It’s hard to believe that “Stranger Things” Season 5 is out swinging like that. Well, it dialled up the hype so hard that Netflix reportedly crashed. Anyway, all’s good as we catch up on the first half of this much-anticipated series. Indeed, Volume 1 turns up the heat on the Demogorgons real fast! After five seasons of demogorgons, Mind Flayers, and enough dimension-hopping trauma, “Stranger Things” Season 5 Vol. 1 delivers a sci-fi narrative that is getting us closer to the ending of it all. And we want to explain it to you.
Because the Duffer brothers thrive on watching us spiral, the final moments leave our heroes in three very different but equally intriguing states. So let’s walk through exactly what happened, why it matters, and how Vol. 1 sets the chessboard for the show’s endgame.
Spoilers as we run up that road, run up that hill and run up that building, of course.
Episodes 1–4 Recap: Hawkins In Jeopardy
Before we get into the meat of it all, let’s recap the gist of this volume.
From the very start, Vol. 1 has been all about building tension and setting up the endgame. We’ve seen Hopper and Eleven trapped in the Upside Down, trying to figure out the mystery of the wall, and of course, the military complicating everything at every turn. Eleven’s powers have been pushed to the limit, particularly in Episode 3, “The Turnbow Trap,” where sound-based devices temporarily render her powerless, making her vulnerable even as she takes down soldiers with style. Hopper, as always, has been the protective figure, covering for her while also making the tactical calls that often save the day. Meanwhile, Will has been exploring his visions and understanding the limits of his powers, which are becoming eerily similar to Vecna’s.
Back in the Rightside Up, Joyce, Will, Robin, and the rest of the gang have been scrambling to protect Derek Turnbow from being Vecna’s next victim. The plan to set a trap using a tracker attached to a Demogorgon was textbook Hawkins ingenuity, and it worked, though not without its chaotic moments. Dustin’s ideas about modifying vehicles, Steve’s tinkering, and Murray’s supplies all played a part, showcasing that even in extreme danger, the group’s unique personalities and creativity are their secret weapons.
We also got to see Holly’s arc begin subtly in these episodes. Episodes 3 and 4 start planting seeds about her importance in Vecna’s plan, with Mr Whatsit, aka Henry, positioning her at the centre of something much bigger than a simple Hawkins threat. At the same time, the stage was being set for Max to make her long-awaited return and offer some desperately needed guidance to the kids in the Upside Down.
Episodes 3 and 4 also ramp up the overarching threat. Vecna’s army of Demogorgons expands, the Upside Down becomes a more deliberate and maze-like battleground, and by Episode 4, “Sorcerer,” it’s clear that Vecna isn’t choosing random victims—he’s specifically targeting Hawkins’ children to mould them into vessels for his plan. Finally, the reveal of the locked vault in the Upside Down, and the discovery that Eight is being held prisoner, delivers one of Vol. 1’s biggest cliffhangers and sets the tension for what’s still to come.
All of this momentum funnels neatly into three core storylines that shape Vol. 1. First, there’s Eleven and Hopper’s mission in the Upside Down, where they uncover the truth about the wall, Dr Kay’s experiments, and the chilling possibility that someone powerful—maybe even Vecna—is being kept behind that vault door. Then there’s Will’s rapidly evolving arc, as he taps into abilities that mirror Vecna’s own and finds himself pulled toward a destiny he doesn’t quite trust but can’t escape. And finally, Holly’s storyline emerges as the emotional wild card, leading her straight into a Camazotz-like memory realm where Max’s return becomes not just a rescue mission, but a pivotal link between Hawkins and the nightmare world Henry built.
Mr Whatsit: Vecna/Henry Creel in Disguise
First things first. Yes, our viney, Ultron-looking Vecna is back, and somehow he’s even worse than before. His red, twisted form alone is enough to give us nightmares, but it’s what he’s planning that’s truly terrifying.
