Stranger Things

Finn Wolfhard, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke and more are all musicians outside of their roles on 'Stranger Things.' Check out the full list here.

On music streaming services, she joined the ranks of on-the-rise alternative musicians with her folk rock singles “To Love a Boy” and “Stay Open,” and has since released her first album, Blush, and her 2021 single “Blue Hippo.” On the show, she quickly became a beloved member of the “Upside Down” monster-hunting group, in part because of her sweet portrayal of a closeted lesbian teenager. “Me and my brother are always in the studio doing stuff and writing stuff,” she said on the Tonight Show. Dumped by Nancy, rejected by his ice-cream shop co-worker Robin Buckley, and striking out with all the girls he tries to flirt with at the Starcourt Mall — if only Steve possessed Keery’s real-life music skills, he might have better luck wooing the ladies. He first started releasing music and touring with his band Calpurnia, earning recognition for their singles “City Boy” and “Greyhound,” before splitting up in 2019. Though nine music-making Stranger Things stars is quite a lot for just one show, it does make sense considering how much the series relies on music — especially hits from the 1980s, the decade in which it’s set.

The British actor and season four standout on playing an '80s metalhead and how he bonded with the OG Stranger Things cast.

“There’s no flies on him,” he says. “He has this ability to make everyone feel at home.” “There was no grandiosity from the [Duffer] brothers, or from the cast members,“ he says. “They’re not nearly as bad as you think,” he says cheekily. “They expect you to be the character.” So that’s what he did. “I could go on for ages about him,” he says. Their most frequent note to Quinn would just be to say the lines faster, he recalls with a laugh. “I’m lovingly neutral,” he says diplomatically. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the bone structure for that.” Between takes, he would keep talking in the accent to his co-stars. “I only did two days on [Thrones]. It was obviously mad to be on something of that scale, but this one was much more collaborative. The way Joe Quinn tells it, it was suspiciously easy landing a role on Stranger Things. He sent in a grand total of two self-tapes in character as Eddie Munson—a showy metalhead with big hair and an even bigger obsession with Dungeons and Dragons. Shortly afterward, he got a congratulatory call from his agent.

In light of the Uvalde mass shooting, Netflix has issued a timely content warning for Stranger Things' season 4 premiere.

But in the wake of what happened in Uvalde, it’s hard not to see both shows as having tapped into something profoundly broken about the country they’re produced in — all at one of the most difficult times imaginable. Both in and out of the larger context that’s revealed as the rest of Stranger Things’ latest season unfolds, the Hawkins lab massacre plays very much like the show’s take on a school shooting due to its focus on helpless children losing their lives in classrooms. Though Stranger Things 4 is mostly set in 1986, the season’s premiere — “Chapter One: The Hellfire Club” — opens a few years earlier, back when Hawkins National Laboratories were still up and running experiments on Eleven and other children with enhanced abilities.

The oft-nostalgic Netflix series succeeds in Season 4 by treating adolescence as the torturous experience it is for those who don't fit in.

But the misery of high school calls for horror, naturally: “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and the “It” miniseries are a few of the callbacks in Season 4, and the terror is as much psychological as it is physical. There is plenty of fun to be had in “Stranger Things 4,” which both celebrates and parodies a decade that pushed conformity, conservatism and questionable style. The end of high school, and with it, the potential disbanding of this tightknit group. New to the party is metalhead and Dungeons & Dragons “Hellfire Club” master Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn). He’s accused of committing a string of heinous murders around Hawkins. The long-haired outcast contends that “Forced conformity [is] the real monster,” and he’s not entirely wrong. The music includes speed metal by Extreme, some “Detroit Rock City,” stoner anthems by Musical Youth, one-hit wonders Dead or Alive and Falco. And of course, Kate Bush’s “Running Up that Hill,” which sets the tone for a moving sequence with Max. Because the oddest thing about “Stranger Things” might be its capacity to keep surprising us. The true source of the murderous evil is Vecna, a ghoulish man/creature who resides in the Upside Down and thrives on destroying the residents from the inside out. Dustin’s genius gal pal Suzie (Gabriella Pizzolo) returns, and the scene in her Mormon household is one of the best. Odes to the goofy nostalgia of “Ghostbusters” and “Goonies” worked when the gang was younger, then nods to “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” mall culture and “Indiana Jones”-style adventure as they aged. And thank goodness for Erica (Priah Ferguson). Lucas’ mouthy 11-year-old sister is not as emotionally battered as the older kids, so she emerges as a sharp weapon against Vecna. The brilliance of “Stranger Things 4” is that rather than gloss over the unpleasantry, it leans hard into their clumsy, painful transition. (The hair is particularly bad.

