Before Season 5 arrives, a Stranger Things seasons 1-4 recap is almost a survival tool. Across four seasons, the series has layered monsters, government cover-ups, Russian plots, and a lot of teenage heartbreak.
This guide walks through the story so far, season by season, without skipping the major beats fans still argue about.
Season 1 – The boy who vanished
Will Byers bikes home through the woods, encounters a creature, and disappears. His mum, Joyce, and older brother, Jonathan, panic when they realize he’s gone. At school, Mike, Dustin, and Lucas notice Will is missing and immediately start to worry, even as bullies close in.
We meet Mike’s sister Nancy and her best friend Barb, who’s wary of Nancy’s new thing with popular boy Steve Harrington. Local sheriff Jim Hopper, still numbed by past grief, is dragged into the case when Joyce insists something is wrong.
Near Hawkins, a secret government lab opens a portal to another dimension. A young girl, Eleven, escapes the facility. She hides in a diner, shows off telekinetic abilities, and narrowly avoids recapture when agents kill the owner. Eleven slips away again.
Joyce receives a distorted phone call that sounds like Will. Ignoring orders to stay home, the boys search the woods and find Eleven instead. She spends the night in Mike’s basement and becomes the group’s unlikely ally.
Mike learns that “bad men” are hunting Eleven. In flashbacks, we see Dr. Brenner, whom she calls “Papa,” forcing her into brutal experiments. Eleven recognizes Will in one of Mike’s photos and tells the boys their friend is trapped in another place: the Upside Down, a dark mirror of their town ruled by a creature they’ll come to call the Demogorgon.
Nancy and Barb attend a party at Steve’s house. Nancy disappears upstairs with Steve; Barb, hurt and alone by the pool, is taken by the Demogorgon. Jonathan, out taking photos, unknowingly captures the moment.
Joyce becomes convinced Will is communicating through the lights. She turns the house into a blinking Christmas-light Ouija board until the Demogorgon briefly bursts through the wall. Hopper follows the trail to the lab and finds a tangle of lawsuits and secrecy.
A body believed to be Will’s is found in a quarry. The town grieves, but Eleven uses a radio to tune into Will singing from somewhere else. Joyce and Jonathan identify the corpse, yet Joyce refuses to accept it’s her son.
Nancy realizes Barb is missing and, with Jonathan, compares notes. Both saw a faceless creature. At school, Eleven humiliates the bullies with her powers. Hopper digs deeper, breaks into the lab, sees the portal, and later wakes up at home with a listening device planted in his lights.
Nancy and Jonathan arm themselves to hunt the monster. The boys try to find a gate to the Upside Down, but Eleven blocks them for their own safety. Nancy discovers a portal in a tree, briefly falls into the Upside Down, and confronts the Demogorgon before Jonathan pulls her back. Steve, jealous of Nancy and Jonathan, lashes out.
Feeling guilty, Eleven runs away and steals boxes of Eggos from a grocery store. Hopper finally accepts Joyce is right and takes her to a catatonic woman whose daughter was taken by Brenner’s lab years earlier.
The Demogorgon’s attacks escalate. Bullies corner the boys; Mike jumps off a cliff to protect Dustin, only to be caught mid-fall by Eleven, who snaps one bully’s arm. Agents close in, but Eleven flips their van off the road so the kids can escape. Steve, after a rude awakening, starts helping Nancy and Jonathan instead of fighting them.
Hopper and Joyce force their way back into the lab and bargain their way through the gate into the Upside Down. Eleven uses a sensory-deprivation setup in a kiddie pool to search; she finds Barb’s dead body and locates Will.
Inside the Upside Down, Hopper and Joyce track Will down, still alive but barely. Hopper resuscitates him. Back at the school, the Demogorgon attacks. Eleven uses the last of her strength to obliterate the creature, disappearing with it.
Will recover in the hospital. Hopper gets into a government car, suggesting an uneasy deal. A month later, the kids return to D&D, but Mike still misses Eleven. Nancy is back with Steve. Will hides lingering damage, coughing up a slug from the Upside Down in secret. In the woods, Hopper leaves a box of Eggos in a hidden spot, just in case.
