Back in 2019, Game of Thrones made television history — though perhaps not in the way its creators intended. After a divisive final two seasons, the show ended on a note that sent the fandom into an uproar when Jon Snow stabbed his lover/aunt Daenerys Targaryen in the heart, ending the life of a character most viewers had spent the better part of eight seasons rooting for after she scorched the city of King's Landing with her dragon.
The outrage was visceral, and not just because of the finale. A petition was started to "remake Game of Thrones season 8 with competent writers" that racked up over 1.8 million signatures. The series finale, "The Iron Throne," garnered a rating of 4.0 out of 10 on IMDB, the lowest of the entire series. And to this day, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss are still the top Google result if you search "bad writers," thanks to a concerted effort by the chronically online portion of the fandom to make it so. In short, the backlash was the stuff of TV legend.
That's relevant because right now we're living through another interestingly divisive series finale for a pop culture phenomenon of a TV show. Last week Stranger Things dropped the final episode of its fifth season, closing the book on beloved characters like Eleven, Mike Wheeler, Jim Hopper, and all the rest. When the dust settled, Eleven was dead (or was she?), the evil Vecna had been vanquished, and the kids of Hawkins were finally finding a way to go on with their lives.
Whether or not this ending satisfied has been a topic of hot debate, to the extent that a not-insignificant portion of the fandom is desperately clinging to the idea that there may actually be a secret ninth episode of Stranger Things 5 that will deliver a more satisfying ending. Whether it's the "Bylers" who hoped Will and Mike would end up together, the eagle-eyed viewers who found plot holes galore, or those who simply wanted a less predictable confrontation between El and the forces of the Upside Down, there are plenty of gripes to be had with the series finale of Stranger Things. It isn't experiencing quite the backlash of Game of Thrones, but judging by the damage control tour creators Matt and Ross Duffer are doing right now to fill in some of the gaps left by the season's writing, I wouldn't say it's quite the resounding finish they were hoping for either.
That's as good a reason as any to take a look back at the finales for these two massive cultural phenomenon series and compare them. Were there any places Game of Thrones exceeded Stranger Things in its final chapter? Spots Stranger Things left Thrones in its proverbial Upside Down dust? The answers may surprise you!
Better: The epilogue
The finale of Stranger Things was a super-sized episode of television that ran for a gob-stopping two hours and 8 minutes, as opposed to the hour and 20 minutes of Game of Thrones' final installment. That extra runtime meant that Stranger Things could devote a full hour and change to its climactic battle before it dialed things back for an extended epilogue sequence that tied up as many loose ends as possible.
That epilogue was a highlight of the episode, showing how our cast had come of age and moved on from their clash with Vecna. It wasn't quite a pitch-perfect ending, but it hit enough emotional beats well that I think it far exceeded what we got in Game of Thrones, where Bran Stark was randomly named King of the Six Kingdoms, Jon Snow was exiled to the Wall, Arya Stark set off on a sea voyage she'd never once alluded to wanting to take, and Sansa Stark became Queen in the North. While Sansa fully deserved to be queen, many of the other plot beats from Thrones' epilogue left something to be desired.
Worse: The plot holes
While Game of Thrones had plenty of issues in its final season, many of those came down to character actions feeling rushed as the show skimmed through major turns over the course of six episodes. But one thing it didn't have a ton of were actual plot holes — elements that contradicted what happened in prior seasons in such a way that it felt like the show ignored its own groundwork. Daenerys may have forgot about the Iron Fleet, but Thrones itself kept relatively good track of its many plotlines and characters down to the last.
You can't say the same for Stranger Things. From the convenient disappearance of secondary antagonist Dr. Kay without so much as a wrap-up scene after Eleven vanishes, to Nancy Wheeler suddenly being okay with murdering a bunch of soldiers (and the military not holding her or Hopper accountable), to Henry Creel's muddled backstory, to the awkward absence of monster guards outside Vecna's lair and more, there were a lot of small inconsistencies in Stranger Things 5 that added up to bigger confusions. In this regard, Game of Thrones edges into the lead.
Better: The action
Stranger Things has always gone big with its season finales, and "The Rightside Up" was no different. The final episode of the series was a thrilling affair, complete with intense action scenes, sequences that were jaw-dropping in scope, a few deaths, and a final battle that viewers won't soon forget.
Game of Thrones, on the other hand, always played its most exciting cards in the penultimate episode of each season. In season 8, the result was "The Bells," when Daenerys Targaryen torched King's Landing while characters we knew and loved were trapped inside the city walls. After that, the finale was a much more muted affair, as the remaining characters wrangled with the moral quandary of Dany's actions and how to pick up the pieces. It was what the story needed, but there's no debating that Stranger Things had more excitement in its final episode.
Worse: The plot armor
One of the few glaring flaws of Stranger Things is the writers' utter reluctance to kill off any main characters. While Stranger Things can be more of a feel-good show and thus, this is understandable, it's also made the series tie itself into knots at times to avoid giving beloved figures the axe. That remained true in the finale, where the full crew went on an outrageously dangerous mission to another dimension and made it out practically unscathed despite facing a kaiju Mind Flayer and a fully-charged Vecna. Yes, secondary characters like Eight and Lt. Akers bit the dust, and the show left Eleven't fate up to interpretation, but still. Stranger Things doesn't kill main characters if it can possibly avoid it, and that made its finale both more predictable and less tense than it would have been otherwise.
Considering that Game of Thrones was the show known for killing off unexpected characters, and it kept that reputation right down to Daenerys' tragic death in the finale, we can safely say it wins this round.
Better: The emotional payoff
By its very design, Game of Thrones left off on a bittersweet note. HBO's medieval fantasy series was always a gritty affair, and it never made any secret about the fact that it probably wasn't going to end with a nice, clean, tidy ending. When Jon finally stabbed Daenerys and everyone else had to figure out how to move forward, it was no surprise that it involved exiles and splitting up the Stark family one last time. But hey, at least the Seven Kingdoms could start to heal in the aftermath.
Stranger Things still has its heartwrenching moment in the death (or departure?) of Eleven, but overall it's a much more wholesome affair. At its core, it's a coming-of-age story about a group of kids who are sucked into a paranormal adventure. When the adventure's through, the oldest kids have to figure out how to be adults, while the main group has to decide where to head off to college after graduation and a whole new generation of younger kids takes over at the Dungeons & Dragons table.
Even aside from its final moments, it's clear that Stranger Things was going for an ending that would leave us all weeping until we ran out of tissues. Whatever flaws season 5 as a whole may have had, the emotional core of the season, and especially its final hour, remained firmly in tact. There's no question that it played the heartstrings better than "The Iron Throne."
All five seasons of Stranger Things are available to stream on Netflix. All eight seasons of Game of Thrones are on HBO Max.