We (mostly) love Steve getting his big hero moment in the penultimate episode to Volume 1. A recap of “The Dive,” episode six of season four of Netflix's ...

When he swims back up to tell everyone, he is immediately pulled back underwater by a vine from the Upside Down! It pulls him through the gate where he lands in a completely drained Lovers Lake and is dragged around! Back in our dimension, Nancy dives right in after Steve, Robin follows, and Eddie doesn’t want to be the only one left on the boat, so he jumps in too. Actually, he says that Dustin is asking him to “follow him into Mordor,” and while that sounds like a terrible idea, “the shire is burning.” They have no choice! They’ll be getting a ride straight back to the Wheelers’. Now, that might be for the best safety-wise, but it means they miss what happens out on the lake. When they get to the spot where Patrick died and the compass starts going crazy, they know there’s only one thing left to do: Someone has to swim down there and check it out. They have to get into the Upside Down. It is the only way. Jason sucks the big one and he has now gotten all of Hawkins riled up in his little satanic-panic mission — everyone is way too eager to get their pitchforks ready, you know? One told him that it was because he used emotion to get stronger — he thought of a memory that made him “both sad and angry,” and it worked. They attack and torture her until Two blasts her against the wall and threatens to kill her if she tells Brenner what they did. Maybe the one of her mother trying to find her and take her back. He knows the Demogorgon hates fire, so he nabs a bottle of vodka, starts a fight so that he can steal a guard’s lighter, and he lets his friend Dmitri in on it after. They’re going to make that meeting Yuri set with the prison warden to turn them over to the KGB — only now, Yuri will be tied up and gagged, and Murray will pretend to be Yuri. What happens after they waltz into the prison and meet with the warden, who is to say?

In the season finale, she uses her mental muscle to yank the wiggly remnant of the demon out of her body, and her adopted dad, Hawkins Police Chief Jim Hopper ( ...

In that post-credits scene at the Russian prison, the guards pass over the American (Hopper) for another sorry soul, whom they drag to a damp cell with a second door. But now she’s still a single mom, raising two sons and Hop’s adopted superhero but powerless daughter, because, in the end, Joyce is the strongest person on the show. In a bonus scene set in a Russian prison, two guards refer to the “American.” Could it be Hop? It is. Hopper and Joyce make it to the control room with the self-destruct keys and are immediately met with Grigori (Andrey Ivchenko), the Russian hit man who’s been stalking them all season. Moments before Hopper got vaporized (sort of), Joyce had finally agreed to go out on a date with him. In the season finale, she uses her mental muscle to yank the wiggly remnant of the demon out of her body, and her adopted dad, Hawkins Police Chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour), crushes the parasite with his boot. Joyce blows up the machine, Hopper and their hopes for the future. The just-sweaty-enough to be sexy Billy (played by Dacre Montgomery) is the bad big brother to end all bad big brothers. The Mind Flayer is moments away from impaling El and the gate has to be shut down. Their goal is to destroy the weapon the Soviets are using to laser a hole into the Upside Down to somehow harness the monsters therein for war or whatever. After they infiltrate the secret Russian underground lair built beneath the new Starcourt Mall with the help of the town’s corrupt mayor, Hopper, Joyce and investigative journalist/conspiracy theorist/fluent Russian speaker Murray (Brett Gelman) set out on a mission. So off they go in a moving van into the great unknown, also known as California.