Season 2 – The Shadow Monster
Season 2 of this Stranger Things opens with a new girl who can create vivid illusions and bears a tattoo like Eleven’s.
Back in Hawkins, the boys hit the arcade and discover a new high score from “MadMax.” Will has another vision of the Upside Down, seeing a vast, spider-like shadow looming over the town.
Hopper is now chief in practice and fields calls from conspiracy theorist Murray Bauman, who is convinced something happened in Hawkins. Hopper dismisses him and investigates a spreading pattern of rotting pumpkin patches.
We meet Billy Hargrove and his younger stepsister, Max, who turns out to be MadMax. Joyce has a new boyfriend, Bob Newby, and is trying to help Will handle his “episodes.” Dr. Owens at the lab treats Will and oversees the still-open gate.
Nancy and Steve visit Barb’s parents, who hired a private investigator and are selling their house to fund the search. Nancy’s guilt only deepens. Jonathan tries to comfort Will, but the visions intensify until the Shadow Monster fully possesses him.
Hopper’s big secret is a cabin in the woods where Eleven has been hiding since she escaped the Upside Down. He keeps her locked down for safety. Eleven chafes against the rules. Joyce discovers that Will has covered paper with drawings; Bob recognizes them as a map of Hawkins.
On Halloween, the boys dress as Ghostbusters and try to bring Max into the party. Billy proves dangerous behind the wheel. Hopper follows the trail of rot and stumbles on organic tunnels from the Upside Down beneath the fields, which later trap him.
Dustin finds a strange tadpole-like creature in his trash, names it Dart, and secretly keeps it. Bob encourages Will to stand up to his fears, advice that backfires when Will confronts the Shadow Monster and is taken over instead.
Eleven, tired of isolation, leaves the cabin, briefly contacts Mike through a radio, and later sees him with Max. Misreading the situation, she knocks Max over with her powers and disappears. Nancy and Jonathan set out to tell Barb’s parents the truth, but are detained at the lab. They record Owens admitting the government’s role and later take the tape to Murray, who helps them shape the story into something the public might believe.
Dart sheds his skin and eats the family cat, revealing he’s a baby Demogorgon. The tunnels spread. Bob deciphers Will’s map, leading Joyce to Hopper, who is nearly consumed. Burns inflicted on the tunnels hurt Will, proving his connection to the Mind Flayer.
Dustin team-ups with Steve to hunt Dart. Steve unexpectedly becomes the older-brother figure the kids need. At a junkyard, the group fights off “demo-dogs,” Demogorgon-like creatures drawn by the Mind Flayer. The lab falls when demo-dogs pour through the tunnels and slaughter staff.
Eleven searches for her birth mother, Terry Ives, and discovers she was experimented on by Brenner’s people. In a vision, she learns her real name is Jane. Following another psychic link, Eleven travels to Chicago to find Kali, subject 008, who can warp people’s perceptions. Kali’s crew hunts down former lab employees. She pushes Eleven to weaponize her rage, gives her a new look, and tries to pull her into their vendetta. Eleven ultimately turns back, sensing her friends are in danger.
At the lab, Bob bravely reboots the system and guides Joyce, Hopper, and the others out, only to be killed by a demo-dog at the exit. The loss hits Joyce hard. Back at the Byers home, the kids, Joyce, and Hopper regroup. Dustin notes that the Mind Flayer behaves like a Dungeons & Dragons “Mind Flayer,” using Will as a puppet.
They decide Eleven must close the gate at the lab while the others distract the Mind Flayer by burning the tunnels. Max finally stands up to Billy, sedating him after a brutal fight. Joyce, Jonathan, and Nancy freeze Will to drive the entity out of his body. At the gate, Eleven channels everything she has, levitates, and seals it shut as the Mind Flayer rages on the other side.
A month later, Barb gets a funeral, and Hawkins receives a sanitized story about chemical leaks. Hopper formally adopts Eleven, who is now Jane Hopper. At the Snow Ball, Dustin’s hair fails to charm his crush, but Nancy gives him a dance. Lucas and Max pair up. Mike and Eleven share a long-promised kiss. Outside, in the Upside Down version of Hawkins, the Mind Flayer still looms over the school.
