Stranger Things 4 ends with Vecna’s plan mostly succeeding: Max dies for nearly a minute during his attack, which opens a massive new gate and allows the Upside Down to start breaking into Hawkins, leaving the town devastated by what people believe is a powerful earthquake. Vecna’s physical body is badly burned and blasted out of the Creel house by Nancy, Steve, and Robin, but he disappears, clearly still alive and vowing to return through Will’s renewed connection to him.

Fate of Max, Eddie, and Vecna

• Max is brutally attacked by Vecna during the final showdown; her limbs are broken and she is briefly clinically dead, which completes Vecna’s fourth kill and triggers the massive rift in Hawkins. Eleven uses her powers in a hospital later to keep Max alive, but Max remains in a coma, with no clear consciousness present when El tries to reach her mind.

• Eddie dies in the Upside Down after he and Dustin play a metal guitar solo to lure the demobats away from Vecna’s lair; he chooses to stay and fight instead of fleeing, is overwhelmed by the bats, and dies in Dustin’s arms, later being blamed by the town as the Hellfire “cult leader.”

• Nancy, Steve, and Robin attack Vecna’s physical body in the Creel house, setting him on fire and blasting him with a shotgun until he falls out the window, but his body is gone when they check the yard, confirming that he survived in some form.

What Happens to Hawkins

• When Max’s brief death completes Vecna’s four sacrifices, four giant cracks rip through Hawkins, meeting in the town center and forming a massive cross‑shaped gate to the Upside Down. The town experiences this as a 7.6 magnitude “earthquake” that kills over twenty people, destroys buildings, and forces evacuations, with authorities and media offering mundane explanations while locals whisper about a biblical-style disaster.

• In the final scenes, ash-like spores begin falling over the fields near Hawkins and dead, gray patches spread across the landscape, showing that the Upside Down is actively bleeding into the real world rather than being confined to hidden gates.

The Main Group at the End

• Eleven is reunited with Mike, Will, Jonathan, Hopper, and Joyce at Hopper’s rebuilt cabin; she is shaken by her inability to fully stop Vecna and by Max’s condition, and she senses that the fight is far from over. Hopper returns to Hawkins with Joyce after escaping the Russian prison and destroying the Demogorgon and other Upside Down creatures there, and he and Eleven share an emotional reunion as he reassumes a father-figure role.

• In the final moments, Will feels the familiar chill and neck tingle that signals Vecna/ the Mind Flayer, telling Mike that Vecna is still out there and hurt but not defeated, and that he will not stop until he destroys everything. The group stands together on a hill overlooking Hawkins as they watch the ominous red lightning and falling spores from the Upside Down, setting up a full-scale war for the next season.