Stranger Things season 4

The Netflix series finally has its 'Goblet of Fire' moment. It (mostly) works. Here's our review of Volume 1, Part 1 of 'Stranger Things' Season 4.

All of that, as tedious as certain episodes can feel in the middle of the season, is worth sitting through until the hour-and-a-half-long finale, which feels like Stranger Things: The Movie. Jonathan, Mike, Will, and Argyle wheel around in a pizza delivery van, with the older contingent stoned off their asses most of the time. There's some of the old Stranger Things in Volume One of Season Four, which is now streaming on Netflix. (The remaining episodes will drop on July 1.) We'll avoid spoilers here, but very early on, it becomes exceedingly clear that Stranger Things went in direction number two—which takes a hard left into Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire territory.

EW rounds up everything you need to remember about where Hawkins' favorite characters left off ahead of Stranger Things season 4.

His death was devastating to everyone, but particularly to Joyce (with whom he finally had a date scheduled after three seasons of "will-they-won't-they?") and his makeshift daughter El, who discovers the emotionally devastating letter he left for her after a season of their rocky father-daughter relationship. Going out on their own adventure, Hopper ( David Harbour), Joyce, and private investigator Bauman ( Brett Gelman) learned that the Soviets had been plotting to build a machine that would open the Upside Down underneath Hawkins' Starcourt Mall. The final moments of the season show a prison of some kind in Russia, where it's revealed that the Soviets have their very own demogorgon that they can't possibly be using for anything good. The first, and probably most important, thing to know is that the core group of friends that the series is based around have all scattered when we begin season 4. It's safe to say that all of Hawkins' horrors didn't stop anyone from finding a little romance, because by the end of season 3, it seemed like everyone had paired off. That doesn't bode well for our little group of friends, who have often relied on El's telekinetic capabilities to get them out of trouble. Here are the most important things to remember before diving into the new episodes.

Netflix is adding a warning card to the Season 4 premiere of 'Stranger Things,' in light of this week's school shooting in Texas.

The first part of Stranger Things Season 4 is still slated to debut this Friday, returning after a nearly three-year hiatus with five new episodes. “We filmed this season of Stranger Things a year ago,” the warning card reads, according to our sister site Variety. “But given the recent tragic shooting at a school in Texas, viewers may find the opening scene of Episode 1 distressing. On Tuesday, 19 children and two adults were killed when a gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The 18-year-old suspect also was killed.

The long-awaited new season of 'Stranger Things' is getting a last-minute warning about "graphic violence involving children" in premiere.

We are deeply saddened by this unspeakable violence, and our hearts go out to every family mourning a loved one.” The new season is being split into two parts. “But given the recent tragic shooting at a school in Texas, viewers may find the opening scene of episode 1 distressing.

Netflix is adding a warning card to the 'Stranger Things 4' premiere in light of the Uvalde, Texas elementary school shooting on Tuesday.

This warning will appear before the prior season recap that auto-plays at the beginning of “ Stranger Things 4” Episode 1 for viewers in the U.S. only. But given the recent tragic shooting at a school in Texas, viewers may find the opening scene of episode 1 distressing. Last Friday, Netflix released the first eight minutes of the “Stranger Things” Season 4 premiere as a sneak-peek video ahead of the official launch of Volume 1 this Friday. This opening scene depicts a massacre that involves Millie Bobby Brown’s psychokinetic and telepathic character Eleven and shows the dead bodies of several children covered in blood.

Stranger Things Season 3, which came out in 2019 on Netflix, featured new romances, and a lot of death. Here's what happened to El, Hopper, and the rest of ...

Will senses the Mind Flayer is coming to attack them, and El holds it off, but is wounded. Joyce makes the difficult decision to destroy the machine with Hopper still trapped, and he’s presumed dead after a large explosion. El takes a piece of the Mind Flayer out of her wound, which renders her powerless. But finally, the Mind Flayer is defeated. El works to find the Mind Flayer through Billy’s mind, but inadvertently reveals her own location to the monster. Along with Lucas’s younger sister Erica, the group finds the loading bay to the mall is actually an elevator, and all become stuck underneath Starcourt. They watch Russians attempt to open a portal to the Upside Down, but then Steve and Robin are captured and drugged. Joyce and Hopper learn through Grigori and the town’s mayor that the mall is actually a front for Russians to buy abandoned property in Hawkins. The pair then search one of the abandoned properties, and once again face off against Grigori. They get away, and manage to take a hostage with them, Alexei, a Russian scientist. El attacks the Mind Flayer, which runs off to the mill, where it’s been dragging people to be possessed. Dustin has a girlfriend, Susie, he connects to through walkie-talkies and a radio tower. When Max and Eleven track down Billy and Heather, the other lifeguard, they see them at Heather’s parents’ house. Season 2 continues the ongoing battle against the Mind Flayer, who first tried to possess Will but was stopped when Eleven closed a portal it used to reach our world. There was new romance, new friends, plus the revelation that Hopper is alive and trapped in a Russian prison somewhere.

Get off social media until you can binge all seven episodes of season 4 volume 1, because we're sure the new season is all everyone's going to be talking about.

We’re officially under 24 hours away from the return of Stranger Things, and we know we’re in for a real treat. Like most Netflix Originals, Stranger Things season 4 volume 1 will be released in full at 12:00 a.m. PT / 3:00 a.m. ET in the United States. But what about for those outside of the United States looking to get their binge on? If you’re living in the Philippines, we’re here with the answer you need.

The goofy gang in Hawkins are back in a supersized series that is visually stunning, way more disturbing – and has the show's single greatest episode.

The opening minutes include a reflection on how Hawkins is a community damaged by tragedy – specifically a reference to the end of the third season, when several people died in an explosive three-way battle between rogue Russian agents, a creature called the “Mind Flayer” and a gang of resourceful children. Unlike the old monsters who would spend most of the season unseen, rattling windows and making lights flicker, this year’s impressively realised fiend – a hideous humanoid with no nose, claws for hands and a house in the benighted realm that could really benefit from significant modernisation – is in full horrific effect from the get-go. If large budgets are to be indulged, one wants to see them clearly on the screen, and that’s immediately the case as we cruise back into Hawkins, the small Indiana town perched on a portal to a monster-infested netherworld, in 1986.

Stranger Things season 4 debuts on Friday. Here's how you can watch the long-awaited fourth installment online and all you need to know about it.

Are you excited for Stranger Things season 4, part 1? That fanbase has since grown exponentially, resulting in it becoming one of the most popular shows of this generation. Arguably the biggest show on Netflix of all time, it premiered back in 2016 to rave reviews and it quickly established a passionate base of fans.

