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The 14 Most Talked-About Stranger Things Episodes
According to the internet. Did your favorite make the list?
By Ananda Dillon
Jan. 6, 2026
Stranger Things: The 14 Most Talked-About Episodes - Netflix Tudum
This article contains major character or plot details.
An era has ended: Our favorite Demogorgon-battling, Mind Flayer–slaying, Vecna-defying party has fought its last fight. Stranger Things reached its exciting (and teary-eyed) conclusion — all episodes of the series are now streaming — but like all good stories, it’ll live on, in rewatches and fan discourse, as well as expand its mythology with spin-offs like Stranger Things: Tales From ’85.
Still, there’s comfort in knowing we can always return to Hawkins, especially by returning to our favorite episodes. The following are those that fans come back to again and again to dissect and discuss. They’re the ones that linger long after the credits roll, thanks to their emotional highs, satisfying victories, and thrilling discoveries. Time will tell which Season 5 episodes will join this list — though there’s already plenty of discussion online — but for now, here are the most talked-about episodes from the first four seasons.
And if you’re looking for other things to watch, to distract you between repeat viewings of Stranger Things, here are a few shows we suggest.
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Stranger Things
Season 1, Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers
It’s Nov. 6, 1983, in Hawkins, Indiana, and something sinister is going down at Hawkins National Laboratory. Elsewhere in town, something sinister also shows up on the D&D board on which Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), and Will (Noah Schnapp) are playing. Mike’s mom cuts the game short, and the other boys head home on their bikes. On his own, Will almost runs into a shadowed creature in the road, causing him to crash and run into the woods. But the thing follows Will home, and with the flicker of a light, he disappears. After that, we meet the characters we’ll come to love. There’s the drunkard, Sheriff Jim Hopper (David Harbour); Will’s frantic mother, Joyce (Winona Ryder); and Will’s guilt-ridden brother, Jonathan (Charlie Heaton). There’s Mike’s sister, Nancy (Natalia Dyer), who’s recently taken up with the hunky Steve Harrington (Joe Keery), though her BFF Barb (Shannon Purser) warns her against it. And then there’s the nameless girl in a hospital gown with a buzz cut found by Mike, Lucas, and Dustin while they’re out searching for Will. The adventure begins.
Stranger Things
Season 1, Chapter Three: Holly Jolly
Alas, Barb, we hardly knew thee. While Nancy and Steve get romantic, Barb fights for her life in the dark blue shadow world we’ll come to know as the Upside Down. Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), or El as the boys call her, has demonstrated her telekinetic abilities and explained as best she could where Will is, so they make a plan to search for him. We also get a bit more of El’s backstory, seeing the way Dr. Brenner/Papa (Matthew Modine) honed her telekinetic skills. Hopper heads to Hawkins Lab to look around and leaves knowing they aren’t being honest with him. But the scene most integral to the episode is when Joyce, after blanketing her home with Christmas lights, discovers that Will is speaking to her through the lights. She grabs black paint to write the alphabet on her wall, an iconic image to Stranger Things fans.
Stranger Things
Season 1, Chapter Seven: The Bathtub
The Bad Men arrive, the kids go on the run, and El proves her power is stronger than anyone knew when she flips a speeding van over their heads, allowing her and the boys to escape. It’s simultaneously an incredible ’80s throwback — referencing the bike escape scene in E.T. — and the most remarkable thing El has done so far. Meanwhile, Nancy and Jonathan finally come clean to Joyce and Hopper about the Demogorgon they’ve been hunting. They learn that the girl with no hair they’ve been hearing about is with Mike and his friends, so they set off to get to them before the Bad Men do. Once united, the kids explain the Upside Down to the adults, and they hatch a plan to build Eleven a sensory deprivation tank to enhance her internal radar and help her find Will. El discovers what became of Barb and locates Will, giving Joyce and Hopper a fighting chance as they head to Hawkins Laboratory to enter the gate.
Stranger Things
Season 1, Chapter Eight: The Upside Down
In the Season 1 finale, the gang comes face-to-face with their enemies. Joyce and Hopper go into the gate to find Will in the Upside Down and bring him home; Jonathan, Nancy, and an unexpected Steve lure the Demogorgon to the Byers’s house; and Papa and the Hawkins Lab thugs find Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and El at the middle school — as does the Demogorgon. Like any good season finale, there is joy, and there is heartache … but the Upside Down isn’t finished with the Hawkins clan just yet.
