SPOILER ALERT! This post contains major plot details from the first four episodes of Netflix‘s Stranger Things 5.
The Hawkins crew are set for one last adventure in Stranger Things 5, which debuted with four episodes on Wednesday evening. While there’s an 18 month time gap between the events of Seasons 4 and 5, it’s been more than three years since there were any new episodes of Stranger Things.
Creators Matt and Ross Duffer have sought to meticulously divulge more details about the supernatural forces that are plaguing the small Indiana town across the last four seasons, and it’s all leading to this. So, that means remembering details from all the way back to the beginning of the series when Will Byers disappears, which is actually how Season 5 opens.
Whether you didn’t have the chance to rewatch 30+ hours of Stranger Things before Season 5’s launch or you just need a way to keep track of everything as the first four episodes of Stranger Things 5 catapult viewers deeper into the show’s mythology, this guide is for you.
Below, we’ll take you episode by episode for a refresher on the pertinent information from Seasons 1 through 4 needed to keep up with Stranger Things 5 Vol. 1.
Courtesy of Netflix
Episode 1: “The Crawl”
Will Byers disappeared on November 6, 1983
Season 5 opens with a flashback to November 12, 1983, six days after Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) went missing. It gives us the first glimpse at what Will was going through while he was in the Upside Down, and it directly ties his disappearance to Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) for the first time.
The scene begins with Will muttering The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go,” a song that his brother Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) introduces him to during a flashback in Season 1, Episode 2 to distract from their parents’ arguing. The same song also starts blasting from Jonathan’s bedroom speakers the first time that the lights flicker in the Byers’ house, convincing Joyce (Winona Ryder) that Will is trying to communicate with her.
Stranger Things began with Will’s disappearance on November 6, 1983. It’s been confirmed that he spent about a week in the Upside Down.
In the Season 1 finale, Joyce and Hopper (David Harbour) find Will inside Hawkins Library, buried beneath the flesh-like vines on the wall with some sort of tentacle pumping something into his mouth, just like he’s seen at the end of the opening sequence of Season 5.
The Season 5 flashback explains how he got there. After days of evading the Demogorgon, it finally apprehended him and brought him to Vecna.
Eleven first opened the gate to the Upside Down
Also worth remembering: In Season 4, we learn the the Upside Down is frozen in time on the day Will disappeared, because it’s also the day the primary gate to the dimension was opened unintentionally by Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) during a psychic experiment gone wrong. Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) had wanted her to try to make psychic contact with a Demogorgon, and it created a tear in the fabric of reality. The action allows the creature to come into Hawkins, which sets off the chain of events that led to Will’s disappearance.
Why is Hawkins militarized?
Robin (Maya Hawke) catches viewers up on the final events of Season 4 during her morning broadcast as the new host of Hawkins’ local radio station. She also reveals that the town is under military quarantine. “I mean, what town on earth can match our very impressive military-to-civilian ratio?” she says cheekily.
After being split up for most of Season 4, everyone reunited in Hawkins in Episode 409, “The Piggyback,” just as Vecna opened four gates to the Upside Down (now temporarily covered by giant sheets of metal), using the lives of four people, including Max (Sadie Sink). Eleven was able to save Max from dying, but she’s still in a coma. The gates split the small Indiana town apart and sent a huge ash cloud overhead, which Robin jokes that they all “inhaled.”
There is still a gate to the Upside Down open in Hawkins at the convergence site of the four massive gates Vecna opened, and it’s highly secure in the Military Access Control Zone (or the MAC-Z).
Hellfire Club
Joseph Quinn in ‘Stranger Things’ Season 4
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Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) is the only one still associating himself with the Hellfire Club at Hawkins High School, because the rest of the student body still thinks Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) is responsible for killing Vecna’s victims last season. The Hellfire Club was just a Dungeons & Dragons club that the boys belonged to, but after the town’s series of murders, people began to think of it as a satanic club and suspected Eddie of the crimes.
Knowing that he was still facing those accusations, Eddie sacrificed himself inside the Upside Down to help the gang escape a horde of Demobats by playing the guitar solo from Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” to attract them to himself instead. It was his final, heroic act. Eddie and Dustin were particularly close, so he’s likely still grieving that loss.
Burning the Upside Down
We know that the fleshy monsters that emerge from the Upside Down have an aversion to heat and can be killed by fire. It’s one of the few things that can actually harm them. This also explains why people who are under the Mind Flayer’s control have an extreme aversion to heat. Throughout Season 2, Will is completely incapacitated every time that an entity from the Upside Down is exposed to fire. In the Season 2 finale, Joyce uses extreme heat (via heaters, while Will is strapped down to a bed in Hopper’s cabin) to get the Mind Flayer dust out of Will and sever Will’s connection to the Upside Down — or so she thought — so that Eleven can close the gate at Hawkins Lab.
The kids also used heat to determine that Billy (Dacre Montgomery) is under the control of the Mind Flayer in Season 3, when they lock him in the sauna.
Eleven’s sensory deprivation
Eleven has been using sensory deprivation since the very first season of Stranger Things. It allows her to enter “The Void,” which is a blank space inside her mind where she can use extrasensory perception to locate other sentient beings. In the first episode of Season 5, Steve says El can’t find Vecna “in her bath,” which is how they occasionally refer to The Void, using that as a justification for why he thinks the big bad monster is already dead.
The tunnels
You might recognize those tunnels that Hopper, Joyce, Eleven and the rest of the crew are using to get around undetected. They’re the same tunnels from Season 2, when the Upside Down gate at Hawkins Lab was expanding below ground without the scientists’ knowledge. Hopper discovered them in Episode 205, “Dig Dug,” and the Demodogs used the system to get around underground undetected. When that long gash of a gate was closed, those tunnels were also no longer connected to the Upside Down.
In Season 2, when Will is connected to the Mind Flayer, he draws the series of interconnected tunnels on a ton of pieces of paper through what he referred to as his “now-memories” (more on that later). Joyce realizes that the edges connect, and she pieces them together to create the map around the walls of her house. You’ll want to remember this for Episode 504, “Sorcerer,” as well.
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Episode 2: “The Vanishing of … ***** Wheeler”
Will’s connection to the Upside Down
At the end of the first season, Will is seen throwing up a slug-like entity into the bathroom sink, an ominous sign that he is still connected to the Upside Down. From then on, he’s always able to sense when creatures from the Upside Down are near, because he’ll get goosebumps on the back of his neck and experience a sinking feeling.
In Season 2, the remaining link he has to the alternate dimension grows when Will begins to see the Mind Flayer, a massive shadowy figure that haunts the Upside Down. It happens gradually, as Will’s reality occasionally shifts inexplicably to the Upside Down, and he can see the storm brewing as the Mind Flayer gets closer to him. During one of those encounters, the Mind Flayer pumps some sort of dust into his body, which in turn allows the shadowy creature to increasingly infiltrate Will.
In addition to the physical symptoms he experienced, Will would also have these visions that he called “now-memories” while he was infected by the Mind Flayer, allowing him to see what it saw. The rest of the group came to understand this as a “hive mind” that the Mind Flayer could control.
But, even after they get the Mind Flayer particles out of Will at the end of the season, he is still able to sense when the monster is near in Season 3. In Season 4, Will is less connected to the hive mind, because he’s moved to California. However, when he returns to Hawkins at the end of the season, he experiences those same ominous symptoms, leading him to believe Vecna is still out there.
What happened to Max?
This will become even more relevant in Season 5, Episode 3, but you’re probably already searching for a refresher on what happened to Max. We know she’s still in a coma and, in Episode 2, Lucas plays Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (Deal With God)” for an unconscious Max in her hospital room.
Max was Vecna’s primary target in Season 4. He exploits her grief and guilt over her brother Billy’s death at the end of Season 3 to invade her mind and manipulate her. At the end of Season 4, once the Hawkins crew realizes Vecna’s plan to open the four gates to the Upside Down, they devise a plan that includes using Max as bait to distract the monster inside her mind while Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Steve (Joe Keery) and Robin attack his physical body. Eleven “piggybacks” into Max’s mind to help her friend out, and she and Vecna face off in a psychic battle.
However, Vecna gets the best of both of them, blinding Max and breaking her limbs the same way that he did his other victims. She was technically dead long enough for her sacrifice to open the fourth gate, but Eleven manages to use her telekinetic abilities to restart Max’s heart. Max hasn’t woken up, though, and remains in a coma.
Henry Creel AKA Vecna AKA 001
The end of Episode 2 reveals that Holly’s (Nell Fisher) imaginary friend Mr. Whatsit, whose name is inspired by A Wrinkle In Time, is actually Henry Creel. He has been appearing to Holly in her mind this entire time, explaining why no one else can see him.
We’re sure you remember that Henry is also Vecna, and they are both the very first test subject from Hawkins Lab, thanks to that shocking reveal when one of Vecna’s vines slithers away from the 001 tattoo on his wrist. But, in case you forgot the lore dump from Season 4, Episode 7, “The Massacre at Hawkins Lab,” here is a quick rundown with the pertinent information regarding our main villain.
We find out that Eleven first encountered Henry inside Hawkins Lab, where he was posing as an orderly. He would appear to her and try to convince her that Dr. Brenner and the other test subjects were out to get her. He convinces her that she needs to try to escape. On the day of the massacre, Henry reveals his true identity to Eleven when he uses his powers to kill some of the guards who are trying to block their escape from the Lab. He tells Eleven to wait in a closet and, when she finds him again, he’s in the rainbow room killing 002 in the same manner we’d previously seen Vecna kill his victims.
At the same time as this flashback is playing out in the episode, Vecna has also invaded Nancy’s mind to show her as well that Vecna, 001 and Henry are one and the same. He shows her some of his backstory, including the fact that he and his family moved to Hawkins in the hopes that it would fix his “odd” behavior, but it only worsens as he convinces himself that he needs to purge the weakness from humanity. He began honing his powers by hurting animals and, eventually, other humans. After developing a fascination with a family of black widows he found in the house, he began to see himself as the human equivalent of one, a predator. He also tormented his family with psychic visions for their perceived weaknesses.
Nancy finds herself in Vecna’s lair, and he reveals that he knows she talked to his father Victor Creel in Episode 404, “Dear Billy.” Henry also reveals that his mom tried to have him institutionalized, which led him to kill both her and his sister. He attempted to kill his father, but he’s already used too much of his power, so Victor was instead blamed for the murders while his son fell into a coma after pushing his limits. Henry awoke under Dr. Brenner’s care, but when Brenner realized he couldn’t control Henry, he started to breed other children with psychic powers — thus setting into motion the experiment that breeds Eleven. As he’s explaining all of this to Eleven, Henry/Vecna/One invites her to join forces with him, but she instead tears him apart, creating a gate with her power and throwing him through it.
The Creel Mansion
If the expansive mansion in which we find Holly with Henry (Mr. Whatsit) looks familiar, its because it’s Henry’s childhood home in Hawkins. Down to the stained glass window on the front door, Vecna has reconstructed his family house, which was previously shown dismantled with the door, the creepy grandfather clock and other parts of it floating around in his mind lair. In Season 4, when both Max and Nancy saw into this lair, they also saw that Vecna was attaching the teenagers he was killing to fleshy spires within the hub near his dismantled house.
Hopper’s Past
For the gruff Jim Hopper, some may understand the Chief of Police more when they remember what he’s been through. Hopper had a daughter, Sara, who died of cancer. He sort of spiraled into depression after this, and Sara’s mother left him. He found purpose in searching for Will and eventually becoming Eleven’s father when he adopted her at the end of Season 2. He references Sara, which explains his protectiveness over Eleven, while the pair navigates the Upside Down together.
Hop also later refers to his time in Russia, where he was taken prisoner after the events of Season 3. When he and Joyce try to turn off the Russian machine beneath the Starcourt Mall that is opening a new gate to the Upside Down, it first seems Hopper might’ve died in the blast. In reality, rhe Russians took him hostage, and before Joyce rescued him in Season 4, he revealed that he worried Sara had gotten cancer from his exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, military experience he draws when interrogating a certain member of Sullivan’s “Wolf Pack.”
Courtesy of Netflix
Episode 3: “The Turnbow Trap”
Eleven closed the gate to the Upside Down — or so we thought
Eleven has tried several times over the course of the series to fix the mistake we now know she made, opening the gate between the Upside Down and Hawkins. In Season 2, she manages to close the original gate at Hawkins Lab, seemingly once and for all.