The show has had tons of memorable music moments across its run, from David Harbour's Jim Hopper hokily Dad-dancing to Jim Croce's “You Don't Mess Around With ...

Duran Duran - Girls on Film Bush's “Running Up That Hill” is definitely the most memorable entry to the Stranger Things season 4 soundtrack, featuring several times for reasons we're unable to get into here because, you know, spoilers. Doris Day - Dream A Little Dream of Me

Series-long questions are answered in the first batch of Stranger Things season 4 episodes. Read EW's recap!

In Russia, Murray is able to convince the Kamchatka warden that he's Yuri. Once inside, he spots Hopper and his fellow inmates gearing up to fight the demogorgon in a Rancor-style battle to the death. In the process of that escape, Peter reveals that he's been implanted with a chip of some kind – he calls it "soteria" – which he says weakens and tracks him. The plan is this: Murray will pose as Yuri and deliver the KGB's most wanted – with Yuri stepping in for Murray – to the prison. Is he connected to the Mind Flayer? And what's he been doing in the years between the murder of Creel's family and this new rash of murders? Exhausted, she tries (and fails) to do the same to Brenner. When he reaches out a hand to her, she takes it. Creel told them that he heard the "voice of an angel" when he was in Vecna's grip, and that voice was apparently the reason for his survival. "The minute I sent for Joyce I sentenced her to death," he laments. Could he have killed Chrissy? Dustin is unconvinced, and he and Max go to Family Video with a mission: Use the store's surplus of phones to call Eddie's friends and find out where he went. He gets far, taking out a handful of guards – first with his fists, then with some dynamite – and escapes via snowmobile to the church in the woods where Antonov's contact is meant to meet him and take him back to America. Unfortunately, Antonov's contact, Yuri (Nikola Djuricko), is a snake, having cut a deal with Kamchatka's warden to serve up both Hopper and Antonov, who are both swiftly captured. Mike, Dustin ( Gaten Matarazzo), and Lucas ( Caleb McLaughlin) are members of a Dungeons and Dragons collective called The Hellfire Club, but Lucas is ditching the big finale of their campaign to play in the championship game of the Hawkins basketball team. This is something Joyce and Murray slowly come to learn after poring over the bizarre letter she found in the Russian doll. If he does well, he reckons, it could endear him to Jason (Mason Dye) and the rest of the Tigers, thus granting him (and, he says, Mike and Dustin) entry into the cool crowd.

Netflix introduces a new big bad in the sci-fi hit's fourth chapter - but what's his backstory?

In the other dimension, One bursts into flames as he is struck by beams of crackling energy, and ultimately becomes Vecna. A zoom-in on the tattooed '001' on his forearm leaving no doubt as to who he once was. We've yet to see the final two episodes of Stranger Things 4, so it's a mystery as to whether Eleven, Nancy, Dustin and co defeat Vecna in this chapter. And something tells us Vecna's a little too important to just be the Mind Flayer's lackey... While floating, she finds her consciousness trapped in a memory from 1979, reliving painful events that occurred at the Hawkins National Laboratory, like when she was picked on and beaten by Two and some of the other kids. Later in Vol 1, Dustin, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Erica (Priah Ferguson) get to talking about Vecna's potential motives, and how he seems to be creating new portals to the Upside Down with each one of his kills. When they get to the house, though, they discover that the guns aren't there, before Nancy quickly deduces that they're actually in the past. While credited as Peter Ballard, an orderly at Pennhurst Mental Hospital, the place where Victor resides, Jamie Campbell Bower actually plays the older version of Henry, who reveals his true identity to Eleven – and Nancy in the Upside Down, too – in episode 7. "A Five-star general with the power to open gates." Her attempt to stop them with drugs inadvertently left her more vulnerable to the dark being, and he crushed her. If you're reading this, then you've presumably watched the entirety of Vol 1 already and want to make sense of the story that's just unfolded in front of you. In true Stranger Things style, the youngsters steadily sniff out clues about their adversary across Volume 1, from the connotations of his Dungeons & Dragons-inspired name to the mysterious way in which he claims his victims. Each of the chapter's trailers gave us a good look at the antagonist, but Netflix has made sure to keep who he is, and what he's doing exactly, under wraps.

The cast and crew traveled to more locations than ever before to film the fourth season, with the fictional Hawkins, California, and Russia recreated in Atlanta ...

The vastness and the variety of desert there was really surprising. To get a behind-the-scenes glimpse, we chatted with the show’s production designer, Chris Trujillo, about the filming locations that brought the horrors to life—and some of the destinations’ non-scary, vacation-worthy appeal, too. I knew there was something special about it, but [taking] this special extended tour of all the different flavors of New Mexican desert was incredible.

A fresh crop of synthy '80s tunes highlight the soundtrack of Stranger Things season 4. Listen to all the atmospheric tracks here.

The soundtrack is produced by Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer, and Timothy J. Smith. That comes through in the many time-specific Easter eggs littered throughout the season but more importantly it comes through the music. Operating under an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra, Stranger Things season 4 is absolutely packed with ’80s-set science fiction, horror, and adventure.

So what's everyone in Hawkins up to six months after the Battle at Starcourt Mall? Things are a little different without Eleven and the Byers family, but mostly ...

She receives a mysterious package from Russia with a doll inside of it — inside the doll is what looks to be some sort of ransom note. And then, finally, her eyes seem to explode into the back of her head. Chrissy starts to hear her mother knocking on the bathroom stall, but suddenly her voice changes, and her “mother” screams at her that she’s a fat pig. He tells her that he wants to end her suffering, and he puts those creepy long fingers over her head. That monster from the bathroom is there — his creepy long fingers and the fact that he’s stalking Chrissy in some nightmare scenario (all that food on the table covered in mold and bugs is him taunting her with her eating disorder) gives some real Nightmare on Elm Street vibes — this is our new big bad, our Vecna. He follows her around until she’s trapped. The boys are growing further and further apart. He also has no time for excuses when Mike and Dustin inform him that Lucas can’t be a part of the final night of Eddie’s big Vecna Campaign for the Hellfire Club because it’s the same night as the big championship basketball game. Before he gets there, she hears the ticking of a clock and then actually sees a grandfather clock lodged in a tree. So what’s everyone in Hawkins up to six months after the Battle at Starcourt Mall? Things are a little different without Eleven and the Byers family, but mostly people are trying to move forward. Lucas is sick of being bullied and feeling like a loser and wanted things to change in high school. You’ll recall that season three ended with an epic battle at Starcourt Mall in which the Mind Flayer — now less of a Shadow Monster and more of a “Covered in the Melted Flesh and Bones of Hawkins Citizens” Monster — was foiled in its mission to kill Eleven before eradicating every living thing in our dimension when Billy sacrificed himself and Joyce and Hopper were able to blow up that Russian laser beam those guys were using to open a gate to the Upside Down. You remember all of that, right? Brenner walks into the Rainbow Room and standing over all the horror and death, there’s our little Eleven, her hospital gown covered in blood, with more of it pouring out of her eyes.

