{"id":65706,"date":"2025-08-13T04:40:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T04:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/65706\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T04:40:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T04:40:10","slug":"stranger-things-hellfire-club-catch-up-season-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/65706\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Stranger Things\u2019 Hellfire Club Catch-Up: Season 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just a few more months until the return of Stranger Things<\/a> on Netflix. As we get closer to the final season<\/a>, join io9\u2019s own Hellfire Club<\/a> for a rewatch of the series leading up to November\u2019s final season premiere. If you\u2019re new, here\u2019s our first-season refresher.<\/a><\/p>\n

On this month\u2019s catch-up, we look at Stranger Things season two. The sophomore installment expanded the Hawkins crew with the addition of Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink) and the newly returned Will (Noah Schnapp), who now take part in the ongoing supernatural town happenings. Will is caught in between worlds in a way that\u2019s a danger to him and his friends. Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is kept hidden from Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and their friends for her protection by Hopper (David Harbour). The two become a found family and encounter danger in ways that bring the tangled web of the Upside Down\u2019s dangers so much closer to home and raise more suspicion surrounding the new leadership at Hawkins Lab.<\/p>\n

Here are the 10 most important takeaways from Stranger Things season two.<\/p>\n

\"Hopper\u00a9 Netflix 1. Eleven and Hopper become an unlikely family unit <\/p>\n

Hopper takes Eleven in after the events of season one when she stumbles out of the Upside Down. To protect her from Hawkins National Lab, whose agents continue to poke about the lives of Mike, Will, and their friends\u2019 families, he insists she stay away from them until they back off. Eleven is promised she\u2019ll see Mike and her friends again, but Hopper keeps putting off the when, pretty much setting up their combative, overprotective father-and-daughter dynamic. But hey, she gets to stay home and have Eggo waffles all the time.<\/p>\n

2. Max and Lucas meet cute <\/p>\n

Max and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) becoming each other\u2019s sweethearts is the cutest story in the season. Although we have to point out there were unnecessary issues with Max\u2019s presence: one, having her be a girl that Lucas and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) fight over initially, and two, somehow also being seen as a threat by Eleven. That\u2019s without even mentioning Max\u2019s racist stepbrother Billy (Dacre Montgomery). Plot devices aside, the Max-Lucas friendship and romance evolves naturally and so does her joining the gang\u2019s adventures. Max calls herself a zoomer because she\u2019s fast\u2014a special ability that comes in handy when they need a driver.<\/p>\n

\"Dart\u00a9 Netflix 3. Dustin and Dart the Demodog <\/p>\n

In probably one of the series\u2019 oddest choices, that slug Will puked out and told no one about gets found by Dustin, who decides to rescue it. Somehow Dustin thinks Dart, his newfound friend, is a new normal Earth species. Despite knowing weird things come out of the Upside Down, he tries to domesticate Dart, who is very clearly a hybrid homage to Gremlins and Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors in the way it grows. Eventually the rest of the gang get in on it to try and tame Dart even though it keeps putting them through dangerous hijinks as it hungers for flesh. By the time Will finds out about its existence, Dustin is already too attached in a bizarrely antagonistic way that endangers their whole crew. They finally realize it\u2019s some sort of Demogorgon-esque creature once it eats Dustin\u2019s family cat and decide to name the species the Demodog. Quickly after that they discover it\u2019s not the only one.<\/p>\n

4. Hawkins Lab\u2019s interdimensional gate grows <\/p>\n

Hawkins Lab gets a new director, who seems friendlier and more interested in cleaning up the crimes being committed. One problem: there\u2019s sort of now a huge gateway rift to the Upside Down that\u2019s causing trouble. Hopper, who, in exchange for Hawkins\u2019 safety and helping Joyce (Winona Ryder) with Will, helps keep quiet about the truth, is getting more and more concerned as pumpkins rot with Upside Down residue seeping through and Will keeps having disturbing visions.<\/p>\n

\"Dustin\u00a9 Netflix 5. The dawn of Babysitter Steve <\/p>\n

Max\u2019s stepbrother Billy takes the crown of the school\u2019s king from Steve (Joe Keery) and makes a show of it. He goads Steve, who\u2019s harboring a broken heart over Nancy (Natalia Dyer) distancing herself. In Billy, Steve sees how much of an obnoxious bully he was and gets some great character growth. After surviving the Demogorgon attack last season, he steps into the role of the Hawkins\u2019 kid babysitter and starts to be a cool older brother figure to Dustin. He protects the kids during their Upside Down adventures and from real bullies like Billy.<\/p>\n

