On Dec. 31, 2025, the Stranger Things finale, “The Rightside Up”, was released onto Netflix. Due to the popularity of the series, many people had high expectations. However, the finale left many people disappointed. Many people found the finale too boring and predictable. With how loved the series was beforehand, it was easy for people to believe the episode wasn’t the true ending to Stranger Things.

People on different social media began to claim that the finale on Netflix isn’t the real finale. These people believe that the finale was an illusion created by Vecna. Fans cited little details in the background like things appearing and disappearing, as well as characters that were strangely similar (hairstyle, poses etc.) to Henry Creel, Vecna past identity.

People believed the real finale would be released on Jan. 7. Many had guessed this date since the number seven seemed to be important in the show, with Will rolling a seven in the DnD game before he goes missing. Jan. 7 would also mean the real finale would release a week after the fake finale. 

On the day that people predicted the real finale would drop, Netflix servers were overwhelmed due to high traffic. This caused widespread crashing on Netflix. To people’s disappointment, there wasn’t a secret finale episode. This becomes even more clear after Netflix changed their bios on social media to “ALL EPISODES OF STRANGER THINGS ARE NOW PLAYING.”