Stranger Things ‘conformity gate’ and TV finales: Fans are not entitled to a do-over

Stranger Things’ so-called “conformity-gate” fan theory was a fizzer.

As if there really was a secret episode that all those special fans had figured out because they’re oh-so-clever. No, of course there wasn’t.

The finale was what it was, and all those “easter eggs” clues pointing to something else were, as the rule of Occam’s Razor dictates, continuity errors and bad filmmaking. The writers didn’t intentionally make a bad finale so they could bait-and-switch with an additional secret episode.

The demand for another Stranger Things ending points to the challenge any TV writer has – how to stick the landing – which seems to be even more fraught in the social media age, where individual quibbles can turn into a collective cacophony.

Long-running shows or movie franchises in particular fall foul of a vocalised fandom because of the parasocial relationships formed over years if not decades. It’s a bond that TV writers, filmmakers, producers and studios have flamed because it works for them too, especially when it comes to marketing.

You know there’s an audience that will always show up, that will buy the tickets and the novelisations, the bobble heads and branded water bottles, and they will tell everyone in their circle that “they have to” watch whatever it is.

At their best, the fans supercharge the conversation, and they devote hours to talking and writing about a fictional character’s back story and decisions. That level of engagement is what artists want with their work.

At their worst, some fans decide they have ownership over works that, inherently, aren’t theirs. When decisions are made that those fans don’t agree with, whether it’s story choices, casting or the colour of someone’s hair, it turns really quickly. That’s the intensity of those parasocial relationships.

Ask any Star Wars actor who’s not white what it’s like when those toxic fans come for you.

While a cohort of dissatisfied Stranger Things fans are not the same as racist Star Wars trolls, at the core of it is this question of control. Ultimately, no matter how much you love a piece of pop culture, it’s not yours.

Those characters might feel like your friends but they’re not. And since when could you control your actual friends’ choices anyway?

Fans don’t own the mechanics of industry and economics in which TV and movies are made. They can influence it, sure, such as when fan support or ancillary revenue (such as Family Guy DVD sales) can reverse a cancellation.

Or when the Veronica Mars sequel movie was funded through Kickstarter. But those are rare examples, and it doesn’t involve undoing a creative decision already made and executed.

When Game of Thrones ended, there was a petition signed by 1.8 million fans that demanded HBO remake the entire final season with different showrunners. Imagine that.

There was no universe in which HBO was going to stump up the money to remake a season of TV that already cost them $US90 million and two years to put out. There is no upside for the studio, the actors and certainly not the creative team.

What’s odd about the Stranger Things furore is that the series ended kind of exactly how you would expect it to. It was always going to have a neat bow with a lot of sentimental beats.

The reason the theory is called “conformity gate” is because the fans couldn’t believe that those characters would choose such normie lives. But this was a show set in 1980s mid-west America, so it wouldn’t have been realistic for every character to choose an unexpected path.

Nor was the show ever really a rebellious or radical story. It always reinforced conventional, American ideals steeped in the nostalgia of childhood.

Look, it’s hard to nail a series finale. So few have done it perfectly. The Americans, Six Feet Under and The Good Place are the gold standards while plenty of sitcoms have gotten away with mid-endings just because of the goodwill of seeing best friends say goodbye, usually to a house or apartment and each other.

Or take something like Mad Men, in which Don Draper seemed to have been on the verge of emotional honesty when he, in the end, exploits it to make a Coca-Cola ad, because an ad man will always be an ad man. Chef’s kiss.

Many shows have also stuffed it up (Dexter, How I Met Your Mother, Killing Eve, Battlestar Galactica) and it’s a legacy that they have to carry around for the years following.

The worst thing any show could do though it to give in to the din and retcon whatever choice was made, even a bad one. Dallas learnt that when it effectively undid its whole eighth season to bring back a killed character. Now it’s more famous for that reversal than anything else.

Entitled fans aren’t always going to agree but how a TV series ends is the purview of those make it. For better or worse, it doesn’t belong to those loudly screaming for a do-over.

A little perspective goes a long way. For everyone who cries “that finale ruined the entire series”, that’s a choice you make. Think of it as a bad break-up, it doesn’t have to invalidate everything that came before. Seinfeld had a crappy ending but people still love the rest of it.

If you’re still really upset, that’s what fan fiction is for.