Not since the pandemic have there been so many endings. The last season of “Stranger Things” wrapped up the buzziest series since King’s Landing burned, “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” was the biplane-hopping finale to Tom Cruise’s action franchise, and “Avatar: Fire and Ash” completed this phase of James Cameron’s space saga. Though I enjoyed them all to varying degrees (and I loved “Fire and Ash“), they all curiously share the same Achilles heel, one crippling to demogorgons and Na’vi alike. Each suffered from an issue of excess and over-exposition, buckling under the weight of too many characters to serve all equally.
It’s a frustrating trend, and a hard one to make sense of –– how can three of the biggest releases of the year, capping off franchises decades old, share similar issues? There’s no single answer, but they all reflect an increasing trend in how storytellers approach their narratives.
For months, I’ve been hearing two claims on repeat like the chorus of an ’80s needledrop. The first is that “Stranger Things” should’ve ended after only one season, and the second is that “Stranger Things“ has been “Marvelized.” I’m sympathetic to those who want to preserve the brilliance of The Duffer’s first season, even as a fan of the others. The second, though, has never been right. Yes, “Stranger Things“ has become a more VFX-driven series, though it’s been that way since 2017. Yes, when cinematographer Tim Ives left the series, the man responsible for helping find the visual identity, it became more drab and visually unappealing. But the most significant problems run deeper, and a reminder that “Marvelized“ is now a catch-all term that, like “Oscar bait“ or “Film Bro”, broadly translates to “a thing I do not like.“
Instead, let’s call it the “Hobbit-ification” of media. When Peter Jackson reluctantly stepped back into further adaptations of Tolkien’s books, it was a last resort after years of difficult rights issues and production delays. “The Hobbit“ is a deceptively tricky novel to adapt –it’s essentially a series of self-contained episodes, and the party of dwarves accompanying Bilbo don’t have strong personalities, much less character arcs. What works in the book is unthinkable in a movie, like when a new character, The Bard, shows up and kills Smaug. So in a rush to get the movies made, Jackson and his screenwriting partners Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh (who share credit with Guillermo del Toro) addressed these issues by piling on backstories and turning mere sentences into bombastic set-pieces, alongside extended flashbacks and invented villains.
They tried to impose some of their lessons from “The Lord of the Rings,“ and it didn’t work. As a result, “The Hobbit“movies are frustrating things, forcing you to wade through superfluous filler to get to the moments of magic. To solve their narrative problems, they would simply add more characters, more scenes, and more action, eventually expanding from two films to three, as if adding excess would convince us of their importance.
To varying degrees, that’s what watching “The Final Reckoning, “Fire and Ash,“ and “Stranger Things 5“ is like. After weeks of hearing complaints about characters who vanish from the story for conspicuous lengths of time, and plots that never seem to know who or what to follow, it hit me like an Ethan Hunt punch to the face. I heard it as often about Lo’ak and Kiri as I did about Mike and Eleven. Lo’ak will journey to sea to find Payakan, only to disappear for what feels like ages, while Eleven will be in danger in the Upside Down, and we must wait half an episode to see what happened. It’s not that either of those story arcs is necessarily bad (mileage may vary), but in order to serve everyone, some characters became victims of the edit.
Likewise, both “The Final Reckoning“ and “Stranger Things“ constantly hit the emergency brake on plot momentum. Instead, as many have called out, there are endless planning scenes, with more time spent telling us what might happen than letting these sequences speak for themselves. Set up and pay off is a narrative art that Christopher McQuarrie and the Duffers have previously mastered. They know that great set-pieces, particularly when they involve so many moving parts, often demand a talky presentation of who-what-where-when-how. It’s why they so often stage their big sequences like heists, where exposition is at its breeziest.
Yet, in “The Final Reckoning,” Ethan spends more time asking for permission to do stunts than he actually gets to do any. Earlier films had Benji deliver zippy run-downs of their latest schemes, but here, there are somehow three sequences detailing how Ethan will survive a dive to a submarine at the bottom of the ocean. One comically ends with Ethan saying, “JK, I actually have my own plan,“ as if to laugh at its own talky problem. In Hawkins, Robin, Dustin, and Steve love to pull from a bottomless chest of visual aids to hatch their next strategy.
In all cases, the big action scenes largely deliver (Frank Darabont’s “Home Alone“ monster battle is terrific, and we all know Tom Cruise hanging onto a barreling biplane is incredible). Still, they’d have been even better if they hadn’t made us work so hard to get there. In both the series and film, there’s a repetitive pattern of clunky exposition, awkwardly timed heart-to-hearts followed by action scenes, each convinced of their own importance. Conversely, “Fire and Ash“ is so dense that the first watch is overwhelming, with its excesses less a byproduct of contrived story beats than a possibly indulgent desire to include as many ideas as possible.
To be fair, it shouldn’t be understated how hard series endings are. They have to be their own stories, but must also bring the grander arc full circle. It’s a hard balance; if they’re too much of either one, they’re harshly penalized for being so different it’s “not what made me love it in the first place, or dismissed as empty fan service. Many of them try to solve this issue with a fetch-quest plot structure that uses MacGuffins that connect to earlier entries. Jason Bourne seeks his memories in “The Bourne Ultimatum,” “The Deathly Hollows“ has Harry, Ron and Hermione hunting down trinkets that reference past stories or series lore, both “Return of the Jedi“ and “The Rise of Skywalker“ involve the Death Star and the Emperor, and “The Last Crusade“ brings back Nazis for a Grail Quest ride along with dad. On TV, “Mad Men,” “The Sopranos,” “The Americans,” and “The Leftovers“ did this best, studiously using prior seasons to lay the groundwork so that nearly every episode of the last season felt like a finale unto itself.
The big climax of “Fire and Ash“ has been burned for feeling like a retread of “The Way of Water,“ which undersells the fact that it’s just as much a remix of the original “Avatar,“ drawing even more scrutiny to the fluid line between what’s too old or too new. “Stranger Things 5“ uses the search for the missing Holly Wheeler to mirror the search for Will in the series debut. But because it lacks as strong a central mystery as earlier seasons (we learn what’s “going on“ with Holly very early), it’s as if every episode has to start from zero, going through the motions of introducing a new plot idea, a new set-piece, and at least one more planning sequence, diluting the urgency of Holly’s capture by Vecna along the way. “The Final Reckoning“ handles this clumsiest, with references and actual clips of past movies, while bringing back a cameo from the first “Mission: Impossible“ as they fight an A.I. digital god. Last year, I wrote about how Ethan Hunt’s last mission was a deeper, weirder movie than some commentators suggested, but from an audience point of view, it’s the worst of both worlds–too redundant for series fans, too lost in the sauce for newcomers.
I would argue that, as a group, they’re better than 2019’s slate of franchise finishers, but they exemplify a general pattern of messy maximalism over streamlined economy. The Duffer Brothers have been called out for promising a final season that returns to the vibe of the original, only to bloat this season with new characters and pointless subplots. On the Empire Spoiler Special Podcast, McQuarrie said he envisioned “The Final Reckoning“ as a leaner movie than “Dead Reckoning,” but after it didn’t work, they rearranged the film and fixed it by adding way more plot. “Fire and Ash“ lost 20-30 minutes of footage during editing, but because each arc was designed to prop up the others to a fault, you feel those absences. Each bas their strengths and perhaps they’ve been treated a little unkindly online, but looking back on 2025, I miss when less was still treated as more.
What do you think of the endings to “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” “Stranger Things 5,“ and “Avatar: Fire and Ash?“ Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account, and check out the team’s latest Oscar predictions here.
