The final season of Stranger Things nears, and with that, our Hellfire Club catch-up session draws to a close. Here’s everything you need to remember from season four before the Duffer brothers’ series returns to Netflix on November 26.
If you’re new here, you can also refresh on Stranger Things season one, season two, and season three in the previous sessions of our Hellfire Club catch-up series, where we break down all the important things we think could come into play for the show’s epic conclusion.
Season four did an excellent job at raising the stakes with the Hawkins crew being ripped apart across the world. Joyce (Winona Ryder) started off in California with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Will (Noah Schnapp), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), and Mike (Finn Wolfhard), who is on a school break visit. Before, of course, the arrival of a mysterious package from Russia, alerting Joyce that Hopper (David Harbour) might still be alive and skipping town with Murray (Brett Gelman) to rescue her man. The kids don’t notice immediately but wrangle up trouble when El fights the popular girl at school who picks on her, alerting the government of her whereabouts. Thankfully Doctor Owens (Paul Reiser) steps in.
Meanwhile, back in Hawkins, a series of grotesque deaths haunts the halls of Hawkins High. Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn), the game master of the Hellfire Club that Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Erica (Priah Ferguson), and Mike are a part of, becomes the prime suspect thanks to the 80’s D&D Satanic Panic. But of course, the deaths have the marks of the Upside Down all over them, so the remaining Hawkins heroes help hide Eddie. Meanwhile, Max (Sadie Sink) begins to realize she might be next, as her mind gets plagued with dark visions that put her friends on high alert to protect her. Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Steve (Joe Keery), and Robin (Maya Hawke) lead the investigation with the kids and uncover Hawkins’ darkest secrets along the way, which reveal that the whole town may just be in mortal danger from a way bigger threat.
A lot happens in season four, including a lot of events in Russia, where Hopper gets his own movie essentially, but we’re not going to focus too much on that, as this season unveiled that the whole Soviet thing was a red herring for a danger much closer to home in Vecna/Henry Creel/One (Jamie Campbell Bower).
Dungeons & Dragons and clues
The story in Hawkins is established by two games, a basketball one where Lucas saves the team and wins the game in the last minute, and the Hellfire campaign against the D&D version of Vecna. In the tabletop world, Vecna almost gets the gang, but Erica swoops in to save the day. Like the game in season one, which hints at an early move causing an initial loss, maybe this will foreshadow things to come next season.
Hopper lives!
Joyce receives a mysterious package, which includes a Russian doll with clues that Hopper is alive and in a KGB prison. Agreeing to pay the ransom to get him out, she and Murray fly to Russia to extract their friend. It’s truly such an unhinged side mission that I still sort of question its necessity other than just being an instrument to get Joyce away from the kids. All that’s discovered here is that Joyce and Hopper are in love and the Russians have failed to really understand the Upside Down in their experiments.
Satanic Panic hits Hawkins
Vecna gets an all-timer intro when he’s set up as a horror villain who stalks his prey’s darkest moments to gain control over their minds. His first victim is Chrissy the cheerleader (Grace Van Dien), who he drives crazy to the point she goes to Eddie for drugs. Unfortunately for our pal Eddie, it’s too late for her, and he witnesses her being lifted off the ground, bones broken like sticks and eyes popped in by an invisible force. When her body is found, all suspicions make Eddie the prime suspect because he runs the Hellfire Club, and so of course Dungeons & Dragons must be a cult. Dustin, Lucas, and Erica know there’s more to it, as it has the marking of the Upside Down’s forces at work.
The Story of Victor Creel
Nancy is on the case; she interviews Eddie’s uncle, who knows his nephew didn’t do it. He drops the deepest of lore that sets the journey toward the truth in motion and tells her about Victor Creel, a man who killed his wife and children in the same way Chrissy died. Ever the sleuth, Nancy teams up with Dustin and the rest, including Steve and Robin, to uncover who is really behind the killings. With Robin, she visits Victor (played by Freddy Kruger himself, Robert Englund), who tells her he’s innocent and his home was haunted by a specter who murdered his family. The only thing that saved him was hearing “Dream a Little Dream” on the radio and coming back to consciousness to find his kids dead too. Working off the hunch that this has something to do with the Upside Down, Nancy and the gang break into the Creel house for more clues.
Kate Bush, Music MVP
Early on in the season we see Max listening to “Running Up That Hill” on her tapedeck before Chrissy’s death. It coincides with the therapy sessions we see her attending, provided by the school counselor. Max doesn’t know this at first, but the power of Kate Bush keeps the monster hunting her from within at bay. After another student who was seeing the counselor winds up dead, it gets pieced together that music is the key to keeping potential victims safe from Vecna’s intrusive thoughts gripping their minds. It comes in handy when Vecna almost gets Max at the cemetery, and Nancy tells them to put the song on for her before it’s too late—Max escaping Vecna is still one of the best scenes in the entire show, all scored to Bush’s incredible song and helped Sadie Sink shine in a star-making turn.
Eleven on the run
The deaths in Hawkins make Eleven the prime suspect in the government’s eyes, and they attempt to sweep in to take her out. Thankfully Owens manages to get to her after she’s apprehended and offers to help her get her powers back in order to take on whatever is truly behind the killings. The downside? Her papa, Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine), is back to continue his work and retraumatize her into recalling not only her powers but also unearthing some suppressed memories of the Rainbow Room massacre. There she finds out that the orderly Henry, who monitored the rooms with the kids to update Brenner on their progress, attempted to help her break out while also asking her to help him remove a handicap placed on him too as another of Brenner’s prisoners.
001 is Henry Creel is Vecna
When Eleven remembers that Henry is 001, we see through her eyes the real events of the Rainbow Room massacre. Henry is just as powerful as she and once he recognized that, he set her up to free him so they could both escape and he could have her by his side. Considering the rest of the experiments inferior, he kills all the other children to absorb their powers, as well as most of the lab workers (for their life force), and that pisses little Eleven off. The pain makes her reject him and fight back, ultimately blasting him through the veil of reality and into what would go on to become the Upside Down.
The endgame
In the Upside Down, Henry, transformed into Vecna, plotted his revenge on Eleven as he used his mind to build the Mind Flayer from its dark forces and used it to control the Demogorgons as his scouts. Every time Eleven was pushed by Brenner to psychically probe the Upside Down, Brenner was lying to her: he wasn’t using Eleven to see if the Soviets had anything to do with the mysterious reality; he was really looking for Henry.
Every time she’d go in looking for him, the veil between both worlds would get thinner, and Henry would send the Demogorgons to go and hunt victims for him to drain of their life force and memories and to help build out the alternate dimension Hawkins. Every life he claimed through his minions, the Mind Flayer, and Max’s brother Billy (who helped lure countless people to Vecna) helped Henry gain the ability to project into the minds of others and prey on them himself. His victims, starting with Chrissy, were meant to finally open the gates to bring the Upside Down pouring into the real world. His aim? To destroy what Eleven loves in front of her, before absorbing her powers.
The season culminates with Max and the others enacting an audacious plan: Max wants to allow Vecna to possess her, tempting the villain with a distraction so the rest of the gang can try and kill him in the process, both physically and with Eleven combatting him psychically. Things don’t go so well for our heroes, however, as poor Eddie sacrifices himself in the Upside Down to distract Vecna’s hordes of Demobats, and Max herself perishes in the possession process, leading to Eleven having to resurrect her (albeit leaving her in a coma). Now left to regroup and face their setbacks, Hawkins prepares for an all-out battle with Vecna and his forces at the height of his powers… with everything at stake coming into season five.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
