It’s Halloween time in Hawkins when Stranger Things Season 2 kicks off. Everyone is a year older and looking forward to the holiday, despite dealing with the lingering effects of the Upside Down. The A.V. Club kids are in eighth grade and dressing up as the characters from their new favorite movie, Ghostbusters. Steve (Joe Keery) is writing college applications with Nancy’s (Natalia Dyer) help. Joyce (Winona Ryder) is back in the dating pool, and Hopper (David Harbour) has a secret new roommate.
Everyone is trying to put what happened in Season 1 and the Upside Down behind them, but the shadow dimension isn’t easy to forget. That’s especially true for Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), who is still having vivid flashes of the other dimension. The good news is that he’s informed Joyce and his friends about what’s happening. They are even consulting some new folks at Hawkins National Laboratory to figure out why his “episodes” are continuing.
As the cause of Will’s episodes emerges, Hawkins falls under attack from a new, terrifying monster that is spreading its reach through the entire town. There’s no escaping the Upside Down this time, and that goes for everyone in the party.
For the most part, yes. Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), and Will are still playing Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) and getting picked on at school. Nancy and Steve are still dating — at least in the early part of the season — with Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) acting as a trusty third wheel. Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is also back in the picture, though she’s being kept away from Mike and the rest of her friends for their own safety.
There are also some new faces in Hawkins. Max (Sadie Sink) joins the eighth-grade class in Episode 1 and impresses our central clique of nerds with her chart-topping arcade and skateboarding skills. Her older stepbrother Billy (Dacre Montgomery) is a troublesome newcomer to Hawkins High and immediately sets his eye on usurping Steve’s crown as king of the school. Billy’s bad vibes are evened out by Bob (Sean Astin), Joyce’s old friend from high school and now boyfriend, who is completely smitten with the Byers family matriarch.
Dr. Sam Owens (Paul Reiser) has taken over for Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) at Hawkins Lab. He is earnestly trying to make things better with those directly affected by the events of Season 1, but he’s hard to trust, just like everyone at the lab. One person who definitely doesn’t believe anything anyone from the lab — or any mainstream media outlet — has to say is investigative journalist Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman). He’s been hired by the Holland family to find out what really happened to their daughter, Barb (Shannon Purser).
The initial diagnosis is that Will is having post-traumatic flashbacks of his time in the Upside Down. One second, he’s hanging out with his friends or his family, and the next second, he’s in the Upside Down. The episodes get progressively longer and more terrifying as Will starts seeing a multilimbed shadow monster every time he envisions the other dimension.
Joyce realizes that Will’s episodes may not be flashbacks at all when she watches footage of him trick-or-treating with his friends and spots the shadow monster Will has been drawing imprinted on the footage. She rushes to the school to find Will, but he’s already in the midst of another episode when she arrives. This time, the shadow monster catches up with Will and burrows into him. Joyce and the A.V. Club (with honorary member Max) are able to get Will to wake up again, but it’s clear that something is very different about him.
The shadow monster is now attached to Will. He can see and feel everything that the monster is doing, including spreading his tentacles under Hawkins and making underground tunnels. He draws the tunnels on hundreds of sheets of paper, which Joyce tapes up all over the Byers’s house (the tunnel map is this season’s light wall).
Bob deduces that the tunnel layout is a crude map of the city of Hawkins. The revelation comes just in time to save Hopper, who Will can feel is trapped in the underground tunnels.
OK is a relative term. Hopper connects Will’s drawings to the rotting vegetation that has been popping up all over town. He digs a hole in the town pumpkin patch and discovers the underground tunnel system, but he’s attacked by Upside Down demon sprinklers shortly into his exploration. The poisonous spray disorients Hopper and makes him pass out. When he wakes up, he’s not exactly sure where he is and gets lost in the meandering tunnel pathways.
He tries to dig his way out when he finds a weak spot in the wall, but it takes too much energy. Hopper takes a cigarette break, but before he realizes it, the vines covering the tunnels are starting to strangle his entire body. Luckily, Joyce and Bob show up before the vines can actually kill Hopper.
