Everything that happened in Stranger Things season 4.

This year the fifth and final season of Stranger Things will finally make its ways to the screen. But a lot has happened the last four seasons. And you probably don’t remember all of it. But don’t worry I’ve watched all seasons again and made a recap for each season, so you don’t have to. But I certainly recommend watching all the seasons again before the final season starts. I’ve very much enjoyed the whole ride all over again.

Stranger Things is an epic coming of age story about friendship, family, love, and courage. It’s suspenseful, emotional. It has a lot of character development and a huge 80s vibe and of course creepy scary monsters, both human and supernatural. 

So let’s take a look at the last season before the end battle starts. 

New Characters

• Eddie Munson. He is the founder of Hellfire Club who plays Dungeons & Dragons. Mike and Dustin also joined when they went to high school.
• Argyle. He is a pizza delivery boy and friend of Jonathan in Lenora.
• Dmitri Antonov. He is a guard at the Kamchatka prison where Hopper is being held. For money he helps Hopper escape.
• Yuri Ismaylov. A smuggler and pilot who flies Joyce and Murray from Alaska to Russia to rescue Hopper but he can’t be trusted.
• Chrissy Cunningham. A troubled cheerleader who is haunted. 
• Jason Carver. A basketball player and Chrissy’s boyfriend.

When it all started part 1

In 1979 September 8 there’s a massacre at the Hawkins Laboratory. All the children and orderlies and scientists are killed in a brutal way. While El as the only survivor makes her way to the Rainbow Room she sees all the carnage. But Brenner also survived and asks her: “What have you done?”

Everything seems back to normal

El, Joyce, Will and Jonathan moved to Lenora, California. El writes Mike that she is happy, but in reality she is being bullied by a girl named Angela and she still doesn’t have her powers back. Will paints a lot and Jonathan smokes weed a lot with Argyle. And Joyce has a job as a tele-marketeer. 

Back in Hawkins Dustin and Mike have joined a high school Dungeons & Dragons club named Hellfire where Eddie Munson is the dungeon master. Lucas has joined the basketball team. Nancy runs the school newspaper. Steve and Robin work at the video rental store.

But nor for long

Joyce gets a doll sent to her by mail from Russia. She calls Murray for help and when she smashes the doll, she finds a letter inside that says Hopper is still alive and that they have to call a number. When they call ‘Enzo” picks up, a codename for the restaurant Hopper and Joyce were going to have their first date. They have to go to Alaska and bring 40.000 dollar. Without telling the kids that Hopper might be alive they leave for Alaska.

Meanwhile in Hawkins Max is doing not well. She has nightmares about Billy’s death and feels guilty. She is seeing a guidance counselor at school and so does Chrissy a cheerleader whom Max hears crying in the bathroom. 

After school Chrissy goes to see Eddie to buy drugs to calm her mind from the hallucinations she is having about people who are looking like death and a ticking grandfather’s clock. When she’s in his trailer she goes into a trance, levitates to the ceiling and all her limbs are being snapped and her eyes sucked in and all her bones are being broken. A monster has invaded her mind and is killing her. 

When Eddie flees the scene, Max, who lives across him at the trailer park, sees him but also sees flickering lights, just like before when the Mind Flayer showed up. 

Continue reading below this announcement.

What happened to Hopper

When the machine exploded, he jumped and survived. But he was found by the Russians who took him to Russia and after torturing him for information they put him in a prison in Kamchatka. There Dmitri Antonov is a prison guard who wants to make extra money and helps Hopper send him the message to Joyce. 

Things go downhill fast in Lenora

Mike is coming to Lenora for spring break but El is still lying to him. Until at the skating rink she is bullied so severely by Angela and her friends that she hits Angela over the head with a skate. 

Later at home the police come for her to interrogate her. When she is being brought to a juvenile prison, the transport is being intercepted by Owens and his associates. He takes El with her and tells her she can get her powers back. He takes her to an underground facility where El sees Brenner again. Meanwhile the military led by Sullivan is looking for El, because they think she is responsible for Chrissy’s death. 

