I’m sure by now we’ve all heard the news that Stranger Things, everyone’s favorite summer obsession, has been renewed for a second season. After weeks of fans anxiously awaiting an official word from Netflix, a short teaser was released, confirming that the new episodes would take place in the fall of 1984, a year after the first season. It also revealed the titles of each of the nine episodes, but nothing else.
Gah! How ever shall will we make it to 2017 without you giving us more, Duffer Brothers? raises fists to the sky
Well, fear not, gentle readers. Using those episode titles, cast and creator interviews, casting information for the second season, and a whole heap of creative license, I have put together a thorough episode-by-episode outline of exactly what will happen in Season 2. Ex. Actly.*
*Probably not at all what will happen in Season 2
(Spoilers for Season 1 ahead. I will be shocked if there are actually spoilers for Season 2, but even so, proceed at your own risk.)
FLASHBACK: Opening scene is a young boy and slightly older girl playing together on a sidewalk that is not in Hawkins. They are not named, but are clearly siblings. The boy is wearing or holding some sort of unique trinket. Suddenly, they are startled by a noise, and the streetlights begin to flicker.
1984: Mike, Will, Lucas, and Dustin meet a new, standoffish girl at school with a short haircut named Max (who reminds them of another standoffish girl with a short haircut). Max doesn’t want to be their friend but then Will flashes to the Upside Down in her presence — maybe even dragging her with him momentarily — and they catch a glimpse of the Demogorgon, who is definitely not dead. Now they’re A Posse.
Missing the thrill of taking on the Demogorgon the year before, Nancy cuts her hair short and dyes it blonde, breaks up with Steve, and starts researching monsters. Her new rebellious attitude draws the attention of Max’s bad-boy older brother Billy, whose advances she spurns. Jonathan and Steve (who are buddies now) bond over keeping Billy away from Nancy.
Joyce and Hopper go on a date, because they should. Joyce voices her concerns that Will has not been entirely himself since returning from the Upside Down. Afterward, Hopper visits his Eleven food drop to find the Eggos missing, then is startled by a noise in the woods, which is probably not Eleven.
Mysterious newcomer Roman roams Hawkins, being mysterious and broody and probably wearing all black. Has a semi-humorous encounter with a beloved Hawkins resident, probably Mr. Clarke.
Glimpse of Hawkins Labs, and possibly of Dr. Brenner, who is also definitely not dead.
FLASHBACK: The boy and girl from the first episode are running in the dark, looking over their shoulders like something is chasing them. They hold hands as they sprint down an alley and hide in the shadows, but the monster finds them. We see the boy get taken as his sister watches, horrified.
1984: Dr. Brenner shows up at the Byers’ home to tell Joyce that she needs to let them study Will, since he is the only person they know of to have survived that long in the Upside Down. They use scientific terms and definitely do not say the words “Upside Down.” Joyce digs her heels in and gives Dr. Brenner some choice words about where he can stick his research. Dr. Brenner leaves, and Joyce tells Hopper what happened. Hopper engages in some Concerned Brooding.
Will and Max tell the others about how they saw the Demogorgon alive, which leads Mike to hope that maybe Eleven is alive too. The boys try to convince Will to take them to the Upside Down to find her, which prompts Will to finally tell his friends the story of how he survived in the Upside Down.
The kids go to ask Mr. Clarke his advice on whether it is safe, hypothetically, for Will to return to the Upside Down, which leads to their first meeting with Roman. Mr. Clarke gives them a hypothetical NOPE, but then Roman convinces Will to go back and to take her with him.
Mike tells Nancy about their suspicions, and Nancy in turn tells Jonathan. Jonathan and Steve both advise Nancy not to go after the Demogorgon again. Nancy misses Barb, who was always on her side, even though she definitely would not have been on her side in this.
Speaking of Barb, there is definitely a memorial or funeral or SOMETHING, because really.
FLASHBACK: We see the girl from the opening of the first episode as a teenager, clearly homeless, fiddling with the trinket that belonged to her brother. She is standing at a grave, smoking, then grinds her cigarette against the headstone and flicks it onto the ground. “I know you’re not in there,” she says, “but I promise, I’ll find you.”
