“Stranger Things” may be set in Hawkins, Indiana, but Massachusetts plays a key role in the series finale, released Dec. 31.
The buildup to the finale pushed fans to the very limits of 2025. After releasing Season 4 of the horror-adventure series in May of 2022, Netflix made fans wait three-and-a-half years until getting to see the final season, which was released in three parts at the end of 2025.
The first four episodes were released on Nov. 26, then three more were released on Christmas Day. The series finale — clocking in at 2 hours 8 minutes — was released on New Years Eve.
But for fans from Massachusetts, the wait had an extra special reveal toward the end of the final episode.
Spoilers follow.
The series finale sets up an epic fight between Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown, supported by the ensemble cast of Hawkins misfits, against Henry Creel a.k.a. Vecna, played by Jamie Campbell Bower.
But it’s after the action concludes that viewers are treated to the references to Massachusetts.
Eighteen months after Vecna is defeated, many of the characters have moved on, and two of them now call the Bay State home.
Robin Buckley, played by Maya Hawke, has wound up at Smith College in Northampton.
This makes a lot of sense in the show. Throughout Season 5, Robin performs as “Rockin’ Robin,” a DJ on the local Hawkins radio station called “The Squawk,” or WSQK.
Smith College, an all-women’s college founded in 1871 and opened in 1875, has had a student-run radio station since 1949, which is still in operation, called WOZQ 91.9 FM. That’s plenty of time for Rockin’ Robin to join their ranks in 1989 when “Stranger Things” concludes.
Robin doesn’t mention the radio station but does playfully cite the “lectures on (feminist activist Gloria) Steinem” and “high concentration of women” as potential draws for friend Steve Harrington, played by Joe Keery, to visit.
One more character winds up in Massachusetts: Nancy Wheeler, played by Natalia Dyer. The gun-toting crusader against Vecna had a job at the local newspaper in earlier seasons, and viewers learn had been attending Emerson College in Boston — likely in its journalism department.
But the character reveals in the end of the finale that she left the college to take a job at the Boston Herald.
“It’s a trainee position,” she says, downplaying the role. “I was sick of school and thought I’d get out there and try the real world.”
Will there be character meetups in Boston and Massachusetts? No. With characters spread out over the eastern United States, they agree on a neutral middle ground — Philadelphia at Robin’s “weird” uncle’s house.
“Stranger Things” is now streaming in its entirety on Netflix.
