“The Demogorgon… it got me.”

I didn’t know anything about Stranger Things when it appeared on Netflix the summer of 2016, but as a child of the ’80s, I was an easy and willing mark for the Duffer’s brand of nostalgia and storytelling. The whole show felt like an homage to the movies and books of my youth. I appreciated how episodes were treated as chapters in a novel, loved the use of Dungeons & Dragons as a narrative device, and the countless references to Stephen King, a writer I was introduced to as a young Catholic school boy corrupted by the unholy book racks at Pathmark. Yet, as much as I enjoyed the show, that’s really all it was; a show. But one I would keep up on.

The wife and I developed a routine for each new season: Sunday evening, after we put our 5 year-old daughter to bed, we would watch a chapter. Just one. Partly because we wanted to draw it out. Partly because our daughter would frequently wake up and walk into the living room during an intense scene. Not long before this, she had walked in while I was watching The Ring, appearing right at the part where the dead girl comes out of the well. My daughter had nightmares for weeks. So now, as soon as we heard her bedroom door open, I’d scramble for the pause button, quick-drawing the remote like Roland Deschain drawing his sandalwood pistols. But the constant stop and start made getting through each show take much longer than the runtime.

During the early days of COVID we started playing D&D as a family. Our group was small and we didn’t know what we were doing, but figuring it out was fun. And there was very little fun going around at the time I’d read that production of Stranger Things season 4 had to be halted due to the pandemic. It wound up being released in May 2022 and would become my favorite season. The broader influence of ’80s horror and the introduction of Eddie Munson, who reminded me of myself at that age, played no small part. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit my heightened interest, my desire for distraction, had to do with something besides COVID.

At the same time I was watching the birth of Vecna and the destruction of Hawkins, my home life was also breaking apart. My wife told me she no longer loved me and wanted a separation. “I have love for you, but I’m not in love with you anymore.” I found myself in my own personal Upside Down. Within a few months we started “nesting.” If you don’t know, this is when the kids stay at the family home while the parents take turns there, splitting time with the kids and days of the week like a pizza. We rented an apartment for when the other wasn’t at the house. More difficult in practice than in theory. For over a year I lived out of an orange Adidas duffel bag. I’d wake up not knowing whether I was at the apartment or house, not sure what day or month it was. I was lost and heartbroken. I missed my wife and the life I’d known for 2 decades. I’d been the stay-at-home parent for both of my kids, spanning nearly 10 years of our lives. There had never been a day I was without them. And the house. It was the place I spent raising my kids: changing diapers, playing Thomas, Cars, Barbie, LEGOs, reading stories, putting them down for naps, making post-nap snacks. I knew every creaky spot and every smell of that place. I hung the property with birdfeeders, marking the change into summer with the return of hummingbirds. I fed the crows mice from the mouse traps, fed the basement funnel weavers insects that had found themselves indoors, hung a tree swing, played in the tributary that ran along the property, explored the surrounding woods, became familiar with the local foxes, bobcats, and bears. It was the first and only stable home I’d ever had. It was my Hawkins. Then the gate opened, and chunks of the life I’d known and loved began crumbling into the widening cracks. 

I’d been taking violin lessons with my daughter since she was 4. We practiced every day. The time we now spent apart showed in our playing. It was impossible to maintain progress when I wasn’t in the home on “daddy days”. I’m ashamed to say my state of mind also affected this. I couldn’t focus or assist her in the way I had before, often unable to free myself from the weighted blanket of self-pity and depression. Mentally, I could not remain present. One day my daughter told me she didn’t want to play violin anymore because it made her sad. I’m not sure if it was the violin that made her sad, or the pending divorce. Or the fact that I was too emotionally fragile to keep her moving in her lessons. Whatever the reason, I knew I was at least partly responsible for her choice to end four years of lessons. To this day the sound of a violin is a heartbreaking reminder of how I failed my daughter. 

I imagined my daughter waking up and leaving her room, not sure which parent would be there that day. Not just which parental unit, but which version of me. I was barely existing. I could fake it through work, but once I was alone, I could barely move, back under those heavy layers of depression. Sometimes just sitting up took monumental effort and a lot of tears. My daughter, now 9, and I watched a lot of tv. It was all I seemed to have enough energy for. Anne with an E was a constant presence on the screen. The scenery and small island life felt safe and calm. It was easy to understand Anne’s desire to stay with the Cuthberts. Then one day my daughter said she wanted to watch Stranger Things. I was surprised since she still didn’t care for scary. She claimed she was the only kid in her class who hadn’t seen it. I told her I thought that was an exaggeration but figured why not. The horror and sci-fi movies of my youth, the very ones from which the Duffers drew inspiration for Stranger Things, got me through some hard times growing up. I was never afraid of Freddy, Jason, a killer shark, or aliens. The violence of real life was scarier than any movie or show, and couldn’t be turned off like a television set. 9 was well-aware of her family falling apart. Maybe she needed a distraction too. We started Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers. That day I watched my daughter out of the corner of my eye more than I watched the episode. I monitored her at every jump-scare and asked, maybe too much, if she was okay, if she wanted to keep watching. She did. From then on, most of our “daddy days” ended with a chapter of Stranger Things.

