‘Stranger Things’ Hellfire Club Catch-Up: Season One

Welcome to io9’s summer cram session for Stranger Things, the Duffer Brothers’ Netflix phenomenon, which will return this November to Netflix for its final season. To honor the Hawkins gang’s late, great, guitar-shredding Dungeon Master Eddie (Joseph Quinn), this rewatch shall be coined the Hellfire Club Catch-Up. With part one of season 5 a few months out, it seems fitting to get started now. Read on for io9’s guide to everything you need to remember from the show’s 2016 debut.

Season one of Stranger Things was straightforward, a lean and mean horror binge. From the jump, the Amblin and Stephen King vibes by way of John Carpenter are all over the DNA of the ’80s-era show. I would shy away from calling this gateway horror because season one in particular really went there in building up the horror with the Demogorgon hunting down Hawkins youth. Violence was not in short supply.

At the center, we have the events unfolding around Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) when their friend Will (Noah Schnapp) goes missing and a mysterious girl turns up with telekinetic powers. Rewatching this made me feel so old because they were so little when the show started—and let me tell you, the show really hits different now that I’m a parent.

Right off the bat, those are my biggest takeaways: the horror and story really hold up and are even more terrifying watching as a mom. Joyce (Winona Ryder), I get it now—I thought her extremes to find Will were a little off-kilter almost 10 years ago. I was so wrong, and everything she did for those kids with Hopper (David Harbour) was absolutely justified.

And there are so many details that I completely forgot about, some of which we’ll go over, like Will’s fake body or the fact that Hawkins has a huge bully problem. For the purposes of our club, though, here are the main things that happened that we should keep in mind as we work our way to season five.

1. Will’s fate might be in how he played that fateful Dungeons & Dragons game

When Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Will end their campaign in episode one, it comes down to a big choice to save them all. Will has the option to either protect his crew or attack the Demogorgon (game version), but his move to fireball backfires. It’s clear he should have made the move to protect his friends, and that makes us wonder if Will’s story might come down to a similar choice—where he may need to make the ultimate sacrifice.

2. Joyce jumps into action, establishing no one messes with her kid

Will is barely gone for the morning period of school, but that doesn’t stop Joyce from taking matters into her own hands. While other parents err on the side of thinking Will ran away, his mother knows better. Her inclination to feel something sinister is afoot lays the groundwork for her and Hopper tuning into the suspicious presence of Hawkins Lab, located near to where Will disappeared.

In Stranger Things: The First Shadowthe stage prequel to the events of Stranger Things the series, audience members have shared it’s now established canon that back in high school, Joyce and Hopper investigated an unusual happening in their town involving Victor Creel (Henry Creel’s father), the real truth of which was left unsolved. Hopper went on to leave to become a big city cop, and in his flashbacks we see his tragic backstory of having lost his daughter to cancer. Seeing Joyce’s relentlessness to find out what happened to Will is something Hopper recognizes and shares—seeing finding Will as a path to do what he couldn’t and save her kid.

3. No one cares about Barb’s disappearance except Nancy

It seems that as things get worse, the rest of the grownups in town would just rather keep ignoring the bad things happening around them. Barb (Shannon Purser) goes missing, and there’s no rush to look for her from anyone but Nancy (Natalia Dyer), who, like her brother Mike, gets the sense that something is off about her friend’s disappearance after Will’s. From the start, Hawkins feels like a small town where most people are miserable, and it could be by supernatural design, as the apathy from the adults rivals the meanness of the kids and teens as they all gawk at Joyce. There’s no justice for Barb as her disappearance is dismissed as another runaway, with the added detail of her car being planted by a bus stop. Nancy begins to run her own investigation concurrent with Joyce and Hopper’s, while the younger kids go on their main character storyline.

4. Hawkins and the secret government lab next door

Could the Upside Down already be feeding off the energy to expand beneath their feet? It seems likely that this is what leads to the fabric between both worlds getting ripped so the Demogorgon can feed on the most vulnerable. Eleven’s (Millie Bobbie Brown) escape from Hawkins Lab as Will is taken sets her up as the hero the town needs.