"Stranger Things" experiences a serious case of gigantism in its fourth and final season, with super-sized episodes and even more drawn-out lead-ups to ...

Lavishly produced, the fourth season seemingly ups the ante on cruelty and bullying as well, leveraging the vulnerability of its nerdy characters. Burdened by expectations and clearly unfettered in terms of creative interference, the producers have responded with a dizzying new threat while scattering the characters, in one case across the globe in terms of that cliffhanger involving Hopper The first two episodes feel particularly bloated before the storytelling by the Duffer brothers and company settles into its groove.

Netflix bloat has come for the streaming service's biggest hit, 'Stranger Things' and its final season.

There is one scene early in the season that feels like the freewheeling, childlike joy of the show's origins, where a group of kids get together to play and win a session of Dungeons & Dragons, the camera zooming in on huddled faces, D20 dice rolling in agonizing slow motion. Maybe the only truly bad thing about this show is it no longer has the charm of a story centered on a group of nerdy kids using their knowledge of fantasy games and pop culture to fight off a bad guy worthy of a 1980s sci-fi movie. None of it is bad, and a lot of it is mostly fine. This season adds two more teens, another adult ally in the form of an imprisoned Russian soldier (Game of Thrones' Tom Wlaschiha), and two (eventually three) antagonists, bringing the grand total of key characters to 20. At that point, Netflix and show co-creators Matt and Ross Duffer had no clue how big of a smash the show would become and were still planning for it to be an anthology. All seven episodes of Stranger Things 4 Volume 1 are more than an hour, with the seventh installment clocking in at over 90 minutes.

To briefly, briefly recap where we left things off at the end of Season 3, all the various characters—including newcomers Robin (Maya Hawke) and Billy Hargrove ...

Eleven has always been connected to Upside Down and the various threats contained within but never before has she had such a personal connection with the bad guy as she does with Vecna. She was, after all, the one who defeated 001 and trapped him in the Upside Down. Owens and Brenner—whose uneasy peace with Eleven will surely be tested going forward—already thought she was their best hope at stopping the Upside Down from wreaking havoc. As we learn in the cross-cutting sequence where 001 and Vecna explain their histories to Eleven and Nancy, respectively, they are one and the same. They were once the son of Victor Creel—the man imprisoned in Pennhurst Asylum who Nancy and Robin interviewed in Episode 4. He quickly goes on a rampage, and then invites Eleven to join him in reshaping the world with their incredible powers while detailing his backstory—again, more on that in one second. Demitri’s imprisoned with Hopper and Joyce and Murrary are flown to Siberia, but they’re able to turn the tables on their kidnapper and enter the labor camp just as Hopper’s about to enter a cage fight with a captured Demogorgon. Dustin and Co. realize that Vecna is greeting a new gateway between the real world and the Upside Down at the site of every killing, and thanks to some Season 1-esque light shenanigans, they convey this message to the trapped teen crew. Max, as mentioned previously, was targeted by Vecna, who tormented her with psychic visions of her dead step-brother Billy (Montgomery, briefly returning in a cameo role). When it came time to try to kill her like he killed the others, he transported her consciousness to his realm in the Upside Down. But, in the nick of time, Robin and Nancy figure out that a previous victim of Vecna’s had been saved because he heard his favorite song and it pulled him back. Lucas, as Max’s ex, knows her favorite artist at the moment is the iconic English art-pop singer Kate Bush, and they slip headphones on her comatose body in the real world and blast her 1985 song “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God),” which allows her to escape. Back in Hawkins, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Max (Sink), Robin (Hawke), Steve (Joe Keery), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), and newcomer Eddie (Joseph Quinn), the Dungeon Master of the gang’s Dungeons and Dragons group who has been wrongfully framed for murder have been tracking down a new threat from the Upside Down they call Vecna. Vecna has been creating psychic bonds with his victims, tormenting them with visions, and then gruesomely killing them by snapping their limbs and making their eyes explode. Billy, who had been possessed by the monster, sacrifices himself in front of his stepsister Max (Sadie Sink). Eleven ( Millie Bobbie Brown) seems to have lost her powers, and she and the Byers family leave Hawkins and move to California. And, Hopper ( David Harbour) sacrifices himself to destroy the gate and is presumed dead… There are a ton of characters in Stranger Things, so it makes the most sense to break them into three main groups. Now, before we get to the midseason finale, let’s recap what happened in the first six episodes of Stranger Things Season 4.