Owens associates come to see Jonathan, Will and Mike to tell them about El and that she’s in danger again and they are too. So two agents are stationed at their house. But Mike, Will and Jonathan want to look for El and call Argyle. When he arrives the house is being raided by the military. The agents are shot and Jonathan, Will and Mike escape with Argyle and take one of the wounded agents with them. Just before he dies he wants to tell them something. He only manages to say ‘Nancy.’ They burry him in the desert and find a little note with a number on it in a pen that belonged to the agent. When they call it, it’s a computer. So they go see Suzie in Utah to help them call the computer. They find out the location of “Nancy” and are headed there.

Things go downhill fast in Hawkins too

In Hawkins Nancy goes investigating Chrissy’s case and takes Fred with her. When she interviews Wayne Munson, Eddie’s uncle, who tells her about Victor Creel who in 1959 stabbed out the eyes of his family and killed them, just like what happened to Chrissy, Fred wanders off and also falls victim to the unknown monster. 

The whole Hawkins party meets up with Nancy and Dustin comes up with the name Vecna, a spell caster, a dark wizard, an undead creature. In Dungeons & Dragons they currently play Vecna’s Curse. We get to see that Vecna lives in the Upside Down in an old Mansion and when he kills he’s connected to vines and floats in the air. 

Max finally tells them what’s going on with her. She also has headaches and nightmares and hallucinations just like Chrissy and Fred and it started 5 days ago. The other two were killed after 6 days, so Max has now one day left. They have to hurry to find out what they are up against and how to defeat it.

Max has written letters to say goodbye and wrote one for Billy which she reeds to him at the cemetery. There Vecna comes for her and she goes into a trance and even starts to levitate.

Victor Creel’s story

Nancy and Robin go see Victor Creel at the Pennhurst asylum. He tells them that he and his family moved to Hawkins after an inheritance. But the house they bought was haunted. First his wife Virginia was killed, exactly the way Chrissy and Fred were killed and then his little girl Alice. His son Henry fell into a coma and Victor tried to kill himself. But the demon never took him. But they do find out that music can break Vecna’s spell. 

Max is still levitating at the cemetery and just in time they put on Max’ headphones and play her favorite song ‘Running up that Hill’ by Kate Bush. While Max is being haunted in her mind by Vecna she runs to the old Creel mansion. When she hears the music she sees a portal opening and runs towards it. She runs through and comes out of the trance. Now she always has her music with her. At the Wheeler’s basement she draws pictures of what she has seen. Nancy puts them together and it’s the Creel mansion. 

In the cold

Joyce and Murray have arrived in Alaska and find Yuri the pilot. But he betrays them. He drugs them to hand them over to the Russians for a reward. While they are flying in the air, Murray fights Yuri with his new karate skills and knocks him out. But the plane crashes, luckily near the town where they were headed.

Hopper is planning his escape and sets off to the church. But he is also betrayed by Yuri and the Russians catch him. They also throw Antonov in jail as a traitor. 

Joyce and Murray make it to the church with Yuri’s involuntary help. Their plan is to walk into the prison. Murray pretends to be Yuri who is turning the prisoners in. They arrive just in time to see that Hopper and Antonov and others have to fight a Demogorgon. But Hopper has a plan. He has stolen a lighter and booze and makes a torch to fight off  the Demogorgon. 

Murray and Joyce apprehend the prison warden and open all the doors so Hopper and Antonov, who are the only ones left, can escape. Inside the prison they find a lab with Upside Down dark particles and dormant Demodogs on which the Russians experiment. They escape through a vent and ride back to the church. There they try to contact Owens, while Yuri has a helicopter he has to patch up to take them back to Alaska. 

Gates in Hawkins

Eddie is now the prime suspect of the murders. The Hawkins party knows he’s innocent and help him hide and bring food. But Jason is convinced that Eddie is a satanic cult leader and a killer. Jason and two others from the basketball team find Eddie on a boat on the lake. When they swim towards him one of the boys, Patrick gets killed by Vecna. Eddie manages to get away and hides in the woods and contacts the Hawkins party with a walkie talkie.

When the Hawkins Party go see Eddie in the woods, Dustin discovers that the compass is acting strange again just like before when there were gates to the Upside Down. So they follow the compass and think that there’s a gate in Lovers Lake where Patrick was killed. At every kill scene there is now a new Gate. Vecna is making Gates with every kill. 

