Stranger Things 5 Part 1 moves fast, splitting the cast across Hawkins, the base, and the Upside Down while setting the stage for a violent return in Volume 2. This guide walks through the essentials, from the biggest story turns to where every character ends up by the end of Chapter 4.

Stranger Things Season 5 Part 1 Recaps

Release Timeline for Part 2

• Volume 2: December 25 (3 episodes)
  • Chapter 5: Shock Jock
  • Chapter 6: Escape From Camazotz
  • Chapter 7: The Bridge
• Finale: December 31 (1 episode)
  • Chapter 8: The Rightside Up
• Global drop time: 5 PM PT

Where Every Character Stands at the End of Stranger Things 5 Part 1

Here’s where every major character is when Part 1 comes to a close and how their stories set up Volume 2.

Eleven ends Part 1, weakened but still fighting.

The sonic weapons at the base shut down her powers, and Hopper forces her to escape before the next wave of soldiers arrives. He sends her into the woods with a compass, telling her to reach the cemetery while he goes straight into the vault, fully prepared to blow himself up if that’s the only way to stop Vecna. Eleven waits in the hallway, powerless, listening as the alarms suddenly cut. When the vault door opens again, Hopper walks out alive and leads her inside. Instead of Vecna, she finds Eight, her long-lost sister from Season 2, unconscious and wired into Kay’s machinery. That discovery is where Part 1 leaves Eleven, desperate to understand how long her sister has been trapped there, and what Dr. Kay was using her for.

Hopper survives the attack at the base but comes closer to dying than ever before.

After being nearly strangled by a creature from the Upside Down, he manages to break free, knock Dr. Kay out, and push Eleven to safety. He walks into the vault alone, ready to trigger the explosives strapped to him if Vecna is inside. When the sonic weapons suddenly shut down, he forces the sealed door open and steps through. Instead of dying, he emerges again moments later and brings Eleven into the vault, where she finds Eight, unconscious and hooked into the machinery. Hopper is bruised and exhausted but alive, standing beside Eleven as she faces the sister she hasn’t seen since Season 2.

Will Byers undergoes one of the most striking turns of the season.

His hive-mind connection grows stronger, giving him brief visions through both Demogorgons and Vecna. But in the finale, something changes. As three Demogorgons close in on Robin, Lucas, and Mike, Will flashes back to his conversation with Robin in the tunnels, her reminder that he can’t keep running from who he is, that the answers he’s searching for are already inside him if he stops being afraid. Will taps into the hive fully and uses powers that mirror Vecna’s, freezing three Demogorgons mid-attack and killing them in the air before collapsing with a nosebleed. His abilities have awakened, though he doesn’t yet understand them.

Mike Wheeler begins to realize that Will is connected to Vecna in ways no one understood.

Mike Wheeler enters Part 1 still holding onto the promise he and Eleven made at the start of the season: once everything is finally over, they’ll leave Hawkins and begin a life far from all of this. Over the course of the four episodes, He doesn’t know what that connection means yet, only that Will is part of something larger than any of them expected. He helps coordinate the tunnel escape plan, witnesses Vecna’s full return.

Nancy Wheeler remains the strategist of the group.

She confirms Mr. Whatsit is Henry Creel in disguise and helps coordinate the Turnbow trap. She ends the volume in the Upside Down with Steve, Jonathan, and Dustin, waiting for Eleven to free their car so they can continue tracking the Demogorgon and get to Holly.

Steve Harrington leads the chase.

Steve Harrington leads the charge into the Upside Down, driving straight through a rift and slamming his BMW into the creature they’re tracking. The car ends up wedged into the Upside Down wall, leaving Steve stranded with Dustin, Nancy, and Jonathan. Tension between him and Jonathan keeps bubbling up; the two can’t seem to stop poking at each other, but Steve makes it clear he isn’t trying to win Nancy back or compete with Jonathan over her.

Jonathan Byers

Jonathan Byers keeps butting heads with Steve, the old tension between them surfacing whenever Nancy is involved, even though neither one admits it out loud. Jonathan follows the Demogorgon through the Upside Down with Steve and Nancy, and Dustin, ending Part 1 stranded on the other side of the wall and cut off from Joyce and Will. What the others don’t know is that Jonathan has been carrying an engagement ring hidden in a cassette case, he’s been planning to propose to Nancy when the dust finally settles, even if the timing now feels further away than ever.

