The D&D campaign meets the Demogorgon
Ten hours into a campaign in the Wheeler basement, the party faces the Demogorgon, Will's fireball roll goes missing, and Karen calls time.
Will Byers
The quiet boy whose disappearance on his way home sets everything in motion. Played by Noah Schnapp.
63 moments · 1h 29m
Will admits the roll was a seven
Mike and Lucas gripe about Nancy, then Will quietly tells Mike the truth about his roll before biking home.
Will bikes home alone and vanishes
A race for a comic turns into Will's solo ride down a dark road, an empty house, and a shed that will not stay quiet.
Joyce remembers Will and Poltergeist
Castle Byers password, a surprise movie night and a witch voice: Joyce's memory of Will, cut against her calling for him in an empty house.
Jonathan gives Will the mixtape over The Clash
A memory of the brothers over Should I Stay or Should I Go, Joyce fighting Lonnie on the phone, as Jonathan tells Will not to like things on command.
Will calls Joyce on the new phone
Joyce begs the breathing voice to say where he is, hears her son say Mom, and then the line and the phone burn out again.
Mike tells Eleven what she did sucks, then Will sings through the walkie
Mike says friends don't lie and Lucas was right about her; then Eleven turns on the walkie and Will's favorite Clash song comes through the static.
Will's voice: Joyce through the wall, the boys through the radio
Will calls for his mom from a place like home but dark and cold; Joyce tears into the wallpaper while the boys hear him on the Heathkit, until it blows.
The party decodes Will's radio message: the Upside Down
Piecing together 'home, dark, empty', Eleven flips the board and the boys name the Vale of Shadows, a dark echo of Hawkins where Will might be.
Joyce remembers Will the Wise and the green fireballs
A memory at the graveside: young Will explains why a wise wizard still needs fireballs, and Joyce promises new crayons because they look like cabbages.
Eleven reaches Will: Mom is coming
Eleven finds Will in his fort and relays Joyce's message to hold on; she comes out of the water shaking and is told she did good.
Will is found; Mike promises Eleven the Snow Ball
Joyce and Hopper pull Will out of the thing holding him in the Upside Down while Mike carries a fading Eleven and promises her Eggos and a dance.
Joyce and Hopper bring Will back
Will isn't breathing. Hopper counts compressions, Joyce begs her son to come back, and Hopper's memory of a hospital monitor cuts through it all.
Will wakes up to his mom, his brother and a mix tape
In the hospital Will asks where he is, worries about Jonathan's bandaged hand, and gets a new tape with songs his brother thinks he'll like.
The party tells Will about Eleven
Mike, Dustin and Lucas pile into Will's hospital room with news of his funeral, Troy's accident, and a new friend who is basically a wizard.
Will the Wise fireballs the thessalhydra
A month later the campaign ends in the basement: Will rolls a fourteen, the boys complain the ending is too short, and Dustin gets blamed for the smell.
Nancy's Christmas present for Jonathan
Nancy stops Jonathan in the driveway with a gift he didn't expect; in the car, Will opens it and Jonathan finds out who helped pay for it.
Christmas dinner at the Byers house
Jonathan documents the turkey, Will guesses the green present is an Atari, slips off to wash his hands, and comes back saying he's fine.
A mystery player called Mad Max beats Dustin's Dig Dug record
Dustin loses at Dragon's Lair, then finds his top score smashed by someone named Mad Max. Keith will only talk in exchange for a date with Nancy.
Will slips into the Upside Down outside the arcade
Will steps out for air and the arcade goes dark and empty around him. Mike finds him shaken and coaxes him back inside.
Max skateboards into Hawkins Middle and corrects her name
The boys clock a new skater in the schoolyard; in class Mr. Clarke introduces Maxine from California, who insists on Max.
The boys spy on Max and get caught
Lucas and Dustin debate whether a girl can be Mad Max while watching her through binoculars, until she leaves them a note.
Joyce tells Will to stop apologizing
Driving Will to his appointment, Joyce reminds him there's nothing to be nervous about and that she'll be in the room the whole time.
Will describes the storm and the evil that wants to kill everyone
Dr. Owens warms Will up with candy talk, then Will recounts being frozen in the Upside Down under a storm that felt like it was watching him.
Jonathan tells Will being a freak is the best
Will shows Jonathan his Zombie Boy drawing and says everyone treats him like he'll break. Jonathan answers with Bowie versus Kenny Rogers.
Ghostbusters costume photo shoot
Parents snap pictures of the boys in proton packs before school; Will and Jonathan pose for Joyce while a little sister calls her brother a nerd.
Two Venkmans and nobody else in costume
Mike and Lucas fight over who gets to be Venkman and why nobody wants Winston, then realise they are the only kids at school dressed up.
Billy's car: 'Say it' and the near miss
Max's stepbrother makes her say whose fault Hawkins is, then swerves at the boys in the road for bonus points. The kids finally learn who Mad Max is.
Will heads out with Bob's camcorder
Joyce gives Will a camera lesson and a promise to come home if anything feels wrong; Jonathan lets him trick-or-treat alone with a 9:00 curfew.
The 3 Musketeers debate and a masked ambush
The boys argue whether 3 Musketeers is just nougat or top three, then get scared out of their skins by a new party member in a mask.
Totally tubular, and Mike sulks
Dustin and Lucas butcher California slang for Max's benefit while Mike complains to Will that nobody asked him about adding her to the party.
Will's episode on Halloween night
Shoved by bullies, Will slips into a vision of the shadow and freezes; Mike finds him shaking and takes him home while Max shrugs it off.
Will describes the shadow; 'crazy together'
Will tells Mike about being stuck between two slides and a living shadow coming for him; they agree that if they are going crazy, they go together.
Bob tells Will the Mr. Baldo story: stand your ground
Driving Will to school, Bob Newby recalls a clown who haunted his dreams for months until he stopped running and told it to go away.
Dustin presents Dart to the party as a new species
In the AV room the boys meet the slimy thing from Dustin's trash; he rules out tadpoles and reptiles and claims a brand-new species.
The party argues Dart is from the Upside Down, then he escapes
Will says he saw something like Dart last year; Dustin's True Sight theory and Death Star defense end when the trap opens and Dart bolts.
Will stands his ground against the shadow
Alone on the field with Bob's words in his head, Will stops running and shouts at the towering shadow to go away, and it turns on him.
Joyce and Dustin find Will frozen on the field
Cold open: Dustin leads Joyce to Will, locked in another episode on the school field, as she pleads with him to wake up.
No more secrets: Joyce shows Will the shape from the tape
Joyce matches the shape on the Halloween video to Will's drawing, says she thinks the episodes are real, and asks him to stop hiding things.
Will admits the thing got him; Joyce's promise
Will describes the shadow as a feeling he still carries everywhere, and Joyce swears nothing bad will ever happen to him again.
Will explains his now-memories to Hopper
Hopper gently questions Will about the shadow; Will says he just knows things now, memories that are not his, growing, spreading, killing.
Joyce and Hopper connect the drawings into vines
Joyce realizes the black lines in Will's drawings join up; laid across the floor they fork like lightning, and Hopper names them: vines.
Will tells Mike the shadow monster is inside him
Will explains his link to the shadow monster and his now-memories; Mike reframes it as a chance to spy on the thing and stop it.
Will wakes up: he saw Hopper and thinks he will die
Will wakes Joyce in the night with a vision of Hopper in danger.
Bob realizes Will's drawings are a map of Hawkins
Asked to find the X with no questions, Bob spots Lovers' Lake and the rivers and works out the vines are a map of the town.
Will's now-memories lead to Hopper's truck and the tunnels
Will shouts turn right from a vision, they find Hopper's truck by a hole full of vines, and Joyce makes Bob dig her down into Will's map.
Joyce and Bob cut Hopper free of the vines
Following his hat through the tunnels, Joyce finds Hopper being strangled by vines and hacks him loose as the lab team floods in.
Bob Newby, superhero, and a son who does not recognize him
Bob tells Joyce about the papers he signed and jokes about Maine, then Will wakes up and does not know who he is.
Will remembers Mike but not Hopper
The doctor tests Will's memory: he knows his friend in the photo but not the man who carried him out, and says the soldiers upset something.
Will sees the shadow monster's weak spot
Mike waits impatiently and Hopper is kept out, then Will comes to with a vision and says he knows how to stop the shadow monster.
Will's confession: it was a trap
Will apologizes and says he was made to do it. Mike realizes the soldiers are walking into a trap, and Will says it is already too late.
Will has to be put to sleep
With the lab overrun, Mike argues Will is a spy for the shadow monster. Joyce asks her screaming son if he knows her before holding him down to sedate him.
Will wakes up tied to a chair
In the shed, Will comes round bound and surrounded by family. Joyce says they only want to talk; he demands to know why he is tied up until his voice gives out.
Joyce's rainbow ship: the crayon memory
Joyce reminds Will of his eighth birthday, the box of 120 colours and the spaceship drawing she hung at work and showed to everyone.
Jonathan remembers building Castle Byers
Jonathan recalls the night their dad left, when he and Will stayed out in the rain building the fort because they just had to finish it.
Mike's first day of kindergarten speech
Mike tells Will about the swings, the question he asked and the yes that was the best thing he ever did. Joyce begs Will to answer, and he does with two words.
Morse code: Will spells out the answer
Will is talking without words. The group feeds him memories while Dustin and Lucas decode the taps letter by letter into a two-word instruction.
The phone rings: it knows where they are
A ringing phone cuts through the shed. Everyone freezes hoping Will did not hear it, but he did, and the house has to move fast.
Jonathan begs Joyce to stop as the heaters torture Will
With Will strapped to the bed and the room blazing, Jonathan screams that they're killing him while Joyce refuses to back off.
Joyce burns the shadow out of Will, and Jonathan radios: Close it
Joyce screams for the thing to get out of her son; Will finally wakes and says Mom, and Jonathan tells Hopper over the radio to close the gate.
Getting ready for the Snow Ball
Joyce films Will's dance moves, Karen photographs a mortified Mike, Lucas's sister ambushes him with a kiss, and Dustin hunts for his hairspray.
Snow Ball arrivals: pure fuel, Dustin's hair, and two first dances
Nancy spikes the punch, Mike and Lucas roast Dustin's new hairdo, Lucas awkwardly asks Max to dance, and a girl asks Zombie Boy Will.
Every Breath You Take: the Snow Ball slow dance
The couples sway to The Police as Mike shows Eleven the steps and the season closes on the Snow Ball dance floor.