I am the one who believes that El (aka Jane) finally left everyone else and passed away. 

I truly enjoy all these recaps that call back those old days. 

It took a nine-year journey to finish the fiction and six years to tell the story. Fortunately, I only took three years to walk through these paths with them. The person who recommended it to me again and again, finally prompting me to watch it, is no longer my friend; we haven’t been in contact for over a year. However, the final season is finally here.

Stranger Things, in my mind, is a pun. Everyone is a freak. The whole story starts with D&D and ends with D&D, conveying a shared spirit: making friends and being yourself. This is what Gen Z has been eager for over the past decades. The internet, especially the mobile internet, easily connected the world. You want to be cool, you want to be unique, yet you are strongly connected with others—listening to Taylor Swift, Sabrina, or Ariana; watching Wednesday, Severance, or Zootopia. Who hasn’t dreamed of gathering together and doing extraordinary things?

And now, this show has become a shared memory for Gen Z, constructing a solid foundation for the future. Just go outside and ask your classmates: “How do you feel about the Stranger Things final episode?”

From winter to winter, I can still remember when I started S01E01. It was a cold midnight, sitting at my desk, lying in bed, becoming fanatical.

That’s the Gen Z story, and that’s the end of it.