Kane Dane
Stranger Things: A Complete Summary Of The First Season, A Walk Down The Memory Lane
A walk in the gloomy world of Stranger Things where the most dreaded side of human civilization can be witnessed. The series is centered around a mystery land in Hawkins where a series of paranormal activities happen, and this led to a complete change of landscape. A ghostly lab where a Demogorgon can be seen. A group of friends who were oblivious to anything fishy happening in their backyard, which was going to change their lives forever.
A series of actions take place in the series, but the kind of story the creators have presented in genuinely remarkable. No wonder it is one of the first Netflix original series, and it is slated to make a lasting impact on the minds of the fans. The series shows the courage and intellect of some kids who took on a deadly mission to fight the evil forces engulfing Hawkins. The series is a brilliant example of production, casting, script, and the list goes on and on.
The characters take strange paths in furtherance of their objectives. The scenes are so well crafted that there is not an iota of possibility that you can find something illogical or not in coherence with the storyline.
About Stranger Things
An American horror series, which is the brainchild of Duffer brothers which premiered on 15th July 2016. Since then, the series has achieved some major milestones. Until now, three seasons have been aired, and all of them are spectacular with a gigantic fanbase. The series is set in the 80s, and the cinematography is brilliant, which makes it a great hit among the fans. The scenes are precisely designed the way it used to be in the 80s, in a nutshell, the whole production team has done a brilliant job.
If we look at the accolades, the series has some big numbers to show, and they are exponentially high. Stranger Things has had 31 nominations in the primetime Emmy Award. So this makes the series a winner, and the best part is that it has won six awards in the primetime Emmy Award. On top of it, Stranger Things has four golden awards nominations and three Grammy nominations. So all this suffices to prove that the series has every ability to call itself a winner. Now we will be getting into episode wise summary where you can take a walk down the memory lane.
Trailer
Cast
· Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers
· David Harbour as Jim Hopper
· Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler
· Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven (“El”)
· Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson
· Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair
· Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler
· Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers
· Cara Buono as Karen Wheeler
· Matthew Modine as Martin Brenner
· Noah Schnapp as Will Byers
· Joe Keery as Steve Harrington
· Shannon Purser as Barbara “Barb” Holland
· Ross Partridge as Lonnie Byers
· Joe Chrest as Ted Wheeler
· Mark Steger as the Demogorgon
· Rob Morgan as Officer Powell
· John Paul Reynolds as Officer Callahan
· Randall P. Havens as Scott Clarke
· Aimee Mullins as Terry Ives
· Catherine Dyer as Connie Frazier
· Peyton Wich as Troy
· Cade Jones as James
· Chester Rushing as Tommy H.
· Chelsea Talmadge as Carol
· Tinsley and Anniston Price as Holly Wheeler
· Chris Sullivan as Benny Hammond
· Tobias Jelinek as lead agent
· Susan Shalhoub Larkin as Florence (“Flo”)
Episode 1- The Vanishing of Will Byers
Flickering lights. The deeply tense situation in a lab. Things don’t feel like going the way it would have been in any other lab. This is how the first episode of the first season of Stranger Things begins. The series starts with a scene in a lab which in itself is scary enough to beat the crap out of you, and then a scientist starts running. The scientist comes into the picture, which is being chased by an unevenly distorted creature that appears to be a monster. This is the reason why the scientist must have been running, and suddenly the flickering lights in a shady lab weren’t scary enough that the scientist tries to get into an elevator. But the obvious happened, and he was lifted by the creature.
From there we don’t know what has happened to the scientist and now we can see a bunch of kids playing Dungeons and Dragons. The four kids are, namely Will, Mike, Lucas, and Dustin. Before we characters each of them, the situation in the room seems to be a hot one, and it was more like a board of directors meeting where the company is about to file for bankruptcy. The precarious situation is overpowered by the characters themselves as they are the ones who are going to face the brunt of whatever is happening in Hawkins.
