It’s been nearly two weeks since all of “Stranger Things” final season came to Netflix. However, that hasn’t stopped an entirely theoretical stage of discussion that was spread across the internet.
For over a week, some people have asked friends, family, and even strangers, both face-to-face and through social media posts or comments, whether there was, in fact, a secret ninth episode. It’s a discussion that ensnared people from all roles in the fandom, as well as even the creators, in the fervor of discussion about what really happened.
A small, if vocal, set of fans claimed that the final episode of the season wasn’t quite what it seemed. Many of those fans read the finale’s premiere (or the remaining week or so after, when some Netflix odds and ends were concluded) as suggesting a secret or “hidden” episode.
The talking point began to grow increasingly serious in online chatter, until the accompanying #ConformityGate quickly gained momentum, with dozens of fans diving into all manner of topics: plots and episodes, actors and promos, Netflix tie-in short teasers, and seemingly everything else related to the TV season. The central theme is the season’s finale.
The hour-long “The Rightside Up” wasn’t the series’s true finale or real credits scene. Yet others remained open to ideas that it was a Vecna fake-out world or otherwise a twist ending that wasn’t the final leg to the franchise’s tale. Among the examples and clues were peculiar shots, inconsistencies in character behavior, repeating numbers or symbols, and, of course, a Netflix promotional teaser trailer that reportedly shared its release date with a key event for many.
The key focal point of the theory was a (deleted) teaser short that particularly showed icons from Stranger Things, but which the theorizing observers had determined to be a teaser short strongly suggesting they were getting more content that breathed room ahead.
“Your future is coming,” says the Netflix teaser. Which, for those awaiting another one, reads as a clear confirmation of another shoe ready to drop. By coincidence, that same day was also the Orthodox Christmas, as well as the day that Netflix’s own franchise had made several announcements of their own to the public, leading to still more nitpicking fan discussion online.
And as January eventually rolled on through and episode Seven’s premiere was then greeted with a slowly steadier blank silence, major theorist portions of the fandom frequently began to vocalize discontented frustration. Enough so that the secret discussion, and discussion of the secret discussion, entering online spaces became far and away overwhelmingly weighted towards non-theorist voices. Numerous fact-checking outlets in early January looked into these claims of a secret episode, however, only to discover similar secondary facts: no evidence, and neither Duffer source interviews nor Netflix publicly available info maintained such a suggestion.
Netflix, among others, had even addressed the rumor publicly itself. Netflix tackled the suggestion of the “secret episode” head-on, as well as the suggestive theory’s assurances of more to come. In fact, overhaul Netflix PR’s web browser accessible media kit, itself a resource for most digging outside speculatory questions, with both a simple, simplified FAQ and a new social media palatable first main page, assuring that all episodes they currently have were completed and immediately viewable with no secret reveals that they’re on their way.
And the creators’s respone to the finale theory, The Duffer Brothers, the creators and developers behind Stranger Things, have also given their takes on the theory, in behind-the-scenes cast interviews as well as on retrospective pieces. In the pair’s Netflix incomes interview, they said they were explicit in envisioning the story structure, which ended up being the reason that “The Rightside Up” closed with their name credits. “A true, definite ending for everyone”, Matt and Ross Duffer. Their “A true, definite ending for everyone” direction.
They admitted that the script “was a bastard.“[It] was one of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do. “Even in doing “[a key eventual scene]”, because we didn’t have the full script, that’s a hard place…” Not to mention the strict time limits and expectations further cementing the impossibility of it. The Duffer Brothers have not at all hinted or suggested there’s a missing major storyline still yet to reveal.
They, in fact, carried up multiple other threads of other fan reactions or quibbles to their own explanations of the end of Season 5. They also have made a firm point to tangibly custom, they will neither drag out a more established story nor produce alternate endings to a “pre-planned” “Upside Down” bare portion of the tale. How fans continued responding after the fact, and where it went.
Many fans were dissatisfied with the finale despite official source rationale or logic, which imageably continued and fueled secret episode speculation for the next several days. Other things included frustration at awaiting plot threads going unexplained, and agreements that the writers took the easy ending to the plot. People resorted to overt posting oaths on social media or creating at least dozens of various petitions for readers or viewer un hidden source information that might satisfy the more answer unseen story they wanted.
Even if the “conformity gate” theory has mostly been swept aside, it here’s a key takeaway to read going beyond a day afterwards: the way today’s speculating fans dive so deep into into online narratives of major topically popular shows, even “hits in the gut” or way back “procedural” type, that single minority partial theories, far out or outright absurd or otherwise unexpected, can catfich hold quickly enough to tip the scales of online discussion about or even within those properties.
