The bomb is ticking. Hopper and Murray have already set the sequence. The core group sprints across a collapsing interdimensional bridge as reality fractures around them: red lightning, dimensional debris, the Upside Down tearing itself apart.
Somewhere in the chaos, a turntable needle drops.
The opening synth stabs of When Doves Cry punch through.
It's a strange choice for an escape sequence. Prince famously stripped the bass line from this 1984 track, leaving it suspended, groundless. But that's exactly why it works. The rhythm says run. The lyrics whisper about breaking cycles, about inherited wounds.
For kids who've spent five seasons trying to outrun monsters chasing their childhoods, it's devastating.
Then the bomb detonates. Eleven stands alone at the MAC-Z gate, the Upside Down folding in on itself. The music shifts.
"Purple Rain" begins. Not loud or dramatic. Just there. What Ross Duffer called "emotional gravitas," though watching it unfold, the phrase feels inadequate.
For the millions who watched on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day – depending on where in the globe they were – it was breathtaking.
For the entertainment industry, it was almost impossible. The Duffer Brothers had secured two Prince songs, including Purple Rain, a track his estate has kept locked to its 1984 film for nearly four decades.
"We were told it was a real long shot," Matt Duffer told Tudum. "So we just crossed our fingers."
Kate Bush: One who made it possible
The answer to how they pulled it off comes down to four words from Matt Duffer: "Thanks to Kate Bush."
When Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) appeared in Season 4, saving Max from Vecna's curse, something extraordinary happened. The 37-year-old song hit No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 by July 2022. Bush, who owns her catalog and could have refused, watched her work find a new generation.
But the real impact was industry-wide. Bush's decision demonstrated that Stranger Things could resurrect music with reverence.
"I don't think without the Kate Bush from Season 4, it ever would have happened," Ross Duffer told Tudum. "That really opened a few final closed doors for us."
When they approached Prince's estate, the Duffers arrived with proof of what they could do for an artiste's legacy. The estate, which had spent years protecting the fiercely private late virtuoso’s work from what they viewed as commercial cheapening, apparently saw the difference.
Metallica's Master of Puppets in Season 4, Eddie Munson's heroic guitar solo, had the same effect. A 1986 thrash metal anthem became a cultural touchstone for kids who weren't born when it was released.
The music industry was watching. More importantly, artiste estates were watching.
Five Seasons of Emotional Architecture
Music has never been decoration in Stranger Things. It's been structural.
In Season 1, Will Byers clung to The Clash's Should I Stay or Should I Go in the Upside Down. Season 2's Snow Ball wove Pat Benatar, Cyndi Lauper and The Police into a sequence that captured middle-school romance with painful precision.
"We did it starting with season one with The Clash," Ross Duffer told The Radio Hag. "The goal is when we're putting in a song, we put a lot of thought into it. We really wanted it to reflect on the characters and the narrative journey. As opposed to just putting in songs that we like: how can this actually affect the narrative in a cool way?"
For the finale, they needed something epic. They'd conceived a vinyl record triggering a bomb in the Upside Down, a literal needle drop of apocalyptic proportions. They needed an album that opened with energy and closed with weight.
"Once we came up with the idea that the record would trigger the bomb, we knew we needed an epic needle drop," Ross said. "I think there's nothing more epic than Prince."
Prince's Purple Rain album lined up perfectly. When Doves Cry, written in a single day, deliberately vulnerable, for the escape. Purple Rain, Prince's apocalyptic metaphor about finding peace at the end of the world, for the devastation.
The brothers had "never talked about a song choice as much as we did for that moment," Ross said. It was thrilling "because it just has not been used. The estate does not generally allow that song to be licensed outside the Purple Rain movie."
The finale didn't rely solely on Prince. The Duffers assembled a careful sequence: Fleetwood Mac's Landslide for reflection on time passing. Pixies' Here Comes Your Man for alt-rock energy. Iron Maiden's The Trooper continuing the show's metal thread from Eddie Munson. Cowboy Junkies' haunting Sweet Jane cover.
David Bowie's Heroes for anthemic hope. The Chords' Sh-Boom, a 1954 doo-wop standard, reminding us the show's nostalgia was always layered.
What they built
Prince was an outlier in every sense. At 19, he played all 27 instruments on his debut album. He fused funk, rock, R&B, and new wave into something uncategorizable.
In 1984, he simultaneously held the No. 1 film, album, and single with Purple Rain and When Doves Cry, a level of cultural dominance unseen before or since.
His fierce independence made him protective of his work. He was dead against his songs and video clips finding their way to the internet. “Name me an artiste who’s gotten rich off the internet,” Prince had once famously said. Steve Jobs isn’t doing too badly, he had added; the Apple founder was alive then.
That fierce protection has passed to his estate after Prince’s death in 2016.
For the Duffers to secure two songs, including his crown jewel, represents more than licensing. It's validation that their show earned a place in the same conversation as the artistes who defined the 1980s.
What the Duffer Brothers accomplished over five seasons is rare: they became keepers of musical memory, bridges between generations. They introduced teenagers to Kate Bush and Metallica, Prince and The Clash, treating each with reverence while demonstrating why these songs mattered.
The finale's choices, anchored by Prince and supported by Bowie and Fleetwood Mac and the rest, aren't just songs from 1984. They're songs that captured what 1984 felt like, what it meant to be young when every song on the radio seemed to understand your life better than you did.
When Purple Rain finally falls over Hawkins, it doesn't signal destruction. It signals release. It was the show's thesis: that music can hold us together when everything falls apart, that the right song at the right moment makes us less alone.
And a reminder that sometimes, when the world feels like it's ending, a song can help you survive it.
So thank you, Duffer Brothers. For the monsters and the friendships. And for the music, the kind that stays long after the screen goes dark.