After the two-hour finale of Stranger Things aired on Netflix on New Year’s Eve, some fans started to believe the seemingly happy ending wasn’t genuine. They launched an online theory, dubbed “Conformity Gate,” claiming the villain, Vecna, had actually succeeded and the happy ending was a fabricated illusion for the characters still trapped in Hawkins. Fueled by questionable online clues, they anticipated a ninth, secret episode would be released on January 7th. However, Netflix has officially confirmed that no such episode exists – the finale, titled “The Rightside Up,” is truly the end of the series.
Netflix recently released all episodes of Stranger Things on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter), as reported by Deadline. This move has likely disappointed fans who were holding out for a specific event called “Conformity Gate” to occur on a predicted date. While that date has passed without incident, it’s unlikely these fans will abandon the theory entirely. They’ll probably just shift the expected date, similar to how some interpretations of the Rapture change over time. It’s a case of dedicated fans finding ways to keep the hope alive.
Okay, so Netflix’s announcement on January 7th wasn’t a huge deal. It was just a tease for a new campaign about how they’ll personalize what we watch in 2026. Definitely not a new Stranger Things episode, and sadly, not even news about the final season of GLOW (though we’ve been hoping!). But it got me thinking about a bigger problem with how fans act these days. We seem to expect stories to be made for us, on demand. It feels wrong to try and force creators to change endings just because we don’t like them – it’s like becoming Annie Wilkes from Misery! Even if everyone hates an ending, like with Game of Thrones, that’s still part of the creative process. Storytelling shouldn’t work that way, in any form. I really hope we all realize that soon.
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2026-01-08 05:02