1984: Will takes Roman to the Upside Down, which has changed since S1 to more closely resemble our world. Unbeknownst to them, Max follows them, searching for a place she can hide from Billy. Will and Roman come across a field of weird egg-like objects, which cause Will to have a panic attack. Roman takes Will back to our world, leaving Max alone in the Upside Down.
Billy comes looking for Max at Will’s house, but Jonathan refuses to let him in, saying that Max isn’t there. After Billy leaves, Jonathan asks Will when he last saw Max, and after talking with all the kids, they realize Max is probably in the Upside Down. Nancy is probably here for this too.
Roman goes to Hopper and Joyce to ask if they saw anyone besides Will when they visited the Upside Down. Roman reveals that the reason she is so obsessed with the Upside Down is that she saw her brother taken by a monster when they were kids and no one believed her.
Dr. Brenner continues to pester the Byers family. We all wonder why he did not die in Season 1.
Max wanders through the field where the eggs are, and dubs it a “pumpkin patch.” She breaks one open, which is not a good idea, but this is Stranger Things, after all. Inside is… Eleven!
Haha, just kidding, that would be too easy. Inside is a smaller Demogorgon-like creature. Max wigs out and runs away, but can’t find the way back to our world. She sees a house and goes inside. The inside of the house is not like the rest of the Upside Down. It’s brighter and cleaner and not nearly so spooky. Right before the episode ends, we realize Max isn’t alone.
FLASHBACK: The girl is now an adult in her 20s and is clearly Roman. She walks angrily out of an old, elegant mansion, then turns back just in time to see it go up in flames. She smiles a little, her face aglow.
1984: There’s a boy in the house with Max, and they are around the same age. He comes into the light, and we can see it’s the boy from the flashbacks in the first episode! Who we now realize is Roman’s brother! He tells Max to come with him and hide, and takes her deeper into the house where he has a labyrinth of halls and rooms and closets he uses to hide from the monsters. Max asks if he means the Demogorgon, but he shakes his head. These are different monsters.
The boy says he doesn’t know how long he’s been in the Upside Down, but the house keeps him safe. He calls it his Palace. He doesn’t know if it’s possible to leave, but Max tells him the story of Will and they decide to try to escape together.
Back in Hawkins, Joyce goes to Hawkins Labs to tell Dr. Brenner to leave Will alone, but she finds it overrun with Mulder and Scully government agents, who she manages to learn are investigating their entrance to the Upside Down, as it is similar to other rifts that have manifested in other parts of the world for years. The agents tell Joyce to go home, but she pushes past them, determined to find Dr. Brenner, but when she gets to the rift, she is met by none other than Hopper, who has been working with the government since they got Will back.
Mike, Lucas, and Dustin decide to mount a rescue mission to the Upside Down for Max and Eleven. Will is scared, but doesn’t want to be left behind, so Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve offer to come along for protection. Billy follows them, convinced that they are hiding his sister. Once they are all in the Upside Down, Billy confronts them, but just as things start to become violent, they realize they are SURROUNDED BY DEMOGORGONS.
Flashback: Roman is in a diner, reading a newspaper. One of the stories is about The Boy Who Came Back to Life. She calls over the waitress and asks how far it is to Hawkins, Indiana.
1984: There is a BATTLE. Steve and the Baseball Bat get to go another round. Maybe Nancy has a gun again, or better yet, a sword or a flamethrower. Jonathan has whatever Nancy doesn’t have. Billy has his fists. The kids have screaming and running and Lucas’s slingshot.
Right when things are looking DIRE, all of a sudden, ELEVEN SHOWS UP AND SAVES THEM ALL. IT IS TRULY EPIC.
Then she tells the others they have to run, because there will be more. The kids ask where the monsters are all coming from, but Eleven doesn’t answer. They run by the pumpkin patch, which shows that now all the egg-things have hatched. In the distance, we see The Palace, but the kids don’t notice it and run the other direction.