It's been three years since we last saw the kids from Hawkins take on the Mind Flayer (and the Russians). This refresher should help jog your memory.

Although Hopper successfully battled a superagent, who was a dead ringer for Robert Patrick’s T-1000 in “Terminator 2,” he was also vaporized in the course of destroying the machine. As that was happening, Dustin and Erica (Priah Ferguson), Lucas’s little sister and an ice cream sample enthusiast, used Dustin’s radio to lead Hopper, Joyce and Murray through the tunnel system below the mall, where they posed as Russian agents to gain access to the giant laser. For a moment, El manages to loosen Billy from the Mind Flayer’s psychic grip, and in a last-ditch moment of heroism, he sacrifices himself in order to save her. And loves the theme to “The Neverending Story.”) Some of the possessed, including the bad-boy lifeguard Billy Hargrove (Dacre Montgomery), returned to their lives as hallowed-out clones of their former selves, who became “active” at the malevolent entity’s discretion. Looking for an edge beyond nuclear proliferation, the Soviets sneaked into Hawkins, where they deployed a giant laser beam to crack open the same gate to the Upside Down that Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and her friends labored so hard to seal up.

"We filmed this season of 'Stranger Things' a year ago. But given the recent tragic shooting at a school in Texas, viewers may find the opening scene of ...

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Netflix added a content disclosure to 'Stranger Things' to warn viewers of a violent scene involving kids. Viewers think 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' should have too.

@disneyplus Hey, @Disney did it occur to you that since Obi-Wan Kenobi starts with a SCHOOL SHOOTING maybe now was not the time to drop it early? In that scene, a Jedi instructor is killed protecting a group of young students while the Jedi temple is being attacked by Clone Troopers who are executing the order. The camera cuts to bodies of young children and lab workers covered in blood strewn over the facility and later shows a young Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) as the catalyst. However, the new Disney+ series starring Ewan McGregor did not offer a warning to audiences. “But given the recent tragic shooting at a school in Texas, viewers may find the opening scene of episode 1 distressing. We are deeply saddened by this unspeakable violence, and our hearts go out to every family mourning a loved one.”

(Kovi Konowiecki / For The Times). Matt and Ross Duffer spent a good chunk of their '90s childhood in Durham, N.C., exploring — riding their bikes, ...

It’s not meta, and it’s not aware that it’s a show. The brothers acknowledge a sort of longing for a time when they could let their imaginations run wild. It was like, ‘Wait, I was imagining Season 2 Finn; I was imagining Season 2 Millie. So this year, we were pretty prepared for how much they were going to age, and we wrote very much to that age.” We didn’t find a treasure map, and we did not find a girl with superpowers. Watching the show is reminiscent of coming back to a new “Harry Potter” movie after a couple of years and wondering: Who’s that? Although the brothers didn’t grow up in the ‘80s (they were born in ’84), they got there as fast as they could, via a steady diet of the decade’s pop culture. Going back to the ‘70s and beyond, you can add “Carrie,” “The Exorcist,” “Jaws,” “Alien,” the “Lord of the Rings” books and H.P. Lovecraft. “It’s about trying to evoke a style of storytelling that I feel had disappeared a little bit,” Ross says. Before we had the older characters in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” storyline. “Stranger Things” began in 2016 as the story of three grade-school kids, Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), searching for their vanished friend, Will (Noah Schnapp). They stumble upon a lost girl, Eleven ( Millie Bobby Brown), who has mysterious telekinetic powers. This year, it was fun to be able to put the kids into that storyline. Our heroes are outcasts and nerds, navigating a world of jocks, stoners and cool kids.

Stranger Things 4 returns to the 1980s with this soundtrack, featuring songs from Kate Bush to Talking Heads and more. Here's which song played in each ...

You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. We all have those songs that can save us from the darkest of moments; the songs that can change a mood from the very first note. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. She's relatively new to Hawkins, she's coming from a broken home, and now she's just lost her stepbrother, Billy. And while Billy was an asshole, he was the closest thing she had to a close family member. How about Eleven and Max bonding in the mall while Madonna's "Material Girl" played in Season 3?

Menachem Begin, the future Israeli prime minister, was imprisoned at Lukiškės for eight months in 1940 and 1941.

Vilna was a hub of European Jewish culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries. That ultimately may have saved his life, as he was freed when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union and ultimately was able to make his way to what would become Israel, where he became the sixth prime minister in 1977. During Lukiškės’ century of operation, it was the site of imprisonment, torture and executions for political prisoners.

Stranger Things season 4 is packed with '80s references from music to D&D to classic movies and TV. We've picked out a bunch of our favorite deep cuts!

The theme mostly seems to be “dreams” (for obvious reasons with Vecna and the ongoing Nightmare on Elm Street tributes). We get old standards like “I’ll See You in My Dreams” and “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams” “Red Sails in the Sunset” seems to be the outlier here, as we can’t figure out how this might fit the theme. And if anyone is a “choosy mom” it is Joyce! As El attempts to regain her powers, she is shown concentrating on crushing a “Coca-Cola Classic” can. Eddie says he’s “pretty god damn far from OK.” Could this be the rare non-’80s Stranger Things reference? One of Max’s flashbacks in this episode shows her watching television when a young pre-Friends Courtney Cox appears on the screen. “A plane brings Mike to California – and a dead body brings Hawkins to a halt. The Carrie vibes are strong in this scene, from the increasing public humiliation to something being dumped on poor Eleven, in this case a chocolate milkshake. - The Hellfire Club is a name withplenty of historical significance, but in the context of Stranger Things, it probably means more as an X-Men comics reference. All seem to be about “clever thoughts,” “fantastic” ideas, and “ingenious plans.” Interestingly, “idea” is also one of the crossword puzzle answers. This, as you might have guessed, is the moment in the 1982 film when the character played by Phoebe Cates removes her red bikini top in a memorable dream sequence. Feel free to point out anything that we may have missed in the comments below, and we’ll add it to the article.

And Netflix subscribers can't say they didn't get their money's worth. The entire season drop so far, especially the seventh episode, was packed with details, ...

Robin and Eddie were able to crawl out of the Upside Down in the final scenes, but Steve is still down there, and Nancy fell into what seemed like a worse universe, Vecna's domain. This is how the first portal to the Upside Down was opened. Eleven used her powers to yank out the chip, and whoops, One's terrifying powers were now unleashed again. Peter Ballard, a man who seemed to be a kind orderly at the lab, turned out to have been the lab's very first child patient, bearing the tattoo of 001, aka One. And who is this man, you may ask? Eleven has been having flashbacks to a bloody massacre among the other numbered, telekinetic kids who were in the lab with her. Nancy and Robin go to the asylum where a now elderly Victor is being held, and realize he didn't kill his family, the season's Big Bad, Vecna, did.

He's also Vecna, but we'll get to that in a moment. Ad – content continues below. Victor Creel apparently moved his family to Hawkins, Indiana ...

The fact remains that even though Steve and the others made their assault on the water gate to take on Vecna, they quickly made their exit as soon as they were able, leaving the cursed wizard at large for the final two episodes of Stranger Things season 4, coming July 1. Perhaps Vecna took awhile to heal from Eleven’s attack and take shape in his new form, feeding on fish while the original gate was still open while slowly creating his own small “water gate” from those tiny, fishy brains. Robin was warned not to step on the vines because they would alert the hive mind, and the tentacles that attach to Vecna while he’s manipulating wounded souls certainly imply a connection between the former human and the natives of this hell dimension. In fact, the Hand of Vecna was a magical item in the game before the monster himself was even fully developed. Victor tells Nancy and Robin his son was “sensitive,” which could simply have been Victor’s way of explaining away his son’s abnormal behavior, but One tells El that his father believed the hauntings and dead animals resulted from “a demon cursing them for their sins. The answer lies with Dr. Martin Brenner and his secret government project to breed psychic spies and assassins in the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

(L to R) Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield Courtesy of Netflix. So, you've made it through the incredibly long ...

Will Hopper, Joyce, and Murray make it out of the Soviet Union? Will Eleven get her powers back? There are definitely plenty of things to wrap up — will Nancy get out of the Upside Down? What does Vecna want? It’s not really a traditional post-credits scene.

“Nina…Nina…here's the number,” Harmon gurgles as he holds out a pen to Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) and Will Byers (Noah Schnapp). Ad – content ...

Right as Eleven and Owens arrive at the Ruth, Nevada facility, a chyron appears onscreen that read “Twelve Hours Earlier.” The timeframe this text is referring to is the previous scene in which Harmon tells Mike and company to find Nina with his dying breath. The use of Nina for these flashbacks is an important one because it makes Eleven and the audience actual participants in the show’s history mores than a traditional flashback would. Kudos to Eleven for revisiting her past and reclaiming her powers but she’s going to have to get back to work quickly. In Eleven’s case, the stimuli that Brenner and Owens have presented to her takes her right back to her time in the Hawkins Laboratory. Eleven is frequently bullied by the other children to the point where the orderly a.k.a. Number One convinces her that they are about to kill her. Perhaps because the moment she’s out of that deprivation tank, things will have well and truly gone wild. That leads Eleven to unshackle Number One’s powers to escape, and he in turns goes and kills all of the other subjects. Dr. Owens (Paul Reiser) and the surprisingly still-alive Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) brought Eleven to that lair to “meet” Nina. You see, Dr. Brenner thinks he knows why Eleven’s powers have seemingly abandoned her. There are some interesting technical tricks used to indicate that Eleven is both passively and actively participating in a memory from several years earlier. This is the ultimate memory that Brenner wants Nina to uncover, along with the moment that Eleven confronts Number One and banishes him the Upside Down where he becomes the inhuman Vecna. Nina resides in the remote desert of Ruth, Nevada where Dr. Owens has established a secret science lair deep underground in an abandoned Intercontinental Ballistic Missile silo. Who exactly is Nina? Harmon is unable to say before he unfortunately expires.

FBI, Physical, The Orville: New Horizons and Lifetime's Bad Seed Returns also change plans after tragedy.

The scene in question was released on YouTube last week ahead of the season premiere. In the wake of the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Netflix has added a warning to the premiere episode of Stranger Things’ fourth season. But given the recent tragic shooting at a school in Texas, viewers may find the opening scene of episode 1 distressing.

Kate Bush is a cheat code. It doesn't matter how many times “Running Up That Hill” is used in film and television; once those opening synths kick in, it's ...

Demogorgons, Mind Flayers, and Vecna, oh my! The Stranger Things season 4 volume 1 finale raises many questions for volume 2 to pursue.