After a finale with major character twists and an origin story for Vecna, here's a breakdown of what happened and what it means for Volume 2.

Dustin masterminds a way to get Steve, Nancy, Eddie, and Robin out of the hellish universe. We'll get to what Vecna shows Nancy next, but you can bet the first episode of Volume Two will pick up with the danger our favorite journalist just encountered. While the storylines for the Hawkins team and Vecna/Eleven hit some sort of cliffhanger in the Volume One finale, Hopper's massive From Russia With Love side plot ends with the man still not escaping Russia! Damn. Instead, we see Joyce and Murray finally reunite with Hopper, seconds after he successfully fended off the Demogorgon. Hopper and Joyce hug, which is the last we see from them in this episode. Let's get this out of the way. Just saying, the end of Season Four, Episode Seven, AKA Stranger Things: The Movie, needed to be worth the price of admission, AKA Your Time. By our estimation? you could've flown from New York City to Iceland and watched Avengers: Endgame in roughly the amount of time it took you to watch this chunk of Stranger Things episodes.

As Stranger Things season 4 Volume 1 is released on Netflix, we take you through every song used in every episode so far.

"Chapter One: The Hellfire Club" serves as a wild, nightmare-fueled first episode for Stranger Things Season 4, and we're here to recap it all.

Back in the trailer, Eddie is petrified to find Chrissy standing in the middle of his living room, eerily still with only her eyes flickering in the back of her head. As Vecna reaches his hand out to Chrissy, her body floats to the ceiling of the trailer. Murray – with his usual chaotic energy – tells her it could be a threat and asks if she can undress the doll and look for a wire. She turns around and to Chrissy's horror, her eyes are white, and her skin appears to be rotting. Poor Lucas looks out to the bleachers, and obviously, Mike and Dustin are nowhere to be found. Petrified, Chrissy scrambles to the corner of the stall as the lights begin flickering and her mom's voice becomes distorted, and the bathroom stall door violently shakes, as if someone is trying to get in. She runs into the other room hoping to find Eddie when she bursts into what appears to be her house. Eleven is writing a letter to Mike (Finn Wolfhard) telling him that she is "twice as happy now" and that she has given California a chance. Meanwhile, "Dusty-Bun" and Suzie (Gabriella Pizzolo) are still going strong, and Robin (Maya Hawke) and Steve (Joe Keery) are still besties who are both looking for love, but there is one member of the party who is noticeably absent: a grieving Max (Sadie Sink) broke up with Lucas and has almost completely retreated from the party ever since Billy's death. Eerie music quietly begins to creep in as suddenly, Chrissy hears the voice of her mom, asking her if she is ready to try on her dress. He slowly walks down the hallway and is horrified to see all the children and the guards, brutally murdered, their bodies bloody and mangled. And of course, what the hell happened to Hopper (David Harbour)? But before we get to that, let's unpack that wild, nightmare-fueled first episode.

Is the new season of Stranger Things worth the wait? We talk through our SPOILER-FREE impressions of all 7 episodes on a new installment of Take the Black.

Skip to 20:56 to hear our thoughts on that: We talk through our SPOILER-FREE impressions of all seven episodes on a new installment of Take the Black. But the main event is our SPOILER-FREE review of Stranger Things season 4, which drops on Netflix today.

Netflix has been pretty tight lipped about the villain of Stranger Things Season 4. Here's everything we know about Vecna after Part 1!

“Vecna was, in his time, one of the mightiest of all wizards. From the Eye and Hand of Vecna entries in the Fifth Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide: As Vecna, he uses these mental abilities as a way to psychologically weaken and lure in his victims – much in a way that Pennywise, Freddie Kruger, and Pinhead do. With that information, it’s no wonder why he targeted Max, who’s grieving the loss of Billy, and Nancy, who still feels guilt over Barb’s death all the way back in Season 1. The second victim we see in Season 4, Fred Bensen, was involved in a fatal car accident that clearly left him with some residual trauma and guilt. It’s also at the Creel House that Henry realized the extent of his powers; not only does he have strong telekinetic abilities, like Eleven, but he can also see into the minds of others, giving him the ability to both tap into their memories and force hallucinations on them. Henry proceeds to fall through that gate, going into the Upside Down, where he’s turned into the Vecna that we know today. However, it’s at that new home – which we now know as the Creel House – where Henry developed a fascination with spiders, and honed a cynical view of the world and humankind, one that rejects the traditional societal structures. Victor was arrested for the murders, but Henry still ended up in the care of Brenner. But before all of that, he was just a kid – and a Creel at that, the once-mysterious family introduced in Season 4. He was born Henry Creel (played by Raphael Luce as a child and Jamie Campbell Bower as an adult), and as his odd behavior worried his parents, the family moved to Hawkins for a fresh start. His identity was a mystery until the last episode of Season 4 Part I, where all was revealed.

Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven and Noah Schnapp as Will Byers in "Stranger Things." (CNN) Netflix added ...

The opening scene of the new season shows Millie Bobby Brown's character, Eleven and several children covered in blood. "We are deeply saddened by this unspeakable violence, and our hearts go out to every family mourning a loved one." Netflix had previously released the first eight minutes of the "Stranger Things" Season 4 premiere.

The most Stranger Things needle drop reminds that Kate Bush saves lives. A recap of 'Dear Billy' episode 4 of Season 4 of Netflix's 'Stranger Things.'

The memories give her the strength to break free from Vecna and she runs toward that clearing in the mist. Instead of taking the $40,000 and picking up Hopper, he calls the warden of the prison, tells him where Hopper is hiding, that the guard Antonov is the one who helped him escape, and he also drugs Joyce and Murray and plans on turning them over to the KGB. So, yeah, Yuri’s a real asshole. A small clearing forms in the mist, and Max can see the scene at the cemetery — she can see her friends. It does not go smoothly, but Hopper is a broody action hero now (I prefer rough around the edges, secret softy Hopper, but this Hopper is also good), so he peels off on the snowmobile and makes it to the church where Yuri is supposed to pick him up. She falls to the ground and into her friends’ arms. Sure, Robin isn’t thrilled that she has to wear Nancy’s clothes to keep up this little psych student ruse, but they need to look like serious academics to impress Dr. Hatch, the director of the asylum, to convince him to let them speak to Creel. Also, those uncomfortable clothes inspire Robin to give a rousing speech about how women in the field of psychology aren’t taken seriously and how this is her dream. Thank god that song is such a goddamn jam because it really adds some drama to the entire conclusion of the episode. She sees her mom hanging laundry and … whoops, nope, she ends up in a warm embrace with Vecna himself, who is telling her that she’s going to get what she deserves and that no amount of letters she writes will change things. He needs her to know that she can talk to him. It’s full of regret that they didn’t get a second chance to become friends, to become real siblings. Max has her own idea of how she wants to spend her time while they wait for some ray of hope from whatever Nancy and Robin — excuse me, Ruth and Rose — can get out of Creel. First, she writes everyone she cares about a good-bye letter. Max does not tell the boys that her hallucinations are getting worse and instead tells them she has a second stop to make: The cemetery.