Before we get into the terror show, let’s talk Mr Whatsit. This cheeky moniker, lifted from “A Wrinkle in Time”, is Vecna’s way of luring the children of Hawkins into his grasp. He isn’t just kidnapping kids for fun. He’s carefully picking them to shape their minds into perfect vessels for his ultimate goal: controlling and reshaping reality itself. Take Will, for example. Vecna’s manipulation of him in the first scene of the season shows just how methodical and strategic he is. He tests, he observes, he orchestrates, and every step is deliberate.
By Episodes 3 and 4, Vecna’s influence is spreading like wildfire. The Demogorgons aren’t just rampaging monsters. They’re extensions of his will, moving with precision and hunting the children under his psychic command. Will’s visions give us a chilling glimpse of his endgame: children strapped to spires in the Upside Down, twelve in total, each chosen for a specific reason.
Vecna isn’t just levelling up his powers. He’s levelling up Hawkins’ nightmare, effortlessly taking down the military in Episode 4, a show of force that makes it clear he is more dangerous than ever.
Psychological manipulation is just as central to his plan as brute strength. He targets kids because their minds are malleable, easily shaped to serve his purposes. He even tells Will outright: some minds simply don’t belong in this world. Instead, they belong to him.
By controlling the minds of Hawkins’ children, Vecna is building something far more terrifying than a monster army: an army of the mind, pliable and obedient to his will.
Holly Wheeler: Cleric In The Making
Holly Wheeler might have started as one of the tiniest players in the “Stranger Things” universe. Maybe a tad bit bigger than Dart, though.
However, Vol. 1 flips that script. From her very first scene, right after the title card in Episode 1, it’s clear she’s about to take centre stage in a way we didn’t expect. Right after the title card in episode 1, she notices a mysterious figure, a Mr Whatsit, and her curiosity pulls her straight into the thick of things.
Of course, appearances can be deceiving. Enter Henry, aka Vecna, who’s been the benevolent-looking man guiding Holly under the guise of protection. While he promises safety, we know better. By Episode 2, we see just how dangerous his “help” really is when a Demogorgon takes Holly into the Upside Down.
But rather than the dark, twisted world we expected, Holly next appears in the Creel house. It’s a seemingly safe, sunlit space where Henry claims the monsters can’t reach her. It’s a clever manipulation by Henry. She’s protected, but only in a way that serves Vecna’s ultimate plan.
By the end of Episode 3, Holly’s story takes a turn. Max — yes, our beloved Mad Max! — shows up, and suddenly the dynamic shifts. Holly now has a guide, a protector who can help her understand the dangers she’s facing.
And here’s where the D&D stats come in. In episode 1, Mike explains that Holly’s basically a cleric with divine powers, capable of opening doors to any dimension. In the show, this isn’t just a nerdy tabletop reference. It highlights her potential role as a literal key to escaping Vecna’s labyrinth. With Max’s mentorship, she’s learning to harness this “class feature,” turning her from a helpless kid into someone who can actively influence the outcome of the story.
Max’s Survival in Camazotz
Yes, after finally revealing herself to Holly, Sadie Sink’s Max gets some much-needed screen time to explain what the hell has been happening with her. Because let’s be honest, we never bought for a second that she was going to be bedridden for the entire season. Imagine if that had been the case. Yeesh.
As we saw in Season 4’s epic finale, Max died for a brief moment but was brought back thanks to Eleven’s intervention. Since then, she’s been trapped in a coma-like state, with Lucas loyally at her side through Episodes 1–4, refusing to give up. His persistence is touching, but it also begs the question: what actually happened to Max after her death?
Turns out, Max isn’t in the Upside Down… at least not physically. She’s trapped inside a psychic construct made from Henry Creel’s memories, a sprawling lattice of thousands of moments. From seeing Hawkins High in November 1959 to witnessing the day Henry first cursed her, Max has been navigating his memories like an unwilling time traveller.
Holly calls this place Camazotz, inspired by the alternate universe in “A Wrinkle In Time”.