So they go to the lake. While Dustin, Max and Lucas stay at the shore, Steve dives into the lake and finds the Gate and is pulled in. Nancy dives after him and so does Robin, so Eddie has to as well. 

Lucas, Dustin and Max are caught by the police and brought back to the Wheeler’s house where all their parents are gathered. There they find out that Steve, Nancy, Robin and Eddie are in the Upside Down and they find a way to communicate with them. In the Upside Down they find out that Nancy’s house is not her house of 1986 but from 1983. And her last journal entry was on November 6 1983, the day El opened the Mothergate. 

Dustin tells them to go to Eddie’s trailer, where Chrissy was killed, because the Watergate is now guarded by Demobats. Dustin, Lucas, Max and Erica, who has now joined them, are going to meet them there. They throw up a rope of sheets that falls down into the Upside Down so they can climb up and fall back into our world.

But before Nancy can go up she is put in a trance by Vecna. He shows her who he really is and what he is planning. 

When it all started part 2

Meanwhile El is at the underground facility with Owens and Brenner and scientists and soldiers trying to get her powers back. Nancy, a big sensory deprivation tank runs a program that triggers El’s memories. Memories she has forgotten. 

It takes her back to 1979 when she and other kids are being trained by Brenner. One orderly, Henry takes an interest in her and helps her, giving her useful advice how to make her powers stronger with a memory that makes her angry and sad. In doing so she defeats the strongest boy who now seeks revenge and attacks El with three others. He is punished by Brenner. But that will only make him angrier says Henry. He tells El they want to kill her and that Papa will let them. Because he is afraid of El’s powers. So he plans for her to escape.

But he can’t go with her because he has a tracking device in his neck that also weakens him. When El takes it out for him, he shows himself for who he really is. He kills everyone in the Lab and wants El to join him because he sees himself in her. But she refuses and fights him. She is about to loose when she thinks of a memory of her mother telling her she loves her and that makes her stronger then Henry. She throws him at the wall, turning him into ashes and creating a portal through which she sends him. 

Henry/Vecna tells Nancy that when he fell into the Upside Down he saw himself as an explorer of a new world. He finds the shadow smoke and turns it into the Mind Flayer. So it was Henry all along. From the beginning, after El opened the Mothergate, he was trying to open Gates, like El could and sought her powers. The Mind Flayer, the Demogorgon and Demodogs and the Flayed were all under his control. To seek El and her powers, to destroy her and her friends and finally to destroy everyone. 

Henry, number one, Vecna

When Nancy was in a trance Vecna showed her his past. It wasn’t a demon that killed his family, but it was him. He had always known that he was different. He experimented on animals, killing them, but liked the black widow spider. A relentless predator, just like him. His mother wanted to put him in an asylum so he killed her and then he killed his sister. He felt powerful with each killing, but it also drained him, putting him in a coma. 

When he woke up he was at the Hawkins Lab. Brenner wanted to study him, and control him. When he couldn’t he tried to recreate him. Hence the other kids. Now he wants to destroy all of humanity. He shows her awful things that are going to happen. An army of monsters invading Hawkins.

They figure out that Vecna’s clock always chimes four times when he kills. Every kill opens a Gate. When he has opened four Gates all hell breaks loose. But just like El, when she is in the sensory deprivation tank, is weakened, he also has a weakness. When he is locked into the vines to seek to invade the mind of his victim, he is weakened. So they set up a plan. 

Preparing for battle

When El has her memories back, she also gets her powers back. She finds the Hawkins Party in her mind and discovers that they are planning to kill Vecna/Henry. But Brenner says she’s not strong enough and won’t let her go. He restrains Owens and El fights Brenner telling him he is the monster all along. But he sedates her, just when the military has found them. Brenner escapes with El in his arms, but is shot. El wakes up and destroys the chopper that has orders to kill her. 

At the same time the Lenora Party arrives at the facility and picks up El and they escape. Brenner finally is dead. They are off to Hawkins to help their friends but it’s too far away to get there in time. So they build a sensory deprivation tank so El can Piggyback ride Max in her mind and help her. 