The Duffer Brothers' show will see most of the major cast returning in the new episodes. This includes Winona Ryder, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten ...

These will follow the same release time as part 1, with new episodes released at midnight Pacific. Episodes will be out at 3am Eastern and 2am Central – while if you’re in the UK, then they’ll be available at 8am. All the while, a new and bigger threat will be surfacing in Hawkins, which could be our characters’ hardest enemy yet.

Stranger Things season 4 part 1 ends on a huge cliffhanger with Nancy in huge danger and a massive twist at Hawkins Lab. If you're confused, we're here to ...

It was this vulnerability that allowed Vecna to attack her as she tried to leave the Upside Down. Her powers were so strong, they opened a crack into the Upside Down, where Number One morphed into the terrifying Vecna – the sinister horror villain who haunted season 4. Victor Creel believed his son was another victim, but in fact he had only gone into a coma because of the surge of powers he used to kill his own family. The moment where Brenner asked, 'What have you done?' at Eleven – which we first saw way back in the cold open to season 4, episode one – turned out to be a clever bit of misdirection. In a final episode twist it was revealed rather than Vecna visiting Creel house, he was actually created there. Who is Vecna? What happened to Nancy? A guide to the shock twist ending

Like the past three seasons, fans can expect a daunting supernatural foe, a host of '80s references, and a new superbly retro soundtrack. Artists featured on ...

11. Wipeout – The Surfaris The latest season picks up six months following last season’s “Battle of Starcourt” which decimated the Indiana town. The show has received widespread critical acclaim including a Grammy nomination for Music Supervision. Find the full tracklist for Stranger Things: Soundtrack from the Netflix Series, Season 4 below. 10. Pass The Dutchie – Musical Youth 2. California Dreamin’ – The Beach Boys Artists featured on the newest soundtrack include Extreme, Kate Bush, Talking Heads, Dead or Alive, Musical Youth, KISS, Starpoint, and more ’80s mainstays.

In light of the Uvalde mass shooting, Netflix has issued a timely content warning for Stranger Things' season 4 premiere.

But in the wake of what happened in Uvalde, it’s hard not to see both shows as having tapped into something profoundly broken about the country they’re produced in — all at one of the most difficult times imaginable. Both in and out of the larger context that’s revealed as the rest of Stranger Things’ latest season unfolds, the Hawkins lab massacre plays very much like the show’s take on a school shooting due to its focus on helpless children losing their lives in classrooms. Though Stranger Things 4 is mostly set in 1986, the season’s premiere — “Chapter One: The Hellfire Club” — opens a few years earlier, back when Hawkins National Laboratories were still up and running experiments on Eleven and other children with enhanced abilities.

The oft-nostalgic Netflix series succeeds in Season 4 by treating adolescence as the torturous experience it is for those who don't fit in.

But the misery of high school calls for horror, naturally: “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and the “It” miniseries are a few of the callbacks in Season 4, and the terror is as much psychological as it is physical. There is plenty of fun to be had in “Stranger Things 4,” which both celebrates and parodies a decade that pushed conformity, conservatism and questionable style. The end of high school, and with it, the potential disbanding of this tightknit group. New to the party is metalhead and Dungeons & Dragons “Hellfire Club” master Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn). He’s accused of committing a string of heinous murders around Hawkins. The long-haired outcast contends that “Forced conformity [is] the real monster,” and he’s not entirely wrong. The music includes speed metal by Extreme, some “Detroit Rock City,” stoner anthems by Musical Youth, one-hit wonders Dead or Alive and Falco. And of course, Kate Bush’s “Running Up that Hill,” which sets the tone for a moving sequence with Max. Because the oddest thing about “Stranger Things” might be its capacity to keep surprising us. The true source of the murderous evil is Vecna, a ghoulish man/creature who resides in the Upside Down and thrives on destroying the residents from the inside out. Dustin’s genius gal pal Suzie (Gabriella Pizzolo) returns, and the scene in her Mormon household is one of the best. Odes to the goofy nostalgia of “Ghostbusters” and “Goonies” worked when the gang was younger, then nods to “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” mall culture and “Indiana Jones”-style adventure as they aged. And thank goodness for Erica (Priah Ferguson). Lucas’ mouthy 11-year-old sister is not as emotionally battered as the older kids, so she emerges as a sharp weapon against Vecna. The brilliance of “Stranger Things 4” is that rather than gloss over the unpleasantry, it leans hard into their clumsy, painful transition. (The hair is particularly bad.

To briefly, briefly recap where we left things off at the end of Season 3, all the various characters—including newcomers Robin (Maya Hawke) and Billy Hargrove ...

Eleven has always been connected to Upside Down and the various threats contained within but never before has she had such a personal connection with the bad guy as she does with Vecna. She was, after all, the one who defeated 001 and trapped him in the Upside Down. Owens and Brenner—whose uneasy peace with Eleven will surely be tested going forward—already thought she was their best hope at stopping the Upside Down from wreaking havoc. As we learn in the cross-cutting sequence where 001 and Vecna explain their histories to Eleven and Nancy, respectively, they are one and the same. They were once the son of Victor Creel—the man imprisoned in Pennhurst Asylum who Nancy and Robin interviewed in Episode 4. He quickly goes on a rampage, and then invites Eleven to join him in reshaping the world with their incredible powers while detailing his backstory—again, more on that in one second. Demitri’s imprisoned with Hopper and Joyce and Murrary are flown to Siberia, but they’re able to turn the tables on their kidnapper and enter the labor camp just as Hopper’s about to enter a cage fight with a captured Demogorgon. Dustin and Co. realize that Vecna is greeting a new gateway between the real world and the Upside Down at the site of every killing, and thanks to some Season 1-esque light shenanigans, they convey this message to the trapped teen crew. Max, as mentioned previously, was targeted by Vecna, who tormented her with psychic visions of her dead step-brother Billy (Montgomery, briefly returning in a cameo role). When it came time to try to kill her like he killed the others, he transported her consciousness to his realm in the Upside Down. But, in the nick of time, Robin and Nancy figure out that a previous victim of Vecna’s had been saved because he heard his favorite song and it pulled him back. Lucas, as Max’s ex, knows her favorite artist at the moment is the iconic English art-pop singer Kate Bush, and they slip headphones on her comatose body in the real world and blast her 1985 song “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God),” which allows her to escape. Back in Hawkins, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Max (Sink), Robin (Hawke), Steve (Joe Keery), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), and newcomer Eddie (Joseph Quinn), the Dungeon Master of the gang’s Dungeons and Dragons group who has been wrongfully framed for murder have been tracking down a new threat from the Upside Down they call Vecna. Vecna has been creating psychic bonds with his victims, tormenting them with visions, and then gruesomely killing them by snapping their limbs and making their eyes explode. Billy, who had been possessed by the monster, sacrifices himself in front of his stepsister Max (Sadie Sink). Eleven ( Millie Bobbie Brown) seems to have lost her powers, and she and the Byers family leave Hawkins and move to California. And, Hopper ( David Harbour) sacrifices himself to destroy the gate and is presumed dead… There are a ton of characters in Stranger Things, so it makes the most sense to break them into three main groups. Now, before we get to the midseason finale, let’s recap what happened in the first six episodes of Stranger Things Season 4.