Max explains to Holly that every victim Vecna took opened a gate to the Upside Down. And Max’s capture triggered the fourth and final gate, literally splitting Hawkins in two. For a fleeting moment, she should have been dead.
In Camazotz, Max realised she was only an observer, trapped inside Henry’s memories. And in this psychic prison, prisoners face three stark choices: Door 1, take your own life; Door 2, accept your fate; Door 3, escape.
Max chose Door 3, navigating memory after memory, getting so lost she looped back to the start. That is, until she heard music. Cue Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”. Max tells Holly that music finds you even in the darkest places, and in her case, it’s coming from the real world. Lucas hasn’t given up on her, and the music becomes her guide, leading her through terrifying memories, including the day Henry first cursed her, until she reaches the night Vecna captured her. Finally, she finds a portal to the real world: her hospital bed, Lucas at her side. She reaches for it, feels his hand, and starts running. However, the portal closes, the music stops, and Henry appears.
Henry’s Dark Cave
Max sprints away from Henry until she reaches that very same orange rock wall and finds a crevice to hide in. For reasons she still can’t explain, Henry refuses to enter the space. Whatever happened there carries a trauma so deep that even he won’t confront it. Lucky for Max, his fear becomes her shield.
To understand why Henry freezes at the cave entrance and why it becomes such an important turning point for Max and Holly, we have to look at the lore seeded in “The First Shadow”, the stage play that fills in Henry Creel’s earliest history. While the show doesn’t require audiences to have seen it, Vol. 1 pulls several emotional threads directly from it.
In “The First Shadow”, we learn that long before the Creels moved to Hawkins, a young Henry accidentally stumbled into something far bigger than himself. After a botched U.S. government experiment in 1943 sent the USS Eldridge into Dimension X, strange technology ended up hidden in the Nevada desert, right where the Creels were living. Henry found it, activated it, and was pulled into a separate dimension for twelve hours, where the Mind Flayer made contact with him for the very first time. His blood changed. His mind changed. And that brief journey transformed him into the creature he would eventually become.
That moment happened inside a cave.
The cave marks the moment Henry stopped being a normal human. It’s where the world split him into the boy he’d been and the monster he was destined to become. It terrifies him. Not because of the cave itself, but because of what it represents.
The cave isn’t just a hiding place. It’s Henry’s trauma point, the one crack in his otherwise unstoppable power. And now that Max and Holly are navigating the Camazotz-like mindscape he built, they may be the key to forcing Henry to confront that trauma.
The Duffers already confirmed the finale will echo parts of “The First Shadow”, and the cave connection is almost certainly one of those emotional callbacks.
The Upside Down Wall Mystery
Right out of the gate in Volume 1, Hopper and Eleven run into a problem that even Eleven’s powers can’t solve: a massive, oozy, impenetrable wall in the Upside Down. No matter how hard she pushes, tears, or tries to bend the laws of reality, this wall refuses to budge.
Later, Steve, Dustin, Nancy, and Jonathan enter the Upside Down in hot pursuit of a Demogorgon. That’s when Dustin picks up something strange on his radio. It’s interference that seems to have a pattern. Being Dustin, he maps it out, and what he discovers is jaw-dropping: the anomaly isn’t random. It forms a perfect circle around the entire Upside Down. And at the exact centre of this circle? Hawkins Lab, aka the birthplace of all this chaos.
The implications are huge. First, it strongly suggests that the Upside Down itself may have been created, or at least contained, by Hawkins Lab. This isn’t just a creepy parallel dimension; it’s a man-made, or at least man-shaped, construct. Second, the circle hints at a supernatural boundary, a kind of containment ring keeping the Upside Down in check, or maybe keeping something locked in.
For Volume 1, this wall is arguably one of the biggest new lore drops. It deepens the mystery of Hawkins Lab, the origin of the Upside Down, and the unseen rules governing the whole chaos. Plus, it sets up a lot of questions for Volume 2: if this wall can break, what else might be coming?
The Return of Eight
Well, Season 2 Episode 7 has got something to say because if you didn’t like that episode, well, we’ve got news for you.
