I’m hoping this post is hitting you late enough to avoid spoilers, but if you have not yet watched the final season of Stranger Things, you may want to skip this one.

As someone who, in my personal life, participates in multiple tabletop role-playing games each week—and also as a clinician who harnesses the power of these systems to help clients grow—I felt like the Duffer Brothers created something truly special. The final season reads like a love letter to the coming-of-age process and the deep bonds formed within a gaming group.

While I personally appreciated the ambiguity the show left us with, I quickly noticed that not everyone did—especially those who aren’t familiar with how a TTRPG campaign often ends. And that got me thinking about therapy applications, especially in acceptance, challenging negative beliefs, and finding closure in ambiguity.

I work frequently with teens, and when the topic of acceptance comes up, it’s almost guaranteed to be met with an eye roll. There’s a common belief that acceptance means you have to like what’s happening. And honestly, that makes sense—because acceptance sits in a dialectic: you can both not like something and not resist it at the same time. A reminder I frequently have to use is that it is ok to say “I don’t like what’s happening right now, and I can accept that it is happening.” That “and” is doing a lot of work.

In Stranger Things, we watch the characters wrestle with loss—specifically, not knowing what truly happened to someone they love. There’s no neat resolution. No definitive answer. And that lack of closure is painful. We see grief show up in different ways: feeling stuck, struggling to re-engage with daily life, and trying to make sense of something that doesn’t offer clear meaning. Mike, in particular, embodies this struggle, given how close he was to Eleven.

But Mike also gives us a path forward.

At one point, he engages in some cognitive challenging. He essentially says: we don’t actually know what happened—and if that’s the case, we have the ability to choose what we believe. Not in a delusional or avoidant way, but in a way that acknowledges uncertainty and then asks: what belief helps us live our lives?

That’s powerful.

Because sometimes, the truth is unknowable. And when we’re faced with that kind of ambiguity, we have a choice: we can fill in the gaps with worst-case scenarios that keep us stuck, or we can gently choose a narrative that allows us to move forward. This isn’t about pretending everything is okay. It’s not about toxic positivity or ignoring pain. The grief is still real. The loss is still real. The not-knowing is still deeply uncomfortable.

But acceptance isn’t about solving the unknown—it’s about learning how to live alongside it. In many ways, this is exactly what a TTRPG campaign ending asks of us. Not every thread is tied up. Not every question is answered. Sometimes the story ends not with certainty, but with possibility. And the players are left to decide what those possibilities mean for them.

Maybe that’s what Stranger Things was inviting us into. To sit with the discomfort. To honor the grief. And to recognize that even without perfect closure, we can still choose how we carry the story forward. And sometimes, choosing the version of the story that brings us a little more peace is enough. So I stand with Mike, Will, Lucas, Dustin, and Max. I believe.