We (mostly) love Steve getting his big hero moment in the penultimate episode to Volume 1. A recap of “The Dive,” episode six of season four of Netflix's ...

When he swims back up to tell everyone, he is immediately pulled back underwater by a vine from the Upside Down! It pulls him through the gate where he lands in a completely drained Lovers Lake and is dragged around! Back in our dimension, Nancy dives right in after Steve, Robin follows, and Eddie doesn’t want to be the only one left on the boat, so he jumps in too. Actually, he says that Dustin is asking him to “follow him into Mordor,” and while that sounds like a terrible idea, “the shire is burning.” They have no choice! They’ll be getting a ride straight back to the Wheelers’. Now, that might be for the best safety-wise, but it means they miss what happens out on the lake. When they get to the spot where Patrick died and the compass starts going crazy, they know there’s only one thing left to do: Someone has to swim down there and check it out. They have to get into the Upside Down. It is the only way. Jason sucks the big one and he has now gotten all of Hawkins riled up in his little satanic-panic mission — everyone is way too eager to get their pitchforks ready, you know? One told him that it was because he used emotion to get stronger — he thought of a memory that made him “both sad and angry,” and it worked. They attack and torture her until Two blasts her against the wall and threatens to kill her if she tells Brenner what they did. Maybe the one of her mother trying to find her and take her back. He knows the Demogorgon hates fire, so he nabs a bottle of vodka, starts a fight so that he can steal a guard’s lighter, and he lets his friend Dmitri in on it after. They’re going to make that meeting Yuri set with the prison warden to turn them over to the KGB — only now, Yuri will be tied up and gagged, and Murray will pretend to be Yuri. What happens after they waltz into the prison and meet with the warden, who is to say?

'Stranger Things' season 4 is out today with a new soundtrack featuring songs ranging from '50s classics to '80s bops.

11. "Wipeout" - The Surfaris The complete soundtrack album is available for preorder now, on digital, CD, and, most appropriately, cassette. Either way, the soundtrack is transporting us out of the 2020s, and for that we are thankful. 10. "Pass The Dutchie" - Musical Youth The soundtrack travels back in time as far as 1950 with "Dream a Little Dream of Me" and hints of '60s and '70s tunes throughout – are the Russians holding Hopper captive just massive Ricky Nelson fans? The year is 1986: the Space Shuttle Challenger explodes, Ray-Bans are in, and a gallon of gas costs 89 cents.

(L to R) Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield Courtesy of Netflix. So, you've made it through the incredibly long ...

Will Hopper, Joyce, and Murray make it out of the Soviet Union? Will Eleven get her powers back? There are definitely plenty of things to wrap up — will Nancy get out of the Upside Down? What does Vecna want? It’s not really a traditional post-credits scene.

Chief Jim Hopper finds himself imprisoned in Kamchatka Russia at the start of Stranger Things season 4. Here's what to know about the Soviet prison camp.

(In real life, many of these camps actually closed after Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, though some were then converted to house political prisoners in the 1970s and 80s; Hopper, having thwarted Soviet scientific efforts in Hawkins, is the “American” prisoner.) Hopper appears to have been captured in Hawkins and then rendered to Russia as a political prisoner. Aside from Stalin, however, who ordered the construction, many Soviet leaders found the endeavor mostly inefficient and unnecessary. Nevermind that his death seemed to complete the season’s character arc from slightly toxic protective father to simply protective father. Nevermind that he was trapped behind an energy field while the explosion occurred. Nevermind that Chief Jim Hopper destroyed the most recent gate to the Upside Down, an event that caused an energy wave to literally incinerate everyone around him.

This article contains Stranger Things season 4 spoilers. We have a spoiler-free review here. When we catch up with Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Erica in ...

In real time, the Hellfire Club’s first major act in the pages of the comics was to try and manipulate Jean Grey into joining their side. The Club was founded hundreds of years ago as a secret society of the most wealthy and powerful people in the world. Some people join because of the opportunity to rub elbows with the rich and powerful. It appears on its surface to be a simple themed fetish club with people dressing in Victorian bondage gear and chuckling over stock tips, but its true purpose is more sinister: it’s a means for the 1% of the 1% to control the world. And while that may sound sinister (Sir Francis Dashwood started a club and gave it the motto “Do What Thou Wilt”), what we know of the clubs’ activities amounts to little more than drinking and whoring. But the name “The Hellfire Club” also has broader historical and pop cultural significance…

"We filmed this season of 'Stranger Things' a year ago. But given the recent tragic shooting at a school in Texas, viewers may find the opening scene of ...

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Netflix added a content warning for Stranger Things season 4's premiere episode which depicts a massacre involving kids, following a shooting in a Texas ...

“But given the recent tragic shooting at a school in Texas, viewers may find the opening scene of episode 1 distressing. The sequence depicts multiple dead children covered in blood. We are deeply saddened by this unspeakable violence, and our hearts go out to every family mourning a loved one.”

Stranger Things 4 returns to the 1980s with this soundtrack, featuring songs from Kate Bush to Talking Heads and more. Here's which song played in each ...

You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. We all have those songs that can save us from the darkest of moments; the songs that can change a mood from the very first note. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. She's relatively new to Hawkins, she's coming from a broken home, and now she's just lost her stepbrother, Billy. And while Billy was an asshole, he was the closest thing she had to a close family member. How about Eleven and Max bonding in the mall while Madonna's "Material Girl" played in Season 3?