So, yes, Hopper and Eleven go full-on stealth mode following breadcrumbs that lead straight to Dr Kay. They’re perplexed as to what the doctor is doing in the Upside Down. So, they investigate further, interrogating a captured soldier, during which Eleven discovers a vault in the base through her powers.
She refers to the person being hidden inside the vault as her Kryptonite… because she’s a punk rocker, yes, she is.
Source: Netflix
What follows is a tense, adrenaline-fueled sequence as they go and investigate the base, complete with one of the most heart-stopping fake-out “Hopper dies!” moments. Thunder clashes and firearms are shot as Eleven and Hopper finally reach the vault. And the reveal inside is equally shocking.
All this time, they thought it was Vecna. But no… it’s not sweet ol’ Jamie Campbell Bower… Neither is it a monster from the Upside Down.
It’s Eight. Not Six, not Seven. Eight!
Kali Prasad, designation 008, returns in the most shocking way possible: locked inside Dr Kay’s vault, unconscious, and strapped to a machine. We last saw her living freely, running with her crew, using her illusion-casting powers to survive. So how did she end up here? And why does Dr Kay need her, specifically?
The reveal reframes the entire season. Eight isn’t just a loose end from Season 2. She’s the missing piece. Unlike Eleven’s telekinesis or Henry’s psychic domination, Kali’s powers manipulate perception itself. She can make someone see anything, anywhere and reshape a battlefield. She can rewrite what an enemy thinks is real.
The Military Crisis in Hawkins Escalates
By Episode 4, the military situation in Hawkins has officially spiralled into chaos. Dr Kay goes full-on “lockdown mode,” ordering a citywide roundup of the kids. She’s convinced Eleven is abducting children thanks to someone spotting her at Holly’s house, and apparently, the only way to stop it is to have the military secure every single child in town. Predictably, this does not go according to plan.
Meanwhile, our crew is improvising like the pros we’ve come to expect. Derek goes undercover, asks questions, and identifies any other kids tied to “Mr Whatsit,” then quietly moves them into the hidden escape tunnel the team painstakingly dug beneath the base.
However, they get discovered. A classmate spots the operation and inadvertently blows the whole thing wide open. The military storms in, and suddenly, Mike, Will, Joyce, and Derek are in custody. The plan teeters on the brink of collapse.
Despite the chaos, the group manages to get several children safely through the tunnels. But hope is fleeting.
Will Byers: Coming Out As A Sorcerer Supreme
Will has also been central to this season so far. The first scene in this season literally details his battles in the Upside Down and how Vecna was part of it.
All through these 4 episodes, we see that Will starts to be more sure of himself — there’s also the allegory about his sexuality in here as well. He’s been having that back-of-the-neck sense that’s never left him ever since that first season. However, now, he goes into even more trances, which is how he discovers he’s more like an antenna for Vecna’s frequencies.
If Will gets close enough to Vecna’s location or even the areas where Vecna’s next victims are lurking, he could tap back into the hive mind. That connection would let him sense potential targets before Vecna reaches them, giving the group a chance to intervene and stop his plans.
However, Will doesn’t fully reach his full potential until that final scene when his friends are in danger. With Robin’s advice throughout the four episodes alongside Mike’s encouragement, Will’s journey finally comes to fruition in the final scene.
During the last scene of the volume, Demogorgons rush Robin, Lucas, and Mike, who had been helping Vecna’s potential victims to escape, and Will hears Robin’s voice echoing in his head. Robin’s monologue about fear, self-acceptance, and stepping fully into who you are. It’s a quiet, internal moment in the midst of chaos, but it hits him like a lightning bolt. Suddenly, something clicks.
Will’s eyes roll back, his body lifts off the ground, and the Demogorgons freeze mid-air, suspended as if time itself has paused. These creatures start twisting, contorting, and breaking, eerily reminiscent of Henry’s victims. We watch as Will exerts a power we’ve never fully seen from him before.
When he collapses, blood trickles from his nose, mirroring the same side effects we’ve seen in Henry and Eleven after they use their powers. Will isn’t just reacting to the Upside Down. He’s interacting with it, commanding it, and reshaping it in a way that shows he’s a force to be reckoned with.
For us, this is a revelation on multiple levels. It’s not Henry’s power he’s wielding. It’s something innate, something tied to the Upside Down itself. And it’s strong. Strong enough to take down multiple Demogorgons at once, strong enough to signal that Will’s role in this story is no longer passive or secondary. He’s no longer just the kid who keeps getting kidnapped. He’s a player, a sorcerer, and perhaps a key to surviving the horrors that Vecna and the Upside Down will continue to unleash.
Burning Questions That Need Answering in Volume 2
Volume 1 leaves us with a ton of threads dangling in the wind, and we can’t help but poke at them like curious scientists at Hawkins Laboratory. First and foremost: what exactly happened to Eight? Eleven’s long-lost sister is now revealed to be held prisoner by Dr Kay, hooked up to a mysterious machine. How long has she been trapped? What was that machine doing, and is she still capable of using her powers? We have more questions than Dustin has in a physics class, and Volume 2 owes us some serious answers.
Max’s situation raises its own mystery questions. We know she’s trapped in Henry’s memory prison, but how exactly will she and Holly execute her plan to escape? The title of Episode 6 is also “Escape From Camazotz”, so we can bet that they’re going to try something. We’ve seen a scene from the trailer where he carries Max’s comatose body in Hawkins General. Is Vecna going to come for her lifeless body in the real world? Will Lucas be able to play “Running Up That Hill” to lead her back to reality? What consequences will Henry’s psychic defences throw at her? Will Holly’s unique “cleric” abilities and her connection to opening doors between dimensions hint at bigger things to come for the two as they attempt to escape from Camazotz.
Also, could Henry’s unresolved trauma in that cave be hiding something bigger? Is this his Kryptonite? Or is it someone else pulling the strings here?
We also can’t ignore the Upside Down wall. Hopper, Eleven, and the gang map it, reveal it as a circle with Hawkins Lab at the centre, and leave us wondering: is it a barrier, a containment field, or something far more sinister? And if the boundaries keep weakening, will it hold? Or is the Upside Down getting ready to break free entirely?
Finally, the biggest question of all: what role will Will play in Volume 2? By the end of Volume 1, he’s demonstrated powers that rival Henry’s and Eleven’s. How does he access them, and will he be able to control them under pressure? And perhaps most importantly, what does this mean for Hawkins’ future, the children, and the fight against Vecna? The answers are all coming, and we can’t wait to dive back in.
Does Anyone Die in Volume 1?
Alright, alright, we know you’re all asking the same question: did anyone actually bite it in Volume 1 of “Stranger Things” 5? The answer is… mostly no. Despite the chaos, the Demogorgon attacks, and Vecna levelling up like some eldritch endgame boss, the major players survive… for now.
No main characters die in this volume. Max reveals herself to be very much alive in Henry’s mindscape. Similarly, Holly herself is in grave danger, but Volume 1 keeps her alive as a key piece of Vecna’s puzzle.
That said, we do see the consequences of Vol. 1 hitting hard: military personnel are brutally taken out by Demogorgons. Early on, Karen and Ted Wheeler almost get offed. A Demogorgon even slashes our dear Lucas. But none of our main heroes die. The stakes feel higher than ever, though, because survival here doesn’t mean safety, and Volume 2 is poised to push everyone even closer to the edge.
So yes, everyone we care about lives… but that doesn’t mean they’re out of the woods. The Duffer brothers have said that death is coming, and there will be some violent ones this season. So, we have to say our prayers for our good ol’ Hawkins crew as they continue fighting this unstoppable entity in the form of Vecna.
To the Duffers: please don’t kill Steve Harrington.
Vol. 1 of “Stranger Things” Season 5 is currently streaming on Netflix!
Catch the next three episodes this 26th December, along with the finale on New Year’s Day!
