The last time viewers took a trip to the Upside Down of Stranger Things, it was the summer of 2019, a summer of chilling at the mall food court and the local public pool of Hawkins, Indiana. It was a time when most people’s biggest complaint was the lackluster let down that was the Game of Thrones series finale. But otherwise, not a care in the world. Oh, my sweet summer child.
Though it was only three years ago, it actually feels like about 84. That pre-pandemic life feels so distant, and so too does Season 3 of everybody’s favorite 1980’s nostalgia trip Stranger Things. So, since we’ve all been a bit preoccupied, perhaps it’s a good idea to brush up on all the Upside Down happenings of Hawkins that we may have forgotten while we were busy baking sourdough and playing the Wordle.
Catch You On the Flip Side
Stranger Things Season 1 premiered on Netflix in the fall of 2016 to near unanimous praise and a social media/water cooler buzz so loud that it was hard to hear anything else. Created by The Duffer brothers, the Emmy-winning show leans hard into Raegan-era nostalgia and serves as a flattering homage to ’80s pop culture. While delivering the perfect amount of nostalgia to millennial viewers, it also serves up pulsating sci-fi mystery and suspense that is thrilling enough to please viewers of all ages.
The fourth season comes after a COVID-related delay of three years with Netflix making viewers wait just a little longer still to see the full fourth season. While the first half of the supersized episodes hits the streamer today, May 27th, the final four eps won’t arrive until July 1st.
Stranger Things Seasons One and Two
In a nutshell, the disappearance of teen Will Byer in 1983 Hawkins, Indiana leads his best buds to discover their tiny mid-Western town has more dimensions than they previously thought. Like, literally. The D&D playing trio of Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), and Lucas (Caleb McClaughlin) take to their bikes in search of bestie Will only to discover a netherworld flip-side dimension known as the Upside Down as well as a mysterious girl (Millie Bobby Brown) their age who really loves frozen waffles.
Long story short, mystery girl has superpowers as a result of dubious government experiments. Known as Eleven because that was the number assigned to her while institutionalized, Eleven joins the Hawkins Scooby gang in their search for Will. The full Scooby gang also includes Will’s older brother Jonathan and his love interest Nancy Wheeler. And of course, Will’s mom Joyce (Winona Ryder) is on the case, relentlessly hounding lackadaisical town sheriff Jim Hopper.
Spoiler alert: The Scooby gang finds Will (with major assistance from Eleven). But when everyone returns in Season 2, Will’s troubles with the upside down aren’t over yet. Will is still haunted by an Upside Down entity known as the Mind Flayer, and while he’s fighting off the demon from taking over his body, Eleven is laying low and missing the gang.
And the gang misses her. In her absence, they befriend girl gamer Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink) who also happens to have one big old douchenozzle for a stepbrother (Billy as played by Dacre Montgomery).
Meanwhile, Nancy’s ex Steve Harrington takes on a surprising role within the gang, becoming a Scooby mentor to the younger guys, giving them tips on everything from hair products to weapons and munitions. From bad boy to Dad boy, he takes on something like a father role within the group.
At the same time, Eleven is going through a self-discovery identity crisis that is pretty typical of most 13-year-olds. Expect hers busts out of the realm of “typical” pretty quickly due to her, ya know, having super powers. On her journey of self-discovery, she heads to Chicago to meet others with powers like hers, at which point she gets the 80’s goth makeover of every girl’s dreams. But even though she’s now too cool for school, she still makes it back to Indiana just in time to save Will from the Upside Down yet again. Girl power.
Season 3: Let’s All Go to the Mall
Season 3 finds the gang in the summer of 1985 right when Hawkins gets its first big mall. While the gang spends time happily flirting and grabbing cones from the ice cream shop where Steve and Hawkins newbie Robin (Maya Hawke) work, their carefree teenage summer shenanigans get cut short by the realization that maybe the Upside Down isn’t done with them just yet.
Indeed, it wouldn’t be Hawkins if danger didn’t literally lurk beneath the surface. Something new is brewing in the Upside Down, and this being the 1980’s, of course the Soviets are behind it. It seems like the ole Russkies are trying to open another gate to the demon dimension right below Hawkins’ Starcourt Mall.
While the Russians are attempting to take the Cold War to a whole new level, back in Hawkins, Hopper adopts Eleven and attempts to stymy her burgeoning relationship with Mike. He succeeds briefly in keeping them apart, at which point the friendship between Eleven and Max has room to grow. Love to see it, every girl needs girl friends, even one with super powers.
With teen romance in bloom, the adults are less lucky in love as Hopper asks Joyce out but doesn’t get the answer he wanted. It’s just a bit #toosoon for Joyce, what with her watching her boyfriend get disemboweled by demodogs a few months back and all. But they do team up for some investigative action. They head to Hawkins Lab where they team up a Russian scientist named Alexei who wants to join their cause.
Season 3: Let’s Split Up!
While the adults are dealing with the international threat of the Russians, the kids are working to take down the inter-dimensional threat of the Mind Flayer of the Upside Down. No longer attempting to possess Will, the Mind Flayer has found a new host in Billy. Possessed Billy is keeping kidnapped townsfolk at the steel mill to feed the Mind Flayer, who incidentally holds a grudge against Eleven for closing the door to the Upside Down. As such, the Mind Flayer brings it, and Eleven gets badly wounded in the skirmish. But it’s not over yet.
All the characters then converge on the Starcourt Mall for an ultimate showdown. The battle is intense and creates for an emotional season finale. While Eleven does manage to heal her wounds and do some damage, she ends up losing all her powers before the Mind Flayer can be defeated. Eleven has always been the key to defeating the creatures of the Upside Down, so who will the gang turn to now?
Will Byers steps up to save the day. After the Mind Flayer lived rent-free in his head for so long, Will knows this baddie’s weakness is heat. So the gang begins throwing flaming fireworks at the monster to save Eleven who somehow manages to bring back Billy’s human side. In a character redemption nobody saw coming, Billy sacrifices himself to save his sister and the rest of the gang.
Meanwhile, back at the lab: Hopper and Joyce go underground to destroy the Russian machine that’s opening the portal to the Upside Down. But an assassin tries to thwart their attempts. Hopper battles it out with the human baddie while Joyce races to turn the machine off. She succeeds, but Jim had not made it out of the danger zone yet. Or did he? Either way, it looks like yet another gate to the Upside Down has been permanently closed, at the cost of their noble sheriff.
A cut to three months finds Joyce intent on leaving Hawkins with Will, Jonathan, and Eleven in tow. With separation impending, both Mike + Eleven and Jonathan + Nancy agree to date long-distance.
And just before the credits roll, it’s revealed that a prisoner dubbed “The American” is locked away somewhere in the barren Kamchatka peninsula of Russia. This mysterious American is spared from being fed to a Demogorgon-like creature… Just who could he be?
Stranger Things Season 4
And that’s where the new season will pick up, with all our favorite members of the Scooby gang scattered across the country, the world, maybe even in different dimensions. What precisely will bring them all back together? Time to binge and find out.
Season 4 of Stranger Things is streaming now on Netflix.
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