Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
In Hawkins, Indiana, Will Byers vanishes on his bike ride home, and the search splits across his family, friends and police chief Jim Hopper. His mother Joyce refuses to accept a body the lab planted as Will’s, while flickering lights let her hear from him inside the Upside Down. Mike, Dustin and Lucas find Eleven, a frightened girl who escaped Hawkins Lab and can move things with her mind. She helps the boys locate Will, but Dr. Brenner’s men are hunting her and the lab’s experiments have opened a doorway to a monster-filled copy of Hawkins.
The danger reaches beyond Will. The Demogorgon drags Barb Holland into the other dimension after the creature smells blood at Steve Harrington’s pool. Nancy, Barb’s friend, joins Will’s brother Jonathan in tracking the monster, while Hopper follows clues to Hawkins Lab and discovers the agency’s cover-up. A staged corpse and Joyce’s messages show that Will is still alive. When Eleven learns she made contact with the creature during an experiment, the friends understand how the gate began and why the lab wants to control her.
Joyce and Hopper bargain their way into the Upside Down and find Will tangled in vines, barely breathing; they cut him free and revive him. Nancy, Jonathan and Steve draw the Demogorgon away, while Eleven faces it at Hawkins Middle School and makes it disappear along with herself. A month later, Hopper leaves food and Eggos in a box in the woods, suggesting Eleven survived. Will returns to his family, but coughs up a slug and briefly sees the shadow world, showing that rescue has not severed his connection to it.