(Credits: Netflix)

By the time Stranger Things season two came around on Netflix, it was Halloween in Hawkins. With the preteens a year older than when we last met them, everyone had their sights set on the holiday, although the traumatic effects of the Upside Down still lurk behind the shadows.

The eighth-grade AV Club kids were all in their festive spirits as they sported cosplays from their latest favourite movie, Ghostbusters. As for the elders, Steve was busy writing college applications with Nancy’s assistance, Joyce was back in the dating game, and Hopper had a secret new roommate.

Everyone was determined not to invite the ghosts of the past, especially from the Upside Down, after the traumatising events of the first season. But the same cannot be said about the shadow realm. With Will Byers still caught up in those vivid visions, it’s safe to say that the true danger was still not behind them. However, besides Will, Joyce and his friends also know about those visions.

To get to the roots of the cause, they had even consulted new figures at the Hawkins National Laboratory. However, as the answers come out clean, so does a horrific new monster.

Is the gang back?

Yes. Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and Will are back playing Dungeons & Dragons. Not much has changed in the school bullying scene either. Nancy and Steve are still seeing each other, at least in the early part of the season. As for Jonathan, he’s now a full-fledged third wheel. And Eleven? Well, she’s back too, just not in the proximity of Mike and others for her own welfare.

Besides the tight-knit gang, there are some fresh faces to greet in Hawkins this time. Max Mayfield, specialising in skateboarding and arcade skills, joins the eighth grade in the first episode. Meanwhile, her stepbrother, Billy, is on a mission to snatch Steve’s reputation as the most popular guy in Hawkins High. And Joyce is seeing Bob, a kind and polite friend from her high school, who’s now her boyfriend.

Dr Sam Owens has replaced Dr Brenner at the Hawkins Lab. Unlike Martin, he’s truly all in to help those affected by the nightmare of the first season. But then again, it’s best not to trust anyone from the laboratory. At least, investigative journalist Murray Bauman doesn’t, who has been hired by the Holland family to find out the mystery surrounding Barbara’s disappearance.

What’s up with Will’s visions?

Initially, Will’s visions are dismissed as post-traumatic flashbacks from his time in the shadow realm. However, when the episodes get longer, he starts seeing glimpses of a shadow monster with multiple limbs. Joyce comes to her senses that the visions are not merely flashbacks when footage of Will trick-or-treating shows the shadow monster he had been drawing all this time.

She wastes no time finding Will, who’s in school and also in the midst of another vision. But this time, the monster catches up with him. Although Joyce and the AV Club kids manage to awaken him, something definitely feels off about him.

It turns out that the shadow monster is now connected to Will. As a result, he can see and feel everything the monster does, including that it’s making underground tunnels throughout Hawkins. As he keeps drawing the tunnels, Joyce takes those drawings and tapes them all over their house, with the tunnel map serving as the second season’s light wall.

Bob figures out that the tunnel map is actually a map of Hawkins. And the revelation comes in handy for Hopper, who Will can feel trapped in the tunnels.

Is Hopper alright?

Hopper had long understood the tunnel map by connecting the links to the rotting vegetation popping up all over the town. After digging in the town’s pumpkin patch, he finds the underground tunnel that Will had been drawing on paper. But he’s soon caught off guard by the demon sprinklers of the shadow realm, leaving him in a state of disorientation which gradually causes him to lose consciousness. By the time he wakes up, he has no clue where he is. And clearly, the suffocating tunnel pathways are not helping.

Still, Hopper doesn’t give up hope as he tries to dig his way out. Although he finds a weak spot within the wall, he doesn’t have as much energy left. As he takes a cigarette break, the vines, which by the way, are alive, begin to strangle his body. But thanks to Joyce and Bob’s timely intervention, he gets saved.

Parallelly, the Hawkins laboratory team finds out that the pumpkin soil is contaminated. They reach the location just as Joyce and Bob were saving Hopper from the deadly grasp of the vines. But what the lab tests reveal blows everyone’s minds as they are discovered to be hive-mind soil.

Basically, if the burns are burned in one place, the vines growing throughout Hawkins must die. The problem, however, is that Will is now attached psychically to the shadow monster. So, when the team burns the hives, he succumbs to a massive seizure.

