Genre storytelling rarely gets poetic timing, but 2025 delivered it by letting two horror juggernauts reach defining endpoints side by side. Stranger Things, which began in July 2016 as a nostalgia-soaked gamble, closed its doors after nearly a decade. IT, by contrast, has been haunting screens far longer, most recently, expanded through HBO’s IT: Welcome to Derry. 

While Stranger Things offered a final goodbye, Welcome to Derry ended only its first season, functioning as a narrative handoff rather than a conclusion. 

Both finales leaned heavily on legacy, but with very different intentions. One aimed to close the book. The other deliberately left pages unfinished. But which one was better? 

IT: Welcome to Derry's 1st season’s near feature-length finale drops Derry into suffocating fog as Pennywise’s presence escalates from a local curse to a national threat. The U.S. military, led by General Shaw, attempts to weaponize the creature by dismantling one of the ancient pillars that cage it within the town. The result is catastrophic. Pennywise breaks loose, racing toward the river that marks the final boundary of its imprisonment.

What elevates the episode is its mythological ambition. Using a fragment of the meteor that brought IT to Earth, the kids, alongside Dick Hallorann and Major Hanlon, manage to restore the cage at the last possible moment. Pennywise is not destroyed but forcibly reset, dragged back into hibernation until the next killing cycle.

While Season 1 of IT plants its boldest seeds through time-travelling revelations, Stranger Things, on the other hand, seems to cut off all loose ends. But which one had a better ending? 

The final episode of Stranger Things Season 5, aptly titled The Rightside Up, wastes no time easing into nostalgia. It opens in motion, plunging straight into the most elaborate battle the series has ever staged. Eleven, Kali, and Max confront Henry Creel inside his fractured mind while Hopper and Murray prepare to destroy the Upside Down itself, turning Prince’s Purple Rain into a literal countdown to annihilation.

 Elsewhere, the Hawkins crew descends into the Abyss, where the so-called Pain Tree reveals itself as the Mind Flayer in disguise. The finale plays like a Dungeons & Dragons endgame. Only after the world is saved does the series allow itself to breathe. The final scene returns to the Wheelers’ basement, where one last Dungeons & Dragons game unfolds. The friends pack away their books, step upstairs, and leave childhood behind. 

As a season finale, Welcome to Derry is more daring. It expands its classic Stephen King style mythology and reframes familiar lore. While Stranger Things delivers a satisfying goodbye, IT: Welcome to Derry proves that sometimes the stronger ending is the one that refuses to end at all.

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Which finale worked better for you and why? Share your thoughts below.