The Hawkins National Lab team discovers that the pumpkin soil is contaminated and arrives just as Joyce and Bob are freeing Hopper from the vines. The lab tests reveal that the soil reacts to the same stimuli, even if it is in separate containers. It’s hive-mind soil!
Theoretically, if the team burns the vines in one place, it should kill the rest of the vines growing through Hawkins. The issue is that Will is now psychically connected to the shadow monster, so when the lab guys start burning the vines, Will has a massive seizure.
The shadow monster attacking Will in his vision on the school field made Will part of the hive mind. When the Hawkins National Lab burns any part of the tunnels, they’re attacking the monster, and Will can feel every attack. He can also feel the monster’s spite and anger once the attack subsides. He makes it through the seizure, but he has significant memory loss — he can’t remember Bob or Hopper — when he comes to. He also knows that the shadow monster wants revenge.
Will tells the doctors that there’s a section of the tunnels that the monster doesn’t want him to see. They send a full team to investigate, but Will admits once they’re already in the tunnel that it’s a trap the monster made him set. The lab team is a group of sitting ducks when the shadow monster’s army of mini-Demogorgons arrives to kill them all. When the carnage is over in the tunnels, the creatures crawl up to the entrance of Hawkins Lab, ready to finish the job and eat everyone in sight.
That’s a fun new development in Season 2. Dustin finds the first mini-Demogorgon in his trash and adopts it because he thinks it’s a new species of pollywog rather than a creature from the Upside Down.
He names the slug D’Artagnan (Dart for short) when he discovers the slimy creature enjoys one of Dustin’s favorite candy bars, 3 Musketeers. He brings Dart to school the next day to show off to his friends and Max. Will has a very adverse reaction to Dart, which tells Mike that Dart is actually from the Upside Down. He insists Dustin gets rid of it before it kills or infects them all, but Dart is a slippery dude and escapes.
Dustin eventually finds him again, but doesn’t tell his friends that he’s keeping a mini-Demogorgon out of fear they’ll make him get rid of it. As you can imagine, this is going to go super well for Dustin.
Nancy and Jonathan are on the quest for justice and to tell Barb’s parents the truth about their daughter without getting arrested for breaking the NDAs they were forced to sign at the end of Season 1. Nancy originally wants Steve’s help with the mission, but he is against risking their lives or pissing off the government (and that’s valid), which leads Nancy to drunkenly tell him she’s not in love and their entire relationship is “bullshit.” Ouch.
So Jonathan steps up and helps Nancy trick Dr. Owens into admitting Barb is dead, and Hawkins National Lab covers it up while she secretly records the conversation. They take the tape to Murray Bauman in hopes he can publicly expose the lab without implicating Nancy and Jonathan. Murray agrees to help but admits they need to water down the story to make it believable to consumers. They concoct a story that lab chemicals poisoned Barb, but the team is still responsible for lying about her death to her parents and the Hawkins general public.
Not only does Murray help the duo bring the truth, or at least a version of it, to the Holland family, but he also calls them out for ignoring the chemistry and intense sexual energy between them. They agree to spend one more night at Murray’s before heading back to Hawkins, but that night turns into an all-nighter when Nancy and Jonathan give in to their feelings and finally sleep together.
It’s great that Jonathan and Nancy stop pretending they don’t have the hots for each other, but this does add another day to their travels. By the time they make it home, they discover the Byers house covered in Will’s drawings and evidence that someone else has been there taking pictures of the scene.
Steve just wants to keep his head down, apply to college, and hang out with his girl, but things are not working out for him this season. He shows up at the Wheeler house to apologize to Nancy after their fight (which started after her drunken outburst), after she and Jonathan have already left on their mission. Instead of making up with his (ex?) girlfriend, he runs into Dustin, who is in desperate need of assistance after Dart doubles in size and eats his cat, Mews. This is how one of the greatest duos in Stranger Things lore is formed.
Dustin takes Steve to his basement, where he’s trapped a growing Dart. By the time they get there, Dart has grown again and dug his way through the concrete to the shadow monster tunnels. Oops! The new besties stock up on raw meat and set up a trail to lead Dart to the junkyard, where they plan to set him on fire. Lucas finally answers the code red alerts Dustin has been sending over the walkie-talkies and brings Max to the junkyard to prove that everything he’s told her about the Upside Down is true.
Dart doesn’t show up until nightfall while Steve and the kids are hiding on the junkyard bus. The mini-Demogorgon is no longer interested in raw cow meat, so Steve ventures out with his bat to lure Dart. However, Dart did not come to the junkyard alone. He’s got a pack of mini-Demogorgons with him that chase Steve back on the bus with Dustin, Max, and Lucas. It seems like all four of them are dead meat when Dart and his bros abruptly bail and head back to where they came from — the tunnels where the Hawkins Lab team was lured by Will and the shadow monster.
She absolutely would be, but only one person in Hawkins knows that Eleven isn’t stuck in the Upside Down.
Hopper is housing Eleven in an old family cabin at the start of the season. Flashbacks reveal that when Eleven eviscerated the Demogorgon at the end of Season 1, she transports herself to the Upside Down version of the Hawkins Middle School science classroom. That puts her mere yards from the gate the Demogorgon created when it scented the blood of the murdered Hawkins Lab team. Eleven waits for the coast to clear of lingering authorities and pushes through the dimension opening. She’s back in Hawkins, maybe a half hour after everything went down.
However, that is just the start of Eleven’s trouble. She makes her way back to the Wheeler house and finds it crawling with government agents who warn Mike that Eleven is dangerous. They urge him to report any future contact with her, so Eleven skedaddles out of there, and survives by scavenging in the woods for over a month. Eventually, she spots Hopper leaving her food in the hidden box and follows him to his truck. He’s relieved to see her and sets her up in his grandfather’s old cabin.
That’s where Eleven is hiding out when Season 2 begins. Hopper has been teaching her to read and to expand her vocabulary, but she isn’t allowed outside of the cabin or to make contact with Mike and the others. If anyone at the lab finds out she’s back, she puts herself and Hopper at risk of being taken in for interrogation, or worse, experimentation. She keeps her promise to stay put until Day 326 when Hopper once again says she’ll be able to leave “soon,” and Eleven reaches the end of her patience.
She isn’t satisfied with the pace of Hopper’s diplomacy with the lab, so she takes a field trip to Hawkins Middle School to see Mike. She runs into a mother and her young daughter playing in their backyard along the way and uses her powers to distract them while she makes her way to the school. She doesn’t even get to talk to Mike because when she gets to the school, she finds him talking to Max and assumes that Mike has replaced her in the D&D party. She uses her powers to throw Max off her skateboard and then heads home, where she and Hopper get into a massive fight about leaving the house and jeopardizing the system he’s created.
Hopper learns a valuable lesson about picking a fight with a hormonal teenager when Eleven shatters every window in the cabin and locks herself in her room. The two are still on rough terms when Hopper leaves for work the next morning. With no TV to entertain her (Hopper ripped out the cable during their fight), Eleven goes digging through Hopper’s paperwork on Hawkins Lab and discovers a file on Terry Ives (Aimee Mullins). She tries to psychically connect with her mother, but when Terry evaporates from the psychic space, Eleven realizes she needs to meet Terry face-to-face.
Eleven was hoping that finding Terry and her Aunt Becky (Amy Seimetz) would mean a happy family reunion and escaping the captivity of Hopper’s cabin forever. Instead, she finds her birth mother in the same near-catatonic state that Joyce and Hopper found her in during Season 1. As Eleven tries to process her mother’s condition, she notices the lights flickering. She follows them to the basement and realizes that it is Terry trying to communicate using her own powers.
Becky gets Eleven a blindfold, and the young girl reaches out to her mom in the psychic space again. She’s still muttering the same phrases over and over. But when Eleven reaches out, Terry shows her daughter the important events leading up to her losing her ability to function normally.
