Spoiler Alert !!!Spoilers for Stranger Things Season 5 finale ahead!

In case you didn’t know, Netflix has reportedly spent a massive budget on Stranger Things Season 5. As per reports from Puck, each episode costs between $50 and $60 million, putting the final season in the same financial league as Avengers: Endgame. Basically, with eight episodes, Season 5 costs around $400 million. 

Now, with that kind of money comes sky-high expectations. But Netflix had promised that every episode would feel like a full-length movie, packed with spectacle, emotion, and Upside Down chaos. And, to be fair, the show did deliver scale. The episodes are longer, bigger, and more ambitious than ever before. 

In fact, the hype turned so high that the final episode’s limited theatrical run pulled in respectable box-office numbers of around $25 million to $28 million (via Variety). But now that the excitement has settled, a different conversation started online. Viewers began questioning whether the visuals actually matched the price tag.

The table contains basic details on Stranger Things:

TV ShowStranger ThingsCreatorsMatt and Ross Duffer CastWinona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Noah Schnapp, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Sadie SinkNumber of Seasons5Production Companies21 Laps EntertainmentMonkey Massacre Productions (seasons 1–4)Upside Down Pictures (season 5)IMDb Rating8.6/10Rotten Tomatoes Score91%

Stranger Things Faces Scrutiny as Fans Compare 24-Year-Old Linkin Park Visuals

As soon as the final episode dropped, fans started freezing frames and questioning whether the show actually looks like it costs $400M. And turns out, a few of the shots from the finale even got compared to Linkin Park’s In the End music video from 2001. The comparison mostly came from the desert-like landscapes seen when the gang enters The Abyss to face Vecna and the Mind Flayer.

For many viewers, the setting felt oddly familiar, almost like something they had seen decades ago rather than something made with a $400 million budget in 2025. What surprised fans the most was how similar the visuals looked despite the massive time gap. The Linkin Park video is over 24 years old, yet it features rocky terrain, dusty skies, and surreal environments that don’t feel wildly different from Stranger Things Season 5. 

Linkin Park walked so stranger things could run pic.twitter.com/wnsQJuZNmy— vids that go hard (@vidsthatgohard) January 2, 2026

The more I look at these ST shots, the more low budget it looks 😭— Platinum Equinox 💫✨ (@PlatinumEquinox) January 2, 2026

How are people liking this finale more than s4 🙆🏻‍♀️🙆🏻‍♀️ shows and movies with less budget had better CGI than the whatever shit of an abyss we saw !— Smruthi Malali (@MalaliSmruthi) January 2, 2026

Omg the green screen is awful. Y’all could do better— Big Stepper (@Dennyxy1) January 2, 2026

In the end, it doesn’t even matter https://t.co/cTUA9cDthU— TheRhyGuy (@ShaneRhyan) January 2, 2026

Netizens found the only noticeable upgrade to be in sharper resolution and smoother textures. In simple terms, it feels like the same idea, just cleaned up in HD. This sparked a bigger question online. If an early-2000s music video can spark this many comparisons, what exactly did Netflix spend all that money on? To clarify, fans aren’t saying the show looks terrible, but many felt the CGI reminded them of the MTV era.

Despite Same Budget as Endgame, Why Does Stranger Things Look Cheap

Now, let’s take a look at what basically went wrong with the Stranger Things Season 5 finale. Let’s begin with one of the biggest complaints about how artificial it looks. While earlier seasons felt real because Hawkins looked like a lived-in ’80s town, full of small details and warmth, this episode made the town feel less like a real place and more like a digital backdrop from old video games. 

A still from Stranger Things Season 5 finale | image credits: Netflix

It seems that the heavy use of CGI didn’t help either. Several effects, like the strange “exotic matter” in the Upside Down, looked unfinished, the locations looked disproportionate and fake, even The Abyss that we witnessed for the first time, earned comparisons to a 24-year-old Linkin Park video. Plus, the cave where Max was hiding felt rushed and overly artificial, as if they were built overnight. 

So what could be a possible reason for such shabby work, despite Netflix offering a staggering budget similar to Avengers: Endgame? Well perhaps, the reason lies in how the budget was spread out. With eight long episodes and years of production, the money per minute of screen time drops significantly. Plus, Netflix may have spent the money more on writers, actors, and marketing, rather than editors. 

And that may have led to the questionable visual choices, making the show feel cheaper than it should, especially with an Endgame-like budget. 

Let us know your opinion on Stranger Things visuals in the comments. 

Stranger Things is streaming on Netflix. 
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire