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Warning: This story contains spoilers forStranger Thingsseason 5, Volume 2.
NEED TO KNOW
Volume 2 of Stranger Things season 5 premiered on Netflix on Dec. 25
Here's a breakdown of everything that happens in the three new episodes, including a major confession from one of the main stars
There's just one episode remaining of the hit series, which will drop on Dec. 31 at 8 p.m. ET
Volume 1 ofStranger Thingsseason 5set the stage for a dramatic second half of the final season, andVolume 2kept the twists and turns coming ahead of the grand finale on Dec. 31.
The second installment premiered with three episodes on Dec. 25 on Netflix, and picked up immediately where Vol. 1 left off: after the reveal that Will (Noah Schnapp) can channel Vecna's (Jamie Campbell Bower) powers and use them against the demogorgons. It's a realization that changes everything, as the entire crew has a newfound leg up on Vecna.
But reality sinks in quickly — after the demogorgons take all the young kids, including Derek Turnbow (Jake Connelly) — Will feels like he failed. The kids, meanwhile, wake up in the dreamworld Creel house with Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher), where they're informed by Mr. Whatsit (Bower) about the role they're going to play in saving the world, though, really, they're just pawns in his plan to merge another world (the Abyss) with Earth.
In the Upside Down, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Steve (Joe Keery), Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) are searching for a way to rescue Holly, despite Hopper's (David Harbour) request that they stay put and await rescue.
Their hunt brings them to Hawkins Lab, which remains intact as it was in 1983. The visit, which almost kills Nancy and Jonathan, brings more answers than ever before after Dustin stumbles upon Dr. Brenner's (Matthew Modine) old journals, which explain the truth behind the Upside Down for the first time.
Courtesy of Netflix
With Dustin, Steve and the crew on their own mission, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Hopper and Eight (Linnea Berthelsen) escape the Upside Down and join Will, Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Joyce (Winona Ryder), Robin (Maya Hawke) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) at the radio station, where they learn about Will's newfound powers and try to relocate Dustin, Steve, Nancy and Jonathan.
The military, led by Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton), takes a backseat in Vol. 2, though one major revelation comes to light when Dr. Kay berates Lt. Akers (Alex Breaux) for failing to capture Eleven. She reveals that if they had her, "We'd have those monsters in Moscow, where they'd be killing Soviets instead of Americans."
By episode 7, Dustin, Steve, Nancy and Jonathan are back in Hawkins, and the whole gang is reunited to formulate one final plan to take down Vecna once and for all — and save Holly and her classmates. Though, Eight has a plan of her own for Eleven, and Hopper is all too wary of her.
It's time for one final battle, but before the series finale on Dec. 31, here's a recap of where things stand afterStranger Thingsseason 5: Volume 2.
Why was the military torturing Eight?
Courtesy of Netflix
The truth about Dr. Kay's experiments comes out: Eight tells Eleven that she once attempted to escape the military facility and found dozens of pregnant women were also being kept there — and being infused with her blood.
An illusion revealed that Eight and Eleven both got their powers the same way. Dr. Brenner infused their mothers with Henry's blood while they were in the womb, but they were all just "pale imitations of Henry," aside from Eleven, Eight says. "Only one of us is truly like him," Eight says about Eleven, before she warning, "There are no happy endings, Jane. Not for us."
Do Max and Holly escape the Upside Down?
Courtesy of Netflix
With Holly's help, Max escapes Vecna's clutches — or Camazotz, as the pair have dubbed the mental prison — and comes back to life in the real world. She wakes up in Lucas' arms in the basement of the Hawkins hospital, right after Karen (Cara Buono) saved Lucas, Robin and Vickie from the demodogs. Tears stream down Lucas' face as his girlfriend opens her eyes for the first time in more than a year, and he tells her, "I knew you were there, I always knew you were still there."
They joke about her song,Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill," and Lucas says he's sick of it. Max isn't, given that it helped guide her home, but she also tells him: "It turns out, this whole time, I didn't even need it. I just needed you. Just you."
When Mike, Hopper, Eleven and Eight arrive at the hospital, they're shocked to see Max awake. "Welcome home, kid," Hopper tells her, as Mike jokes that she "took [her] sweet time," to which she quips, like no time has passed, "Screw you, Wheeler."
Holly, on the other hand, wakes up in Vecna's clutches, surrounded by the 11 other kids from her class he's taken to the Upside Down. It's unclear at first where she is as she attempts to escape from him, but while she runs, she finds what looks like a gate, climbs through it and then falls through the sky — through another world, it seems — into the Upside Down. She lands, suspended in the air, right above where Nancy, Jonathan, Steve and Dustin are, and she calls out for her sister to help her, before she's sucked right back into the sky.
The next time she wakes up, she's in the Creel house with her classmates, but Henry has convinced her friends that Max was a monster who manipulated and tricked her into thinking he was evil, leaving Holly alone with the knowledge of what's to come.
Whatisthe Upside Down?
Dr. Brenner's journals give Dustin a new understanding of the Upside Down, Vecna, the wall — everything. He explains to Steve that Vecna didn't make the wall, dashing their hopes of breaking it down to save Holly, who they assumed was behind it.
Instead, he says "death" is behind the wall. "Everything we have ever assumed about the Upside Down has been dead wrong. This place, the Upside Down, it isn't another dimension. It's not another world," Dustin tells Steve. "It's a wormhole — a bridge between two points in time and space — between our world and another."
If the wormhole were to collapse, Dustin warns, "It will take us with it — all of us."
Later, when they reunite with the others in episode 7 and make their final plan to take Vecna down, Dustin explains his findings to everyone — with a visual aid to help.
"We've always assumed the Upside Down is another dimension opened by Brenner, but it turns out, it's actually a bridge. More specifically, an interdimensional bridge that rips through space-time," he says. "It is wildly unstable, but held together by exotic matter, which we found, dead-center, above the lab. In theoretical physics, they call this type of bridge a wormhole. And this wormhole connects Hawkins to here — another world that I've coined 'the Abyss.'"
His choice of name is related to the game Dungeons & Dragons, which draws an exasperated "Jesus Christ" from Hopper.
"I believe this Abyss is the true home of the demogorgons, the vines, the Mind Flayer, all the nasty s--- we've found in the Upside Down. And it's where, all those years ago, [Eleven] banished Henry. He was lost for years, and he would've stayed lost, if it weren't for Brenner [forcing Eleven to find Henry]."
When Eleven made contact with Henry, who was in the Abyss, "the bridge formed," Dustin says. "And ever since, Henry and his army of monsters have been using it to cross right back into Hawkins. We kicked Vecna's ass last year, but I think he just fled across this bridge back to the Abyss to lick his wounds."
Do Nancy and Jonathan get engaged?
Matt Kennedy/Netflix
While trapped inside the melting room in the lab, convinced they're on the brink of death, Nancy and Jonathan make some pretty big confessions to each other, including that Nancy hates The Clash, that Jonathan hates reading Nancy's articles and that Jonathan never applied to Emerson — which Nancy knew all along.
They were honest about how they're bonded for life from what they've been through, but also suffocated by it, and then Jonathan showed Nancy the engagement ring he'd been carrying around for days.
"I figure that I have screwed up enough with you that it'd be nice to get something right for once, in the end. Nancy Wheeler, will you not marry me?" he asks her.
"I tried to convince myself that this would somehow fix everything, but it was just gonna make things worse, which is why it has been sitting like a cannonball in my pocket for the last two days. So what do you say? Do you accept my un-proposal?"
She says yes to the un-proposal, and they tell each other they love each other and kiss, but it's an ending, not a beginning. When the ring rolls away, Nancy realizes the liquid that they thought would suffocate them has hardened, and they can escape — as friends.
Do Steve and Dustin make up after their fight?
COURTESY OF NETFLIX
After things got physical between Steve and Dustin when Steve brought upEddie(Joseph Quinn) and his tragic death, the pair made up as Steve sets up a tricky maneuver in an attempt to get to Nancy and Jonathan. Dustin revealed to his friend just how debilitating his grief has been.
"You're always trying to get yourself killed, and I can't let it happen again. Stop being so selfish, please, if you go on there, you're gonna die, and I can't deal with it again," Dustin tells Steve through tears. "Don't let it happen again, please, not you."
They hug and the confession helps Steve understand what Dustin's been going through, and later, they talk about the fight again, as Steve apologizes once more for what he said about Eddie.
"Eddie, he saved your life — our lives. And I know what he meant to you. I can't even imagine how hard it's been," Steve tells Dustin. "But instead of just being there for you, I just, well, I got angry about it. I guess I got angry because things were different. Because I really missed you. I missed my best friend."