The series seems to take over with the flow and is in no mood to unnecessarily create scenes to ward off the attention of the audience. After the tensed game, they finally took their bicycles and went to their respective homes. Will and Dustin are racing, and then Will races ahead of Dustin. While he was ahead, he saw a creature chasing him and eventually fell off the bike. Here the real adrenaline rush is about; to begin with, the noise of dogs barking accentuates the excitement level of the fans. He starts running towards is house and reaches the backyard of his house.
The situation is about to take a crucial turn, and it was evident from the things happening in the backyard of Will’s house. Lights began to flicker, things started to turn the way they did in the first scene of the first episode, so the things are gonna get worse for sure. Suddenly Will pulls out an air rifle and aims towards the creature, but the creature engulfed him and voila! Will disappeared.
Here things start to turn serious as his brother, Jonathan, and single mother, Joyce, start searching for Will. The search began, and Will’s family searched every possible place where they could find him. They went to Mike’s, his friends, his dad, who left his mother to live with some other woman. The situation became tense, and they took the matter to the police.
Here comes the real twist as they met Jim Hopper, who behaves ignorantly and doesn’t ‘t take things seriously in the beginning. He made weird analogies that things like these keep on happening, and Will is eventually going to return to them. This may have appeared as a normal case of missing, but things are going to change for sure. This thing is not normal neither the disappearance of Will.
The next scene starts with Mike’s older sister Nancy and his boyfriend Steve Harrington. They are in an intimate scene, and things are going the way they go when two teenagers are in a room together. But the series seems to have no space for romantic stuff, and they are gonna keep you high on your toes all the time.
The next scene starts with the lab where some sophisticated people with armed guards are searching for something, and then we can say that there must be something going around in the lab which has been sanctioned by some top-notch people. They are searching for a girl who is hiding from her and perhaps ran away from the lab. The girl which they were searching is in hospital clothing with little hair on her head. This girl reaches a store where she is offered a burger, but the girl appears as abnormal. She is behaving strangely, and this has raised some questions in the mind of the owner of that food joint.
He rather chooses to call social service. Then he sees the girl repairing a faulty fan by just looking at it, perhaps with the power of her brain. This is astonishing in every possible aspect. Cut to Will, as time passes, even Jim Hopper, the cop realizes that it’s not normal, and the search for the kid begins. Jim is already traumatized by the loss of her daughter, and he seems to understand the pain of losing a kid. But there is no clue whatsoever as to where he disappeared. Suddenly the phone begins to ring, and Joyce rushed to pick up the phone, but she hears nothing except the noise, but she is confident that the breaking voice at the other end is of Will’s.
So this is something that is going to play a crucial role in the upcoming episodes. The friends are equally tensed and terrified as they have also joined the search party, and suddenly thunders can be heard. In the lightning, they saw that girl who perhaps escaped from the lab lying there in the woods. The first episode wraps up with a hell lot of mind-boggling questions for us to think.
Episode 2- The Weirdo on Maple Street
After a hell of a horrifying episode, the second episodes begin from where we left as the rain and thunderstorm continue where the kids found Eleven. They are in a confused state of mind as they don’t know what to do with her. They can’t leave her, and neither took her with them, so the dilemma continues for a while before deciding that night she is going to be at Mike’s place. So this is something which is going to change the course of things happening around the lab in Hawkins. They went ahead with their plan and made Eleven stay with them for the night. They even renamed her as Elle.
They gave him some food to eat, precisely waffles for dinner don’t constitute as food per se. But we can’t expect any better from kids who are already risking by giving shelter to a strange girl. And the kids planned to tell Mike’s mom about the girl which they eventually canceled, as they have had some other thoughts too. One of the crucial things that happened is the fact that Eleven recognized Will at once as if she has seen him somewhere. So this accentuates the hope for the kids that they may end up getting the whereabouts of their friend.
Although she recognizes Will but here we also came to know about Eleven’s past. There is a flashback scene where she can be seen screaming, “Papa Papa.” And my Papa, she was referring to the weirdo scientist Dr. Brenner, who is associated with the lab. Things start to turn worse for Joyce as she has no clue about her missing son.