However, as we learn in Season 3, those efforts were all for naught, because a group of Russian scientists open another gate to the Upside Down underneath Starcourt Mall, which they use as a front for their mission. Hopper and Joyce manage to close that gate, too, eventually. All the permanent gates to the Upside Down are gone until Vecna opens the massive rift in the Earth at the end of Season 4.
How can Vecna “spy” on his victims?
If rewatching the entirety of Stranger Things before Season 5 wasn’t an option, the Duffer Brothers recommended Season 2, Episode 6, “The Spy” as one of the few that viewers should definitely familiarize themselves with again prior to Vol. 1. It becomes clear why in Episode 503, when the Hawkins crew hatches a plan to kidnap Derek Turnbow (Jake Connelly) and, hopefully, trick a Demogorgon into leading them to Vecna (and Holly).
“The Spy” is when, in Season 2, Joyce realizes that Will is effectively being controlled completely by the Mind Flayer, at least when it wants to. Will is taken to Hawkins Lab at the top of the episode after another burn inside the Upside Down leaves him incapacitated. When he wakes up, he tells them that they “upset him” by burning the tendrils in the Upside Down and they shouldn’t have done that. He sets a trap for the Mind Flayer by telling Mike (Finn Wolfhard) he knows how to stop the monster, only to lead the crew straight to it inside the Upside Down tunnels (yep, those “Dig Dug” tunnels). This clues the rest of the characters in on the fact that the Mind Flayer is using Will to, ahem, spy on them, and it’s also when they begin to understand the extent of its control over the boy.
In order to successfully free Will from The Mind Flayer’s manipulation, they have to make sure throughout the final episodes that he doesn’t know where he is, otherwise the Mind Flayer can send the Demogorgons straight to him.
Similarly, the gang realizes that Vecna can see through the eyes of whomever his next victim is going to be, but that also means that he’ll be able to spy on them. So, in order to pull off their plan, they need to make sure Derek Turnbow — who they suspect Vecna will target next — doesn’t know where he is once they take him from his home.
Eleven can spy on people, too?
Sort of. Eleven can enter other people’s minds via her Void. It’s not the same as Vecna’s ability to see through the eyes of his victims or the Mind Flayer’s ability to control other peoples’ minds. Instead, she enters their subconscious and sees their memories.
That’s what she’s doing in the third episode of Season 5, when she and Hopper are trying to get information from Lt. Akers (Alex Breaux), the soldier they kidnapped regarding what the military is hiding inside their Upside Down compound and how, exactly, they’ve learned to neutralize Eleven. The first time we see her do this is in Season 2, when she visits her mom Terry Ives (Aimee Mullins), who shows Eleven inside her mind so she can understand what happened to her at Hawkins Lab. This is how she finds out she has a sister.
Eleven does the same thing in Season 3, when she enters Billy’s subconscious to try to determine what’s been going on with him. She does it yet again to try to help Max defeat Vecna in Season 4.
L-R: Noah Schnapp as Will Byers and Jamie Campbell Bower as Vecna in ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5
Courtesy of Netflix
Episode 4: “Sorcerer”
Hopper & Joyce’s relationship to Henry
Eagle-eyed watchers may have noticed as well that the opening night of Joyce’s Oklahoma production in which Henry Creel starred took place on November 6, 1959. Does that date sound familiar? We thought so.
Stranger Things: The First Shadow establishes that, once he moves to Hawkins, Henry goes to school with Hopper and Joyce, who have spoken about being classmates throughout the seasons. Joyce and Hopper are directly responsible for the reason that the town blamed Victor Creel, Henry’s father, for the murders of Virginia and Alice Creel, Henry’s mother and sister. She and Hopper had been investigating a series of animal killings in Hawkins, including a neighbor’s cat, which they linked back to Victor. In reality, it had been Henry who killed the animals and his mother and sister after succumbing to the Mind Flayer’s control.
There has been no immediate connection between present-day Vecna and Joyce or Hopper in the show just yet execpt in final moments of Episode 504 when she locks eyes with Vecna. The history can be felt between the former classmates and thespians, and Jamie Campbell Bower says it’s something he “had considered” when depicting the big bad this season.
Hints from Henry’s mindscape
In the final episode of Season 5, viewers learn that Max has been hiding inside of Vecna’s mindscape, which is also where Holly is trapped, at least mentally. Will has a vision of Holly buried into a flesh-like wall with a tube in her mouth, just like Will in Season 1, so we can assume that invading her mind, where he can create any reality he desires, is how he’s keeping her placated.
