Stranger Things was a success when it debuted in 2016. It quickly became one of Netflix’s most popular series. But now, more than a year later, do you recall of what happened in the first season? We’ll help you to remember all the events of the season and enjoy the next season. Caution: contain spoilers.
The series focuses on four boys, Mike, Dustin, Lucas and Will. They are friends and love playing Dungeons & Dragons. On a certain day, they’re playing the game and Will decides to leave. As he returns home on his bike, he gets attacked by a strange creature and disappears! Nobody understands what happened and that’s the main mystery of the season.
In another moment, we met a little girl with shaved hair and dressed in hospital robe. She ran away from a strange laboratory and stopped at a local restaurant. The owner, Benny, pities her and feeds her before calling social services. He sees a tattoo on her arm and Eleven’s flame. Benny does not have a long life because it’s killed by the supposedly social worker, but Eleven manages to escape in time. The girl runs into the forest and is found by Dustin, Lucas and Mike.
The boys take Eleven to Mike’s house. There she recognizes Will in a photo, which scares everyone. Lucas and Dustin want to tell Mike’s parents about her, but Eleven prevents them with her powers. In the meantime, Joyce and Jonathan, mother and brother of Will, don’t accept the boy’s disappearance and don’t give up on finding him. During the story we also met Nancy, Mike’s sister and Steve, her boyfriend. Nancy and her friend Barb are going to a party at Steve’s house, but things get out of hand. Barb gets angry with the party people and isolates herself. At that moment, alone by the pool, she disappears. Barb wakes up in an empty, dirty pool. She shouts at Nancy and tries to leave, but is dragged by something invisible.
Joyce believes she can communicate with Will, then begins to fill her house with Christmas lights. When it blinks the woman believes that it’s the child giving her a signal. So she makes a code with alphabet letters and the lights, as it blinks, also forms a phrase. Will says he’s alive, but not safe.
Sheriff Hopper is in charge of solving the mystery of Will’s disappearance and notice that Hawkins’s lab is hiding something. Gradually, he starts to investigate the place. It’is also discovered that Eleven is connected to the place through flashbacks. In the meantime, Nancy is very worried about Barb’s disappearance. She returns to Steve’s house and finds her car, until she encounters the strange creature for the first time.
A body – apparently Will’s – is discovered in the water in a quarry. Joyce refuses to believe that it’s her dead son. Hooper also thinks that is something wrong with the body, so he digs into it and finds out that it is not a real body, but a puppet. At her home, Joyce hear Will’s voice coming from the walls. She decides to rip the wallpaper and sees something coming out of there, then begins to destroy the wall with an ax, but she just stumbles upon her balcony. People begin to believe that Joyce is crazy and hallucinating.
Meanwhile, Eleven goes to school with the boys wearing a costume – Yes, the blond wig and pink dress. At the scene, the girl uses an amateur radio to try to communicate with Will and succeeds. They realize that Will is trapped in another dimension, called the Upside Down. With a teacher’s help, they discover that it’s possible to exist other dimensions. So together they go off to find the missing boy using compasses. Eleven is afraid to find the strange creature, so she hinders the quest, but the boys can tell she’s interfering. They start to fight and only Mike defends the girl. The situation gets out of control and Eleven flees. As they search for her, Mike and Dustin fall into an ambush of two school boys and El appears to defend her friends with her mental powers.
Concerned about Barb, Nancy asks Jonathan for help and together they realize that the creature that captured Barb is the same monster seen by Joyce: a faceless humanoid figure with long arms. They go deeper to find out the whereabouts of the missing people and they will investigate in the forest. There they find the creature feeding on a deer, follow the trail of blood and find a small passage. Nancy crawls through the gateway and enters the Upside Down. She is almost caught by the monster, but Jonathan pulls her back. They decide to kill the monster and goes to buy traps and weapons.
Hopper is also getting closer to find out about the parallel dimension when he invades Hawkins’s lab and discovers a portal in the basement. He gets knocked out before he finds out more. Even so he does not give up and goes with Joyce to know who Terry Ives is. Terry’s sister explains that she was tested on the MKUltra Project while she was pregnant. Her daughter was abducted by the director of Hawkins’s laboratory, Dr. Martin Brenner, when she was born. Joyce and Hopper concludes that Eleven is the likely daughter.
When everyone realizes they are about to unravel the mysteries, they join together to try finding Will and Barb. They invade school property and build a tank of sensory deprivation to amplify the Eleven’s powers. During the session, she finds only Barb’s corpse – and Will’s alive! He says he’s hiding in “Fort Byers”.
To save the boy, Hopper and Joyce invade the Hawkins lab while Nancy and Jonathan are going to kill the monster. Will’s brother and the girl set a trap in the Byers’ house. After much fighting the monster is almost caught, but manages to return to the Upside Down. Meanwhile, Joyce and Hooper manage to get into the other dimension. They go deeper into the place when they find the monster’s nest in the library of the Upside Down city. Will is there, unconscious with a tendril in his throat.
During the rescue, Mike, Lucas, Dustin and Eleven hide in the school. They do not stay safe for long as Dr. Brenner and his agents arrive to capture El. She kills most of them with her powers, but the danger is not over yet. The monster appears at school and finds the children and Eleven uses her mental strength to disintegrate it and then disappear.
With Will safe, Hopper and Joyce manages to revive him and he is taken to the hospital. In the end, no one knows what happened to Eleven, but Hooper leaves waffles – the girl’s favorite food – in the woods. And Will also does not seem fully recover from his time in the Upside Down. He has strange visions and does not tell his family about it. What?!
Now that you know what happened in season one, all you have to do is wait until October 27 and enjoy the next season!
GIF source: Giphy