She keeps on reiterating the same thing to Jim that the breaking voice she heard on the phone was of none other than that of Will’s. And here is the worst part of the story that the whole house where Will lived is bugged and there are intercepting device all over the place. Now, this makes things weird in every possible sense.
Things begin to get worsened as Joyce has to go back at work too, and there is no room for further leave from the job. Her struggle with the loss of kid is evident from her behavior as she keeps on smoking one cigarette after others. She is also negotiating with the grocery store owner, where she works as she is asking for two weeks of the advance payment and a telephone.
Amid all this, Nancy’s life is going on in full swing, and she is having the best of her times with her boyfriend Steve Harrington, who is a spoilt brat for sure. Now Jonathan starts his journey towards his dad’s place where he gets disappointed with the fact that Will isn’t there, and he starts to lose all his hopes on his brother’s return.
While all this was happening, the series took a new turn when Lucas thought of telling Mike’s mom about Eleven. But as we all know by now that Eleven has an extraordinary mind, and she uses her power to decipher the things going in Lucas’s mind. A sound of a thud and the gate closed. She uses her brain’s power to close the door, and here we can ascertain that whenever she uses this kind of power, her nose starts to bleed.
Cut to the teenage life when Nancy forces her Barb to come with her as she doesn’t want her parents to overthink about her late-night parties. AlthBarb Barb was reluctant in the beginning but eventually joined her for the sake of friendship. Meanwhile, Eleven tells the kid about the place where Will is hiding, and the monster can engulf him. The investigation also continues, and Jim found out that there is a sewer line making it to the lab.
Jonathan is busy taking pictures of the woods and trying to get some details. But he ends up on the poolside of Steve’s place. But unfortunatBarb Barb who got a cut in her hand can be seen sitting by the side of the pool, and suddenly a drop of blood fells into the swimming pool. And again, the flickering of lights starts, and Barb is engulfed by the same creature. We don’t know what could have possibly happeneBarb Barb. The next episode is expected to shed some light on it.
Episode 3- Holly, Jolly
Until now, the disappearance of will was something that terrified the people living in Hawkins. This time around, things are going to be more dangerous, and the series has taken a new Barb disappeared in the second episode. The third episode starts with shouting and screaming while trying to get out of the swimming pool, and up to a certain extent.
She even succeeded in climbing up the ladder, but the monstrous creature was successful in pulling her back to the bottom of the pool, and she finally disappeared. Completely oblivious to barbs disappearance, Nancy was in no mood to go on searching for her as she was about to head home. Upon reaching back to her home, she has to face her mum and face her wrath too.
Although she has to listen to her mum, she didn’t have any clue Barb barb might be missing, and it was only the next day in school when she realized that she had gotten herself into hell lot of trouble. She came to realize that she hasn’t left simply, and she might be into some trouble, and her thought was accentuated by will’s disappearance. The next scene shows the terrible state of mind of will’s mother, Joyce.
She started doing weird stuff, and to picture is it she lit up the cold room with lights, and perhaps this was the way she was trying to establish contact with Will as she was of the firm belief that the noise which came the other day on the phone was Wills’s voice. Her acts confused Jonathan, too, and he thought that she might be mentally disturbed with will’s disappearance. But her strange behavior wasn’t strange for long, and it was substantiated that her approach might appear as weird, but she was doing the right thing.
Mike’s mother and sister came to see Joyce, and suddenly, Mike’s younger sister went into that room full of light it, and she was about to get engulfed by the monstrous creature, but it was Joyce who saved her. In the next scene, it can be seen that kids were deeply disturbed with all the failures they got while searching will, and they were in no mood to quit and to ensure that they will find a friend, they even resorted to direct action.
Meanwhile, all this was happening and then comes the time of flashback as eleven Ek commercial on TV and remember how that commercial was directly linked to one of the trauma she faced at the lab. In the flashback, she remembered how she was told to crash a Coca Cola can with her brainpower and to even kill a cat with it. But things changed and finally e she was able to kill those who were instructing her to kill the cat.
