THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR STRANGER THINGS 5
To say people had high expectations of Stranger Things’ fifth and final series is an understatement. The show started streaming on Netflix in 2016 and released its final episode on New Year’s Day (New Year’s Eve in some countries) to a variety of responses from fans. Some found it at least mildly entertaining and a satisfying ending, but some found it disappointing. So disappointing that a conspiracy theory emerged online that everything the audience saw was all an illusion concocted by the series’ telekinetic antagonist Vecna/Henry Creel. The heroes were apparently trapped in a ‘dream world’ experiencing a fake reality where they killed him and had a happy ending. The viral conspiracy theory also speculated that the ‘real ending’ would be released and reveal the true conclusion to the story. People would document evidence on virtual platforms (such as Twitter, Reddit and TikTok) that the theory was true and Netflix had tricked Stranger Things fans across the globe. This conspiracy was dubbed ‘Conformity Gate’.
But what is the basis of Conformity Gate? Throughout series four and five Vecna is shown to have the ability to enter people’s minds and induce them into a trancelike state where they see, hear and feel whatever he wants within a world inside their head. In series five specifically, he kidnaps twelve children and has their minds trapped inside a world within his own and had successfully manipulated their memories so that they did not know how they got there and truly believed they were in the real world. Therefore, Vecna was entirely capable of fabricating an entire fake reality and trapping the large ensemble of characters inside of it. But what is the evidence that things weren’t quite right in the final episode’s epilogue? Examples include: a dial that had been red in a previous episode was now grey, Steve became a baseball coach despite only being seen playing basketball in the show (which was due to Vecna seeing him wield a baseball bat covered in nails as a weapon when fighting monsters) and the students at the graduation ceremony have their hands placed on their laps in a manner akin to how Henry Creel would position his hands in front of himself while standing back when he was an orderly at Hawkins Lab. There was even more abstract evidence, such as Mike shutting the door while leaving the basement being similar to Truman shutting the door to leave the fabricated world of The Truman Show. Within apparent frequent appearances of the number seven in the episode and other number related evidence, Conformity Gate believers concluded that the secret episode would be released on 7th January.
Yet this evidence could be easily dismissed. Props changing colour can be a continuity error, Steve can be interested in more than one sport and a crowd placing their hands on their laps during a graduation ceremony can simply be a polite formal mannerism to show attentiveness to the people on the podium in front of them. But the most damning evidence…
There was no new episode on 7th January.
Instead, on 12th January Netflix released One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5, a documentary highlighting the production behind Stranger Things’ final series and indicating no official signs of an unreleased episode.
One can’t help but wonder what caused so many fans to believe that the finale of Stranger Things couldn’t be real. Despite being less popular, Conformity Gate still lives within some influencers now claiming that this year’s Super Bowl, the annual championship game for America’s National Football League (NFL) which often features adverts of upcoming films and television shows as well as elaborate half-time shows, will feature an announcement of the illusive secret episode’s release date. Whilst these influencers could be attempting to perpetuate online traction from discussing Conformity Gate, this explanation doesn’t apply to all fans.
It all comes down to the aforementioned disappointment with Stranger Things’ ending. The once ‘small-town setting’ show inspired by 80s horror films and Stephen King had accumulated into an Avengers-style plotline of the heroes traveling to another dimension for an action-packed final battle against a giant monster. There were numerous plotholes and inconsistencies with previous series’ lore throughout series five. Fans who had not seen the play Stranger Things: The First Shadow, nor found an explanation of its narrative or lore online, were puzzled over the show’s timeline after it was revealed Vecna had been cast in a play directed by Joyce when they were both in high school. Despite the seemingly high stakes, series five’s only deaths were unnamed soldiers, Kali/Eight who had not been in the show since an unpopular episode of series two in 2017 and Eleven’s sacrifice which is implied to potentially be a façade to escape the military. These are justifiable reasons to be dissatisfied with both the final episode and series five as a whole. It’s understandable why so many fans would hope that there’s a better canonical ending out there and desperately look for clues, be it dials changing colours or loose parallels with a 90s Jim Carrey film.
Conformity Gate is also not the first conspiracy spawned by a TV show’s unsatisfying ending. BBC’s Sherlock suffered a similar fate in 2017 when its final episode was so poorly received that an online conspiracy theory was created of the final series having a secret fourth episode, despite the show’s consistency of three episodes per series (with the exception of a special released between series three and four). The secret fourth episode never aired and the show was confirmed to be finished.
Overall, Conformity Gate is an example of how online platforms combined with unsatisfied fans can create elaborate conspiracies and false hope that a popular television show doesn’t have a bad ending. It is entirely possible that a future long-running television show will have its own conspiracy theory of a secret final episode after a group of fans deem the finale ‘too badly written to be the real end’.