How is Will and the shadow monster connected?

When the shadow monster launched an attack on Will in his episode at the school field, he made Will a part of the hive mind. Consequently, whenever the Hawkins lab team burns any tunnels or vines, they are primarily attacking the monster, which Will can also feel. In fact, he can feel the growing sense of anger and vengeance within the monster after each attack. Although he survives the seizure, he now suffers from partial memory loss.

Will informs the doctors that the monsters don’t really want him to see or explore a certain part of the tunnel. Hearing this, the lab sends the team to probe the underground tunnel. But once they’re inside them, Will confesses that it was a deceitful trap which the monster made him set. And then starts the showdown between the lab team and the mini-Demogorgons, leaving a carnage of bloodshed and leading the monsters to the entrance of the lab.

What’s a mini-Demogorgon?

A mini-Demogorgon is basically a bite-sized version of the main villain from Stranger Things season one. Dustin becomes the first person to stumble on one in his trash, which he adopts as his pet, D’Artagnan. The name is derived from the fact that the slug loves one of Dustin’s favourite chocolate bars, 3 Musketeers. Dustin even carries Dart to school to make it meet his friends. But Will’s reaction makes it clear that Dart is nothing but a villainous creature from the Upside Down.

Mike suggests that Dustin kill Dart before it becomes a threat to everyone. But the creature manages to flee, thanks to its slippery state. Although Dustin finds it again, this time, he decides to keep Dart a secret from everyone, lest they insist on killing him off.

What is going on with Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve?

Nancy and Jonathan are determined to give Barbara justice and inform her parents about the real truth without having to break the NDAs they signed in the first season. Although Nancy wants Steve’s help in all of this, he is not exactly in on the plan to get the government angered or risk their own lives, which leads to her drunken confession that she’s not in love with him.

Jonathan extends the help to Nancy instead by tricking Dr Owens to confess that Barb is dead. They secretly record the admission on a tape while the lab tries to cover things up. They both take the recording to Murray, hoping that he exposes the lab without implicating them. But even in the agreement, Murray suggests they need to tone down the story if they want it to be digestible. As a result, they come up with a story that the lab chemicals poisoned Barb and that the lab team has lied about her death to the parents and the public.

Murray’s help to Jonathan and Nancy isn’t limited to that, as he makes them confront their feelings for each other. And the all-nighter at Murray’s brings more truth than they bargained for. When they return to Hawkins, the Byers’ house is full of Will’s drawings. But it turns out someone had been taking pictures of those while they were absent.

As for Steve, he does go to the Wheelers’ house to apologise to Nancy. However, by then, she had already left the town with Jonathan. Although Steve doesn’t get his closure, he stumbles upon Dustin, who desperately needs his help after Dart eats his cat as he grows up. As Dustin leads Steve to their basement, where the former has kept Dart, they find out that the creature has dug its way to the shadow tunnels and escaped once again.

Steve and Dustin then come up with a plan to queue a stack of meat towards the junkyard, where they can set it ablaze. Meanwhile, Lucas shows up with Max at the junkyard to prove the truth about the Upside Down, having finally answered Dustin’s red code alerts. But Dart doesn’t appear until the night falls, as he’s no longer attracted to raw cow meat. Instead, Steve goes out to lure Dart with his bat only to find that it hasn’t arrived alone. With Dart, there’s an army of mini-Demogorgons chasing Steve back on the bus where the AV Club kids are hiding. However, surprisingly, they soon head back to the tunnels.

Where is Eleven amidst all of this?

Everyone in Hawkins believes that Eleven is possibly stuck in the Upside Down, except for one, who’s sheltering her in an old family cabin, Hopper. Flashbacks from the first season reveal that when Eleven disembowelled the Demogorgon in the season finale showdown, she transported herself to the shadow realm version of the Hawkins Middle School science room, leaving her a few yards away from the gate that was created when the lab team was murdered. After the authorities cleared the coast, she crossed the dimension and returned to Hawkins.

First, she tried to return to the Wheeler house. But upon finding the house swarming with government agents who keep warning Mike against Eleven, she left the scene and survived in the woods for a month. But one fine day, she sees Hopper leaving food for her in the hidden box, leading her to tail him to the truck. Relieved of finding Eleven, he hid her in his grandfather’s cabin, where she was taught to read to ensure better communication. However, she was strictly advised not to contact anyone from the AV Club, as that could put both their lives at risk.

