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In this op-ed, entertainment news editor Kaitlyn McNab argues that a racially coded scene in Stranger Things 4's finale was unnecessary and harmful to the show's Black characters and its fans, and calls attention to a larger issue of how the Netflix series portrays race. Warning: spoilers for Stranger Things 4: Volume 2 ahead.
As we reach the one-hour mark of the super-sized finale episode of Stranger Things season 4, the stakes have never been higher. By now, the Hawkins gang has set their plan in motion for a multi pronged attack against Vecna, the series' Big Bad. Max Mayfield, played by Sadie Sink, hides from the phantasmagorical wrath of Vecna within her happiest memory — her first kiss with her ex-boyfriend Lucas Sinclair, portrayed by Caleb McLaughlin, at their school's winter dance. While Max is under Vecna's trance, she is completely vulnerable. Lucas and his sister Erica (Priah Ferguson) are tasked with protecting Max's body in the real world while the rest of the group attempts to weaken Vecna in the Upside Down. It's while safeguarding a white girl that the only two Black characters are abused by white men — and that the only Black male character of the young cast is held at gunpoint.
The tone of this episode's midpoint is intended to be dramatic and intense, with the harsh chords of heavy metal literally providing the soundtrack. Yet, even with all of the buildup and my emotional preparation for another signature heart wrenching Stranger Things season finale, nothing could have prepared me for the moment Jason and Andy, a pair of young white men who have started a police-style mob within the town, target the Sinclair siblings.
Nothing could have prepared me for 11-year-old Erica running for her life before being tackled to the ground by Andy, watching him pin her arm behind her back and threaten to break it as she struggles. Nothing could have prepared me for Lucas nervously putting his hands in the air while his former basketball teammate Jason cocks a gun at him.
Season four of Stranger Things has leaned completely into the elements of horror, depicting gory deaths and revealing its most viscid and gut-churning creature yet, the man-monster-hybrid Vecna. As a horror and science fiction fan, this kind of imagery was familiar and exciting to me. The heightening of my imagination to wrap my head around the mythology of the Upside Down is what made this very real world horror — a Black boy's life in the hands of a white man with a gun — so jarring, so terrifying, and arguably one of the scariest moments from the entire season.
With the Duffer Brothers' repeated warnings to fans ahead of Volume 2 that no character was safe from potentially being killed off, I immediately feared that I was about to watch Lucas die in a way that was far more realistic than supernatural. It almost felt like I was watching a different show entirely.
“W-w-wait. We… we don't have to do this,” begs Lucas as Jason, who believes Lucas is part of a murderous Satanic cult, ironically stares at him in fear. Jason orders Lucas to wake Max, and to empty his pockets and turn around, as if Lucas was a perp on the street and he was a cop. “If I wake her too soon, we all die,” says Lucas, desperately trying to explain the fatal consequences of waking Max. “No. You don't wake her up right now, you die, Sinclair,” Jason responds as he removes the safety from the gun. “Just you.”
As the scene continues, it's intercut with updates on what the other characters are up to. Hopper, Joyce, and Murray chase Demodogs and Demogorgons in a Russian prison. Eddie and Dustin duel against Demobats in the Upside Down. Steve, Nancy, and Robin fend off the Hive Mind's cobra-like tendrils. Max and Eleven battle Vecna within Max's mind. It's only Lucas and Erica who face conflict in the real world. Every other character is given an otherworldly, supernatural creature to slay — it's only Lucas and Erica who must fight a monster that they would face on any other day as young Black kids in suburban, small-town Indiana in the 1980s.
With this one scene, the Duffer Brothers and the Stranger Things writers effectively pop the bubble they've somewhat created for the Sinclair siblings, the weird, nearly anachronistic setting of Hawkins, Indiana: a place where racism exists, but is a rare occurrence. This isn't to say that the notorious and rampant anti-Black racism of the decade doesn't touch the Sinclair family at all — but the instances are few and far between, something that seems incredibly unrealistic given both the time and location setting of the series. In season one, a bully hurls the slur “midnight” at Lucas — because of its explicitness, this may seem like the last instance of racism that Lucas has endured, but it's not.
In fact, season four isn't even the first time that Lucas has been physically assaulted by a white man during a Stranger Things finale episode. In episode 9 of Stranger Things 2, Max's stepbrother Billy assaults Lucas after repeatedly ordering Max to stay away from him. “You know what happens when you disobey me. I break things," Billy tells Max, then grabbing Lucas by the collar and shoving him up against the wall. Lucas then knees him in the groin, angering him further. “You are so dead, Sinclair! You're dead," Billy says before Steve Harrington interjects. Sounds extremely familiar.
