Wrestling superstar CM Punk has compared the online anger at the ending of Stranger Things to the backlash to John Cena’s final WWE match, saying both fandoms sometimes display “a slight mental illness” when events don’t go the way they had built them up in their heads.
CM Punk, regarded as one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, hit out at fans who “just seem to want to be angry about everything because it didn’t happen the way they fantasy booked it in their head.”
Stranger Things Season 5’s finale, which left it up to the audience to decide whether Eleven was alive or dead, has proven so divisive that some fans have concocted stories about secret ‘Snyder cuts’ and theories about a ninth episode that would have revealed the show’s true ending. Both were proven to be fake. Still, a petition to release this supposed “unseen footage” gained nearly 400,000 signatures — despite being debunked by the cast. Some fans are even using generative AI to make alternative Stranger Things endings.
Speaking on My Mom’s Basement with Robbie Fox, CM Punk noted parallels between the Stranger Things and wrestling fandoms, expressing concern about people who react with anger to events that don’t go the way they had hoped.
“I see it in wrestling. I see it with fandoms, with Stranger Things,” he said. “People just seem to want to be angry about everything because it didn’t happen the way they fantasy booked it in their head. To me that’s a slight mental illness.
“Like, hey I bought tickets to go to this wrestling show and then I look on Twitter and wrestling journalist 345678910 reports that there’s going to be a big surprise guest, and I go to this show and there’s no big surprise guest, and I spend an unhealthy amount of time complaining about that online. And it’s just like, well you weren’t promised a big surprise guest. Somebody that probably knows less about what they’re talking about than you do and is just a fan just like you, made some shit up on the internet and passed it off as a journalism, and you’re getting mad at that.
“I see the same thing with the Stranger Things fandom. People just straight up mad about the way it ended, and I thought the 45 minute epilogue… Mind you, I’m not a feverish Stranger Things fan. I’ve watched the entire show and it’s hard to remember what has happened because they spend way too much time in between seasons, which I feel is a valid criticism. But I thought it was so poetic the way they wrapped it up. At the heart of the movie, it’s a nostalgia bomb, but it’s about these kids that are bonding over playing Dungeons & Dragons. They’re the outcasts, so they find each other and there’s a sci-fi element to it. And the way they wrapped it up was just like a dungeon master.”
On Eleven’s ending, specifically, and the ambiguity around her fate, CM Punk added: “I was super happy about it, but people have their opinions. It’s just like the John Cena / Gunther finish. I feel like it’s the same thing. Some people… maybe I don’t think you understand what you’re watching. But if you didn’t like it, I can also understand that. But to overnight make it your entire personality and spend an unhealthy amount of time talking about it… put it this way, if John won, they’d be mad about that, too. But we wouldn’t be talking about it anymore. And we’re still talking about that finish. The smile, the tap. ‘Oh my god, The guy who said don’t give up just gave up.’
“Everybody’s an expert. I thought it was beautiful.”
The John Cena / Gunther ending refers to John Cena’s emotional final WWE match in December 2025, where he lost to Gunther via submission, officially concluding his legendary career with a symbolic “passing of the torch” to a dominant new champion, though fans had mixed reactions to Cena’s “Never Give Up” persona tapping out.
CM Punk went on to say that beloved Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back probably would have suffered a similar backlash had social media been available at the time.
“Could you imagine for a second if Twitter was around when Empire Strikes Back came out?” he said. “I remember watching that movie when I was a kid and I was just like, ‘This movie is amazing.’ Boba Fett is super cool. But they cut Luke’s hand off. They freeze Han in carbonite. Vader’s his father. The rebels are getting their asses handed to them. And I never once in my fandom was like, ‘Fuck you, George Lucas. How could you do this? Luke wouldn’t do that.’
“Ah, Jesus Christ. Just sometimes it’s okay to be a fan. And it’s okay to enjoy things and it’s okay to not enjoy things, too. But the way people just grandstand about it is… it’s a little mental to me.”
Earlier this week, the widely-discussed Stranger Things ‘Conformity Gate’ theory was proven — as expected — to be nonsense, leaving conspiracy theorists facing the cold, harsh reality that Season 5 really is the end of the show.
In the wake of Stranger Things Season 5’s divisive finale, the so-called ‘Conformity Gate’ theory spread like wildfire across social media, especially TikTok. It posits that the lengthy epilogue we saw in the final episode was an illusion created by villain Vecna, who remains alive and well.
Some fans spent a great deal of time and energy assembling “clues” that pointed to the shadowdrop of an “Episode 9” of Season 5 that would reveal the true ending on January 7. Alas, that failed to materialize, leaving some Stranger Things conspiracy theorists dismayed.
“The show ended guys. It’s over,” said one fan on the Stranger Things subreddit. “I understand you weren’t happy with the ending… I wasn’t either. But believing a secret episode is dropping just makes no sense. Not only that but the posts about it, which are nonstop and all I need at this point in the discussion of the ending and it clogs up all the space for actual discussion of the actual ending. If you want to play pretend with the ending there are several fan fiction websites to go to. I really hope today is the end of all the secret episode nonsense.”
Photo by Rich Freeda/WWE via Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
