"The Mind Flayer Is Clearly a Woman": The End of Stranger Things

***This episode contains spoilers for Stranger Things, Heated Rivalry, Fleabag and The Traitors U.S. (season 4, episode 5)In 2016, Netflix quietly premiered Stranger Things, a show set in Hawkins, Indiana in the 1980s. There were boys on bikes, a girl who liked waffles and blowing things up with her mind, monsters, evil government entities, a dimension nicknamed the Upside Down that is basically Hawkins covered in spiderwebs and endless references to ET. A decade and five seasons later, Netflix dropped the finale to the now millions of fans it has built up — fans who were ready with magnifying glasses to find clues, tear apart their least favorite scenes, defend the show's creators and cast with their lives and all of the above. In their first episode of Finale Girls, Rachel and Mallika dive into the cultural impact of the Netflix phenomenon, how internet discourse has upended the TV-watching experience, how the finale changed the show’s trajectory and more. Theme song by Nickolas CarvalhoCheck out Rachel and Mallika's newsletter "Yes, We're Still Watching": https://yeswerestillwatching.substack.com/---30 Sec: Our Life This Week as a Season Finale 2 Min: What We’re Watching This Week (Heated Rivalry, Traitors, Industry, The Copenhagen Test) 9 Min: The Cultural Impact of Stranger Things 16 Min: 2-Minute Stranger Things Recap18 Min: Stranger Things Season 5 30 Min: Vecna, The Mind Flayer and the “Big Bad” 39 Min: Eleven’s Ending 46 Min: The Last Scene 56 Min: Where’s Joyce? 59 Min: The Netflix Multiverse  1 Hour 8 Min: Conformity Gate and Divorce Gate 1 Hour 13 Min: Prince 1 Hour 15 Min: Favorite and Least Favorite Lines 1 Hour 23 Min: How the Finale Changed the Show for Us 1 Hour 27 Min: Our Finale Rankings