Oh the f*cking horror. A love letter to Hawkins.
12.29.25 // STATE Editorial
“Friends don’t lie.” It was a question, then a statement and then a promise. A promise between the show and the rest of us, of what life can be, even when it’s not. Now, as this escapist saga approaches its end, that promise feels bittersweet. For nearly a decade, the tale of a ragtag group of kids from Hawkins battling otherworldly evil has enthralled and comforted, challenged us and held up a mirror to our own lives in a blaze of eighties neon, cold war anxiety and the long lost summers we all wish we’d had.
In the midst of its final season, lovers of Hawkins are grappling with mixed emotions: excitement for an epic conclusion, and heartache at saying goodbye to characters who feel like old friends, in a time when we all desperately could use more friends. How did an adult horror show starring mostly unknown child actors in 2016 explode into a cultural phenomenon that could crash Netflix’s servers, revive 80s music, and inspire millions to believe in the power of friendship? As we prepare for one last trip to the Upside Down, It’s worth asking why we are so desperate to escape into it.
A Cultural Phenomenon Born from Nostalgia and Horror
From the moment Stranger Things aired, it transported us to a time that now seems foreign. Steeped in the sights, sounds, and spirit of the 1980s, a time of arcade games, BMX bikes, mix-tapes, and Spielbergian adventure, it uses that bygone era to ground its horror in something warmly familiar. For Gen Xers and older Millennials who grew up in the ’80s, watching the series felt like a homecoming. Each episode is peppered with homages to the pop culture of their youth, from kids pedaling through suburban streets like in E.T. to hours in a basement spent on Dungeons & Dragons, Eggo waffles, and vintage arcade games. For those that didn’t experience the 80s, we’re reminded of the movies we grew up watching, of a time we long for but may never have experienced, a low tech world where friendships held strong across multiple dimensions.
The effects of Stranger Things have been astounding. Its influence has trickled into music, fashion, food, and more. Consider the music: when the iconic Kate Bush song “Running Up That Hill” featured in a pivotal, heart-stopping sequence, a whole new generation rushed to stream it, vaulting the song to the top of charts worldwide and breaking multiple records nearly 37 years after its release. Not long after, Metallica’s metal anthem “Master of Puppets” was given a similar second life. Following Eddie Munson’s near death rendition, the 1986 track shot into Spotify’s Top 10 in the U.S. for the first time ever. The show’s reach extends far beyond the screen, it has become an aesthetic we yearn to escape into.
The Upside Down as a National Mood Disorder
Yet none of this impact would have materialized if the world of Hawkins itself hadn’t been so achingly compelling. Stranger Things didn’t rely on nostalgia alone. This was a story of ordinary kids in a sleepy town facing something extraordinary and terrifying, a blend of coming-of-age adventure, sci-fi thriller, and horror mystery combined. The monsters were never just monsters. The writhing, slime-ridden tentacles from the Upside Down? They were the embodiment of every waking nightmare we’ve half-watched through our screens: the pandemic, school shootings, wars livestreamed in real time. The Upside Down isn't fiction anymore. It's just Twitter on a Tuesday. It's the feeling of doomscrolling at 3 AM while the world burns in our hands. For nearly a decade, the real world’s been vibrating on the same frequency as Hawkins.
In 2025, our demons are invisible; loneliness, economic precarity, the rise of AI and the creeping dread that we are sleepwalking into a future we didn't choose. It is no coincidence that this show peaked exactly when the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness an epidemic as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. With nearly 80% of Gen Z reporting feelings of isolation over a 12-month period, Hawkins offers a drug we can’t find on the street anymore: analog presence. It is a world where "connection" isn’t a DM, but a walkie-talkie in the hand of a friend who would die for you.
Stranger Things never loses sight of the fact that it’s telling an adult story told through a child’s eyes. Because for many of us the world feels more adult-like than we could have ever imagined, and we stare hopelessly at our phones observing the horror. We feel like these kids, only the kids of Hawkins don’t need to stare through screens. They experience their horror in their own reality, and, most importantly, they can do something about it. The sense of helplessness so many of us have felt throughout recent years seems absent in Hawkins. These kids fight, whether through courage, super powers or loyalty.
Heroes, Misfits and Outcasts
The show’s core lies within its characters' struggles. Viewers see the characters conquer external demons and feel a cathartic sense of hope for conquering their own internal ones, be it anxiety, grief, or the trials of growing up.