Dr. Brenner is there when Terry gives birth. She hears Eleven crying even though the doctors and Becky say the baby didn’t make it. She does research and then takes a gun to Hawkins Lab to find baby Eleven. She makes it to a room with a rainbow sticker outside the door and finds two small girls playing inside, one of whom Terry believes is her daughter. Security takes her away before Terry and the girl can talk, and Dr. Brenner leads the electroshock therapy that prevents Terry from fully explaining what she saw in the lab ever again.
Eleven comes out of the psychic space, understanding that Dr. Brenner stole her from her mother and then literally fried her brain so Terry couldn’t attempt to rescue Eleven again.
Jane Ives is the name Terry Ives gave to her daughter. Jane came to be known as Eleven when Dr. Brenner took her from Terry to raise in the lab, the name originating from the number tattooed on her wrist.
Eleven wants to find the other girl in Terry’s vision, so Becky shows her a file of other lost children potentially taken by Dr. Brenner. They find a newspaper clipping of an Indian girl taken from London who looks like the other girl playing with young Eleven in the rainbow room at the lab. When Eleven later hears Becky telling the authorities that Eleven showed up at her house, she runs away and decides to track down the girl from the photo.
That’s how Eleven ends up in Pittsburgh, hanging with the masked assailants from the opening of the season. The girl from the photo is named Kali (Linnea Berthelsen), and she was 008 in Dr. Brenner’s experiments. She also has psychic powers, but instead of telekinesis, she can make people have visions of whatever she wants. This is very useful when the gang needs to steal stuff or get away from authorities.
Kali is on a mission to take down all of the people responsible for her being taken to Hawkins National Laboratory. She offers Eleven the chance to do the same and avenge her mother. This takes them to a man named Ray (Pruitt Taylor Vance), who was a nurse at the lab who performed the electroshock therapy that stopped Terry from being able to communicate with anyone. The gang robs his apartment, and Kali allows Eleven to exact her revenge by mentally strangling Ray –– right after he reveals that Dr. Brenner is still alive. The mention of “Papa” pushes Eleven over the edge, and she’s ready to kill Ray until she notices a picture of him with his two young daughters.
Eleven stops cutting off Ray’s air supply, and Kali steps in to finish the job with a gun, but Eleven doesn’t let her shoot him. They have to make a run for it, because Ray’s daughters are in the apartment and call the police while Kali and Eleven attack their dad. Kali uses her powers to help them get away and reprimands Eleven for screwing up the job. When Eleven still doesn’t see Kali’s side, Kali plants a vision of Dr. Brenner in Eleven’s head, trying to convince her that Kali is right and Eleven needs to embrace her anger.
The two psychics don’t have time to argue about their moral philosophies because the cops show up at the gang’s hideout. Once again, Kali helps them get away with her powers, but Eleven doesn’t follow suit. She uses her own powers to check in with Hopper and Mike and realizes they are in danger at the lab. Kali and her friends drive away, but Eleven runs in the opposite direction and boards a bus back to Hawkins.
She doesn’t make it in time to save everyone at the lab, but Jonathan and Nancy do. They show up at the front gate looking for Mike and Will just as Steve is arriving with Dustin, Lucas, and Max to investigate what Dart and his friends abandoned them for at the junkyard.
The issue is that the power is out at the lab, making it impossible for the kids and teenagers to get in. That’s because Bob is still inside, trying to reset the Hawkins Lab system to allow the adults to escape the horde of mini-Demogorgons with Mike and Will (who has been sedated so the Mind Flayer can’t keep sending attack minions to their location).
Bob the Brain turns into Bob the Superhero when he not only flips the power breakers but also completely restarts the security system to unlock the doors. With the lights back on and a clear path to the exit, Hopper takes Joyce and the boys to the exit while Dr. Owens uses the security cameras to help Bob navigate his way out of the basement.
The entire team is so close to a clean getaway until Bob accidentally knocks over a broom and alerts one of the creatures. It chases him all the way to the front door, where Joyce and Hopper are waiting. A brief second to enjoy the relief of reuniting is all Bob and Joyce have before the shadow monster’s minions attack Bob. They are already clawing into his stomach before Hopper can aim his gun at them. The injuries are too severe, so Hopper drags Joyce out of the building just as Jonathan pulls up to rescue them. (He’s able to get in once Bob resets the power, which opens the front gate.) Jonathan and Nancy drive Joyce, Mike, and Will out of the lab. Hopper follows behind in his police truck, picking up Steve, Dustin, Lucas, and Max on his way out.