Stranger Things season 4 is packed with '80s references from music to D&D to classic movies and TV. We've picked out a bunch of our favorite deep cuts!

The theme mostly seems to be “dreams” (for obvious reasons with Vecna and the ongoing Nightmare on Elm Street tributes). We get old standards like “I’ll See You in My Dreams” and “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams” “Red Sails in the Sunset” seems to be the outlier here, as we can’t figure out how this might fit the theme. And if anyone is a “choosy mom” it is Joyce! As El attempts to regain her powers, she is shown concentrating on crushing a “Coca-Cola Classic” can. Eddie says he’s “pretty god damn far from OK.” Could this be the rare non-’80s Stranger Things reference? One of Max’s flashbacks in this episode shows her watching television when a young pre-Friends Courtney Cox appears on the screen. “A plane brings Mike to California – and a dead body brings Hawkins to a halt. The Carrie vibes are strong in this scene, from the increasing public humiliation to something being dumped on poor Eleven, in this case a chocolate milkshake. - The Hellfire Club is a name withplenty of historical significance, but in the context of Stranger Things, it probably means more as an X-Men comics reference. All seem to be about “clever thoughts,” “fantastic” ideas, and “ingenious plans.” Interestingly, “idea” is also one of the crossword puzzle answers. This, as you might have guessed, is the moment in the 1982 film when the character played by Phoebe Cates removes her red bikini top in a memorable dream sequence. Feel free to point out anything that we may have missed in the comments below, and we’ll add it to the article.

And Netflix subscribers can't say they didn't get their money's worth. The entire season drop so far, especially the seventh episode, was packed with details, ...

Robin and Eddie were able to crawl out of the Upside Down in the final scenes, but Steve is still down there, and Nancy fell into what seemed like a worse universe, Vecna's domain. This is how the first portal to the Upside Down was opened. Eleven used her powers to yank out the chip, and whoops, One's terrifying powers were now unleashed again. Peter Ballard, a man who seemed to be a kind orderly at the lab, turned out to have been the lab's very first child patient, bearing the tattoo of 001, aka One. And who is this man, you may ask? Eleven has been having flashbacks to a bloody massacre among the other numbered, telekinetic kids who were in the lab with her. Nancy and Robin go to the asylum where a now elderly Victor is being held, and realize he didn't kill his family, the season's Big Bad, Vecna, did.

Netflix released a warning before the premiere of its newest season of “Stranger Things” following the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas where ...

Season 5 will be the show’s final season. We are deeply saddened by this unspeakable violence, and our hearts go out to every family mourning a loved one,” the warning reads per THR. “We filmed this season of “ Stranger Things” a year ago.

He's also Vecna, but we'll get to that in a moment. Ad – content continues below. Victor Creel apparently moved his family to Hawkins, Indiana ...

The fact remains that even though Steve and the others made their assault on the water gate to take on Vecna, they quickly made their exit as soon as they were able, leaving the cursed wizard at large for the final two episodes of Stranger Things season 4, coming July 1. Perhaps Vecna took awhile to heal from Eleven’s attack and take shape in his new form, feeding on fish while the original gate was still open while slowly creating his own small “water gate” from those tiny, fishy brains. Robin was warned not to step on the vines because they would alert the hive mind, and the tentacles that attach to Vecna while he’s manipulating wounded souls certainly imply a connection between the former human and the natives of this hell dimension. In fact, the Hand of Vecna was a magical item in the game before the monster himself was even fully developed. Victor tells Nancy and Robin his son was “sensitive,” which could simply have been Victor’s way of explaining away his son’s abnormal behavior, but One tells El that his father believed the hauntings and dead animals resulted from “a demon cursing them for their sins. The answer lies with Dr. Martin Brenner and his secret government project to breed psychic spies and assassins in the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Early in Season 4, Robin (played by Maya Hawke) offers an explanation for her and her friends' nonchalance in dealing with threats from the Upside Down, the ...

Max’s ensuing escape is a nail-biting sequence in which she looks like she’s trying to escape her own head, reaching for her actual world, which she spots in the distance. That’s the real threat of a conspiracy, Stranger Things suggests: A potent, injurious vision can worm its way inside anyone’s mind—even your own mind—but if it lingers long enough, it can dominate your beliefs so completely that reality becomes akin to a pipe dream. In other words, Vecna is the manifestation of conspiratorial thinking gone wrong—a surprising twist for a show that has always rewarded every theory concocted by its characters. Such history fills in many of the gaps in the Upside Down’s mythology, while crucially rooting Vecna’s evils in a deeply human motivation: to persuade others to listen to him. In past seasons, the actions of Stranger Things villains were much more open to interpretation: They could be representative of trauma, grief, and the particular strain of paranoia that coursed through America in the ’80s—or they could simply be bloodthirsty monsters, no analysis necessary. When he ensnares Max (Sadie Sink) in his realm—she’s mentally susceptible, given her grief over the loss of her brother in Season 3—her friends learn that playing her favorite song can remind her of reality. As the mystery unravels, Vecna appears to be operating according to a belief system, not according to mere survival needs. He considers the way humans live to be “poisonous,” too rigid in its structure of clocking in and out day by day, while shaping people’s choices—building nuclear families, saving money for retirement—according to societal demands. Whether demogorgons or demodogs or the “Spider Monster,” the beasts that cross into this world—and, primarily, the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana—are vicious but also faceless and mindless. Over the course of the previous three seasons, they’ve upgraded in size and ferocity, graduating from preying on humans to possessing them. “We’ve actually been through this kind of thing before,” she tells Eddie (Joseph Quinn), a classmate who’s just encountered the Upside Down for the first time. Early in Season 4, Robin (played by Maya Hawke) offers an explanation for her and her friends’ nonchalance in dealing with threats from the Upside Down, the desolate alternate realm that regularly sets monsters loose.

In Stranger Things Season 4 Dustin wears a hat that says "Thinking Cap," and now you can get yourself a replica of this from Amazon.

This post contains affiliate links, where we may receive a percentage of any sale made from the links on this page. In addition, it has a red trim around the edge, stitching on the brim, and an adjustable strap, so one size fits all. The day has arrived, and season 4 of Stranger Things is finally on Netflix for fans to binge-watch.

Spoilers for episode 1 of Stranger Things season 4 ahead: Fans who have watched the new episode said that it has made it difficult for them to sleep.

Viewers believe that Vecna will be a major supernatural threat, going by the first season where a version of D&D monster Demogorgon comes out and disrupts life in Hawkins. Fans of the science fiction horror drama took to social media after watching the first episode and said that one episode alone has made it difficult for them to sleep. The Netflix original is being released in two volumes-- the first with seven episodes that have already been released, and the second with two episodes that will drop on July 1.

