Not to open a review by making it all about me, but I love me an epilogue. Much like Rob Gordon, I can’t fully say if I have a propensity for wistfulness because of epilogues or a love of epilogues because of the wistfulness. Still, they certainly share territory in my grey matter. I want to make that clear from the start because your personal feelings on character-driven epilogues will have a lot of influence over how you feel about the Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 3 2+ hour closer. Because, you see, about a third of it is epilogue.

But before we get to that post-end, the main plot. The ever-expanding cast of Stranger-ites has a multipronged attack plan. Team 1, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Hopper (David Harbour), Murray (Brett Gelman), and Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) go into the Upside Down to enter Vecna’s mind with Max’s (Sadie Sink) help, who’s back at the radio station under Vickie’s (Amybeth McNulty) supervision. Meanwhile, the rest—except Erica (Priah Ferguson) and Mr. Clarke (Randy Havens)—ride the radio tower into the Abyss. There, they plan to free the kids and finish off any remaining wetwork after Eleven’s team finishes mopping up Vecna. Things, of course, go awry. But, thankfully, not awry in a two-hour-long kind of way. Perhaps that’s what some would like. To this critic, though, that sounds interminable.

Even beyond the diminishing returns of endless stab, shoot, burn, and slugfests, Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 3 is smart not to prolong the final battle. The visuals are absolutely not up to that level of attention-holding. The Abyss, as a location, is devoid of any interesting color or landmarks. It is a sepia-toned dessert that gives the viewer no sense of what it feels like to be there. It stimulates no senses, not even sight.

The monster (keeping it vague here) the team eventually encounters is striking in size. However, it lacks the goopy grossness of the Spider Monster (aka the Meat Flayer) from Season 3. In addition to being a frightening physical presence, the idea of what it must have felt and smelled like was stomach-churning. The Mind Flayer’s shadow form in Season 2 is similarly immense, but its strange near incorporeality made it deeply unnerving. By contrast, this monster is a physical threat but feels more like an action movie obstacle than an otherworldly horror creature.

The Upside Down’s power has also diminished in Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 3. (And, really, throughout this season.) Once overflowing with menace, it feels empty and echo-y. It feels like walking through a banquet hall when most people have had the sense to decamp to the afterparty. There’s barely any life—storytelling or otherwise—left in it.

Of course, there is a functionality to these diminishments. The final battle is here. Despite Vecna’s (Jamie Campbell Bower) power, our heroes have achieved impressive victories. They’ve forced him back on his heels, to consolidate resources and attention. The Upside Down is empty because he can’t afford the “troops” that once made it a living nightmare. The Abyss is a dusty nothing because his entire attention has shrunk down to 12 kids, their might-be saviors, and a massive beastie.

Something can be true AND disappointing, though. So, while the starkness and emptiness are textually justified, they are also visually uninteresting. That’s why the moments of the final battle that sing the most are small in scale—Hopper faces off against hallucinations of his failure, Eleven surprising members of the Army, Nancy’s (Natalia Dyer) face as her clip goes empty. Because when the lens pulls back to show scale, it also exposes the settings’ screaming blandness.

The Duffer Brothers and their team seem to get this and blissfully keep the reins tight. It is only when the fighting ends that they let the slack out. And then arrives the epilogue.

Understandably, some may compare this last forty minutes to Return of the King’s multiple conclusions. It isn’t unfair, but perhaps a bit misleading. The King’s endings were episodic, spread across time and location. At Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 3’s end, the epilogue’s multiple “events” are centered around roughly the same 24 hours, save for a brief flight of fancy. That made them feel less like an endless lengthening and more like a natural, slow wind-down.

It also feels like the final homage to the 80s materials that inspired Stranger Things from the start. At sunset, on a rooftop, glasses clink as people pledge likely soon-to-be-broken promises. It feels pulled from a young adult-oriented Hughes or Brat Pack film, but, again, filtered through the Duffers’ arguably kinder lens. A graduation scene echoes the teen comedies with an anarchic display of final pettiness and more sweetness than those films tended to traffic in. And finally, most powerfully, the show casts Mike as a Richard Dreyfuss in Stand by Me-like protagonist, looking back at his childhood as he watches others go down that path. He narrates the futures of his friends in the show’s most earned tearjerker. Happy futures he nonetheless—and rather pointedly—seems to no longer figure into.

I—and everyone likely reading this—already know Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 3 has left some (many?) disappointed. As noted, the battle isn’t the series at its best, so I can understand that. However, as my reviews of the show have returned to again and again, taken in full, the show gets its characters and understands the emotional touchpoints of both. On that level, the most crucial level for this critic, Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 3 satisfies.

Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 3 has ripped from its reality onto Netflix now.

Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 3 Trailer: