Warning: This story contains spoilers for\u00a0Stranger Things\u00a0season 5, Volume 2.\n<\/p>\n
NEED TO KNOW
\nVolume 2 of Stranger Things season 5 premiered on Netflix on Dec. 25Here’s a breakdown of everything that happens in the three new episodes, including a major confession from one of the main starsThere’s just one episode remaining of the hit series, which will drop on Dec. 31 at 8 p.m. ET<\/p>\n
Volume 1 of Stranger Things season 5<\/a> set the stage for a dramatic second half of the final season, and Volume 2<\/a> kept the twists and turns coming ahead of the grand finale on Dec. 31.\n<\/p>\n 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<\/a>) can channel Vecna’s (Jamie Campbell Bower<\/a>) 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.\n<\/p>\n But reality sinks in quickly \u2014 after the demogorgons take all the young kids, including Derek Turnbow (Jake Connelly) \u2014 Will feels like he failed. The kids, meanwhile, wake up in the dreamworld Creel house with Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher<\/a>), 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.\n<\/p>\n In the Upside Down, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo<\/a>), Steve (Joe Keery<\/a>), Nancy (Natalia Dyer<\/a>) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton<\/a>) are searching for a way to rescue Holly, despite Hopper’s (David Harbour<\/a>) request that they stay put and await rescue.\n<\/p>\n 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<\/a>) old journals, which explain the truth behind the Upside Down for the first time.\n<\/p>\n Noah Schnapp as Will Byers, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, and Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers in ‘Stranger Things’ season 5.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n With Dustin, Steve and the crew on their own mission, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown<\/a>), Hopper and Eight (Linnea Berthelsen) escape the Upside Down and join Will, Mike (Finn Wolfhard<\/a>), Joyce (Winona Ryder<\/a>), Robin (Maya Hawke<\/a>) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin<\/a>) at the radio station, where they learn about Will’s newfound powers and try to relocate Dustin, Steve, Nancy and Jonathan.\n<\/p>\n The military, led by Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton<\/a>), 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, \u201cWe\u2019d have those monsters in Moscow, where they\u2019d be killing Soviets instead of Americans.”\n<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 and save Holly and her classmates. Though, Eight has a plan of her own for Eleven, and Hopper is all too wary of her.\n<\/p>\n It’s time for one final battle, but before the series finale on Dec. 31, here’s a recap of where things stand after Stranger Things\u00a0season 5: Volume 2.<\/p>\n Why was the military torturing Eight? <\/p>\n Linnea Berthelsen as Eight\/Kali in ‘Stranger Things’ season 5.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n 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 \u2014\u00a0and being infused with her blood.\n<\/p>\n 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,\u201d Eight says about Eleven, before she warning, \u201cThere are no happy endings, Jane. Not for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Do Max and Holly escape the Upside Down? <\/p>\n Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield and Nell Fisher as Holly Wheeler in ‘Stranger Things’ season 5.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n With Holly’s help, Max escapes Vecna’s clutches \u2014 or Camazotz, as the pair have dubbed the mental prison \u2014 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<\/a>) 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, \u201cI knew you were there, I always knew you were still there.\u201d\n<\/p>\n They joke about her song, Kate Bush<\/a>‘s “Running Up That Hill<\/a>,” 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\u2019t even need it. I just needed you. Just you.”\n<\/p>\n 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.\u201d\n<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 through another world, it seems \u2014 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.\n<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n What is the Upside Down? <\/p>\n Jamie Campbell Bower as Vecna in ‘Stranger Things’ season 5.<\/p>\n Netflix<\/p>\n Dr. Brenner’s journals give Dustin a new understanding of the Upside Down, Vecna, the wall \u2014\u00a0everything. He explains to Steve that Vecna didn\u2019t make the wall, dashing their hopes of breaking it down to save Holly, who they assumed was behind it.\n<\/p>\n Instead, he says “death” is behind the wall. \u201cEverything we have ever assumed about the Upside Down has been dead wrong. This place, the Upside Down, it isn\u2019t another dimension. It\u2019s not another world,” Dustin tells Steve. “It\u2019s a wormhole \u2014 a bridge between two points in time and space \u2014 between our world and another.\u201d\n<\/p>\n If the wormhole were to collapse, Dustin warns, “It will take us with it \u2014 all of us.\u201d\n<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 with a visual aid to help.\n<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve always assumed the Upside Down is another dimension opened by Brenner, but it turns out, it\u2019s 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 \u2014 another world that I\u2019ve coined \u2018the Abyss.\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n His choice of name is related to the game Dungeons & Dragons, which draws an exasperated “Jesus Christ” from Hopper.\n<\/p>\n \u201cI believe this Abyss is the true home of the demogorgons, the vines, the Mind Flayer, all the nasty s— we\u2019ve found in the Upside Down. And it\u2019s where, all those years ago, [Eleven] banished Henry. He was lost for years, and he would\u2019ve stayed lost, if it weren\u2019t for Brenner [forcing Eleven to find Henry].”\n<\/p>\n 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\u2019s ass last year, but I think he just fled across this bridge back to the Abyss to lick his wounds.”<\/p>\n Do Nancy and Jonathan get engaged? <\/p>\n Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler and Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers in ‘Stranger Things’ season 5.<\/p>\n Matt Kennedy\/Netflix<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 which Nancy knew all along.\n<\/p>\n 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.\n<\/p>\n \u201cI figure that I have screwed up enough with you that it\u2019d be nice to get something right for once, in the end. Nancy Wheeler, will you not marry me?” he asks her.\n<\/p>\n “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?\u201d\n<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 as friends.\n<\/p>\n Do Steve and Dustin make up after their fight? <\/p>\n Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson and Joe Keery as Steve Harrington in ‘Stranger Things’ season 5.<\/p>\n COURTESY OF NETFLIX\u00a0<\/p>\n