Warning: Spoilers ahead for Stranger Things Season 5.
Nobody wants their favorite characters to die. When we get properly invested in a story, we are also invested in the characters that the story gives us. Most of the time, we are invested in the story because of the characters. Emotional attachment to a character and their growth is essential for viewership. So, when the stakes are high and a character’s life is on the line, viewers become anxious, and, in the case of a character’s death, upset.
While it is always upsetting to lose a character, I believe that storytelling is unique in the fact that writers can give death meaning and purpose. A character’s death can drive the plotline forward, spark another character’s growth, symbolize a deeper meaning, or haunt the narrative. When written correctly, a character death, while tragic, can be beautiful, meaningful, and essential to the plot of a story.
A great example of a meaningful character death can be found in “Brokeback Mountain.” At the end of the film, when Jack is revealed to have died, it leaves a lasting emotional impact on the audience and the characters. Ennis is left alone to mourn the life he was too scared to live and wonder if he had kept himself from true happiness all these years. Additionally, it is implied that Jack was murdered because someone found out he was gay. This drives home the deeper theme of the movie and reinforces Ennis’s fears of accepting Jack’s proposal of living together. The end of the film is made more tragic and impactful because Jack died, truly preventing him and Ennis from any sort of happiness.
On the contrary, “Stranger Things” shies away from killing its main characters. While this appeases audiences, it also weakens the narrative. In the first few seasons, the deaths of characters who had only been introduced for one or two seasons (Barb in season 1, Bob in season 2, and Billy in season 3) remained emotionally impactful. We grew to love these characters, they died in violent ways and continued to haunt the narrative up until the final season. But when we get to season 4, these kinds of deaths become predictable. It is the writers’ way of keeping the stakes high and presenting possible danger to our beloved main characters. For a few seasons, we felt the fear of those stakes, but by the time season 4 rolled around, the death of Eddie was unfortunately predictable because he had been recently introduced.
Another mistake the writers made was leading us to believe Hopper was dead, only to bring him back in the next season. When we watched (or thought we watched) Hopper die in the finale of season 3, we really felt the stakes of that season paying off. A main character had been killed off, and we watched every character deal with the emotional fallout of that death. When he returned in season 4, while we were happy to see him alive again, immediately the stakes were lowered, and the narrative weakened.
Setting characters up for death multiple times only to leave them alive only works for so long. The emotional impact is eventually lost because the audience no longer trusts that their favorite characters will actually be harmed. We are still attached, but less emotionally invested because of the many times we’ve been tricked.
Once again, in season 5, the writers are still too scared to kill off their main characters. While the finale has not yet been released, none of our main characters have died, even though we’ve been set up multiple times. One of the most frustrating examples of this is the scene in volume 2 with Nancy and Jonathan. With death closing in on them, they confessed everything they had been hiding from each other, and both had emotional breakthroughs. It was an emotional scene that brought tears to many viewers, but it was completely undermined when the rising danger suddenly disappeared.
It is hard to grapple with the death of a character, but in this situation, I think the scene would have had much more emotional punctuation if they hadn’t survived. Now the scene isn’t as heart-wrenching as it could have been, and it even leaves the audience confused. Many viewers commented on this scene, saying they had no idea it was actually a breakup. The quick come-down from an intense moment like that weakened the powerful emotional notes of the scene.
Season 5 was built up to be the most intense season of the show so far. The Duffer brothers promised the most carnage and the highest death toll we have seen in Stranger Things thus far. The combination of these promises and the amount of emotional fakeouts in the season so far made it extremely underwhelming emotionally. There may still be an abundance of tragedy waiting for us in the finale, but to me, it is still poor writing to leave every death until the last second. The stakes are higher than they have ever been, but they would feel much higher, and I would personally be more emotionally invested, if we had seen a main character or two die before the finale.
It is understandable to keep your main characters alive, especially in a show with as large a fanbase as Stranger Things has. However, when you ignore the importance of death in a narrative, you inevitably lose some of that audience.
