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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteNot on the evidence established here. Before the finale aired, Finn Wolfhard said the cast hoped Stranger Things would not face the kind of backlash associated with Game of Thrones’ final season. He also said the cast read the scripts and thought they were special. That comment shows the comparison was on the team’s mind; it does not prove season 5 received the same response.
What Finn Wolfhard actually said about the “curse”
In an October 16, 2025, report by TIME, Wolfhard described the cast’s pre-release concern: “The way that Game of Thrones got torn to shreds in that final season, we’re all walking into this going, ‘We hope to not have that kind of thing happen.’” He added that, after reading the scripts, “We knew that it was something special.”
The timing matters. Wolfhard was describing hopes and expectations before viewers could see the completed season. His remarks are not a retrospective judgment, a review score, or evidence that audiences reacted to Stranger Things season 5 as they did to Game of Thrones.
Did Stranger Things season 5 have a bad ending like Game of Thrones?
The available evidence does not establish that it did. A fair comparison would need dated, comparable measures of both critical reception and audience response, as well as a distinction between objections to particular story choices and the broader claim that a finale damaged a show’s reputation. No such paired measures are established here, so calling the seasons’ reception equivalent would go beyond the evidence.
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That does not mean every viewer liked the ending, or that criticism did not exist. It means the pre-release quote alone cannot settle how the season was received. “The Game of Thrones curse” works as a description of a fear; it is not, by itself, a finding about the finished season.
What made the finale feel like a deliberate ending
Spoilers for the series finale. In Netflix Tudum’s January 2, 2026, interview with creators Matt and Ross Duffer, Ross Duffer described the final Dungeons & Dragons scene as a return to the show’s beginning and a farewell to the characters’ childhood: “This is about this group of characters saying goodbye to their childhood.” He said the sequence had been planned for a long time.
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- In 1980s Indiana a group of friends witness supernatural forces and government exploits. In searching for answers, they unravel a series of mysteries.
The creators also said they wanted the characters to continue their individual journeys and find happiness in different ways. That explains the ending’s intended frame, not whether every viewer found the choices satisfying. The finale’s return to the Wheeler basement gives the series a structural bookend; viewers can still disagree about the resolutions that lead up to it.
When season 5 came out—and what that settles
Netflix’s season 5 release information identified it as the fifth and final season, released in three installments: four episodes on November 26, three on Christmas, and the finale on New Year’s Eve, all at 5 p.m. Pacific Time. Netflix’s January 1, 2026, coverage guide said the finale and all other episodes were then streaming. That confirms the season’s release and completion, not a shared critical or audience verdict.
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Verdict: the fear was real; the “curse” is unproven
Wolfhard’s comments establish that the cast was aware of the risk of a Game of Thrones-style backlash and felt confident after reading the scripts. The creators’ comments establish how they intended the finale’s bookend to work. Neither establishes that Stranger Things season 5 actually suffered the same kind of backlash. On the evidence available, saying it “officially fell victim” overstates the case.
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