“Stranger Things” Season 5 Volume 1 packed a number of big reveals into the first half of the show’s final outing while raising even more questions.
The final season gets off to the races immediately as Hawkins is under quarantine following Vecna’s attack in Season 4. But our various heroes aren’t sitting on their hands, they’re making frequent (dungeon) crawls into the Upside Down when the military makes supply runs into the space to hunt for Henry and stop everything once and for all.
Eighteen months must have been the cap for both sides because Vecna starts making his endgame moves right as the Hawkins bunch gets antsy and gets bold. The first four episodes of Season 5 contain a number of big reveals, deadly attacks, and characters finally leveling up, which perfectly set up how the back half of the season will play out.
Here are the biggest moments from “Stranger Things” Season 5 Volume 1.
The Attack on the Wheelers
Vegas odds on Ted Wheeler becoming attacked/killed by a monster from the Upside Down were very high by the second episode of Season 5, which found the entire Wheeler family – the ones who hadn’t been fighting demogorgons since Day 1 at least – finally facing down the realities of their situation.
Vecna sends a Demo to kidnap Holly, but she is able to get away long enough to get both her parents’ attention. Ted tries to fight the monster off with a golf club, but is ripped up and tossed through a wall into Mike’s room. Karen puts up a better fight with nothing but a broken bottle of wine. She gets more than a few good stabs in before her torso and throat are ripped up, and she’s flung aside while Holly is finally taken to Vecna.
Miraculously (and somewhat cowardly of the show, honestly), neither of the Wheeler parents died in the attack. Karen is rushed into critical surgery and can’t speak afterward because of the damage to her throat, and Ted is in a coma.
Max Becomes a Dream Walker in Vecna’s Memories
To the surprise of nobody, Max did not remain braindead for the first batch of episodes. Instead, she eventually makes contact with Holly after she’s been brought to the mind prison that Vecna made to keep her. She explains everything she knows about the monster and the Upside Down since she got involved in the whole mess back in Season 2 – and then she explains where she has been.
It boils down to her not really being braindead, but rather lost within a tangled web of Vecna/Henry/One’s memories. She spent the 18 months she’s been in a coma wandering throughout Vecna’s memories, whether they’re bad moments like the Massacre at Hawkins Lab or his time at Hawkins High with younger versions of Joyce, Hopper, Karen, Bob, etc.
Eventually, Lucas’ commitment to seeing her every day and playing her favorite song becomes a guide for her, and she begins traveling through her own past memories – maybe setting up a way for the show to do time travel without the time travel element – and almost gets out, but she’s discovered by Vecna before she can make it. She’s forced to flee through memories until she finds a cave system that he won’t follow her into for some reason. Max made it her home, and she resigned herself to living a life in this prison until Holly arrived, and now she plans to get them both out.
Kali/Eight Has Been Weaponized by the Military
While in the Upside Down, Eleven and Hopper learn that the military has these new sonar cannons attached to their vehicles that can attack El mentally and stop her from using their powers. Much of Volume 1 has them distracted from their hunt for Vecna so they can figure out what is happening and how they can stop this.
They become convinced that Dr. Kay and the military have somehow already caught Vecna and are weaponizing him against Eleven. They break in successfully, but things go south, and they are caught by Dr. Kay. Luckily, things turn for them once again and Hop is able to knock Kay out and tell El that he’s going in to kill Vecna one way or another – he’s strapped explosives to himself to ensure he gets the job done.
El is locked outside the room, but shortly after Hop leaves, the sonar attack stops, and he opens up the door. He ushers El into the room to show her that the person they’ve weaponized against El is actually Kali/8 – the girl Eleven met in Chicago in the infamous “Lost Sister” episode from Season 2.
Vecna Gets His Children
Vecna isn’t just killing kids this season, he’s taking him the way he took Will way back in Season 1. He comes for Holly and gets his first victim, but the Hawkins crew is able to thwart his attempts to get Derek Turnbow. Learning about the kids being abducted, the military tries to step in by rounding up every kid aged 9-10 and protecting them at the MAC-Z. Unfortunately, all they did was just round them all up in one convenient place for Vecna and the demogorgons.
Our heroes come up with a plan to use the tunnels under the town to get the kids who are in danger out. They send Derek in to identify which kids have seen Mr. Whatsit/Henry and start sneaking them out. Despite getting the majority out, Vecna shows up and deals a major blow to the group. Whether the kids were still at the MAC-Z, were on their way through the tunnels, or had already been put in Murray’s van to be driven out of Hawkins, Vecna got all of them.
Now he has his twelve children to do whatever he has planned for them.
Will the Wise becomes a Sorcerer
Will’s connection to Vecna and the Upside Down has been the center of the show since the beginning, but it was only in the final episode of Season 5 Volume 1 that Will decided to tap into that connection for his own benefit – and this time, he did it successfully.
After Vecna runs roughshod over the MAC-Z and kidnaps his remaining kids, he sends demogorgons to take out Mike, Lucas, and Robin. After having a terrifying face-to-face with Vecna and remembering a pep talk from Robin earlier in the episode, Will leans into his connection to the Upside Down and is able to stop the demos before they can kill his friends. The monsters rise up into the air and have their arms and necks broken in the same way Vecna killed his victims in Season 4.
Having Will use his innate Upside Down abilities – hence him becoming a sorcerer rather than a wizard – is certainly a boon for the Hawkins crew. The way he looked, though, while using those powers, with his eyes grayed out like Vecna’s, might mean his abilities could take a toll on him in a way Eleven’s don’t.