“Nina…Nina…here's the number,” Harmon gurgles as he holds out a pen to Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) and Will Byers (Noah Schnapp). Ad – content ...

Right as Eleven and Owens arrive at the Ruth, Nevada facility, a chyron appears onscreen that read “Twelve Hours Earlier.” The timeframe this text is referring to is the previous scene in which Harmon tells Mike and company to find Nina with his dying breath. The use of Nina for these flashbacks is an important one because it makes Eleven and the audience actual participants in the show’s history mores than a traditional flashback would. Kudos to Eleven for revisiting her past and reclaiming her powers but she’s going to have to get back to work quickly. In Eleven’s case, the stimuli that Brenner and Owens have presented to her takes her right back to her time in the Hawkins Laboratory. Eleven is frequently bullied by the other children to the point where the orderly a.k.a. Number One convinces her that they are about to kill her. Perhaps because the moment she’s out of that deprivation tank, things will have well and truly gone wild. That leads Eleven to unshackle Number One’s powers to escape, and he in turns goes and kills all of the other subjects. Dr. Owens (Paul Reiser) and the surprisingly still-alive Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) brought Eleven to that lair to “meet” Nina. You see, Dr. Brenner thinks he knows why Eleven’s powers have seemingly abandoned her. There are some interesting technical tricks used to indicate that Eleven is both passively and actively participating in a memory from several years earlier. This is the ultimate memory that Brenner wants Nina to uncover, along with the moment that Eleven confronts Number One and banishes him the Upside Down where he becomes the inhuman Vecna. Nina resides in the remote desert of Ruth, Nevada where Dr. Owens has established a secret science lair deep underground in an abandoned Intercontinental Ballistic Missile silo. Who exactly is Nina? Harmon is unable to say before he unfortunately expires.

The seventh episode of 'Stranger Things 4' has a shocking revelation that will shake up the Hawkins gang's lives completely.

Vecna, Peter Ballard, 001, and Creel Junior are revealed to be one-in-the-same, and his fascination with spiders implies that the “vines” that permeate The Upside Down are actually his legs. Season 4 is not the end of Stranger Things, though. The nature of the relationship between 001 and Eleven remains nebulous. Armed with this knowledge, the teens head out to the Wheeler residence to see if they can find any of Nancy’s guns, but instead, all they find in her room are a pair of kitten heels and a barely worn-in diary. Volume 1 ends with a significant revelation, tying together the many Vecna-connected strands Stranger Things had laid out since the very beginning. His father, Victor, is blamed for the crime, and Dr. Brenner takes Creel Junior under his wing. What we do know for a fact, however, is that 001 leads El to the drainpipe that she eventually uses to escape in Season 1. Robin and Eddie are pulled through the floorboards/roof in a delightfully trippy scene until Vecna possesses Nancy. In a flashback montage in the episode’s last fifteen minutes, Vecna shows Nancy (while simultaneously telling El in her subplot) that he is Creel Junior — a budding psychopath who is solitary, misunderstood and doesn’t feel that the natural law of the world is meant for him. Fret not— here’s our explainer for the final episode of Volume 1 to prepare you for the July 1 release of Volume 2. Their worst nightmare materializes right at the point when Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) and Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman) infiltrate the prison. Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine) tortures answers out of 002, one of the teens who gave El a concussion via telekinetic bullying.

Stranger Things season 4 is currently being binged around the world by Netflix subscribers who now have access to the show's penultimate season.

So far, they have not missed yet, and this season shows that the time off due to the pandemic has only allowed them to regroup and come back even stronger. We will see if anything changes, with scores going up or down, when the final two enormous episodes of season 4 debut in July, including the 2.5 hour season finale. Over the past couple months here, and Stranger Things is a pretty strong quality outlier.

Demogorgons, Mind Flayers, and Vecna, oh my! The Stranger Things season 4 volume 1 finale raises many questions for volume 2 to pursue.

And of the four individuals in the Upside Down, Nancy has the most of it. There is very little humanity left in Number One. He is basically The Upside Down personified – the insidious combination of actual evil and power as interpreted by a dark dimension. Dustin works out that Vecna’s kills in the real world open gates to the Upside Down. Sure enough, they make it to Eddie’s trailer, the site of Vecna’s first kill of the season, and a makeshift rope allows Robin and Eddie to make it back to the real world. The final moments of Stranger Things season 4 episode 7 reveal that Henry Creel a.k.a. Number One is the monster we’ve come to know as Vecna. Upon being banished to The Upside Down, the shadowy realm gives him a terrifying, bestial form more suitable to his inner evil. For a moment it really seems like The Upside Down journey is over and the whole crew is about to make it out. Nancy even climbs (or descends…the Upside Down is confusing) the rope and crosses the threshold of the two worlds. It’s possible that time in the Upside Down runs more slowly than time in the real world. It’s also possible that The Mind Flayer and his five-star general Vecna have isolated the Wheeler household in its 1983 version just so the gang doesn’t have any weapons to use. It is likely that Eleven and the Hawkins lab making first contact with the shadowy realm in 1983 effectively froze it in time. The Stranger Things season 4 volume 1 finale goes where all Stranger Things finales, midseason or otherwise, must inevitably go: The Upside Down. This time, however, Nancy (Natalia Dyer) notices that something is a little different about the sideways universe. Though every season of Stranger Things takes place in the past (at least relative to our own present), this season journeys further back in the timeline than ever before. The crushing weight of Stranger Things’ history comes to bear in episode 7 where we learn a lot about the series’ mythology and even get thrown a cliffhanger or two.

Does Hawkins have its very own Michael Myers? We suspect there is more to this story. stranger-things-season-4-finn-wolfhard-millie- ...