And of the four individuals in the Upside Down, Nancy has the most of it. There is very little humanity left in Number One. He is basically The Upside Down personified – the insidious combination of actual evil and power as interpreted by a dark dimension. Dustin works out that Vecna’s kills in the real world open gates to the Upside Down. Sure enough, they make it to Eddie’s trailer, the site of Vecna’s first kill of the season, and a makeshift rope allows Robin and Eddie to make it back to the real world. The final moments of Stranger Things season 4 episode 7 reveal that Henry Creel a.k.a. Number One is the monster we’ve come to know as Vecna. Upon being banished to The Upside Down, the shadowy realm gives him a terrifying, bestial form more suitable to his inner evil. For a moment it really seems like The Upside Down journey is over and the whole crew is about to make it out. Nancy even climbs (or descends…the Upside Down is confusing) the rope and crosses the threshold of the two worlds. It’s possible that time in the Upside Down runs more slowly than time in the real world. It’s also possible that The Mind Flayer and his five-star general Vecna have isolated the Wheeler household in its 1983 version just so the gang doesn’t have any weapons to use. It is likely that Eleven and the Hawkins lab making first contact with the shadowy realm in 1983 effectively froze it in time. The Stranger Things season 4 volume 1 finale goes where all Stranger Things finales, midseason or otherwise, must inevitably go: The Upside Down. This time, however, Nancy (Natalia Dyer) notices that something is a little different about the sideways universe. Though every season of Stranger Things takes place in the past (at least relative to our own present), this season journeys further back in the timeline than ever before. The crushing weight of Stranger Things’ history comes to bear in episode 7 where we learn a lot about the series’ mythology and even get thrown a cliffhanger or two.

Prosthetics designer Barrie Gower and makeup department head Amy Forsythe explain how the practical effects for the new villain in Netflix's Stranger Things ...

Forsythe remembers taking a photo of an in-costume Vecna sitting in her 1965 Ford Ranchero, with members of the makeup and prosthetics team in the back. Gower also believes that practical focus has a positive impact on the performances of the various cast members. “Most importantly, the actor has to go to the loo at some point during the day,” says Gower. “So you have a special undercarriage that went under some cycling shorts so he could open a special Vecna pouch and go to the loo.” “It’s the nature of the beast. But for the most part, what you see in the show is what the prosthetics and makeup teams built. The benefits of a focus on practical effects, and merging them cohesively with digital ones, are evident when you watch the new season. Gower notes that many of the techniques used in Vecna’s creation were pioneered in the ‘80s, though the team had the advantage of more modern materials. “Practical effects are such a huge thing with the nostalgia of the ‘80s, and we were losing that so much in our show,” she explains. “The quite interesting thing about Stranger Things is it’s this huge property already, and it’s got this great design sense to it,” Gower tells The Verge. “They already had a very clear vision of what they wanted to do with this character.” It did require a lot of work, though: the application process took an average of 6.5 to 7 hours to complete. One of the main goals, Gower says, “was to create the character as close to 100 percent practical as possible.” Gower says the process started with concept images from artist Michael Maher Jr., which was followed by plenty of discussion with Maher, the Duffers, and the visual effects team, among others.

Stranger Things season 4 is currently being binged around the world by Netflix subscribers who now have access to the show's penultimate season.

So far, they have not missed yet, and this season shows that the time off due to the pandemic has only allowed them to regroup and come back even stronger. We will see if anything changes, with scores going up or down, when the final two enormous episodes of season 4 debut in July, including the 2.5 hour season finale. Over the past couple months here, and Stranger Things is a pretty strong quality outlier.

Stranger Things Season 4 leaves David Harbour out in the cold with nowhere to go.

He was one of the most compelling parts of the first season, something that feels so long ago as he has become buried under a mountain of drivel. It just drops him into the darkness with no sense of development, leaving both actor and character there to wither into nothingness until it needs him to make a sudden rebound. Early on in this season, Hopper is described as being “stuck” and this unintentionally ends up being the aptest description of what his role has been reduced to. For almost the entirety of his story this season, Hopper is trapped in Russia where he was teleported. Some of this is the show’s rather blunt way of showing he has given up on life, though it ends up making his character feel lifeless by extension and lessens the impact of him being broken down. He ended the last season by making a sacrifice that left all those around him believing that he had perished.

TVLine's detailed recap of 'Stranger Things' Season 4, Volume 1 reveals spoilers for episodes 1-7.