Robin Buckley

Robin Buckley spends much of Part 1 working side by side with Will, helping him make sense of the visions and powers and pushing him to stop burying parts of himself. Their conversations in the tunnels become one of the season’s emotional anchors, with Robin gently guiding him as he navigates his identity and the fear that still shadows him. She also plays a key role in the Turnbow plan, helping drug the family and move the blindfolded kids into the tunnels. Robin is nearly killed when a Demogorgon attacks the evacuation point, surviving only because Will’s powers erupt at the last second.

Lucas Sinclair

Lucas Sinclair spends his early scenes talking to Max in the hospital and pleading for a sign she’s still in there. During the final attack, a Demogorgon charges him in the tunnels. Will saves his life when his powers erupt.

Max Mayfield

Max Mayfield reveals the full truth about her death: she woke up inside Henry’s memories, trapped in a maze of his past and her own trauma. She found refuge in a cave Henry refuses to enter, realizing it’s the one place in his mind that scares him. Max has been hiding there for months. With Holly now at her side, she sees a possible escape for the first time. She ends Part 1 in the cave, alive but still imprisoned within Henry’s world.

Holly Wheeler

Holly Wheeler begins the volume as Henry’s captive at Creel House, befriended through the Mr. Whatsit persona. After receiving Henry’s false “map,” she leaves the house and ends up finding Max in the woods. She now hides with Max, preparing to follow Max’s instructions and re-enter Creel House to keep Henry from knowing she escaped.

Joyce Byers

Joyce Byers starts Part 1 in full protective-mother mode. She can’t shake the guilt from the night Will was taken years ago, the eight hours she came home from work and didn’t check on him, and it shapes the way she watches him now. She leads the extraction plan with that same force, guiding several of the targeted children through the tunnels and refusing to let fear slow her down. At the base, she confronts Vecna head-on, only to be thrown aside with a single gesture.

Erica Sinclair

Erica Sinclair successfully drugs the Turnbow family with the pie and helps move the blindfolded kids into the tunnels. She slips the drugs into the family’s pie and, once they’re unconscious, helps blindfold and move the selected kids toward the tunnel entrance. While the others prepare the trap, Erica stays aboveground as lookout, holding watch and directing each group to the right spot so the extraction can happen cleanly

Derek Turnbow

Derek Turnbow begins as a panicked kid who doesn’t trust the group but becomes crucial to their inside plan. Disguised as a regular student, he identifies which kids have seen Mr. Whatsit. He is later taken into custody along with Will, Mike, and Joyce when the military breaks into the bathroom.

Vecna / Henry Creel

Vecna / Henry Creel moves freely through Hawkins under the Mr. Whatsit persona, quietly grooming the children he plans to take. By the end of Part 1, he has already abducted four of them, including Holly, and reveals that he is collecting twelve in total. In his view, these children are the ideal targets: physically fragile, emotionally unsteady, and easier to bend than adults. Vecna calls them “vessels,” minds he can reshape and fold into his own design until they become extensions of the world he wants to build. When he emerges through a portal at the base, restored and stronger than ever, he strengthens the Demogorgons with a single gesture and confronts Will directly. He tells Will he was the first proof of what he could create, the blueprint for the army he intends to form. After asserting his control and allowing the Demogorgons to drag several children through fresh portals, Vecna slips back into the Upside Down, leaving the full scale of his plan for Part 2.

Eight / Kali Prasad

Eight is alive inside the vault beneath the military base. She is unconscious, hooked up to machinery, and clearly held there by Dr. Kay. Neither Eleven nor Hopper knows how long she has been trapped. Her rescue is one of the biggest reveals of Part 1.

Dr. Kay

Dr. Kay oversees the base, nearly kills Eleven with sonic weapons, and orders the mass detention of Hawkins kids. Hopper knocks her unconscious before entering the vault.

Part 1 ends with the cast scattered, Vecna fully restored, and the walls around Hawkins showing new cracks. Volume 2 will have to answer how the twelve children fit into Vecna’s larger design and what Will’s awakening means for the final fight. The next 3 episodes land on December 25 on Netflix.