Meanwhile, Joyce is shocked that Hopper is working with the government and didn’t tell her. Hopper tells her they think Will’s ability to communicate with her while he was in the Upside Down can be used for military communication. He was working to change their minds, but in order to do that, he had to show he could be trusted, which means he was forbidden from telling anyone who he was working with.
Roman is talking to Mr. Clarke about the Upside Down, telling him what she’s learned in her years of trying to find her brother and since coming to Hawkins. Mr. Clarke speculates that the Upside Down is constantly changing and adapting based on the people in it. In that case, Roman asks him, what are the monsters? Mr. Clarke talks about how little we understand the human brain, and how maybe the monsters are the physical manifestation of the minds in the Upside Down becoming supercharged with fear and having to discharge that mental energy. “Like a bolt of lightning in a storm,” he explains. “But… with monsters.”
Back in the Upside Down, the kids have to stop running because Will is coughing uncontrollably. He goes to his knees, then coughs up a weird slimy slug-thing like he did in the S1 finale.
The weird slug that Will coughed up starts to grow into a Demogorgon-like creature before their eyes. “You mean the Demogorgon is a giant loogie?” Dustin shouts. “Were they all giant loogies?” He looks at Eleven. “Were they YOUR loogies? Next time try a lozenge.” Eleven leads them all out a tree that leads to our world, where she says the Demogorgon can’t follow yet. Exhausted, and upset that they never found Max, the kids go home.
Roman and Mr. Clarke realize that if the Demogorgons are being created by people trapped in the Upside Down, then the more people who go there, the more monsters they’ll create. Roman wonders how many monsters would be created by a lifetime in the Upside Down. Mr. Clarke does Math, and Roman realizes that even if her brother had been taken to the Upside Down alive, he’d have been swarmed by monsters by now and wouldn’t still be alive. Roman decides she needs to close the rift to the Upside Down once and for all, so that this never happens to anyone else.
Meanwhile, Max and the boy are trying to find their way out of the Upside Down. They see a lot of monsters, but every time one appears, the boy is able to find a place to hide. Max wonders how he can always find a hiding place so quickly, and he shrugs and says they’ve just always appeared for him. However, despite retracing their steps, they can’t seem to find their way back to Hawkins.
Joyce and Hopper go back to the Byers’ house just as Jonathan and Will return, looking bedraggled. They ask where they’ve been and, reluctantly, the story comes out. Joyce and Hopper realize they have to ask for help from Dr. Brenner again in order to save Max.
The government team, along with Joyce and Hopper, heads into the Upside Down to find Max, but are immediately swarmed by monsters. A firefight breaks out, and some try to run back toward the rift that leads into Hawkins Labs, but before they can get there, Roman and Mr. Clarke destroy it from the other side (maaaaybe with homemade flamethrowers?) Everyone panics that they are now trapped in the Upside Down. Also the monsters are still attacking, and seem to be multiplying.
Billy has returned to Hawkins Labs to try to find Max. He sees it burning and it is clear by his expression that he’s going to do something reeeeeeally stupid.
Joyce and Hopper get separated from the rest in the commotion and are cornered by a monster. Hopper draws his gun.
Nancy goes looking for Billy, because she is worried about what he’s going to do since they didn’t find Max. Jonathan and Steve go looking for Nancy, because Nancy is great.
The kids decide to go talk to Mr. Clarke to see if he has another idea for how to find Max, but when they look for him, he’s nowhere to be found. They see the notes he had made for Roman, and ask Eleven if he is right that people are creating the Demogorgons. She tells them it’s not just the Demogorgons, but all of the Upside Down. She then reveals that the Upside Down only started to look like Hawkins when Will was there, and before that, it was just blackness. The kids speculate that maybe each kid that goes to the Upside Down has the power to create a new part of it.
Max and the boy hear the fighting and go to investigate. Max recognizes Joyce, and tells Joyce and Hopper to follow them. Together they run until they find a little cabin in the woods. They pack inside it and Hopper asks if the monster can get in, but the boy says the monsters never get into his hiding places.