Although Billy vehemently warns Max to stay away from Lucas throughout the majority of season two, it is never explicitly stated why. But for most Black viewers, the answer was clear: Billy was racist. And since Billy's redemptive, “heroic” death, his racism seems to be all but forgotten by a large part of the Stranger Things fandom. After the second season's culmination, Ross Duffer confirmed Billy's racism, while Matt Duffer watered Billy's bigotry down to being a “terrible person." Even the show's creators do not seem to totally agree on how the show handles race.
The Duffer Brothers continuously betray their Black characters, and this latest, disappointing betrayal of the Sinclair siblings confirms the glaring issue of an uneven, and oftentimes tone deaf depiction of race in the series. Lucas, and particularly Erica, deserve more screen time to become the emotionally nuanced characters that their counterparts have all grown to be. They do not deserve a lengthy scene in which they are brutally attacked, especially by white human men. If only the writers gave their two Black main characters the same painstaking level of attention they do the accurate 1980s nostalgic detailing of the show — or every other white main character.
There's an overwhelming amount of pressure on Lucas and Erica as the two token Black main characters, a pressure frequently pointed out in valid critiques by the show's Black fans. As if to prove that the Sinclair siblings are not tokens, the writers have ushered in a handful of other Black characters season after season.
However, none of them are fully realized, and none of them achieve the representation Black fans seek. There's a gaggle of flippant, non-speaking Black girls who back Erica up at the Starcourt Mall in season three, only enforcing the child version of the sassy Black woman trope they've locked her in; more random Black cops and government agents in season four, including the Hawkins interim chief of police Lt. Colonel Sullivan, who is quickly solidified as the enemy; and Vecna's third victim Patrick, who is killed off with no narrative and barely one line of explanation — Patrick being preyed on by Vecna was a perfect opportunity to flesh out the emotional backstory of a Black character and in turn, humanize him, and the writers still did not take it.
In a recent interview with Variety, actor Caleb McLaughlin commented on Lucas' role as the token Black kid in the friend group, and whether this influenced the character's desire to distance himself from his friends in the fourth season. “Back in the 80s, Black kids definitely got bullied for being Black, especially in a predominantly white school. So I think that definitely played a big part,” said Caleb. “He probably got bullied more than the other kids in the show. We’re not gonna play on that, but it probably had to do something with it. His friends were there for him, they love him, they’ve been best friends for life, but they probably don’t know how Lucas feels inside. Definitely, silently, that plays a part.”
But… why silently? Why is there delusion embedded in Lucas Sinclair's story? Why must we act as though Lucas would not and has not experienced racism, if he is still going to be placed in violent, racist situations? Why must we pretend that Lucas' father, or any Black father in the 1980s, would tell his young Black son to cooperate with and respect the police by “not lying” to them? Why must we continue the ruse and play along, as though Black fans are not being denied the opportunity to escape in fandom by constantly being reminded of violence and racism?
This season, despite Eddie Munson being the target that Jason, Andy, and their mob are truly after, this season's secondary villains never actually go head-to-head with Eddie. Instead, they take all their rage out on the Sinclair siblings in season four's finale.
While still being held at gunpoint by Jason, Lucas delivers a speech that's intended to fulfill his character arc for the season: he doesn't want to be popular like Jason anymore, he wants to remain true to himself and his friends. Jason doesn't care. He aims and shoots at Lucas, who physically brawls with Jason for his life after knocking the gun out of the jock's hands. Outside, Erica is also brawling with a white man twice her size. This is not Lucas and Erica's Eddie Munson moment. They are not heroes. This is not comeuppance, or righteousness, or victory. This is the worst nightmare of many Black kids across America. And Jason being killed by Vecna's “earthquake” is not satisfying — it's a cop out that allows the writers to avoid making the golden white boy face repercussions for inciting rage and fear within his town.
In the days following the finale's release, Jason's coded-yet-obvious racism is already being dismissed and explained away by some Stranger Things fans, in the same way that Billy's was. They were products of their environments, products of their upbringings. This unnecessary finale scene cannot be explained away. By the end of season four, Stranger Things' long history of a harmful, unsteady depiction of race has come to a head — and with the show set to end with its fifth season, the Duffer Brothers have only one season left to attempt to do right by their two Black main characters, to stop fumbling their Blackness, and in turn, do right by their Black fans.