By Robert Scucci
| Published 16 seconds ago
Now that we know that Dustin Henderson graduated at the top of his class, it’s safe to say that he’s the smartest kid in the room. Watching him get his flowers in the Stranger Things series finale was one of the most satisfying story arcs in the series because if anybody deserved peace and happiness, it’s our little Dusty Bun.
While I’m not alone in railing on Stranger Things for undermining its own appeal with its final season, I’m thrilled that we got to see Dustin grow through his struggles and become a fully self-actualized young adult in the process.
I know that all of us here over at Giant Freakin Robot have been hyper-critical of Stranger Things season 5, but it’s for good reason. As fans who have been following the series for a decade, we felt let down because nearly every single memorable character became a one-dimensional shell of their former selves.
Mike Wheeler’s presence was sleep-inducing. Max and Holly loved explaining things when they should have been running for their lives. Joyce was written dumb. Hopper became little more than a concerned parent who knows how to use automatic weapons. I could go on for days.
My main takeaway after Season 5 kicked off was that it felt like everybody involved with the series fell out of their flow state. Nearly every actor failed to lock back into their characters and fire on all cylinders because too much time had passed between runs. It’s nobody’s fault. That’s how time works. However, it’s still worth noting because the fallout is obvious to anyone who watches TV and movies critically.
It never felt like Gaten Matarazzo stopped thinking about Dustin, though, and it shows on screen, making his character arc by far the most satisfying in the series.
Stranger Things’ True Reason To Be
We can talk ad nauseam about what Stranger Things is truly about, but to me it was always about the loss of innocence. The small town of Hawkins and all of its residents were changed forever when the Upside Down opened up, something that everybody not in the know considered a curse of the highest order.
The sentiment that always echoed in my brain is that once you leave home, you can never go back. Nobody ever left home in the literal sense in Stranger Things, but their community was altered in such a severe way that it told everybody there was no turning back.
As a coming-of-age vehicle about child outcasts who end up saving the day with their Dungeons & Dragons knowledge and love for science, Dustin, in my mind, is the character who lost the most innocence. We could argue that case for Eleven and Will Byers as well, but let’s really break it down for a second.
Eleven has always been a prisoner of institutional malfeasance. Her entire character is based on impropriety, which robbed her of her childhood. In other words, Eleven never had innocence to lose, but rather innocence she longed to gain because she never had a place to truly call home.
Will Byers, who went missing in Season 1, was also robbed of his childhood, but we all knew that already. He unwittingly and unwillingly became a vessel and spy for Vecna, setting the entire series’ conflict in motion from day one. However, he’s dealing with a cosmic terror that the average person doesn’t ever encounter, making him a sample size of one.
Everybody else in Stranger Things, the humans living in the regular world who have to witness the fallout, have their own raised stakes. I’m not trying to downplay anybody else’s struggles here. Everyone has been traumatized and robbed of their innocence in one way or another. Dustin sits at the center, though, as he’s the smartest kid in Hawkins, more often than not the voice of reason, and not afraid to tell it like it is, even if he’s going to face pushback every step of the way.
Dustin’s Grief Is Palpable, And Gaten Matarazzo Knows It
Stranger Things Season 5 kicks off with an angsty Dustin. Taking place two years after the events of Season 4, Dustin is seemingly single (not a Suzie in sight) and a shell of his former self. He’s relentlessly bullied, and he keeps his head down.
He wears his Hellfire shirt with pride because he saw his best friend and role model, Eddie Munson, die a heroic and absolutely brutal death. He never got over that trauma, and internalized that grief. Everybody else witnessed the same thing, but Dustin, whose father is absent in the series, has always gravitated toward an older male role model to keep himself centered. He does it with Steve Harrington, and he did it with Eddie. He lost more than a friend in Eddie. He lost a father figure.
The second Steve risks his life trying to save Nancy and Jonathan by haphazardly propping a ladder up against a sinkhole of white sludge, we witness the climax of Dustin’s character arc. When he breaks down crying, embraces Steve, and says, “Please, I can’t do it again. Not you,” it’s one of the most heartfelt moments in the entire series, and it doesn’t feel forced.
Dustin finally, without a filter, bellows out what’s been eating away at him all this time. We all knew it as viewers, but hearing him explicitly say what was wrong felt cathartic. Steve, who’s emotionally intelligent in his own right but blinded by everything else going on around him, finally has that moment of clarity when the ladder falls, implying that if he hadn’t listened to Dustin, he’d be dead too. We bore witness to a broken teenager coming to terms with his tremendous loss in a tangible way that the rest of the gang could finally understand and make peace with.
Honoring Eddie In The Best Way
When it’s revealed that Dustin is valedictorian of his class, we all knew what was coming, but it felt earned. He honored Eddie Munson’s fantasy of flipping off Principal Higgins, snatching his diploma, and running like hell to escape high school.
Proudly yelling, “Screw the school. Screw the system. Screw conformity. Screw everyone and everything trying to hold you back and tear us apart, because this, this is our year,” Dustin’s story closes in the best way possible.
It only gets better when Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper” blasts over the loudspeakers as a final tribute to Eddie. For those who aren’t into power metal, Iron Maiden’s mascot is a giant skeleton named Eddie, which felt on the nose, but not in a way that felt cheap.
As much as I loved railing on Stranger Things Season 5, it felt like the right time to talk about one of the stronger notes the series ended on. It all comes down to ole Dusty Bun making it through to the other side as a fully realized version of himself.
We all know he’s going to do great things. The sheer intestinal fortitude he built up throughout the entire series will make him unstoppable no matter what happens next.
Stranger Things is streaming on Netflix.