In the midst of all these, Steve found out that Jonathan had some pictures of that night when he and Nancy hooked up. An Angry Steve found it deeply disturbing and eventually broke the camera and Ripper part all the photos, but Nancy noticed that in one of the photos, the Barb was seen sitting by the pool. This accentuated her Quest to Barb Barb and to know what has exactly happened to her, and she started lookingBarb Barb in the woods and the pool.
In the midst of all of which was happening, the police weren’t able to get anything substantial, and Jim was looking for more proof against the lab. He somehow managed to enter the lab and go through the CCTV footage, and he found out a strange thing that there was no rain in the clips while on that day, there were heavy downpours.
Completely oblivious to all this gym went ahead with his inquiry and started to know more about Dr. Brenner. But a piece of unfortunate news was waiting for or all of them as they received a call that a body has been seen floating in the water. Well, it was Will’s body. Seeing Wills body completely horrified, the friends and Mike were unable to register His anger, and he eventually screamed at eleven for lying the whole time. This is how the third episodes and with a hell lot of questions to be answered in the upcoming episodes.
Episode 4- The Body
The kids were shattered with the loss of their friend, and they didn’t know how to react. Mike felt that eleven is the one who should be blamed for all this as she was lying to him all the time about Wills well-being. Now, 11 looks quite upset with the fact that she was only trying to help Mike and other friends find will, but she had no option but to face the wrath, ok Mike.
So she received her life One More Time by trying to establish contact with will with the help of a walkie-talkie. But unfortunately, these signals were not so strong to establish direct contact, and she eventually lost contact. But the boys seem to be Unstoppable, and they were not ready to accept the fact that will is dead, and they were trying to do everything in their capacity to sneak eleven into the school lab where they can use advanced types of equipment to establish a contact.
They made a brilliant plan and did a complete makeover of eleven, which by the way, led to Mike’s crush on eleven. There was an assembly called do to commemorate the demised kid, and it was that time when the kids got into a scuffle with one of a Bully from their school. Unlike the old times, this time, they had 11 with them with her superpowers, and she used has superpowers to completely overpower the bully kid.
In the meantime, Joyce and Jonathan ware called to identify the body but to completely lead different points of view to further confrontation between them. On the one hand, Jonathan was convinced that will has died while Joyce was not ready to accept the fact that her connection meant nothing.
Wild Jonathan and Joyce where are going over the death the kids were on their mission to establish contact with Will, but while establishing contact eleven remembers how Dr. Brenner used her to take out information from others in a similar fashion. These things seriously traumatized eleven. In the midst of all this, Joyce hears Will’s voice from the back of the wall. This accentuated her Expectations of getting back her kid, and she started hitting the wall with an ax. She found out a red webbed structure, but she eventually realizes that it was nothing.
Meanwhile, Jonathan and Nancy were also on their Quest to rearrange the pics, and they found out that there was a creature that might have taken both Will and Barb. The rearrangement of the told of pics finally reinstated Jonathan’s Belief in his mother’s claim that will might be trying to communicate with her. After getting through the details of the cases, Jim finally found out the guy who informed the rest of the troopers about Will’s body.
Jim took out his anger on that guy, and it was just a matter of time when he admitted that it was not the will’s body, and he did mislead the police. Overtly outraged by the news, Jim finally reached the morgue and started tearing up Will’s body. The most astonishing thing happened when he found out that the body was stuffed with cotton, and they were being fooled all the time, and it must be Dr. Brenner hatching the conspiracy to fake Will’s death. The chilling Revelations of the episode make the upcoming episodes even more exciting, and the extent of the thrill is rising exponentially.
Episode 5- The Flea and the Acrobat
With time, the conspiracy surrounding which death is getting trickier and trickier and nobody has an iota of hint what has happened? Everybody is busy in their Quest based upon their theories and finding, and on top of it, nobody is telling anyone how they are trying to explore the possibilities of wills disappearance.