It definitely isn’t! The crew needs to come up with a plan as soon as they get back to the Byers’s house, especially when Hopper’s pleas for military reinforcements go unanswered.
Dustin and Mike officially dub the shadow monster as “The Mind Flayer” from D&D, and his minions are nicknamed Demodogs (Demogorgons + dogs). They hypothesize that the only way to take out the Demodogs is to kill their master, but they have to figure out how to do that without hurting Will ... but the only person who would know how to do that is Will, who can’t know anything that the Mind Flayer could use against them.
Will needs to be interrogated, but they can’t let the Mind Flayer know where they are. They black out the Byers’s shed and tie the still-sedated Will to a chair. He freaks out when he wakes up, and it is clear that the Mind Flayer is still in control. Joyce starts sharing a memory of Will opening a box of crayons on his 8th birthday and drawing a rainbow spaceship. Jonathan and Mike jump in with their own stories about how much they love Will, and Hopper notices Will tapping out Morse code on the side of the chair. He’s communicating with them in a way the Mind Flayer can’t understand.
Will tells them they need to close the gate at Hawkins Lab if they want to cut off the Mind Flayer, but then the phone rings in the kitchen. Will can hear it through Hopper’s walkie-talkie, which he’s using to communicate the Morse code to the kids inside the house to translate. Once Will hears that ring, he knows that everyone is at the house, and the Mind Flayer signals the Demodogs to come running. Joyce sedates Will again so the Mind Flayer can’t get any more info, and then everyone needs to prepare for the attack as the Demodogs descend on the house.
Yes, it absolutely would, and our girl does not disappoint. Hopper and Nancy are ready to defend the group from the incoming threat with the rifle Hopper finds in the Byers’s shed, but they don’t get the chance to shoot. There are sounds of a massive scuffle outside before a dead Demodog is thrown through the living room window. Once the threat is clear, Eleven psychically unlocks the front door and arrives in her cool outfit from Pittsburgh, ready to save the day once more.
Once tearful reunions are had (and angry words are exchanged with Hopper for hiding her for a year), the next plan needs to be hatched. Eleven is the only one who can close the gate at the lab, but Will and the Mind Flayer have to be separated before they sever the Mind Flayer’s connection to the remaining Demodogs. Once Will has complete control over his own body, Hopper and Eleven will need help distracting the Demodogs so they have a clear path to the gate.
The Mind Flayer hates heat. Will has been saying it in various ways throughout the season, but now it all clicks for Joyce. They need to burn the Mind Flayer out of Will if they want a chance at defeating this monster once and for all.
The first step is to move Will to a place he’ll have no chance of recognizing if they fail at extricating the Mind Flayer. So Joyce, Jonathan, and Nancy (after getting the blessing from Steve) take Will to Hopper and Eleven’s cabin. They strap him down to a cot, light a fire in the cabin stove, and turn on a couple of space heaters. Will immediately wakes up when he feels the heat, and it is obvious the Mind Flayer is not cool with what’s happening.
Unfortunately for the shadow monster, Joyce is still BIG MAD about Bob’s death. She puts the space heaters on full blast even though Will is screaming for mercy. Remember, it’s not Will; it’s the monster! The evidence that the heat eviction is working starts crawling up Will’s veins, proving they are so close to success. Nancy puts it over the top by poking Will in the side with a hot poker from the fire, expelling Mind Flayer particles from Will’s body and scattering them into the night sky.
That’s a great question, and, yes, he is. Billy is tasked with tracking down Max once their parents figure out she’s missing. He has to cancel a date to find her, so you can bet that he is not pleased with the assignment.
His first stop is the Sinclairs’ after seeing Max hang out with Lucas at school and the arcade. That takes him to the Wheelers’ place, where he has an interesting interaction with Mrs. Wheeler.
