After four seasons of serial disappearances, gruesome murders, and a litany of monsters terrorizing their town, the residents of Hawkins, Indiana, the fictional setting of Netflix‘s Stranger Things, have proven impressively resilient. For reasons either sentimental or suicidal, they simply refuse to relocate. Their stubbornness echoes the indomitable American spirit former President Ronald Reagan invoked when he said, “If we lose freedom here, there’s nowhere to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.”

In the much-anticipated final season, we return to find that Hawkins’s residents can’t leave. Following the catastrophic breach between their world and the Upside Down, the town has been quarantined by an opaque, curiously well-funded military apparatus that insists the air is poisonous. Though series creators the Duffer Brothers do not advertise their political views, we can draw our own conclusions from the fact that the final season centers on their protagonists sleuthing around state-mandated lockdowns and whispering conspiracies about clandestine government motives.