Season 3 – The Starcourt summer
Summer 1985 shifts Stranger Things into Cold War territory. At a secret Russian base, scientists fire up a huge machine designed to blast open the gate once more. Nearby in Hawkins, life seems simpler: Starcourt Mall is the new center of town.
Steve now works at Scoops Ahoy with coworker Robin Buckley. Dustin returns from science camp with a radio tower called Cerebro and a supposed Mormon genius girlfriend, Suzie, whom no one believes exists. Mike and Eleven are inseparable, which drives Hopper to distraction. After failing to give a heartfelt speech, he threatens Mike into backing off.
Later, Dustin picks up a coded Russian broadcast on Cerebro. At the public pool, lifeguard Billy flirts with Karen Wheeler but crashes his car after being drawn into the Upside Down beneath the old steel mill. Something takes hold of him.
Eleven and Max become close friends; Lucas and Max keep breaking up and making up, and Will resents how quickly childhood is slipping away. Nancy and Jonathan endure sexist abuse as low-level interns at the Hawkins Post.
Joyce notices all her magnets losing power and suspects some new experiment. Mr. Clarke confirms her worries. Hopper confronts Mayor Kline and discovers he’s taking bribes from a company tied to Starcourt. Beating the truth out of him points Hopper toward mysterious new properties on the edge of town.
Dustin, Steve, and Robin decode the Russian message and realize it references the mall. They recruit Lucas’s sister Erica, who loves free ice cream but insists on being negotiated with adequately. She squeezes through the mall’s air ducts and discovers a hidden elevator that plunges them deep underground into a Russian bunker.
The Hawkins kids suspect Billy is possessed and trap him in a sauna. He erupts with inhuman strength, confirming their fears. All over town, townspeople are slowly being turned into “the Flayed,” hosts who are building a new body for the Mind Flayer out of liquefied flesh.
In the Russian base, Dustin, Steve, Robin, and Erica find a massive laser drilling into the Upside Down. They’re caught and drugged. Joyce and Hopper kidnap a Russian scientist, Alexei, and drag him to Murray’s bunker to translate.
Eleven uses her powers to spy on Billy and sees the Mind Flayer’s plan. At the hospital, Nancy and Jonathan battle two Flayed reporters who melt and merge into a single creature. Eleven manages to tear it apart.
At the Fourth of July fair, Mayor Kline distracts Hawkins while the threat grows. Dustin and Erica break Steve and Robin out; the pair stumble through a drugged confession in a bathroom, where Steve admits he likes Robin and she quietly tells him she’s gay. Their friendship resets on honest ground.
The Mind Flayer attacks Eleven at Hopper’s cabin. She fights it off but is badly wounded. Alexei enjoys his first American carnival before being killed by a Russian assassin. Hopper and Joyce barely escape. Eleven later cuts a remaining piece of the monster from her leg, losing her powers.
Everyone converges on the mall and realizes the Russian machine under Starcourt is the new gate. They split the mission: Hopper, Joyce, and Murray go underground to destroy the machine; Dustin and Erica guide them from above; the kids use fireworks to draw the Mind Flayer away.
Dustin finally proves Suzie is real when she sings “Never Ending Story” with him over the radio before giving them Planck’s constant. Underground, Hopper fights a Russian bruiser near the machine. Murray sabotages the controls. The key chamber requires two switches to be turned on at once. Hopper ends up trapped behind an energy field. He nods to Joyce, who turns both keys and detonates the device. The gate collapses. Hopper vanishes in the blast.
Above, the Mind Flayer disintegrates. Billy, freed at the last second, sacrifices himself to save Eleven. Starcourt burns. News reports call it a tragic mall fire.
Three months later, the Byers family packs to leave Hawkins; Eleven, now powerless and grieving Hopper, goes with them. Joyce gives Eleven Hopper’s letter, which she reads in tears. In a Russian prison, we glimpse a Demogorgon and hear guards refer to an unseen “American” prisoner.