When El joins Mike, Lucas, and Dustin on their search for Will her powers quickly get revealed. It starts off simple enough, like Carrie meets E.T. El makes a kid who picks on her friends at their friend’s fake funeral pee himself, and later makes other kids fly with the wave of her hand. As she learns to channel her powers to make contact with Will in the Upside Down, it raises the stakes of the mystery. And it’s not so clean-cut because Lucas is the first to question her involvement with Hawkins Lab, while Mike’s protectiveness over her shadows his doubts. Her superhuman strength is dangerous and something the bad men want her back for. They figure out it’s to use as a weapon, but against what?

5. Will’s fake body

The Hawkins Lab agents, led by Brenner (Matthew Modine), attempt to cover up Will’s death by staging a fake dead body that gets all the way to the morgue. Hopper gets in and cuts it open to find it’s stuffed. Joyce already knows, because by then she’s been in touch with Will through Christmas lights from the Upside Down. The pain of her loss, you could argue, might be what begins to lure the Demogorgon through her walls. The blinking lights become the thread of how to know something is coming through.

6.The truth about Baby Jane

Hopper and Joyce uncover that the kid who was described as having a shaved head near the scene of a crime could have been the child of a pregnant woman who was experimented on during Brenner’s time with MK Ultra. When El/Jane was born, Brenner took the child back to Hawkins Lab, presumably to see how the psychedelics affected her child. Her powers were developed and tested in the lab, as seen in flashbacks where she refers to Brenner as Papa. In season one, things are left very vague in regard to how much MK Ultra was truly involved with Eleven’s origin. Stranger Things: The First Shadowhowever, fills in canon for that lore, which will likely be revealed in season five.

7. Nancy not Drew but close enough

Nancy and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) piece together that Barb’s blood is what the Demogorgon caught the scent of to pull her into the Upside Down. In Jonathan’s photography, they see its slender and misshapen face lurking behind Barb, and it matches Joyce’s description of the creature coming through the walls. They know blood lures it and both teens decide to fight back against it. Nancy’s interest in investigative journalism is born here, and it sets her up to be more than the small town girl who stays with her high school jock sweetheart.

8. The kids are all right even Steve with the good hair

The jock in question, Steve (Joe Keery), surprisingly goes from leading the crowd of disaffected youth to abandoning it when he begins to listen to Nancy. His lines deliver clues to the idea that the town exists in this sort of fog and when he turns on his bully friends, it’s because he realizes that Nancy cares about others—and he wants to, too.

When the showdown at the Byers home is getting set up Steve shows up to make amends at Jonathan’s doorstep for having thought that Nancy was cheating on him. Which, thanks to the timing and the blood on his face for making fun of the Byers family earlier, is exactly what makes the Demogorgon attack them all. It’s very Nightmare on Elm Street and Nancy gets an Alien-style Ripley action hero moment while the two guys vying for her attention fend off the monster. They hear Joyce and Hopper on the other side looking for Will and realize the electromagnetic veil is thinning (the lights be blinking!).

9. The Demogorgon vs Eleven

Joyce and Hopper find Will, and he’s absorbed onto a wall by the tendrils of the Upside Down’s alternate reality Hawkins. The consequences of Hopper’s trade to be let into the Upside Down from the lab give up Eleven’s location at the school. There the kids had helped her tap into the Upside Down to look for Will and Barb. Sadly, Barb was discovered mostly consumed by the nightmare realm.

When the agents arrive and attack Eleven and her friends, she pops the brains of those who raised guns at them, and all that blood sets off the Demogorgon’s hunger. Here we see Brenner get dragged away, indicating that the Demogorgon is collecting as many people alive for the hive walls of the Upside Down. In order to close the seal, Eleven realizes she’s the only one powerful enough to keep it where it belongs and goes in with it to save everyone. Hopper’s guilt leads him to try to help through waffle drops , hoping the Eggo scent will lead her back.

10. Will is different now

Will’s recovery after his ordeal seemingly goes well for a few months after his rescue. He gets caught up on everything he’s missed and seems like a normal boy. Jonathan goes over to Mike and Nancy’s to escort him home, but things aren’t what they appear. Will hacks out a small slug and keeps it secret that he’s still somehow tethered to the Upside Down through his mind. The cliffhanger is just a tease of the places the show eventually goes—the drama of season one centered Will’s disappearance and raised Eleven to main character status going forward, but the Upside Down may have sown a seed that may finally pay off in the final season.

Are there any details we missed that you think will come back around in season five? Let us know in the comments below. In a month we’ll be back with the next Hellfire Club Catch-Up, digging into Stranger Things season two.

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