We’ve watched Will Byers cope with the trauma of return, after his harrowing imprisonment in the Upside Down. His struggle to accept and understand himself while feeling that the person he cares for most, as well as the bonds of childhood are slipping away. We’ve seen police chief Jim Hopper, a man scarred by grief, venture once more into the risk of paternal love.
We’ve followed Max through her journey of survivor’s guilt and depression after losing her stepbrother Billy. Grief and depression had her in a chokehold, a journey encapsulated as she runs from Vecna’s mental torment while Kate Bush’s music swells. As she leaps back into her body while the music plays, she jolts back to life, gasping “I’m still here”. The first and most liked comment on a Youtube clip of the moment states simply “This scene made me want to LIVE”.
Dustin is what happens when a golden retriever gains sentience and gets straight A’s in science. He is joy incarnate. He’s the glue. The chaos wrangler. And now, perhaps, the mastermind of Vecna’s demise.
Lucas is the guy whose weapon is loyalty. When Max was breaking under the weight of depression, Lucas didn’t flinch. He sat with her in the silence. When she lay in a hospital bed, lost in the darkness, he stayed. Even when there was no promise of a miracle, he refused to give up hope.
Then there’s Steve. Our king. The man who started as a walking Axe body spray commercial and became the mom we never knew we needed. The collective threat of “IF STEVE DIES WE RIOT” is less about plot and more about what he represents: growth, loyalty, the possibility of redemption. He’s every one of us trying to get it right the second time around.
And of course, El. A girl who fought through unimaginable abuse and found strength and kindness on the other side. The epitome of post-traumatic growth. Eleven’s journey showed us a victim building a life that is whole.
Friends Don’t Lie (Except When They Do)
It started as a mantra. “Friends don’t lie.” Simple and pure. But the Duffer brothers knew better. Knew that the pain wasn’t just in the breaking of that promise, it was in the believing. Because as we grow up, we learn the sad truth: friends do lie. Sometimes out of love. Sometimes out of fear. Sometimes because we’re too scared to be honest with ourselves.
Hopper lies to El. Mike lies to El. El lies to Mike. And yet we root for them, because that’s what real love looks like. It’s messy, flawed, stitched together with apologies and hard-fought forgiveness. “Friends don’t lie” was never the whole truth. It was the hope. And in that hope lives the heartbreak. Yet it’s a heartbreak the group overcame, and it’s a fight we all must learn to face if we want bonds to hold true in an era when we treat people as disposable and find endless distraction from the pain of betrayal in the technology that surrounds us.
Cold War Paranoia for the 21st Century
In Stranger Things, the paranoia is clean. The government really is hiding a portal in the basement. The journalists really are being wiretapped. When Murray Bauman rants about Russian spies, he sounds like a lunatic, but the script vindicates him; he is the only sane man in a town of sleepwalkers. But looking back at Hawkins from the vantage point of 2025, the "Cold War" themes hit differently. The terror isn’t just that the government is lying; it’s the dizzying realization that in a world of secrets, the truth can feel impossible to find.
The show captures the exact moment the American consensus began to fracture, the hangover of Watergate and Vietnam, where "trust the plan" started to morph into "question everything." Today, we are living in the terminal stage of that disease. The parallel between Hawkins and our current reality isn't a literal Deep State cabal; it’s the destabilizing fog of information warfare. We live in an era where legitimate institutional failures (the things that actually turn out to be true) are buried under an avalanche of half-truths, online noise and weaponized fantasy.
We watch Stranger Things with a specific kind of envy. In the show, the conspiracy is solvable. You can break into the lab. You can steal the files. You can find the sadistic scientist). In our reality, the "truth" is rarely that satisfying. It is fragmented, spun, and buried. We don't know who to believe—the State, the Media, the algorithm, or the Murray Baumans of the internet who may be right 10% of the time and dangerous the other 90%. We love Hawkins because it offers us the one thing we can’t find in our own feeds: a conspiracy that can actually be exposed, fought, and defeated.
Get on the bike.
Ultimately, the most radical and comforting thing about Stranger Things isn't the supernatural fantasy, it’s the agency. We love these kids because they don't wait for permission. When the police chief is drunk and the government is lying and the sky is turning purple, they don’t tweet about it. They get on their bikes. They build weapons out of fireworks and nails. They form a party.
We are living in a time that demands that same frantic, terrified courage. The monsters we face are often far more dangerous than anything in the Upside Down because they don't have physical bodies we can punch. But the lesson of Hawkins still holds: the cavalry isn't coming. The government isn’t going to save us. The "grown-ups" are asleep at the wheel. If we want to survive the horror, we have to do it ourselves. So turn off the news. Find your party. Get on your bike.
