SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers from the series finale of “Stranger Things,” now streaming on Netflix.
After nearly a decade, Stranger Things finally came to an end on December 31, 2025, marking the conclusion of a run that had begun in July 2016, becoming one of the most telling phenomena of the streaming age. The two-hour episode, “The Rightside Up,” was released on both Netflix and select theater screens, a move that highlighted the fact that this was a series that was event-driven until the very end. In a splintered media environment, the Stranger Things finale on New Year’s Eve was a final flash of a shared culture.
The series finale served as a way to close all those loose ends by sending Eleven, Will, Joyce, Nancy, and the rest of the Hawkins crew off into the Abyss to finally take down Vecna and the Mind Flayer. The series finale, however, concluded not on a clean resolution of all those mysteries but on a deliberate choice to leave one of them unresolved—Eleven’s.
This uncertainty is reflected at the end of the series as well. An 18-month time jump later, the original group is back together again for one final game of Dungeons & Dragons, this time at the Wheelers’ house, held down in the basement. Mike speculates that Eleven may still be alive when Holly Wheeler and a new generation burst down the stairs for the table.
Why the briefcase rock matters going forward
In considering the future, there’s one thing from the finale, though, that won’t simply be relegated to the background with quiet acceptance—the creepy rock hidden in the unknown scientist/doctor’s briefcase that Henry Creel touched only to get it absorbed in his body. Revealed in a flashback with a glimpse of its seeming merge with Henry and its subsequent linking with the Mind Flayer, its very introduction called out many questions, and the Duffers just confirmed those with an exclusive with Variety are the kind of questions they intend.
In follow-up interviews following the finale, Matt Duffer has admitted that the stone is “spinoff-y,” but declined to elaborate on what exactly that means, only that it will indeed be at the center of the upcoming Stranger Things spin-off. Perhaps more importantly, it has been made clear that this new spin-off will not be an extension of existing mythology but will feature a completely different world and set of rules.
Indeed, Ross Duffer confirmed that production on the spin-off will continue right now, as the two brothers are eager to get back to work. Although the spin-off will help to answer some questions about the rock and its purpose, it will not address the Mind Flayer or involve legacy characters. That is, Stranger Things may very well be done, but its universe is certainly not expanding backwards. What’s more, the universe is expanding laterally through the usage of a final mystery that unlocks something completely different.