9, now 10, was excited when Amybeth McNulty from Anne with an E showed up as Vicki in season 4. Because Vickie acts, talks, and thinks like Anne, 10 theorized that Anne, on a trip to California, had wandered off during a stop in Hill Valley. There, she came across a cave containing one of Doc Brown’s 1885 time machine trains. Anne’s curiosity got the best of her, and she found herself transported to 1985. At first she was scared and bewildered, but soon discovered women had more opportunity in 1985 than the late 1800s and decided to stay. Anne eventually finds her way to Hawkins, Indiana, changes her name to Vickie Dunne and, after enrolling in high school, discovers her love of the clarinet. 

At the end of Chapter Eight: Papa, I watched 10’s reaction during the Vecna reveal and cherished seeing her mind blown. In Chapter Nine: The Piggyback, she cried over Eddie’s sacrifice. Once we got to the end of season 4, we started the show over from the beginning. We started talking about things you notice only during rewatches, shared theories on how the show might end in season 5. During cliff hangers I might gasp and joke, “I wonder what’s going to happen” and she’d roll her eyes. The third time we saw Hopper get blown up by the Russian gate-opening laser at the end of season 3 I said, “I can’t believe Hop is dead!” After another rewatch of season 4, as the gang is all together at the end, watching the “snow” fall on Hawkins, 10, now 11, turned to me and said “Wait . . . how are they going to explain Hopper being alive to everyone in town?” But we didn’t just talk about the show. Sometimes it’d just be playing in the background as she told me about school and got me up to speed on the evolving dramas with and between friends. Normal things. In a way, Stranger Things opened gates for us between the life we’d known and whatever it was turning into.

In the summer of 2023 I moved into the apartment full time. Alone. Still under layers and layers of depression. But when 11 and I had time together, we could piggyback on the world of Stranger Things.

At one point I assumed my daughter’s interest in the show would easily transfer to its influences. I started reading her Firestarter, thinking a story about a girl with special powers and nosebleeds, on the run from mad government scientists would be perfect. But the only thing it was perfect at doing was putting her to sleep. Fair enough.

In the spring of 2025 we went to see Stranger Things: The First Shadow on Broadway. I’d bought the tickets six months earlier. I remember seeing the total cost at checkout, which I could not afford, and clicking “BUY” before second thoughts creeped in. I gave the tickets to my daughter, now 12, as a Christmas present. I printed out the ticket email, put it in a giant cardboard box and wrapped it. When she opened the box she looked confused at seeing nothing but a piece of paper. Then she read the printout and said, “HOLY SHIT!” The tickets were for the first showing of the play on American soil after it spent a year or so being perfected in London’s West End. I rented a decent car that wouldn’t leave us stranded, pulled 12 out of school early, and we made a night of it in the city. Before the play, we wandered around the theater district, got some great Japanese food, took pictures with waxy celebrities at Madame Tousaud’s. The line to enter the Marquis Theater was filled with superfans, some dressed as their favorite characters. The woman in front of us could barely contain herself as we waited for the doors to open. She had flown in from California just to see the play and was dressed as if she worked for Scoops Ahoy. The play itself was better than I could have hoped. The actors were great, the story was perfect, and the sets and special effects were out of this world. After the actors took their final bow, 12 sat speechless, eventually saying it was “the greatest thing” she ever saw. Better than Wicked, which her mom took her to see. I still carry that good feeling with me and take it out whenever I need it. 

Stranger Things season 5 began in the fall of 2025. 12 and I were a little frustrated that the season was being released in 3 parts – chapters 1 through 4 on Thanksgiving, 5 through 7 on Christmas, the finale on New Year’s Eve. The suspense a parceled release created, as well as dragging out the experience, wound up being worth it. During the time chapters 5, 6, and 7 were released, my girlfriend had come over with her kids for a holiday dinner with me and mine. A storm hit while we ate and they got snowed in and had to stay over, so we watched a chapter together. It was the first time 12, now 13, had watched the show with anyone besides me.

On January 1, 2026 we watched the finale of Stranger Things. I’d been sick for days with Flu A. 13 and I had made plans to watch it together even though the chapter’s release didn’t land on a “daddy day.” Though I said I’d wear a mask, I wasn’t sure my daughter would want to risk illness, or that her mom would even let her. To my surprise and relief they were cool with it. We were both on the edge of our seats through all the action and tense moments. As the final scene played out in Mike’s basement, where it all started, I cried. I loved Mike’s story of what could have been, as well as the corny stuff about happiness and comfort in What Is. I cried not because of the fates of the cleric, the bard, the knight and the zoomer, the storyteller, the paladin, or the mage. I cried not because of that final look Mike gave his basement just before closing the door on one stage of life to enter another. I cried not because my mirror neurons responded to the emotional musical resonance created by slow tempos, minor keys, and descending melodies. I cried because I realized the end of the show meant the end of something personal for me. The past few years had been the hardest of my life. There were more times than I can count when I didn’t think I’d make it. Stranger Things, a fun and nostalgic tv show I bonded over with my daughter, played a part in making life livable, one chapter at a time.

I wondered if my daughter could tell I was crying behind my glasses and mask. Whether my sad sniffles sounded different than my sick sniffles. I looked over at her curled up on the recliner, watching the comic book style ending credits. “I can’t believe it’s over,” I said, unsuccessfully holding back tears. “What did you think?”

13 twisted in the chair, thought for a moment. “They never showed how they explained Hopper being alive to everyone.”

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A.T. is the Managing Editor for Farewell Transmission