Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2 Seemingly Ends The Nancy-Steve-Jonathan Love Triangle

The following post contains spoilers for the events of "Stranger Things" Season 5, Volume 2.

The eternal "Stranger Things" question of whether Nancy Wheeler will end up with Jonathan Byers or Steve Harrington appears to have been answered — and it seems neither man will win Nancy's heart.

As fans of the Netflix drama know, Nancy (Natalia Dyer) has had two main love interests — Charlie Heaton's Jonathan and Joe Keery's Steve — for the duration of the series. Although Nancy has been in a relationship with Jonathan during the show's current final season, their partnership has seemed awkward and strained in recent episodes, while Steve has spent the season thus far pining for Nancy in increasingly unsubtle ways.

Back during Volume 1, which released in November, we learned that Jonathan had procured an engagement ring for Nancy, which he'd tucked inside a John Coltrane cassette tape. It wasn't clear if Jonathan would ever work up the nerve to pop the question, though — or, frankly, if he should — but a perilous moment in Episode 6 (which dropped Thursday night as part of Volume 2) prompts Jonathan to reveal the ring, after all, in what becomes his and Nancy's most and least romantic scene ever.

We'll skip over the finer details of why Nancy and Jonathan end up in potentially mortal danger in Episode 6 — there's lots of scientific jargon that Dustin can explain — but the pair comes stunningly close to death after the Upside Down begins to literally melt down around them. Trapped in a tiny, slippery room with no viable exit, Nancy and Jonathan start making long overdue confessions about their relationship that reveal quite a bit of incompatibility: She hates The Clash; he hates reading her articles; they both hate spending time together when they're drunk and high, but they do it anyway.

Eventually, Nancy and Jonathan admit their shared trauma of recent years has perhaps kept them too tethered to each other. "It made me feel safe. But also...," Jonathan starts, and Nancy finishes, "It can be suffocating."

Jonathan then reveals the ring inside the cassette tape packaging — "Nancy Wheeler, will you... not marry me?" — adding that he thought getting engaged would somehow fix their relationship, "but it was just gonna make things worse." Through tears, Nancy accepts his "un-proposal," and they share I-love-yous that are both extremely genuine and seem to suggest this is the appropriate time to end their relationship for good.

And yet, it doesn't look like Nancy will end up with Steve, either. During her and Jonathan's airing of relationship grievances, she concedes that Steve is a good guy who makes her laugh, but they're ultimately too different. Case in point: He knows exactly what he wants out of life, and she doesn't just yet — and what he wants is six kids. Hard pass from Nancy.

We suspect Nancy and Steve will get closure of their own in the "Stranger Things" series finale, which drops on New Year's Eve at 8 p.m. ET. In the meantime, tell us: How did you feel about this pivotal Nancy/Jonathan scene? Did you also take it to mean they are amicably parting ways? Drop a comment below with all of your thoughts.