However, Max is not at the Wheeler residence, so that sends Billy to the Byers’s house where he finds Steve and the A.V. Club holding down the fort. Steve tries to stop Billy from coming in, but Billy takes him down just like he did on the basketball court. Once inside, Billy threatens Lucas to stay away from Max, which takes things way too far. Steve gets back in the ring and fights Billy, but Billy is the better fighter. He punches Steve unconscious (that’s two seasons in a row that Steve has had his ass handed to him in a fight), but Max manages to sedate him with the leftover drugs Joyce was using on Will.
Of course, the party has a plan. They steal Billy’s car, with a recovering Steve packed in the back seat, and drive to the tunnel entrance Hopper created at the pumpkin patch. Their objective is to draw the Demodogs away from the lab to give Hopper and Eleven optimum time to close the gate.
Steve, being the incredible babysitter that he is, tries to stop the plan. He is promptly overruled and instead leads the way to the hub of tunnels to help Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Max douse the place in gasoline. They set the place on fire and make a run for it, but Dart (you can tell it’s him by the yellow markings on his butt) stops them in their tracks. It’s finally time for Dustin’s connection with the mini-Demogorgon to come in handy. He uses two Three Musketeers bars to distract Dart while the rest of the party gets away. They make it all the way back to the tunnel entrance before the remaining Demodogs in the tunnel make a run for the Hawkins National Laboratory.
Yes, thanks to Steve and the kids luring away many of the Demodogs, Hopper and Eleven have a fairly easy time making it to the gate in the Hawkins Lab basement. They even run into a still-breathing Dr. Owens on the way! It’s nice to see that guy alive, especially because he can help Hopper keep Eleven a secret from the Department of Energy.
That’s a later problem, though. The pathway to the Upside Down has to be closed! Hopper and Eleven take the elevator down the makeshift tunnel shaft to reach the gate, which has grown exponentially larger since the last time we saw it. Eleven uses her boosted powers (thanks to Kali teaching her how to tap into her anger) to close the gate while Hopper shoots the Demodogs returning to the lab to defend the gate. Between Hopper’s marksmanship and Eleven’s deep well of anger, they manage to close the gate with the Mind Flayer menacingly watching from the other side.
This season would be a real bummer if they didn’t. Season 2 gets a time jump to December just like Season 1. We check back in with the crew just in time for the middle school Snow Ball. Dr. Owens manages to get Hopper official adoption papers for Eleven, so even she gets to attend the dance that Mike told her about in the previous season.
Eleven and Mike get their first dance to Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time,” and another chance to smooch. And they aren’t the only ones! Lucas manages to ask Max to dance, and they have their first kiss just a few feet over from Mike and Eleven. Even Will gets asked to dance by one of the girls in their class!
For a second, it looks like Dustin might be the only member of the party to strike out, despite following King Steve Harrington’s romantic advice to the letter. Nancy, who is at the dance as a chaperone, comes to the rescue, though, and makes Dustin look like the coolest kid in eighth grade by asking him to dance. She confesses that he’s always been her favorite of Mike’s friends, and that gives him enough confidence to muddle through the remaining awkward years of puberty.
Hawkins and the Upside Down remain in separate dimensions for now, but that will not remain the case. The closing scene of the season is a shot of the Hawkins Middle School gym on the night of the Snow Ball in the Upside Down. The Mind Flayer is still very much alive and stands vigil over the school while a storm rages around the monster. Eleven may have cut off access between the Mind Flayer and Hawkins, but the threat is definitely not eliminated. Don’t forget: The particles of the Mind Flayer in Will’s body disappeared into the night air, and we don’t know if they went back to the Upside Down or potentially found a new host to infect. No, we are definitely not done with the Upside Down yet.
Need a refresher before returning to Hawkins one last time? Check out our Season 1, Season 3, and Season 4 recaps.
Stranger Things Seasons 1–4 are now streaming on Netflix. Stranger Things 5 will release this fall: four episodes on Nov. 26, three episodes on Christmas, and the finale episode on New Year’s Eve.