Stranger Things
Season 2, Chapter Six: The Spy
Finally, Nancy and Jonathan give in to the growing romantic tension between them after Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman), the conspiracy theorist and investigator, calls them out. What will become one of the series’ most compelling friendships is budding as Steve and Dustin hunt for Dart, the ever-growing Demodog, and Steve shares the secret to his perfect hair. Lucas brings Max (Sadie Sink) along to fight the Demodogs and prove to her that the Upside Down is real. Will’s connection to the Mind Flayer has grown so deep that he feels any pain inflicted on the creature. He shows Dr. Owens (Paul Reiser) a location in the tunnels that may be the key to destroying the Mind Flayer, but too late — they realize that Will is far more compromised than they knew.
Stranger Things
Season 2, Chapter Eight: The Mind Flayer
The Demodogs infiltrate Hawkins Lab. It’s Bob “The Brain” Newby’s (Sean Astin) time to shine as he leaves Dr. Owens, Hopper, Joyce, Mike, and an unconscious Will in a security room while he goes to the computer to unlock the doors and gate so they can leave. He saves the day and is almost home free at the front door when the Demodogs catch up. It’s a gut-wrenching moment in the series. At the Byers’ house, the gang figures out how to distract the Mind Flayer inside Will with stories of shared memories, which allows Will to tell them in Morse code that they need to close the gate. The Mind Flayer figures out their location and sends the Demodogs, but another hero has returned in the nick of time.
Stranger Things
Season 2, Chapter Nine: The Gate
El’s back! And Mike is reasonably upset to know his friend has been alive all this time. But time is of the essence. Hopper and El head to Hawkins Lab to close the gate and end what she started. Joyce, Jonathan, and Nancy take Will to Hopper’s cabin to force the Mind flayer out of him with heat. Billy (Dacre Montgomery) tracks down Max at the Byers, and he and Steve fight. In a moment reminiscent of The Exorcist, the Mind Flayer finally leaves Will’s body. And Eleven does what she does best, exerting all her power to close the gate. The kids finally get their chance to go to the Snow Ball, and Hawkins is safe — for now.
Stranger Things
Season 3, Chapter Four: The Sauna Test
The slimy Mayor Kline (Cary Elwes) gets a much-deserved beatdown from Hopper as he and Joyce investigate the mysterious large Russian who attacked Jim at the lab. At the Starcourt mall, Robin (Maya Hawke), Dustin, and Steve recruit Erica Sinclair (Priah Ferguson) to crawl through the ducts to the top-secret room where the Russians have been storing boxes. There, they find canisters filled with an eerie green substance — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, anyone? — right before they learn the hard way that the room is actually an elevator. Meanwhile, at the pool, Mike thinks up a plan to trap Billy in the sauna and use heat to figure out definitively if Billy is under the influence of the Mind Flayer. They get the answer they expected, but El is injured when they realize just how strong Billy/the Mind flayer has become.
Stranger Things
Season 3, Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt
It’s the Fourth of July, and boy, do we get fireworks in the final episode of Season 3. The entire gang is together at the mall, filling each other in on the two notable threats: the Russians and the Mind Flayer. They devise a multipart plan: Murray, Hopper, and Joyce will make their way to the Russian gate below Starcourt to destroy the machine keeping it open; Steve, Robin, Erica, and Dustin will get to Dustin’s radio tower to transmit instructions to Murray and co.; Nancy, Jonathan, and the rest of the kids try to get away but are trapped in the mall by Billy and the arrival of the Mind Flayer. El breaks through Billy’s mind barriers, Dustin sings a duet of “Never Ending Story” with Suzie (Gabriella Pizzolo), Joyce has to pull off a risky maneuver turning two keys to destroy the Russian laser, and Lucas holds off the monster-sized Mind Flayer with fireworks. The finale is by far the most impactful and devastating of the seasons thus far, with repercussions that will play out in Season 4.