6. Will gains the ability to see into the Upside Down <\/p>\n

While in the real world, Will begins to have visions of the Upside Down and a large looming entity in the sky that\u2019s attempting to gain more control. Dustin and friends refer to it as the \u201cMind Flayer\u201d and Will\u2019s condition as the \u201cTrue Sight\u201d to continue to connect their supernatural adventures to Dungeons & Dragons. Unfortunately, it\u2019s a double-edged sword; as much as he can see over there, it also sees through him. Through this ability, the Mind Flayer attempts to use Will as a vessel to help the Demodogs burrow holes from the gate to Hawkins. Why? Well, at the time, the Hawkins crew figures that it\u2019s to wipe out the inferior species, the humans, by ripping the fabric of reality to unleash the darkness within the Upside Down to absorb the living into its hive for more power.<\/p>\n

\"Jonathan\u00a9 Netflix 7. Nancy and Jonathan\u2019s investigative team-up <\/p>\n

This totally platonic burgeoning photographer and journalist relationship leads Will\u2019s older brother Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) and Mike\u2019s older sister Nancy to connect with the private investigator Barb\u2019s family had hired, Murray (Brett Gelman). Together they hatch a plan to expose what Brenner was doing at Hawkins Lab. As part of their plan, Jonathan and Nancy let themselves get captured by Dr. Owens (Paul Reiser), a lesser evil from the U.S. Department of Energy, who replaced Brenner as the head of Hawkins National Lab.<\/p>\n

There they get Owens to explain that the creators of the \u201cmistakes\u201d are gone and show them the rift to the Upside Down that was left open, which they\u2019ve had trouble sealing. The teens get him on tape admitting that it\u2019s still of interest despite the danger. Owens and company want to make sure that other global powers like Russia don\u2019t try to replicate the \u201cmistake,\u201d and he emphasizes that it\u2019s why they sign so many people away to secrecy\u2014living or dead. Oh, and Nancy and Jonathan? They do more than a little kissing.<\/p>\n

8. El uncovers the truth about her mother, which Hopper hid from her <\/p>\n

El\u2019s real name is Jane Ives. Her mom, Terry, was told her daughter died at birth\u2014but she distinctly remembered hearing her cries before Brenner snatched her away. Years later Terry did try to go back and rescue Jane from the Rainbow Room, which she shared with a similarly powered child referred to as Eight.<\/p>\n

Terry\u2019s fate is more tragic, however; Brenner fried her brain, making her catatonic and unable to seek out her child ever again. Eleven does get a moment to see her mom once more, but it\u2019s a bittersweet one on her journey to discover the truth about herself and her sibling figures from the Rainbow Room in Hawkins Lab. Eight later tries to get \u201cJane\u201d to join her ragtag group of superpowered teens out for revenge, but she decides to resume her identity as El in Hawkins with Hopper and her friends.<\/p>\n

9. Will\u2019s birthday is March 22 <\/p>\n

This comes back in a major way in a later season, but it\u2019s a key way of finding out that Will is not himself. Through asking a series of questions, Joyce figures out something is controlling her son from the Upside Down. It admits that it\u2019s now making him a part of the hive mind through the Mind Flayer, led by someone who is very angry. Possessed and puppeted by the Mind Flayer, Will leads soldiers into a trap to prevent them from burning the tentacles that are tunneling into Hawkins.<\/p>\n

At one point Dustin suggests the Mind Flayer could raise an army of the undead, which we hope pays off and we could get to see those it\u2019s absorbed or consumed in the Upside Down throughout the show\u2019s seasons. It begs the question: is anyone who was absorbed by the hive really fully dead? Asking for a friend from a future season\u2026 a former Dungeon Master of the Hellfire Club.<\/p>\n

\"Eleven\u00a9 Netflix 10. Eleven closes the gate <\/p>\n

After side-questing, Eleven shows up in the nick of time looking really badass to save the day. It is sadly right after Joyce\u2019s computer-geek boyfriend, Bob (Sean Astin), gets ripped apart by Demo Dogs after helping get everyone else out of the lab with his hacking skills. Bob was this season\u2019s MVP, and it was heartbreaking to see him get eaten in an unnecessarily long sequence. There\u2019s no way that man could come back, but he died a hero for his city.<\/p>\n

Eleven and Hopper go back into the lab to seal the gate, and it\u2019s thanks to the anger Eight inspires in Eleven that she taps into her powers to seal the rift and push the Mind Flayer into its Upside Down cage. Shortly after that, the tape Jonathan and Nancy got of Owens\u2019 cover-up hits the papers. It\u2019s enough to make HNL shut down and leave Hawkins, but Owens pops up to keep in touch with Hopper and thanks him by giving him custody of Eleven as her father on some official forged documents. He recommends she lie low for another year, but she at least gets to go to her first Snow Ball dance with Mike and get her first kiss. Hey, she saved the town again; she earned it.<\/p>\n

Tune in next month when we catch up on Stranger Things season three.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just a few more months until the return of Stranger Things on Netflix. As we get closer to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,41878,75,41879,41880,1316,41881,41882,348,20632],"class_list":{"0":"post-65706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-david-harbour","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-gaten-matarazzo","13":"tag-millie-bobby-brown","14":"tag-netflix","15":"tag-sean-astin","16":"tag-stranger-things","17":"tag-tv","18":"tag-winona-ryder"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}