Season 4 – Vecna and the beginning of the end
Season 4 of Stranger Things opens with a flashback to 1979. Dr. Brenner runs Hawkins Lab full of numbered children. A horrifying massacre leaves them all dead except one: young Eleven, standing amid the bodies.
In 1986, Joyce, Eleven, Will, and Jonathan now live in Lenora Hills, California, with a new friend, Argyle. Joyce works from home. Eleven writes upbeat letters to Mike but is bullied relentlessly at school by Angela and her friends.
In Hawkins, Dustin stays in touch with Suzie. Steve and Robin now work at the video store. Max is withdrawn, still traumatised by Billy’s death. Lucas joins the basketball team and falls in with captain Jason and the jocks, while Dustin and Mike stick with the Hellfire Club, a D&D group led by outcast metalhead Eddie Munson.
Cheerleader Chrissy Cunningham begins to see disturbing visions and hears an ominous grandfather clock. She meets Eddie in the woods to buy drugs, shattering his assumptions about perfect cheerleaders. Joyce receives a Russian doll that hides a note suggesting Hopper is alive; she calls Murray for help.
Lucas chooses the championship game over Hellfire, so the boys recruit Erica as their last-minute player. Eddie introduces a new D&D villain, Vecna. The party defeats him in the game, the same night Lucas’s team wins the real-life final.
That night, Chrissy goes to Eddie’s trailer for stronger drugs. She falls into a trance. In Vecna’s mental realm, he torments her with warped memories before snapping her limbs and killing her. In Eddie’s trailer, her body levitates and folds in on itself. Eddie flees in terror.
News of Chrissy’s death shatters Jason, who becomes obsessed with finding Eddie. Max, who lives nearby, saw Chrissy and Eddie together and knows something is off. Nancy and fellow reporter Fred investigate the story. Soon, Fred begins seeing his own visions.
Mike flies to California. There’s a quiet rift between him and Will, who feels sidelined. Eleven takes Mike to a roller rink and pretends she has friends there, but Angela exposes the lie and humiliates her. Eleven snaps and hits Angela with a skate in full view of the crowd.
Joyce and Murray call the number on the Russian note and reach Enzo, a guard who offers to free Hopper for a fee. We learn that Hopper survived the explosion, was captured, and has been forced to work and fight in a brutal prison camp.
Dustin, Lucas, Max, and Steve find Eddie hiding in a boathouse and convince him they believe his story. On the way to a crime scene with Nancy, Fred is drawn off by visions of his guilt over a past car crash; Vecna kills him and opens a second gate.
The military visits Dr. Owens, convinced Eleven is responsible. Owens refuses to hand her over but realizes she’s in danger. Eleven is arrested for the assault on Angela but is intercepted by Owens, who takes her to a secret facility in Nevada: the NINA project. There she’s confronted with Brenner, alive and running a program to restore her powers. She tries to escape but is sedated and dropped into her own memories.
Lucas, conflicted about his new friends, eventually warns Dustin that Jason and the jocks are turning the town against Eddie. Nancy and Robin bluff their way into Pennhurst Asylum to speak with Victor Creel, whose family died in the 50s under strange circumstances. He describes visions, a family curse, and how hearing his favourite song briefly snapped him out of Vecna’s grip. That detail will matter.
Max now has the same symptoms as Chrissy: headaches, nosebleeds, and visions of the clock. Convinced she is next, she writes letters to her loved ones. At Billy’s grave, Vecna attacks and drags her into his red-sky realm. Nancy and Robin’s information reaches the group just in time. Dustin and the others slap headphones on Max and blast Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill.” The music anchors Max to happier memories, and she claws her way out of Vecna’s control.
Will, Jonathan, Mike, and Argyle are ambushed in California; soldiers kill their guards. The group flees in Argyle’s pizza van and seeks out Suzie, who hacks a system and gives them coordinates to the NINA base.
Inside NINA, Eleven relives the days at Hawkins Lab and grows close to an orderly named Peter, who claims to understand her. In Russia, Joyce and Murray are betrayed by pilot Yuri, who wants to sell them and Enzo to the KGB, but they overpower him and crash-land in the wilderness.