The kids speculate that since Eleven can find people and fight monsters in the Upside Down, and Will can create environments and pass easily from one dimension to the other, maybe if they work together, they’ll have the power in the Upside Down to not only find Max, but to create a way out for her. Will and Eleven hold hands, and together, they close their eyes and try to find Max, but all they can see is the outside of the cabin. Try as they might, they can’t get in.
The kids wonder if maybe Max’s power is force fields, and that’s why they can’t get to her. They need to figure out how to get to her, and decide to break into Hawkins Labs to use their equipment to boost Will and Eleven’s powers. But when they arrive, they find the lab on fire, and Mr. Clarke unconscious on the ground. Mr. Clarke tells them that Billy took Roman, and that he thinks she is the key to finding Max. The kids explain their theory to Mr. Clarke, and he says this fits with his “lightning” theory for the Demogorgon. What they need is a way to amplify their brainwaves in order to override Max’s “force field.”
Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve find Billy with Roman, and devise a plan to free her. Nancy insists that she should be the one to distract Billy, because he’s least likely to hurt her. She goes to talk to him, telling him that she knows where Max is, while Jonathan keeps watch and Steve goes to help Roman.
The kids and Mr. Clarke use SCIENCE to create a modified EEG that will not only monitor brain activity, but increase it (I don’t know how. I’m a writer, not a scientist). With Will and Eleven both hooked up to the machine, they are able to go into the Upside Down and enter the cabin.
FLASHBACK: Roman’s brother’s first day in the Upside Down, running from the monster into The Palace, which is much smaller than it is in 1984. Once he goes inside, it starts to expand.
FLASHBACK: Eleven is pulled out of the Upside Down after her first encounter with the Demogorgon, but we continue to watch as the monster tries to follow her, hits a wall we can’t see, and then methodically starts clawing at it, trying to break through.
FLASHBACK: The outside of Castle Byers, as we can hear Will singing inside, we see the woods surrounding it start to come into view out of the blackness.
1984: Monsters are starting to come out through the fire out of Hawkins Labs. Nancy and Billy are interrupted by a blazing Demogorgon, which draws his attention back to Roman, where he spots Steve. Billy and Steve begin to fight as Nancy and Jonathan try to keep the Demogorgon away from Roman.
Will and Eleven are able to get into the cabin, where they find Joyce, Hopper, Max, and the boy. They bring them back to Hawkins, where Hopper immediately says he needs to go check things out at Hawkins Labs, and see if the fire is under control. Mr. Clarke tells Max that Billy was at the lab last he saw him, and Max insists on going with Hopper, and the other kids insist on staying with Max, so the whole group decides to go.
When they get there, EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE AND SWARMING WITH MONSTERS. Nancy and Jonathan are cornered. Billy is bloody and on the ground. Steve is trying to drag Roman to safety. Hopper starts shooting, but it’s not going to be enough. Eleven and Will join hands as Eleven begins pushing the monsters back toward the burning lab and Will starts making the entire environment around them flash between Hawkins and the Upside Down. The boy starts pulling them together so they can all join hands, and once everyone is linked, he stands with Will and Eleven and, all at once, the monsters stop attacking. They stand, almost peaceful, before there is one final flash of the Upside Down, and they are gone.
Steve finally gets Roman free, and as she gets her first look at the group, she gasps when she sees that her brother is there, unchanged from the last time she saw him, over two decades earlier. They hug and cry and their reunion is very heartwarming.
Max looks around and realizes Billy is gone. She asks the other kids where he went, and while Lucas wonders if he ran away in the commotion, Eleven says that he went with the monsters. Max looks shocked, but not sad.
Hopper looks thoughtfully at Will, Eleven, and Roman’s brother, then at the burning lab. Closing shots of the episode are a montage of Hopper finishing his report of the “lab explosion” that caused the fire, in which he indicates that all were lost, including the young girl who was the ward of Dr. Brenner; Roman and her brother in a car, heading away from Hawkins; the Byers family sitting around a dinner table; Mike and Nancy showing Eleven the real bed their parents have put in the basement for her; and then finally, all six kids – Mike, Lucas, Dustin, Will, Eleven, and Max – outside on a sunny day, teaching Eleven how to ride a bike.