I missed the Stranger Things finale’s post-credit scene and it literally changes everything

After watching the Stranger Things finale, did you switch your TV off as soon as the credits started rolling? I did, and I completely missed the post-credit scene. It turns out, a lot of people seem to have done exactly the same thing, and the scene changes EVERYTHING.

When the credits end, a shot pops up of a Stranger Things “Player’s Manual” that says, “Fantasy role-playing game.” Um, what?! Everyone’s totally freaking out because they think this suggests the whole of Stranger Things was a fantasy game all along, a theory that’s always been popular.

THE END CREDITS #StrangerThings5 #StrangerThings pic.twitter.com/7I1R8nzsKS

— j ⋆·˚ ༘ *‧₊ st5 spoilers (@jjxmayb4nk) January 1, 2026

“It was all a game! It was not real,” one person wrote on TikTok. Another said: “No, because why did at the end it say ‘Stranger Things Player Manual’. Does that mean this whole thing was a game?”

“My theory was it was all a book/comic as right at the end it says ‘imaginative book’. I don’t think any of it was real,” someone else added.

There’s just one problem. The creators of the show, the Duffer Brothers, did actually shut down this theory back in 2023. Ross Duffer told Metro: “That would be the equivalent of, ‘That’s all a dream’. No, I assure you that is not how we’re going to end the show. We’ve known where we’ve been going for a while. And we feel comfortable with it; hopefully, it satisfies everyone. We’ll see.”

*spoiler alert* this confirms Stranger Things was just a DND type game we were all playing for 10 years #StrangerThings pic.twitter.com/uYzA5y8xUp

— scrulove (@SCRULOVE) January 1, 2026

However, the Duffer Brothers love to be ambiguous, so it seems like the Stranger Things finale’s post-credit scene was definitely meant to be open to interpretation. We’ll never really know whether it was all a game or real life, and that’s the beauty of it.

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People have another theory that Mike wrote the “Stranger Things Players Manual” based on their adventures because we saw him become a writer. However, the manual doesn’t actually say “written by Mike Wheeler,” so there’s no proof of this either.

“It’s not a game, it’s a game Mike made based off of what he went through,” someone argued. Another agreed: “Omg it wasn’t all a game. Mike wrote it into a book so others can roleplay it in Dungeons and Dragons.” Which theory do you believe?

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Featured image by: Netflix