'Stranger Things' finale: 3 takeaways

Warning: This story contains spoilers about the "Stranger Things" finale.

Everyone recovered yet? After nearly 10 years, 40-something episodes, five seasons — and enough dangling story threads to easily fill another five — "Stranger Things" came to an end Wednesday night.

Or did it?

Three observations:

1. Too long

Holy Mother of God, that was long. One hour certainly wouldn't have been enough, but two hours-plus was too much, especially considering that there were two finales lashed together here. The first wrapped the Upside Down (or Rightside Up) story, while the second was essentially fan service. Each hour could have worked just fine on its own, but that wasn't the plan. The plan was to blow the doors off this thing — to slay the Mind Flayer once and for all; demolish the wormhole/exotic matter/"Abyss"/Rightside Up; dispatch poor Henry Creel/Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower); and tell us what everyone still living (or maybe not living) was up to 18 months in the future (not all that much, as it turns out.) As Mike (Finn Wolfhard) predicted at the outset, "a million things have to go right [and] a million things could go wrong." Not a bad assessment for "The Rightside Up" — the finale's title — either.

Sure, there were some spectacular special effects here, and — at least during the first hour — "Rightside Up" never fully lost sight of what made this series so wildly fun in the first place: Great cast, along with a shaggy-dog form of storytelling where any idea, no matter how preposterous or far-fetched, must be followed to conclusion. But shaggy-dog tales do have a way of confounding logic, and in the end, showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer could never quite get their arms entirely around this sprawl. Even at two hours, that would have been physically and narratively impossible.

So if you're looking for review stars, here's mine: 2½.

2. Montauk shoutout

If you took a bathroom break, you missed this, but ... as Hop (David Harbour) at long last proposed to Joyce (Winona Ryder) over dinner, he mused about their future together. Maybe a nice beach somewhere, the sound of waves lapping? Far, far from Hawkins and its blighted past. As it would happen, "Montauk is looking for a new chief of police. You and me! We could start fresh again." (Note to the Duffers: Montauk doesn't actually have its own police department.)

I guess no one has told him about East End housing costs yet. In any event, let's call this a shoutout as opposed to a wistful, not-yet-thoroughly-vetted life plan. The Duffers originally envisaged a Montauk setting for "Stranger Things" until budget realities intruded. Could this line perhaps be a setup for a future spinoff, this time truly set in Montauk? Nice thought but don't bet on it. Budget realities will still intrude.

3. Is El (Millie Bobby Brown) alive or dead?

Of course, this is the big question. Alive or dead? Or is she like Schrödinger's Cat (look it up) — both alive and dead at the same time, in separate-but-equal quantum realms? As Prince's "Purple Rain" played and the bomb was detonated, El was standing astride the opening to the Upside Down/Rightside Up. In an instant, the wormhole/Abyss collapses while El is swept up in the maelstrom. This seems definitive except nothing has ever been definitive in "Stranger Things."

At that final "Dungeons & Dragons" wrap in the closing seconds of the finale, Mike chose to believe that "the mage you saw die [El] was not real [but] an illusion. Where did she go? No one knows. I like to imagine a beautiful land somewhere, far, far away." Cue to El, standing on a ledge, a spectacular vista before her. (Closing credits did indicate that filming took place in New Zealand and Iceland, so pick your fantasy destination.) Mike: "She finds a small town to call home, safe from the danger of the Black Hand." The Black Hand, by the way, is the villainous Major General Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton), while her fate was left undetermined Wednesday — one of those dangling threads.

There's a temptation to believe this final D&D — with Mike, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Max (Sadie Sink) and Will (Noah Schnapp) around the table, swapping fables, shedding tears — was like Bob Newhart's dream: All five seasons had essentially unfolded in an elaborate game sequence, with any outcome (Alive or Dead) conceivable. But what Netflix and "Stranger Things" really wanted to do was sidestep finality. Any outcome is indeed possible. And so, by the way, is any sequel.

Believe me, this isn't the last we've seen of "Stranger Things."