He begins to chant "murderer" repeatedly to a horrified Fred. Suddenly, everything snaps back to normal, and Nancy and the cop are looking at him strangely. Dustin decides it is time to fill him in on the Upside Down. He asks Eddie if he saw anything that looked like swirling dust. In Alaska, they will meet with a man named Yuri and give him the money, which he will then in turn give to Enzo. While he is talking, a woman outside the phone booth bangs on the door and yells something at him in Russian. Joyce says that if he wants her to go to Alaska, she needs to speak to Hop to confirm he is alive. It dawns on El what she has done as she watches everyone race over to Angela. Mike looks at El and echoes Dr. Brenner when he asks, "What did you do?!" What is her relationship with Eddie Munson? Jason is stunned and terrified and tells them Chrissy said she was going home after the game to change. Will says they are supposed to be best friends, and Mike shrugs him off, annoyed, and asks why Will didn't reach out more and why it has to be all his fault. You can't." As she turns away El screams her name, but this time, instead of trying and failing to use her powers, she does the next best thing her instincts think of. Murray translates that the woman called him a "mooser," which is Russian slang for "pig" and is usually directed at cops or guards in Russia. Joyce and Murray realize that Hop must be "stuck" in prison and maybe bribed Enzo to break him out. Will confronts her when he and El get a minute alone and tells her Mike doesn't deserve to be lied to, and he's going to be upset when he finds out. While Mike is looking for El, he asks why Will has been moping all day, and Will tells him with frustration that El has been lying to him ever since he got there. Will is holding a rolled-up painting he is clearly going to give Mike. They jump up in excitement when they see him, and Mike gives El flowers he handpicked from Hawkins. El is excited, but her face falls slightly when she looks at the card, which is signed "FROM MIKE," noticeably not "LOVE." Mike and Will have an awkward reunion and Will, looking disappointed, doesn't give Mike the painting. As they exit the airport, we see Murray (Brett Gelman) hopping into a cab on his way to meet Joyce and figure out what the hell is up with that shady letter from Russia. When he gets to the Byers residence, he reads the full message: "Hop is alive.

We get a little haunted house movie in the middle of 'Stranger Things'! A recap of “The Nina Project,” episode five of season four of Netflix's 'Stranger ...

• So many insane things have happened on this show, literally called Stranger Things, but Joyce and Murray having to land a plane in a Soviet forest after Murray karate-chopped their traitorous pilot Yuri who was going to sell them to KGB is absolutely bonkers. — and calming Argyle down after being fully informed of all Strange Things, Mike realizes it makes no sense for the guy to just hand him a pen. They discover that Eddie has hopped on the boat in the boathouse and is currently paddling away in Lover’s Lake. Jason and Patrick swim after him, but just as they catch up, Patrick gets pulled underwater. Jason and the basketball team have a renewed sense of urgency to track down Eddie after Chrissy’s funeral, and a few of them, including Jason and Patrick, the kid we saw Vecna lock into in “The Monster and the Superhero,” wind up at Reefer Rick’s. Patrick’s been having more hallucinations. He then comes shooting out and is levitating above the lake in a trance. He knew the risks of trying to get out of this place, he says, and he did it anyway, and because of that, he “sentenced Joyce to death.” It was the same with Sarah. “Everyone I love, I hurt,” he says. They follow the trail of lights — Vecna on the move — until they end up in the attic. Back in Hawkins, the gang is starting to put a few things together. For now, all we know is that it includes putting Eleven in the NINA tank and making her walk through specific memories from her time at Hawkins. From September 1979 at Hawkins, to be exact. It’s honestly a little from column A and a little from column B. Even though it looks like El is getting the hang of being in her own memory — the repeating stops and she goes on to an exercise with the other kids where she continues to fail and we learn that Two is a real number two, if you know what I mean — it doesn’t take long for her to go back to that traumatic memory from before. I want to believe Dr. Owens, who is working with Brenner, really does have El’s best interest at heart and that Brenner is simply a means to an end, but I also want Hopper to pop out and headbutt this dude. I guess since the fate of the world rests on the hope that Eleven can somehow get her powers back and Brenner is the only one with a real plan to do that, Owens has no other choice.

TVLine's detailed recap of 'Stranger Things' Season 4, Volume 1 reveals spoilers for episodes 1-7.

WHAT HAPPENED: After Mike, Will, Jonathan and Argyle escaped from the feds, they figured out that the “Nina” the doomed agent protecting them had wanted them to contact was a computer. And El was forced to blast him through a gate to the Upside Down, where he became… Nancy and Robin learned from mental patient Victor that “the voice of an angel” — Ella Fitzgerald on the radio — had snapped him out of Vecna’s trance before he could be killed. WHAT HAPPENED: After rendezvousing with Eddie, Steve, Nancy, Robin, Dustin, Lucas and Max deduced that Lovers’ Lake hid beneath it a gate — a Watergate, per Dustin. Once Steve had found the portal, he was dragged through it by tentacles and attacked in the Upside Down by Demobats (?!?). In Utah, Suzie fell for the tall tale that Mike, Will, Jonathan and Argyle spun and obtained for them Nina’s coordinates. WHAT HAPPENED: After Nancy, Robin and Eddie helped save Steve, they deduced that a gate was located at each of Vecna’s murder sites and hurried to the Munsons’ trailer. “Enzo” Dmitri informed Hopper that as soon as pilot Yuri received the ransom money, the prisoner could make his escape. And at Rink-O-Mania, Angela so brutally humiliated El in front of a visiting Mike that she bashed her smug face with a roller skate. Keep scrolling, and before Part 2 drops on Friday, July 1, we’ll discuss all the major twists of plot, pausing to shine a spotlight on each episode’s biggest moments. Oh, and something extremely wicked their way came: Visiting Eddie’s trailer to score drugs, troubled cheerleader Chrissy was fatally pretzeled by the supernatural force that had been stalking her. BIGGEST LAUGH: Steve deduced that Robin’s crush on Vickie wasn’t in vain because she’d returned Fast Times at Ridgemont High to Family Video during a key Phoebe Cates moment. But the advice would be just as well-taken by you or anyone diving in to the first part of the series’ penultimate season. “Buckle up, brochachos!” Early on in the Season 4 premiere of Netflix’s Stranger Things, that’s the warning that Jonathan’s pothead pal Argyle gives him, Eleven and Mike, and he does so, because he’s kinda what you’d call a wild driver.

Things got even stranger there at the end of episode 7. Gael Fashingbauer Cooper. May 28, 2022 ...

Robin and Eddie were able to crawl out of the Upside Down in the final scenes, but Steve is still down there, and Nancy fell into what seemed like a worse universe, Vecna's domain. This is how the first portal to the Upside Down was opened. Eleven used her powers to yank out the chip, and whoops, One's terrifying powers were now unleashed again. Peter Ballard, a man who seemed to be a kind orderly at the lab, turned out to have been the lab's very first child patient, bearing the tattoo of 001, aka One. And who is this man, you may ask? Eleven has been having flashbacks to a bloody massacre among the other numbered, telekinetic kids who were in the lab with her. Nancy and Robin go to the asylum where a now elderly Victor is being held, and realize he didn't kill his family, the season's Big Bad, Vecna, did.

Fans who've just finished the new episodes of Stranger Things, don't worry—episode 7 isn't the finale. The first drop of the Netflix hit's fourth season ...

After those, we have the fifth and final season to answer all remaining questions. Viewers may have noticed that episode 7 was longer than usual the other six, coming in at 1 hour, 39 minutes, or the length of a shorter movie. That's because episodes 1-7 were just the first part of this supersized season, which per the Duffer Brothers has a runtime "nearly twice the length of any previous season."