The Dynamics of the storyline has changed drastically with the unfolding of facts. Jim is trying his level best to get into the details of his latest findings and to substantiate his theory he sneaks into the lab by fooling the guards and pulling out some overtly dangerous stunt, but at the end of the day, he didn’t achieve a thing as he was tranquilized and thrown away from the lab by the Guards who were working under Dr. Brenner.
Amid all this crisis, the police finally foundBarb’sarb’s missing car and developed a theory that she might have eloped somewhere as they didn’t have anything substantial to link it with Wills case. Disturbed by Will’s disappearance, even Lonnie came to see Joyce and tried to convince her that she might be pulling her self in believing that will is still alive.
The friends and family were busy at Will’s funeral, and in the meanwhile, the stooge from the lab started snooping around Joyce’s house and trying to get the info on the chat she was having with Will and other shreds of evidence which might make a case against them. They also check the machine which the kids were trying to use to establish the contact with Will, so there was an all-out effort to get into the details of wills disappearance.
After the commencement of the funeral, each subgroup finally started their phone investigation and was trying to establish contact with Will. In the midst of all this, another round of flashbacks started coming to eleven when she remembered how she was drowned in order to get information about it possible Russian spying on American assets.
Her panic was complemented with the fact that the compasses weren’t facing the north direction, so this meant that there was some disturbance going around their and Lucas eventually blamed eleven for all this, which finally ended with eleven hanging Lucas upside down with her brainpower. This lead to further confrontation Mike and eleven as he was upset with her unruly behavior.
Since everybody was trying everything at their disposal, Jonathan and Nancy took altogether a different approach to tackle the unseen monster as they were actually preparing guns in order to shoot The Invisible enemy, which might have to enBarb Barb and will. While going in the woods, Nancy and Jonathan two separate parts to chase a deer, which started running when Jonathan tried to shoot it, and they had no idea where they were getting into as Nancy sneaked into a dead tree where the monster can be seen tearing up the deer.
As the Monsters saw Nancy, the chase game begins, and the only thing Jonathan could hear was Nancy screaming, but he had no clue that she was right Beneath her feet, and still, he was unable to help her. But eventually, everybody started realizing that Joyce was not wrong, and she was right in assessing that will hasn’t died, and rather it was a conspiracy hatched in the lab, and there is more substance to it than what was appearing from above.
In the end scenes, one can see Jim holding a placard, which was saying Joyce does not say anything as he was convinced that the place is bugged. In the placard, there was an admission of guilt, too, as Jim finally believed What choice has been saying right after the disappearance of her son.
Episode 6- The Monster
Amid the crisis which has already engulfed the Hawkins town is now aggravating at an unprecedented rate where every element of the series is entangled somehow with the monster. The fifth episode ended with Nancy getting trapped into a tree where the monster resides, and she is struggling to get out of the close of the monster, which in every possible sense a blood loving monster.
There is a constant screaming from Nancy, and Jonathan is unable to decipher from where the voice is coming, but finally, he realized that the noise is coming Beneath his feet and finally able to rescue Nancy. After heavy Tussle with the monster, did you finally left the woods and reached out to nancy’s home, but they didn’t have any clue that Steve is stalking her, and now he is going to this sort to misogyny to prove that she is the one with loose character.
Anyway, totally oblivious to steve’s stocking Nancy and Jonathan finally help to word their mission, but they end up being confronted by Steve. The confrontation took an ugly, and when Steve, along with his friends, started doing spray paint on the walls and name shaming Nancy. Now, this is completely unacceptable to do Nathan, and here starts the physical scuffle between them where Jonathan not only hits Steve rather in an uncontrolled state of anger event hits a policeman. And after hitting a policeman, the duo ends up in jail.
When all this was happening, Jim was busy establishing the forward and backward linkages of the case, and he makes an astonishing discovery related to an event that has happened in the past. Jim comes to know that there was a complaint against Dr. Brenner about stealing someone’s kid, and this is something that is going to bring a substantial change in the storyline, and a new twist is all set to arrive.
After doing extensive research about Dr. Brenner, Jim finally comes to know that this experiment is being conducted for long, and there is already a survivor of this experiment named Terry Ives.
