In a student poll conducted by the Morton Pony Express News, Stranger Things was named best show of 2025.
According to Google’s AI Overview, approximately 38% of Netflix subscribers watched the final season of Stranger Things, and 56% of those viewers enjoyed it. In the same survey, several students said the show’s fast-paced progression was a key reason for its success. The production for the final season cost roughly $60 million per episode, which was double the budget of Season 4. Furthermore, in a random survey of 100 Morton East students, 40% (40 students) selected Stranger Things as the best show of last year, while IT: Welcome to Derry placed second with 19 votes.
“I enjoyed the Stranger Things show. It was confusing and weird at times, but I liked the drama, and the cast did a good job at acting. My favorite scene was when Vecna appeared in the other dimension and the kids showed up and they started fighting,” said Morton security Claudia Ruiz.
While some people liked the show, some other people may not have the same opinion.
“I think the ending was pretty bad and I didn’t really like the show. There was a lot left out, and they could have gone in depth with some things like the development about Eleven’s ending. I didn’t like how we were left on a cliffhanger, and the producers could have done a better ending instead of telling us maybe Eleven is dead or maybe she’s not. I think the show appealed to a lot of people since a lot of us kind of grew up watching the show when it came out in 2016,” said junior Nathan Garcia.
A lot of students had very similar opinions about the show.
“Stranger Things was a good show, but I think the last season was really rushed and they could have done a lot better. I feel like some things that were built and talked about in previous seasons weren’t really explained or really talked about in this new season. The fight scenes improved, and I really liked the scene where Karen put a gasoline tank in the washing machine and killed the demodogs,” said sophomore Anahi Ballesteros.
Some people may have enjoyed the fight scenes, but not everyone did.
“The ending of Stranger Things was not good at all. The Duffer Brothers could have done a better job at writing the ending and taken their time writing it. The whole fight with Vecna was poorly written. His first appearance was really cool, but they built up Vecna so much just for the fight with him to be very short. Stranger Things would’ve been a lot better if the fight had been a lot longer,” said senior Fernando Del Moral.
While Stranger Things finished in first place, IT: Welcome to Derry finished second in the poll.
“I really enjoyed the new IT show and it was definitely my favorite show of the year even though I don’t really enjoy watching scary stuff. I liked how the show connected to the movies and it took place 27 years before the first movie. The only thing I hated was how I would have to wait every Sunday for a new episode to come out. I wish they had just released all the episodes all at once. My favorite scene was when the kids had to beat Pennywise to the lake to replace the missing shard that kept Pennywise in Derry. I also really liked how they revealed to us that Marge in the show was Richie’s mom in the first movie — it was a big surprise,” said senior Isabelle Salgado.