The Hawkins Party’s plan is to kill Vecna when he’s connected to the vines. Max serves as bait at the Creel mansion and Lucas and Erica go with her. Steve, Nancy, and Robin go into the Upside Down to the Creel mansion to kill Vecna. While Dustin and Eddie stay at Eddie’s trailer in the Upside Down to lure all the Demobats away from the mansion. Max has a strategy to hide from Vecna in nice memories.

But Joyce, Hopper and Murray can help them as well. They go back into the prison lab where everybody is now slaughtered, to destroy the dark particles. The particles are now inside the Demogorgon and the Demodogs, so they are now connected to Vecna. To destroy them will weaken Vecna. 

The Battle: wins and losses

At first it all seems to go exactly according to plan. In the mansion Max challenges Vecna to come take her. It takes a while but then she goes into a trance.

Dustin and Eddie lure the Demobats and when they are close enough they hide inside the trailer. 

Erica sends the Upside Down Party a message that they can enter the mansion. 

In Russia Joyce, Hopper and Murray lure a Demodog so that they all follow and Murray can burn them. 

El is looking for Max in her mind. And Max is hiding in a nice memory.

But then it all goes wrong.

Jason and his vigilantes find Erica and Lucas. Jason comes up to the attic with a gun and demands Lucas to wake up Max. 

In her mind Vecna has found Max and is chasing her.

The vines grab Steve, Robin and Nancy. And the Demobats enter the trailer and attack Dustin and Eddie. 

In Russia Hopper is attacked by a Demodog.

And Max is starting to float, and El still can’t find her. 

Eddie lures the Demobats away from Dustin to fight them off as a hero. 

But then things are looking up. El has found Max and fights Vecna. But Vecna is still too strong. He restrains Max with vines in the Upside Down mansion and does the same with El. He wants El to watch Max die. But Mike talks to El and she hears him. He tells her she’s a superhero and that he loves her and that she has to fight. While Max is floating in the air Lucas manages to fight off Jason. But her limbs are beginning to breaks and her eyes are starting to bleed. El breaks free of the vines and throws Vecna against a tree away from Max. 

In Russia Murray burns down all the Demodogs and Hopper slays the last Demogorgon. At  the same time Steve, Nancy and Robin are freed from the vines and make it to the attic, setting Vecna, who’s in a trance, on fire, while Nancy shoots him. 

From inside Max’ mind, from the Upside Down and all the way from Russia Vecna is being attacked and finally shot through the attic window. But when they go downstairs he is gone. 

Antonov and Yuri pick up Hopper, Joyce and Murray at the prison to finally go home. 

In two heartbreaking scenes we see Lucas holding the dying Max in his arms. While El from within her mind is with them. She touches Max’ heart. Meanwhile Eddie is dying in Dustin’s arms. 

Because of Max’ death, the fourth Gate is opened. It runs through the mansion and the attic slicing Jason in half and it runs through the whole town, making buildings collapse.

The aftermath

Two days later the Lenora Party is riding into Hawkins while a whole caravan of cars is leaving Hawkins. They reunite with the Hawkins Party and have a lot of catching up to do. The find out that Max is in a coma at the hospital and Lucas and Erica are with her. The doctors say she was clinically dead for one minute but that a miracle started her heart again. That was El but only Mike and Will suspect what really happened. They don’t know if she’ll ever wake up.

Hawkins looks like a battlefield, most of the town is destroyed and the high school gym is made into a shelter for people who have lost their home or who are looking for their loved ones. Steve, Robin and Dustin go help out and Dustin finds Wayne Munson who is looking for Eddie, who is now the main suspect and presumed dead. He tells him that Eddie was a good guy and that he died a hero. 

The others are installing El in the now abandoned old Byers house to hide her, when Hopper and Joyce arrive. They also have a lot of catching up to do. 

But then Will gets goosebumps in his neck just like when the Mind Flayer showed up. Dark clouds are gathering above Hawkins and ashes are starting to fall out of the sky. They walk up the hill and look out over Hawkins. The flowers are dying and turning into ashes and above Hawkins a dark red sky is rumbling. The Upside Down is leaking into our world. 

That was an emotional rollercoaster out of this world. They thought they had won the war, but they didn’t even won the battle. Vecna is coming for them all. 

Whatever the final season may bring. It will be Bitchin’