vecna battle. His frenemy relationship with Steve solidifies, as they both accept that their fight over Nancy was for naught and perhaps they don't hate each other as much as they thought they did. Though he spends much of Season 5 carrying around an engagement ring for Nancy, in Episode 7, he gives it to her as a non-engagement ring.

It's revealed during the course of his conversation with Robin, Steve, and the others that his dream of going to New York University has been fulfilled: He's currently in the school's film program. He's in the process of making a cabalistic horror movie that, as Jonathan explains, is about capitalism. With his lifelong ambition being fulfilled and happiness having found him at last, Jonathan's ending is a happy one indeed.

Steve Harrington goes from rich bully to reluctant babysitter to protective older brother figure over the course of "Stranger Things." He experiences danger during "The Rightside Up," nearly falling from the top of the WSQK building during the party's attempt to enter the Upside Down. He's saved by his longtime bud Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo), further cementing that their season-long tiff is over. 

He lives through the final battle, ultimately settling into his post-high school life in Hawkins. He's seen coaching the town's little league team to a promising season, with Derek (Jake Connelly) acting as catcher. His college plans are never explained, but it's revealed that his dating life is as bumpy as it ever was — he's been through multiple disastrous relationships since he ended his pursuit of Nancy. His friendship with Dustin lives on, and the twosome go out on road trips together when Dustin's not in college. Steve's ending is poetic, with his love of children at the forefront just as it should be.

The greatest gift that the finale of "Stranger Things" gives Holly Wheeler is that it allows her to finally be a child again. Her bravery proven, she manages to protect her classmates and get them back to safety with the help of Max and El. Freed from captivity in the wake of Vecna's death, Holly is relieved to be reunited with her brother and sister. In the aftermath of her ordeal, she's seen at Mike's graduation. In spite of her trauma, she doesn't seem worse for wear.

One of the most poignant scenes in the finale involves Holly. It takes place right at the end of the episode, after Mike's party dissolves and prepares to move on to their adult lives. After they shelve their binders of character information, Holly and her friends — all of whom were held captive by Vecna — gather to play Dungeons & Dragons together. The legend of Holly the Brave will live on, and apparently she'll be making her own way in the world.

After a long season dealing with some pretty terrible trauma related to the death of Joseph Quinn's Eddie Munson (a character inspired by a real-life horror story), Dustin Henderson gets to enjoy redemption, relief, and triumph during "The Rightside Up." He's a major part of the group's success against Vecna, and he saves the life of his good friend, Steve, during the battle. During his high school graduation, he decides to use his valedictorian speech to do exactly what Eddie planned on doing.

After delivering an emotionally rich oration, Dustin strips off his robe to reveal a Hellfire Club t-shirt — a reference to Eddie's much-maligned Dungeons & Dragons club — and flips off the school's principal. The speech gets him a lot of social clout and even a few flirty come-ons. The finale never explains what happened to his girlfriend, Susie, but Dustin seems to be enjoying the attention. After helping his party figure out a solution during their D&D game, a flash-forward informs us that Dustin's braininess will continue to benefit him in college.

Will Byers suffered mightily to get his happy ending, but the universe finally cuts him some slack in the final episode of "Stranger Things." After his powerful coming out moment in the penultimate episode, Will plugs into Vecna's hivemind. He uses the powers he gained from Vecna to do his part in defeating the antagonist once and for all. When Vecna dies, Will lives — and, not only that, he thrives. Finally free from his mental and emotional trauma, Will finally takes control of his life, making his ending one of the best in the whole show.

With his relationship with former crush Mike fully secured as a strong friendship, Will finally begins to taste life beyond the world of Hawkins. He graduates and takes part in that final D&D game, ultimately helping Mike's party defeat their final opponent. Will moves away to attend college, and, in a flash forward, goes to a bar where he meets a date. With the possibility of true love — or at least a good night — ahead of him, Will looks to be well on his way to finally living happily ever after.

Joyce Byers went through a lot during the course of "Stranger Things," but it made her happy ending all the more satisfying. After nearly losing Will multiple times and having to worry about Jonathan on top of it all, she became an active part of the party's attempt to defeat Vecna. Her work in the field is ultimately rewarded when she gets to behead her tormenter with an axe. "You f***ed with the wrong family," she tells the antagonist before killing him.

With both of her boys set on a course to happiness, Joyce turns to her relationship with Hopper to find fulfillment. Their romance continues happily onward in "The Rightside Up," with Jim proposing to Joyce, her saying yes, and the two of them making plans to move to Montauk, New York (which seemingly sets up a "Stranger Things" spin-off). Joyce has the best ending of all the main characters, and it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person.