Jim and Joyce went ahead with their Discovery and chose to meet the lady whose daughter was stolen, and she blamed Dr. Brenner for it. Although she was reluctant in the beginning amid the disturbed state of mind, they come to know that she was the part of an experiment where she was drowned into that saltwater solution in order to maximize the working ability of her brain, and the experiment which was going in the lab was no different.
They also discovered that she was told she had a miscarriage in her 3rd month of pregnancy, but she was confident that she gave birth to a girl, and now we can ascertain that this girl might be eleven. After this discovery, the next scene shows eleven lying in the woods and another visit to a grocery store where she picks up stuff, and when she heads back, we can see shattered window panes, so this does summarise what could have possibly happened when she left.
In the last episode, we saw the scuffle which took place between eleven and Lucas, which made a rift between Mike and Lucas although Mike did scream over eleven Lucas was in no mood to get along with Mike and Dustin to continue the search hunt for Will.
So friends have parted their ways, and amid all the uncertainties, mike and Dustin went into the woods to search for eleven, but there was something has waiting for them while they reached the mountainous terrain. They went ahead to search for 11 but end up being confronted by Troy the bully guy from school and mind it this time Troy is armed, and he is hell-bent on taking revenge from mike for what eleven did to him when they were in school.
Now troy threatens Mike that if he does not jump off the Cliff Troy will slit Dustin, and he was left with no other option than to jump. Well, he did make the jump, but eleven was there, and she used her extraordinary mental strength to save mine from falling off the Cliff. And here the real game begins, totally outraged by what troy tried to do with Mike, eleven twisted his arms and ensure that It Breaks.
Meanwhile, Lucas also makes a big breakthrough in the investigation when he sees power trucks from the local company getting out of the lab, and thus this clarified that there is much more to it than what is appearing. So there is a hell lot of thing which is going behind the doors, and the people of Hawkins are completely oblivious to the extent of damage this lab is doing.
Episode 7- The Bathtub
The things are getting scarier with every successive episode, but this time something really sweet is expected to happen when Mike and eleven are expected to have their first case but who would have thought that it won’t happen because of Dustin as he shows up out of Nowhere completely spoiling the mood for mike as well as the audience. Anyway, there is no more space for fun as some really bad guys are behind their back, and this time, the threat is more than ever as the team from the lab is approaching Mike’s house to capture eleven.
But this is no easy feat to capture a girl with extraordinary leave mental strength, which transcends the physical strength of the whole team combined. Lukas sees the threat and immediately informed Mike that the team from the lab is rushing towards their house. Accessing the seriousness of the situation, Mike rushes with eleven without wasting a second or giving second thought to it.
They started running away from the house, but unfortunately, Dr. Brenner saw them, and the team started chasing the kids, but this wasn’t the end of the story as the kids had eleven on their side, and she flipped a freaking car just with her mental strength. They somehow manage to escape the team and hid in an abandoned bus. The team deployed helicopters to search for the kids, and it was getting tougher for them to escape from the vigilant team.
After a hell lot of ups and downs and a disintegrated approach, finally, we can see a more concentrated effort with all the stakeholders putting on their thoughts in one direction. With the help of the walkie talkie, Jim and Joyce were able to track down the boys, and all of them went to Joyce’s house how to make a broader plan and establish a connection with Will.
Eleven told them about her ability to listen and track Will, but for that, she will need a hell lot of things, and on top of it, they would have to make an isolation tank just the type of we saw in eleven’s flashback. They somehow managed to arrange all the stuff together and finally made a tank in the mid of the gym at their school. Here begins the experiment and mind it for the first time keeping something good in mind.
Eleven started tracking the facts, and the first thing we come to know Barb barb is dead while mike is holding up but doesn’t seem to be in good health at all. Completely outraged by this, Joyce and Jim didn’t wait for a second and went straight to the lab to get arrested bye by the Guards at the lab. So the seventh season has accentuated the Expectations to a new high, and the excitement level is unprecedented for the audience.