Although Eleven keeps her promise for most of the part, she grew tired by Day 326, having repeatedly heard that she would be able to leave the place soon. Having been frustrated with the stretched-out negotiation between Hopper and the lab, she finally leaves to see Mike at the Hawkins Middle School. But upon reaching there, she finds Mike conversing with Max, making her assume that she had been replaced. In a fit of rage, she uses her powers to throw Max off her skateboard and heads back to the cabin, where a massive fight erupts between her and Hopper. But unable to control her anger, she blows out every window and locks herself in her room. Since she no longer has a TV to engage herself with, she decides to go through Hopper’s paperwork on the lab, finding a file on Terry Ives. She tries to establish a psychic connection with her mother, but upon her disappearance, she decides to meet her in person.

What does Eleven discover during her visit?

Eleven hoped that meeting Terry and Aunt Becky would make up for a happy family reunion. But contrary to her expectation, she finds Terry in a near-catatonic state, and soon the lights begin to flicker. As she tails them to the basement, she realises it’s her mother trying to communicate with her. Becky helps Eleven with a blindfold to help her ease into the psychic space, and when she finally connects with Terry, she shows her daughter the detailed events of everything that led her to that state.

When Terry gave birth to Eleven, Dr Brenner was right there. Although she could hear Eleven cry, the doctors and Becky insisted the baby wasn’t alive. But Terry was not one to give up. She took a gun to the lab to track down Eleven, where she reached a room with a rainbow sticker where two small girls were playing, one of them whom Terry believes was her daughter. However, before she could talk to Eleven, Terry was taken away and put under electroshock therapy.

Where does Eleven go after that?

Eleven wanted to know the identity of the other girl in the vision. So, Becky helps her out with a file of all the lost children Dr Brenner took in. There, they chanced upon a newspaper report of an Indian girl who was taken from London, who resembled a lot with the girl in Terry’s visions. But soon she overhears Becky alarming the authorities of her presence, leading to her escape and hunt for the other girl.

Eleven heads to Pittsburgh, where she finds the girl from the photo, Kali. Like Eleven, she too has psychic powers. But instead of telekinesis, she can make people visualise anything she wants. Kali, herself, is determined to take down those behind the Hawkins Lab, and she suggests Eleven team up with her. The search leads them to Ray, a nurse at the lab who did the electroshock therapy on Terry. Eleven nearly ends up killing Ray following the revelation that Dr Brenner is very much alive. But the picture of his two young daughters stops her.

Kali intervenes to finish what Eleven started. However, the latter doesn’t let her do so. When the daughters end up ringing the police, they flee the scene. But Kali blames Eleven for messing things up, in turn, leading her to plant a vision in Eleven’s head, convincing her to own the anger she’s boiling with. When the authorities show up at the gang’s door, Kali helps them escape. But this time, Eleven doesn’t follow. She finds out that Hopper and Mike are in danger at the lab.

Is Eleven able to save everyone?

Eleven doesn’t arrive in time. However, Jonathan and Nancy appear at the front gate searching for Mike and Will, as do Steve, Dustin, Lucas, and Max, to probe what led Dart and the army of mini-Demogorgon to abandon them. Since the power is out, the kids and teenagers are unable to get inside at first.

With Bob still inside the lab, he’s trying his best to reset the Hawkins lab system so that the adults can escape the army of mini-Demogorgons with Mike and Will. And he ultimately manages to switch the power breakers, completely rebooting the security system, unlocking the doors. As the lights come on, Hopper helps Joyce and the boys to leave the lab, and Dr Owens makes use of the CCTV cameras to get Bob out of the basement. But Bob steps over a broom, alarming one of the monsters, which chases him to the front door. Although Bob and Joyce manage to reunite, the rejoice doesn’t last long as the mini-monsters launch a vicious attack.

Hopper manages to drag Joyce out of the building, and Jonathan shows up just in time. They drive out of the lab, saving all but Bob.

Is Will trustworthy yet?

