Is Stranger Things Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot
Yes, 5 out of 10. Constant jump scares and a monster from another dimension, mostly handled by kids with walkie-talkies.
Ruling: Watch it with the lights on, because the jump scares tend to arrive right after a quiet scene.
Stranger Things runs five seasons in Hawkins, Indiana, a town described as the place where nothing ever happens. A government laboratory just outside it has been secretly experimenting on the supernatural, which is how that description stops being true.
The premise, briefly
When a boy vanishes in Hawkins, Indiana in 1983, his mother, the police chief and his friends run into a secret laboratory, a girl with psychic powers and an alternate dimension called the Upside Down.
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
Eleven and her friends rescue the kidnapped children, kill Vecna and the Mind Flayer, and destroy the Upside Down. Eleven appears to stay behind as it collapses. Her friends choose to believe she faked her death.
The season four finale, "Chapter Nine: The Piggyback". Eddie sacrifices himself to lure Vecna's bats away from his friends, and Vecna takes over Max's mind. Eddie dies. Max is badly injured, dies briefly and ends up in a coma.
No dog dies in Stranger Things, and the Demodogs that die are monsters. A Demodog eats a cat, and a pet snake is killed off screen.
Mostly it is jump scares and monster fights spread over five seasons, and the grimmest stretch is the end of season four.
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
A laboratory with a hobby
On November 6, 1983, twelve-year-old Will Byers cycles home from a Dungeons & Dragons session in Hawkins, Indiana, runs into a creature and vanishes. His mother Joyce reports him missing to police chief Jim Hopper, who starts a town-wide search. Out at Hawkins Laboratory, the director, Dr. Martin Brenner, is hunting for a girl who cannot have gone far. She turns up in a diner wearing a hospital gown, with "011" tattooed on her arm. Her name is Eleven. Will's friends Mike, Dustin and Lucas take her to Mike's house, where she tells them that bad men are after her and shows them she can move things with her mind. She uses the D&D board to explain that Will is in the Upside Down and that a creature called the Demogorgon is hunting him. Mike's sister Nancy and Will's brother Jonathan work out what is taking people, after Nancy's friend Barb disappears too. In the finale, Hopper gives up Eleven's location so Brenner will let him into the Upside Down, Nancy, Jonathan and Steve set the Demogorgon on fire at the Byers' house, and Eleven kills most of Brenner's agents. Will is found alive, and Eleven disappears after killing the Demogorgon.
Reading this instead of watching it is the correct decision. Scaredy Cat makes that decision automatic, for free.
Eleven months later, the monster has colleagues
Season two begins eleven months later, in October 1984, with Halloween coming. Will keeps seeing a huge shadow monster, and the group learns that everything connected to the Upside Down belongs to one hive mind, the Mind Flayer. Joyce is dating her old classmate Bob Newby. A new girl named Max arrives at school and catches the attention of Dustin and Lucas. Dustin finds a slug-like creature he names Dart, and Steve Harrington helps him recapture it while a pack of adolescent Demogorgons called Demodogs starts threatening everyone. Hopper has been hiding Eleven in an old hunting cabin, and she travels to Chicago to find Kali, another girl Brenner experimented on. Nancy and Jonathan learn from Dr. Owens that Barb died in the Upside Down. When the Demodogs attack the laboratory, Bob gets the power back on and is then killed by one. Eleven returns and closes the gate under Hawkins Laboratory.
The mall opens and so does something else
Season three takes place in the days before the Fourth of July in 1985, when the new Starcourt Mall is the center of attention in Hawkins. Hopper adopts Eleven and worries about her relationship with Mike. Dustin and Steve, along with Steve's coworker Robin Buckley and Erica, who is Lucas's little sister, find a secret Soviet laboratory under the mall, where scientists are trying to reopen the gate to the Upside Down. Meanwhile, rats flock to a mill and merge into a mass, and the Mind Flayer possesses Max's stepbrother Billy, who delivers people to it. It becomes a physical creature made from the flesh of the rats, and later from people it has possessed. The Mind Flayer injures Eleven, and she loses her powers when she gets rid of a piece of it lodged in her wound. Billy dies shielding Eleven, Mike and Max from the Mind Flayer. Hopper fights and kills a Soviet agent named Grigori, then gets trapped with the machine. Joyce triggers an explosion that closes the gate, and Hopper seems to be disintegrated.
A very bad bat situation
Season four starts in March 1986, eight months after Starcourt. Eleven and the Byers family have relocated to California, where Eleven has no powers and is bullied at school. In Hawkins, Vecna, the Mind Flayer's partner and the laboratory's first test subject, murders teenagers to open gates to the Upside Down. He frames Eddie Munson, who runs the Dungeons & Dragons club at the high school, and picks Max as his fourth target. Joyce and Murray learn that Hopper survived and is held in a Kamchatka prison camp, so they go to get him. Dr. Owens takes Eleven to a facility in Nevada to help her recover her powers, and Brenner betrays him and traps her there. Vecna turns out to be Henry Creel, son of Victor Creel and the lab's Subject 001. The scene to brace for is the season finale, "Chapter Nine: The Piggyback". Dustin and Eddie lure Vecna's bats away from the others, and Eddie sacrifices himself. Vecna also takes over Max's mind, and Mike's declaration of love helps Eleven break his hold. Max still dies from her injuries, briefly, and is left in a coma. Rifts open across Hawkins.
One very long goodbye
Season five is set in November 1987. The military has put Hawkins under quarantine and built a base inside the Upside Down, and it is hunting Eleven while she trains in hiding with Hopper and Joyce. Henry, in his Vecna form, kidnaps Holly, Mike and Nancy's younger sister, along with 11 other children. Dustin works out that the Upside Down is a wormhole to another dimension called the Abyss, and that Henry plans to merge it with Hawkins. Holly and Max are trapped in a psychic realm built from Henry's memories, which Holly nicknames Camazotz. Hopper and Eleven break into the military base, defeat Dr. Kay and her soldiers, and find that the prisoner is Kali. Dustin, Steve, Nancy and Jonathan keep the Demogorgons busy in the Upside Down. The final plan is to let Henry pull the worlds close together, use the radio tower to climb into the Abyss, get the children out, and destroy the Upside Down with a time bomb set near a mass of exotic matter.
The ending, explained
In the final episode, Eleven, Kali and Max go inside Henry's mind and block the merge of the worlds. He escapes as Vecna and tricks Hopper into breaking the link. Soldiers led by Akers attack the lab and kill Kali, and Eleven takes revenge on them. Holly guides the remaining children out of Henry's head while Eleven goes into the Abyss to fight him. Will witnesses Henry's past and sees that a piece of the Mind Flayer turned Henry bad, and he embraced it. The Mind Flayer rises as a giant monster, and the group takes it down as Eleven and Will get the better of Henry. The group rescues the children, and Joyce kills the dying Henry. They detonate the bomb in the Upside Down and destroy it. To stop the military from using her blood to create more psychic test subjects, Eleven appears to stay behind in the collapsing Upside Down. In May 1989, a year and a half on, Mike and Will finish high school with Dustin, Lucas and Max, and Hopper proposes to Joyce. Mike suggests that Eleven faked her death. The others decide to believe him.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. You can leave when the credits start.
Questions people ask at 1am
The whole plot of Stranger Things is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
You don't have to sit through five seasons of Stranger Things to know how it ends. Install Scaredy Cat and it will blur the scary parts of the next thing you open.
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