Sure, on paper, it may not seem like much. Steve, after all, not only stays in Hawkins when characters like Nancy, Jonathan, Robin, and Will leave their former lives behind, but he’s literally still employed at the high school they all once attended. But arrested development this is not. In fact, Steve is the character who, by the story’s end, seems most at peace with himself, who is content in a way that it’s not entirely clear any other character on the series’ canvas has yet managed to achieve. Perhaps this is because the events of Stranger Things have already required Steve to confront the person he’s been and the one he wants to become in more direct ways than some of his friends, or maybe it’s just because he’s the kind of person who was always meant for a simpler kind of life. Either way, it works.
Yet, while Steve’s life is perhaps smaller than he once thought it would turn out to be, it’s rich in meaning (and apparently also cash, if he’s already planning to buy real estate at the ripe old age of maybe 20 years old). He’s a teacher and a coach, helping to shape the youth of Hawkins in ways that are less directly related to the potential end of the world but that are no less impactful.
It’s not an accident that pretty much every kid on his baseball team is one of the 12 Vecna kidnapped, meaning that Steve is still shepherding and protecting those who need his help. (His six nuggets have essentially become a dozen at this point.) He’s going on road trips with Dustin during his summer college breaks. He’s dating, frequently and unsuccessfully it seems, but still with an eye toward settling down. (Presumably, he still wants those six nuggets of his own.) And despite everything that’s happened there, he’s still able to see the beauty in Hawkins, enough that he never seems to have even considered making his life elsewhere.
There’s plenty of stuff to nitpick when it comes to the ways that the Duffer brothers chose to wrap up this show. (See also: Eleven’s ambitious disappearance, the inexplicable MacGuffin space rock that corrupted Henry, the over-the-top violence of Vecna’s death.) But the fact that the show does so right by one of its most beloved fan favorites goes a long way to making this finale a success, even if it might leave you wondering why everyone couldn’t be afforded this same treatment.
