Overview

Stranger Things is a science fiction horror TV series developed by the Duffer Brothers and available to stream on Netflix. It makes use of both investigative drama and the supernatural interspersed with horror. It’s set in the 1980s, with references to the pop culture of the time.

The series has received 31 Primetime Emmy nominations, four Golden Globe Award nominations, a British Academy Television Award nomination and more. It has won three People’s Choice Awards, a Critic’s Choice Television Award, two American Film Institute awards and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series to name but a few.

Premise

Stranger Things is set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. There is a laboratory nearby, which claims to carry out scientific research for the United States Department of Energy. However, it actually performs experiments on the paranormal and supernatural. They have created a portal to an alternate dimension and carry out their testing on humans.

Season one opens with a boy called Will Byers being abducted by a creature from the Upside Down. Joyce – his mother – and police chief Hopper begin to search for him, while a young girl with unusual abilities called Eleven escapes from the lab and runs into Will’s friends Mike, Dustin and Lucas.

Cast and characters

• Joyce Byers – Winona Ryder
• Jim Hopper – David Harbour
• Mike Wheeler – Finn Wolfhard
• Eleven – Millie Bobby Brown
• Dustin Henderson – Gaten Matarazzo
• Lucas Sinclair – Caleb McLaughlin
• Nancy Wheeler – Natalie Dyer
• Jonathan Byers – Charlie Heaton
• Karen Wheeler – Cara Buono
• Martin Brenner – Matthew Modine
• Will Byers – Noah Schnapp
• Maxine ‘Max’ Mayfield – Sadie Sink
• Steve Harrington – Joe Keery
• Billy Hargrove – Dacre Montgomery
• Bob Newby – Sean Astin
• Sam Owens – Paul Reiser
• Robin Buckley – Maya Hawke
• Erica Sinclair – Priah Ferguson

Episodes

Season One

Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers

The scene is Hawkins, Indiana, and the date is November 1983. A scientist is attacked by a mysterious creature at a laboratory. When Will Byers is on his way home, he encounters the creature and mysteriously vanishes. Will’s mother Joyce reports her son as missing to Jim Hopper. Meanwhile, lab director Martin Brenner looks into a substance coming out of the lab’s basement and says the girl can’t have gone far. A young girl with a shaved head enters a local diner. Brenner monitors the phones and learns where she is, sending agents to the diner when owner Benny calls social services. Benny is killed, but Eleven escapes using her abilities. Mike, Dustin and Lucas find Eleven in the woods.

Chapter Two: The Weirdo on Maple Street

Eleven is taken to Mike’s house, where it’s decided she can sleep in the basement for the night. Will’s brother Jonathan visits his estranged father Lonnie as he searches, but doesn’t get a warm welcome. Eleven tells Mike that bad people are looking for her. She recognises Will in a photo and shows the boys her psychic abilities. Then she tells them to trust her, because she believes she can help them find Will. Eleven says that Will is in the Upside Down and being hunted by the Demogorgon. Meanwhile, Mike’s sister Nancy and her friend Barb go to a party with Nancy’s boyfriend Steve. Nancy gets drunk and Barb is left alone by the pool. She is attacked by the Demogorgon and disappears.