Four years, a $480 million budget, and a striking cast with some of the biggest names in Hollywood right now.

All of these things contributed to making the worst Stranger Things finale ever. The writers and producers, the Duffer Brothers, promised so many elements that would be addressed, explained, or highlighted, but most fans were left confused by where they were in the final cut.

SPOILER WARNING, if you haven’t seen the last episode and plan to watch it, come back after finishing the season finale.

Fans were promised scenes with the main four characters or the “Core Four”, the origins of the Upside Down, five deaths, and taking time to focus on the main character Will Byers.

One of the main problems for me is altogether TWO HOURS of footage were cut from the season finale. That’s two hours of dialogue, two hours of narrative, two hours of character development, and two hours of lore GONE.

One of the scenes cut was a scene of the Core Four in the basement. This is how the show opened in season one, and it would have been a full circle moment for the characters and the audience.

I refuse to believe that there was nothing special about this scene, something had to have happened or it wouldn’t have been written, directed, and filmed only for the Duffers to cut it.

Another thing that makes this season almost unbearable to watch is the crappy writing. With every witty line I feel like I’m watching a screenplay made by a seventh grader.

One such moment is Will’s coming-out scene. This was supposed to be a very intimate and delicate point in the season. For whatever reason there were people there who didn’t even know him. WHAT SENSE DOES THAT MAKE? I mean we are talking about a teenage boy in the 80s — in the middle of the AIDS epidemic, and you’re telling me that Will is just going to announce he is gay to people that he had literally never shared a word with throughout the entire franchise. Make that make sense.

To top it all off we get the cheesiest moment in the entire season. When he is done sharing this very intimate detail, Will’s brother, Jonathan, stands up and says “you’ll never lose me,” then everyone goes around the room and says “or me,” and they all share a group hug.

The most frustrating part is that the Duffer Brothers know how to write a really great coming-out scene. They did it with Robin in season three, it felt real and authentic. Will’s felt rushed and randomly placed.

In an interview with the Duffers they mentioned a traitor. After fans watched the season finale most of them couldn’t tell who the traitor actually was. When the Duffers were asked they could not give a clear answer. WHEN YOU LOOK IT UP ON GOOGLE IT DOESN’T GIVE YOU AN ANSWER.

At the end of the show we get a very full circle moment with the Core Four — including Max — playing their last Dungeon and Dragons campaign. We are told a story of how one of the main characters, Eleven, could be alive. When the Duffer brothers were asked if she was actually alive they said they wanted to leave it up to the viewers’ imagination.

That is probably some of the laziest writing I’ve seen since Sons of Anarchy. Like just say you got bored, or you were tired after writing, producing, and directing five seasons, instead of leading up to what was supposed to be the best season to date and letting millions of fans down.

Obviously you can tell that I feel very passionately about this topic, and I feel that I have every right to be. The oldest of the main characters is 24. The youngest is only three years older than me. I literally grew up with these kids. The ending scene was their graduation, and I graduate this year. I related to these characters so much growing up and was extremely let down.

I’m not the only one who thinks this. The season was so bad that fans made a theory it was bad on purpose and a secret episode was going to come out addressing all of the problems. The main idea of this theory was the villain was altering the viewers’ mind just like he does with the characters in the show.

Obviously when the supposed secret episode was supposed to drop, nothing happened and fans were let down once again.

Regardless of the personal issues with the Duffer brothers, or the writers strike, or Netflix having strict guidelines that needed to be followed, fans deserved a well written and high production season finale. If production needed to be paused for a SECOND TIME fans would have been okay with that.

There are so many other plot holes and random inconsistencies it would take me too long to go through them all. Such as Will’s birthday being forgotten, Derek’s parents being missing, and Holly randomly becoming the main character. All around simple things that could have been fixed if anyone would have cared enough to fix it.

This season was a prime example that instead of saying “let’s leave that on the drawing board” the Duffers should say “let’s think about the drawing board a little bit longer.”