Steve, Robin, Nancy, and Eddie investigate Lover’s Lake, where the second gate opened. A force drags Steve underwater into the Upside Down. Eddie, Nancy, and Robin follow. They fight off demo-bats and search for a way back, using flashes of light to communicate with Dustin, Lucas, and Erica. The younger trio realizes that each of Vecna’s killings opens a gate. They guide their friends to a portal in Eddie’s trailer so they can climb out. Nancy is grabbed at the last second and pulled into Vecna’s mind.
Eleven learns Peter’s true identity: Henry Creel, Victor’s son and subject 001. Henry murdered his family and framed his father, later becoming Brenner’s first test subject. After Eleven removes the control chip in his neck, he slaughters the children and staff at the lab. Eleven fights him, driven by rage and fear, and blasts him through the wall into the Upside Down, where he burns and transforms into Vecna. The memory restores her full power.
Nancy escapes Vecna’s vision with knowledge of his plan: four gates to tear Hawkins open. The Hawkins group decides they must kill him in his lair. In Russia, Hopper and Enzo survive the Demogorgon pit thanks to Joyce and Murray and eventually escape the prison, only to turn back when they realize killing the monsters there might weaken the hive mind.
In Nevada, Brenner is mortally wounded when the military attacks the base. Before he dies, Eleven rejects his claims of love and freedom. Mike, Will, Jonathan, and Argyle arrive with a makeshift salt bath built in a Surfer Boy Pizza, and Eleven uses it to project herself into Max’s mind.
In Hawkins, the plan is divided into teams. Max, Lucas, and Erica go to the Creel house as bait. Steve, Nancy, Robin, Eddie, and Dustin return to the Upside Down to attack Vecna’s body. Eddie and Dustin will draw the bats away with a loud distraction.
Yuri drags his feet repairing his helicopter, but Hopper, Joyce, and Murray force him to cooperate. At the Creel house, Jason and the jocks crash the operation, convinced the kids are Satanists. Erica tries to warn Lucas, who ends up fighting Jason while Max deliberately lets Vecna in again, using Kate Bush as her anchor.
In the Upside Down, Eddie plays a blistering “Master of Puppets” solo on his guitar to lure the bats to him and Dustin. Nancy, Steve, and Robin move on to Vecna’s lair. In the pizza shop, Eleven joins Max at the Snow Ball memory where Vecna is stalking her.
The plan nearly collapses. Jason destroys Max’s cassette player, cutting her off from her song. Vecna overpowers Eleven and begins his ritual. In Russia, Hopper fights a Demogorgon with a sword while Murray douses other monsters with flames, weakening the hive mind. Dustin tries to drag Eddie through the gate, but Eddie decides to stay, buying more time. He dies in Dustin’s arms, proud that he didn’t run away this time.
Back in the mindscape, Eleven rallies and pins Vecna long enough for Nancy, Steve, and Robin to douse his physical body in Molotov cocktails and shotgun blasts. Vecna’s charred body falls from the window and disappears, badly wounded but not dead.
In the Creel attic, Max’s limbs snap, and she goes blind. Her heart stops in Lucas’s arms. Eleven, still inside her mind, refuses to accept it and jump-starts her heart, bringing her back but leaving her in a coma. Vecna’s plan still succeeds: four gates rip open, the ground splits through Hawkins, and a massive “earthquake” devastates the town, killing Jason and many others.
Two days later, the government frames the events as a disaster. Eddie is remembered as a cult leader. The Byers family and Eleven drive back into a broken Hawkins and reunite with the group at Hopper’s repaired cabin. Hopper and Eleven finally see each other again. Robin and Vickie get a fragile new start. Dustin tells Eddie’s uncle what really happened.
Max lies in the hospital, alive but unresponsive. When Eleven reaches into her mind, she finds only darkness. Outside, ash-like particles fall from the sky as fields die and the smell of rot drifts in from the distance. The group stands on a hill looking out at Hawkins, where the Upside Down has begun to bleed through. The beginning of the end is here.