Well, not yet. Dustin and Mike name the shadow monster The Mind Flayer from D&D, and the minions are now called Demodogs. From their understanding, the only way to defeat the Demodogs is by vanquishing the master. But that needs to happen without hurting Will. However, the primary problem is that only Will knows how to do that.

Although they want to question Will, they cannot do it without letting the Mind Flayer know about their whereabouts. So, they come up with a plan to blacken the entire Byers’ shed and tie him to a chair. As is expected, Will loses it when he wakes up, clarifying that the Mind Flayer is still controlling him. But the crew stop at nothing to communicate with Will, who ultimately starts using Morse Code so that the Mind Flayer doesn’t get a hunch.

According to Will, it’s important for the gang to shut the gate at the Hawkins lab in order to stop the Mind Flayer. But when the phone begins to ring in the kitchen, it doesn’t take long for the Mind Flayer to understand that they’re still at the house, leaving the Demodogs to chase them. Joyce doesn’t waste time sedating Will, as his consciousness could give off more information to the Mind Flayer. But knowing what’s coming for them, everyone needs to get on their toes.

But where is Eleven?

Although Hopper and Nancy are doing all they can to defend the group from what’s to come with a rifle, they don’t get their heroic chance. Eleven throws off a dead Demodog through the living room window and unlocks the front door, leaving everyone aghast and relieved at once.

After shedding a tear or two, they come up with a plan for Eleven to close the gate at the lab. But for her to succeed, Will and the Mind Flayer need to be separated. And once Will gains control of his body, Eleven and Hopper plan to lure the Demodogs to create a clear path to the gate.  

How do they separate Will and the Mind Flayer?

It turns out that the Mind Flayer cannot take heat. So, their only chance at defeating it is to burn the monster out of Will. The first step is to shift Will to a place he cannot recognise. As a result, they end up at Hopper and Eleven’s cabin, tying him to a cot and firing up the cabin stove, and also making use of those space heaters. Will wakes up almost immediately when the heat increases.

Meanwhile, Joyce is still not over Bob’s death. And she turns up the heaters to full throttle, although Will keeps screaming, or shall we say, the shadow monster. Thankfully, the plan comes to a success when the Mind Flayer particles begin to secrete from his body, evaporating into the sky.

Does Billy have a role in all of this?

Yes, he does. Billy had to cancel his date to track down Max, who had been missing. He first goes to the Sinclairs’ house, followed by the Wheelers’ place. But unable to find her at either, she ends up at Byers’ house. Although Steve tries to stop him, Billy knocks him unconscious. However, Max intervenes by sedating him with the leftover drugs.

The kids then take Billy’s car, along with Steve, to the entrance of the gate at the pumpkin patch. Their plan is to lure the Demodogs away from the lab so that Hopper and Eleven have enough time to close the gate. While Steve tries to prevent them, it’s to no avail. Instead, he now has to help Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Max pour gasoline all over them in the tunnel. As they set fire and try to flee the scene, they are stopped by Dart. But Dustin’s connection with Dart finally pays off when he distracts him with the same candy bars.

Do Hopper and Eleven succeed?

Hopper and Eleven quite easily reach the gate with Steve and the AV Club members distracting the Demodogs. They even stumble upon Dr Owens, who’s still alive and could be useful for Hopper in keeping Eleven a secret. But that’s something they need to deal with later on.

As they reach the gate, Eleven uses her powers to full blast, thanks to Kali’s teachings, closing the gate, while Hopper continues shooting Demodogs returning to the lab. And yes, they finally succeed in closing the gate with the Mind Flayer observing it all from the other side.

What happens after?

Similar to Stranger Things season one, the second season follows a time jump to Christmas just in time for the middle school Snow Ball. Dr Owens helps Hopper to officially adopt Eleven, allowing her to attend the ball as well. Eleven and Mike get to dance for the first time, as do Lucas and Max. Not to forget, they also have their first kiss, both couples! For those worried about Will, he gets asked for the dance, too.

While Dustin initially doesn’t get asked, Nancy, who is at the dance as the chaperone, asks him for one, making him the coolest kid in the middle school.

But does the shadow of Upside Down still lurk in Hawkins?

Well, for now, Hawkins and the shadow realms are separated. But that bliss is definitely not going to last long, as we know with the fifth and final season inching closer by the minute.