Stranger Things RECAP before the Final Season

Welcome to the Man of Recaps. This is Stranger Things:  

full series recap before the final season.

It’s the ’80s in the small  town of Hawkins, Indiana. 

We follow a group of adorable  nerds — Mike, Dustin, Lucas,  

and Will — playing Dungeons & Dragons. Tonight, they fight their biggest monster yet. 

It’s the Demogorgon.

But that night, Will Byers encounters a monster  of his own and disappears without a trace. 

So it’s a missing child case, as his  mom Joyce Byers is worried about him  

and enlists the help from the  chief of police, Jim Hopper.

As the search comes up empty, Will’s  friends decide to go looking themselves. 

And they find not Will, but  a mysterious buzzcut girl.

She doesn’t say much because  she’s never socialized before. 

In fact, she doesn’t even have a  name — just her number: Eleven. 

She’s from a secret government science  lab because she has psychic powers.

Now the lab is hunting for  her, led by Dr. Brenner,  

who treated Eleven not like a  kid, but a science experiment. 

Though he has some messed-up paternal  feelings for her, he has her call him “Papa.”

Mike hides Eleven in his basement, E.T.-style. 

He feeds her Eggo waffles, which  quickly become her new obsession.

Eleven wants to help them find  Will by using her psychic powers. 

She sees him in a dark, scary place,  and Eleven knows where this is.

In the lab, they did experiments to  push the limits of her psychic vision. 

And yesterday, she went too far — saw into  another dimension with a scary monster. 

She accidentally opened a portal, and  in the chaos, she managed to escape.

Eleven explains by flipping their D&D board over. 

So they call this dark dimension the Upside Down. And they name the monster the Demogorgon.

Will’s older brother Jonathan  Byers is looking for him,  

and he has a crush on Mike’s  older sister, Nancy Wheeler. 

But she just started dating the coolest  kid in school: Steve “the Hair” Harrington.

That night, she goes to Steve’s house,  

where her friend Barb is chaperoning. As Nancy and Steve are hooking up,  

Barb’s alone out by the pool when  — oh — the Demogorgon grabs her.

Jonathan was taking pictures nearby for  totally normal, not-stalker reasons. 

And so he managed to catch the Demogorgon on film.

In the Byers home, the lights have been  going crazy, and Joyce begins to think  

it’s Will trying to talk to her. So she pulls out the Christmas  

lights and hangs them all around. Then she paints the alphabet on  

the wall, and it works. Will is talking to her.

Of course, it doesn’t work  when she tries to show Hopper. 

So Joyce looks completely crazy.

But when Hopper searches the Hawkins  lab, it’s very clearly a CIA cover. 

So when they find Will’s body  but don’t let anyone see it,  

Hopper punches his way in  there and sees it’s a fake.

The kids sneak Eleven into the school so she can  use their powerful radio to try to talk to Will. 

But after school, they’re attacked by  bullies who force Mike to jump off the cliff. 

But oh — Eleven catches him, floats  him back with her psychic powers.

“Hey! That’s my boyfriend!” Leggo my Eggo.

But now the lab has found her. 

So Eleven pulls a reverse E.T.  and flips the van right over them.

Finally, all of our groups meet up, and  the kids explain about the Upside Down. 

So Hopper and Joyce go to the lab,  

convince them to let them look for  Will by venturing through the portal.

We finally see the Upside Down, which is a dark,  

scary place full of choking ash  and creepy vines everywhere.

Nancy and Jonathan realize to give him a  chance, they need to distract the Demogorgon. 

Just then, Steve busts in. He assumed these two were hooking up. 

He did not expect to find an interdimensional  monster coming through the ceiling.

But Steve steps up, grabs the nail bat,  and blam — knocks the Demogorgon into the  

trap where they set it on fire. It’s injured, but it escapes.

Just then, Dr. Brenner catches the kids, but  they’re saved by the Demogorgon busting in. 

And luckily, it beats Dr. Brenner  first — but now it’s coming for them.

So Eleven steps up, and a huge  psychic blast rips this thing apart. 

But in the process, Eleven disappears.

But the adults found Will in the Upside Down,  and so it’s a happy ending as Will is saved. 

Except he coughs up a Demogorgon baby slug. So watch out for that.

In Season 2, things have gone  back to normal in Hawkins. 

Except Will is having  flashbacks to the Upside Down.

They haven’t figured out how to close the portal. 

But for now, they have it contained, and the  Hawkins lab is trying to be less evil now.

They’ve put a good guy in charge: Dr. Owens. 

But they’re still very much searching for Eleven,  who no one has seen since she disappeared.