"Yeah, I missed my best friend too," Dustin agrees, and then they hug, before making a death pact ahead of their final stand against Vecna: "You die, I die."
What's their final plan of attack to take down Vecna once and for all?
COURTESY OF NETFLIX
It's Steve who comes up with the gang's final plan (dubbed "Operation Beanstalk") to take down Vecna for good. At first, Hopper suggests that they steal a chopper from the Upside Down and find a military pilot to fly it up into the Abyss, but no one's convinced about that idea.
Steve grabs a flashlight and a slinky to demonstrate his plan, using the flashlight to represent the squawk radio tower and the slinky as the bridge.
"We'll never reach the Abyss from the tower, right? But Max said Vecna is drawing our worlds together, so we let him. And we wait and wait as he draws it closer and closer and closer, and when it's close enough, and the radio tower is poking through one of the rifts, bam! El makes her move," he suggests. "She does her meditation thingy, enters Vecna's sick mind and ambushes him – in your face, dickhead."
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What plan does Eight convince Eleven to agree to?
Courtesy of Netflix
The group is all in for Steve's "Operation Beanstalk" plan, but Eight has an amendment to the agenda that she shares with Eleven.
Despite Mike's insistence that they'll end this and be able to ride off into the sunset together, Eleven has her doubts. "This isn't like one of your campaigns. You don't get to write the ending, not this time," she tells him, though he retorts with, "Maybe I don't. But we do — you, me, Lucas, Will and Dustin."
Eight, it turns out, has had an agenda of her own the whole time — and it's one she hinted at during a tense conversation with Hopper.
"If you really wanna protect her, she needs to know the truth, and she needs to be able to deal with what's waiting for her on the other side of this. Killing Henry won't end this," Eight had warned Hopper, claiming he's been lying both to himself and Eleven.
Just before they put the plan into motion, Eight tells Eleven that there's only one way to truly stop Dr. Brenner's vicious cycle. "After we kill our brother, after the children are rescued, we don't leave with the others. We stay on the bridge. When the Upside Down vanishes, so will we. It is the only way, Jane."
As the episode ends, and they head into the Upside Down in a truck with Murray at the helm, Eleven gives Eight a subtle nod that seems to indicate she's in for this amended plan of theirs, which no one else knows about.
Does Will come out?
Courtesy of Netflix
Before putting their plan in motion, Will pulls Joyce aside to confess something to her, but when Mike interrupts them, he realizes he needs everyone to hear what he has to say.
In front of everyone (Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Max, Eleven, Robin, Murray, Nancy, Steve, Erica and Joyce) he makes a tearful confession that he's gay.
"I haven't told any of you this because I don't want you to see me differently, but the truth is I am different. I just pretended like I wasn't because I didn't wanna be. I wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted to be like my friends, and I am like you. I'm like you in almost every way," he begins, before listing all the ways that he's just like Mike, Dustin and Lucas — their shared love of Dungeons & Dragons, snacking, movie-watching.
"We like Milk Duds in our popcorn with extra butter, and we like drinking Coke with Pop Rocks, and we like bike races and trading comics and NASA and Steve Martin and Lucky Charms and literally all the same things. I just…. I don't like girls," he finally admits.
Will also hinted at his longtime crush on Mike, albeit without calling him out by name, before sharing that the reason for his confession was that Vecna showed him a future where he was alone because he was gay. "It felt so real," Will says, breaking down, but Joyce reassured him that he would never lose her, and Jonathan joined in, too, as did Dustin, Lucas, Mike, Eleven, Robin and Max.
What's Vecna's plan?
Courtesy of Netflix
Henry explains to the kids, who are all gathered in the Creel house, that a darkness is taking over the world, one that he compares to the "black thing" inA Wrinkle in Time, which they're reading in school.
He says he's traveled to another world, where everything is good, and that he wants to use the kids to bring that new world to Earth and fix everything.
The final scene of Vol. 2 shows all the kids — including a bloodied-up Holly, who was attacked and pushed down the stairs by her classmates after expressing her distrust in Henry and his plan — holding hands around a candle-lit dining table in the Creel house, with Henry at the head of the table.
"It's time," Henry says, and all the kids' necks snap back, their eyes roll back into their heads and go white, and the screen fades to black, leaving all their fates up in the air heading into the finale.
Volumes 1 and 2 ofStranger Thingsseason 5 are streaming now on Netflix. The finale drops Dec. 31 at 8 p.m. ET.
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