Stranger Things
Season 4, Chapter One: The Hellfire Club
In 1979, at Hawkins Lab, Dr. Brenner, AKA Papa, is working with a large cohort of children and teens, all gifted with special powers. A routine day suddenly becomes a bloodbath when the staff and children are murdered. When Dr. Brenner finds the last person standing, it’s a young El with rage in her eyes. Cut to 1986: El, who goes by Jane, is in California with Will, both adjusting to their new school and El’s loss of her superpowers. Lucas has joined the basketball team and rejected his nerd status, and Mike and Dustin have joined the Hellfire Club, a new D&D group led by Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn). Max is spiraling after Billy’s death, getting through it only by listening to the unofficial song of Season 4, Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill.” Meanwhile, hallucinations of an evil voice and a chiming clock are haunting cheerleader Chrissy Cunningham (Grace Van Dien). In search of a drug to stop her symptoms, she turns to Eddie, but goes into a trance inside Eddie’s trailer home. This is the episode that gave the world Eddie’s much-quoted line, “Chrissy, wake up!” And in Chrissy’s mind, we get our first glimpse of Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower).
Stranger Things
Season 4, Chapter Two: Vecna’s Curse
The good news is Jim’s alive! The bad news is Chrissy’s dead and all of Hawkins is reeling. Joyce and Murray reach out to the mysterious Russian contact to try to find Jim’s whereabouts. Eddie is on the run as a murder suspect. With Robin and Steve’s help, Max and Dustin search for Eddie, suspecting that what happened may be connected to the Upside Down. Nancy investigates Chrissy’s murder and learns about a man named Victor Creel who murdered his entire family in 1959 in the same way Chrissy appears to have been killed. Mike makes his way to California and learns that El hasn’t been fully honest about how well she’s adjusting; in fact, she’s being bullied. Meanwhile, Vecna chooses his next victim.
Stranger Things
Season 4, Chapter Four: Dear Billy
It was the image that defined Season 4: Max suspended high above a gravestone under Vecna’s thrall. But she does see it coming. Max figures out that the same “symptoms” that Chrissy and Fred Benson (Logan Riley Bruner) had in the week before their deaths are ones she’s also been experiencing. She figures it’s only a matter of time before she’s next and writes her friends letters to read once she’s gone. Nancy and Robin pretend to be graduate students to get an interview with Victor Creel (’80s horror legend Robert Englund) and learn that he didn’t actually kill his family, but awoke from a trance to find his wife and daughter dead and his son in a coma. Robin pieces together that it was music that saved Victor’s life that day, and they relay the info just in time to Dustin, Lucas, and Steve, who quickly put Max’s headphones on, saving her life. In Alaska, Joyce and Murray meet the eccentric Yuri Ismaylov (Nickola Djuricko). At the same time, back in California, Mike, Will, and Jonathan plan to escape from the agents babysitting them so they can find El.
Stranger Things
Season 4, Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab
Here we get the gritty details of who Vecna is, how he came to be, and how Eleven is linked to him. We also get the reunion of Joyce and Hopper at the Russian prison after he faces off against a Demogorgon. Dustin figures out that the portals to the Upside Down are at the sites of Vecna’s murders, information he relays to Nancy, Steve, Robin, and Eddie, who are stuck in the Upside Down. They all make their way to Eddie’s trailer, where Dustin opens the portal — they are almost all through the opening, when Nancy is put into a trance by Vecna. Over at The Nina Project in Nevada, Eleven is in the process of regaining her lost memories. Both Eleven and Nancy simultaneously see what actually happened at Hawkins Lab in 1979, and that the massacre was carried out by Brenner’s first failed experimental child, Henry Creel, aka One, and it was Eleven who sent him to the Upside Down, where he became Vecna.
Stranger Things
Season 4, Chapter Nine: Piggy Back
With the fight for Max and all of Hawkins, the Season 4 finale is a wild ride. In a four-phase plan, the Hawkins group prepares to enter the Upside Down and summon Vecna to his house. The others find ways to help the team in Hawkins from afar. Joyce and Hopper return to the prison, where they inflict damage on the portal there and fight the Demogorgons to distract the hive mind. Eleven realizes she can protect Max’s mind from within the Void, and Will, Mike, Jonathan, and Argyle (Eduardo Franco) build her a sensory deprivation tub. Eleven searches for Max in her memories; Eddie shreds on his guitar to distract the Demobats; and Robin, Steve, and Nancy attempt to creep up on Vecna while he’s distracted in the house. It truly takes the entire clan, spread out all over the world, working against impossible odds to get Vecna to lose his hold on Max. But the damage has been done, and the veil between Hawkins and the Upside Down is officially torn down.
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