While Stranger Things: The First Shadow wasn’t required viewing before the final season, it might provide a hint as to why Henry won’t venture into the caves in which we discover Max has been hiding all this time. The play links Henry’s descent into madness to the Nevada Experiment, which, in this universe, was an attempt by the government to recreate an entirely accidental inter-dimensional trip made by the USS Eldridge in 1943 (with Dr. Brenner’s father on board, no less).
One of the big revelations in The First Shadow is that a staff member from the Nevada Experiment defected and left his equipment in the caves of Rachel, Nevada, where Henry and his family lived before they moved to Hawkins. Henry was exploring the caves one day when he stumbled upon the equipment, unknowingly sending him to Dimension X. While there, he seems to be exposed to a shadowy entity that looks a lot like the Mind Flayer, and he returns with frightening telekinetic abilities. He survives the ordeal, but he’s eventually tracked down by Dr. Brenner, who makes him the first test subject at Hawkins Lab.
Who is Kali?
In Season 2, audiences learn that Eleven has a sister named Kali (Linnea Berthelsen). She’s 008, and she’s revealed to Eleven through her mom Terry’s mindscape. Eleven, frustrated with Hopper keeping her locked inside, runs away to Chicago to reunite with Kali. While she’s there, we learn that Kali’s telekinetic powers are slightly different than Eleven’s. Kali can make people hallucinate and convince them to see and experience things that aren’t really happening. She does it several times, from conjuring spiders to erecting a gargantuan steel wall from the ground to stave off the police.
Eleven soon realizes she needs to return to Hawkins, though, after Kali brings her on a botched mission to murder one of the men who was responsible for their mother’s condition. When the police arrive at Kali’s compound, she and Eleven go their separate ways. That’s the last we see of her before Eleven finds her inside the military compound in the Upside Down in Episode 504.
Will’s memories
In the final moments of Vol. 1, before his powers manifest, Will is remembering what Robin told him about learning to embrace who she really is. At the same time, home video-style footage plays on screen, depicting some of Will’s memories from when he was a boy. If you remember, all the way back in Season 2, these were the memories that Joyce, Jonathan and Mike used to try to help Will break free of the Mind Flayer’s control.
Will the Wise
The Duffer brothers have been hinting that Will might have powers since Season 1, and fans have already run with that theory for quite a while now. Much of this has to do with Will’s D&D character Will the Wise, so we’ve unpacked a few of the key references.
In their D&D party, Will serves as the group’s wizard, which fans have speculated could be one of the keys to understanding his connection to the Upside Down. Wizards, or mages (as the group has commonly referred to Eleven), develop their powers using arcane magic to cast powerful spells.
In Season 1, Joyce has a memory of Will drawing a picture of Will the Wise shooting “fireballs,” which is also a key D&D spell, at his enemies. The fireballs are green, because he couldn’t find a red crayon, and Joyce jokes they look like cabbages. In the memory, Will also says he chose to use fireballs to defeat the enemy he’s up against, because “sometimes the bad guys are smart too” and he needs braun over brain to defeat them.
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Another spell commonly used by wizards is “Wizard Eye,” which allows the caster to see places they are not physically present in. But wait…when Mike tries to convince Will that he might actually have magical abilities, he tells Will that, while he’s a wizard in the game, he’s actually more like a sorcerer in real life.
The biggest difference between a wizard and a sorcerer is that a wizard develops their magic through study, while a sorcerer’s abilities are innate. There’s also that pesky little fact that the episode is literally titled, “Sorcerer.”
Also, in Season 2, Mike also refers to Will as a “cleric.” If this sounds familiar, it’s because Mike tells Holly that Holly the Heroic is also a cleric. In D&D, a cleric is a spell caster that derives its power from a deity or other powerful being, rather than possessing innate abilities. There are different “domains,” or subclasses, of clerics that determine their specific abilities.
We don’t know yet how much of this will connect to Will’s powers (or Holly’s endgame, for that matter). But, what we do know, is that Will’s abilities are unlike what we’ve seen from our other supernatural characters thus far. While they manifest similarly to Eleven’s in the final moments of Vol. 1, Schnapp and Brown tease that “they’re just two completely separate abilities.”