WHAT HAPPENED: After Mike, Will, Jonathan and Argyle escaped from the feds, they figured out that the “Nina” the doomed agent protecting them had wanted them to contact was a computer. And El was forced to blast him through a gate to the Upside Down, where he became… Nancy and Robin learned from mental patient Victor that “the voice of an angel” — Ella Fitzgerald on the radio — had snapped him out of Vecna’s trance before he could be killed. WHAT HAPPENED: After rendezvousing with Eddie, Steve, Nancy, Robin, Dustin, Lucas and Max deduced that Lovers’ Lake hid beneath it a gate — a Watergate, per Dustin. Once Steve had found the portal, he was dragged through it by tentacles and attacked in the Upside Down by Demobats (?!?). In Utah, Suzie fell for the tall tale that Mike, Will, Jonathan and Argyle spun and obtained for them Nina’s coordinates. WHAT HAPPENED: After Nancy, Robin and Eddie helped save Steve, they deduced that a gate was located at each of Vecna’s murder sites and hurried to the Munsons’ trailer. “Enzo” Dmitri informed Hopper that as soon as pilot Yuri received the ransom money, the prisoner could make his escape. And at Rink-O-Mania, Angela so brutally humiliated El in front of a visiting Mike that she bashed her smug face with a roller skate. Keep scrolling, and before Part 2 drops on Friday, July 1, we’ll discuss all the major twists of plot, pausing to shine a spotlight on each episode’s biggest moments. Oh, and something extremely wicked their way came: Visiting Eddie’s trailer to score drugs, troubled cheerleader Chrissy was fatally pretzeled by the supernatural force that had been stalking her. BIGGEST LAUGH: Steve deduced that Robin’s crush on Vickie wasn’t in vain because she’d returned Fast Times at Ridgemont High to Family Video during a key Phoebe Cates moment. But the advice would be just as well-taken by you or anyone diving in to the first part of the series’ penultimate season. “Buckle up, brochachos!” Early on in the Season 4 premiere of Netflix’s Stranger Things, that’s the warning that Jonathan’s pothead pal Argyle gives him, Eleven and Mike, and he does so, because he’s kinda what you’d call a wild driver.

Does Hawkins have its very own Michael Myers? We suspect there is more to this story. stranger-things-season-4-finn-wolfhard-millie- ...

He begins to chant "murderer" repeatedly to a horrified Fred. Suddenly, everything snaps back to normal, and Nancy and the cop are looking at him strangely. Dustin decides it is time to fill him in on the Upside Down. He asks Eddie if he saw anything that looked like swirling dust. In Alaska, they will meet with a man named Yuri and give him the money, which he will then in turn give to Enzo. While he is talking, a woman outside the phone booth bangs on the door and yells something at him in Russian. Joyce says that if he wants her to go to Alaska, she needs to speak to Hop to confirm he is alive. It dawns on El what she has done as she watches everyone race over to Angela. Mike looks at El and echoes Dr. Brenner when he asks, "What did you do?!" What is her relationship with Eddie Munson? Jason is stunned and terrified and tells them Chrissy said she was going home after the game to change. Will says they are supposed to be best friends, and Mike shrugs him off, annoyed, and asks why Will didn't reach out more and why it has to be all his fault. You can't." As she turns away El screams her name, but this time, instead of trying and failing to use her powers, she does the next best thing her instincts think of. Murray translates that the woman called him a "mooser," which is Russian slang for "pig" and is usually directed at cops or guards in Russia. Joyce and Murray realize that Hop must be "stuck" in prison and maybe bribed Enzo to break him out. Will confronts her when he and El get a minute alone and tells her Mike doesn't deserve to be lied to, and he's going to be upset when he finds out. While Mike is looking for El, he asks why Will has been moping all day, and Will tells him with frustration that El has been lying to him ever since he got there. Will is holding a rolled-up painting he is clearly going to give Mike. They jump up in excitement when they see him, and Mike gives El flowers he handpicked from Hawkins. El is excited, but her face falls slightly when she looks at the card, which is signed "FROM MIKE," noticeably not "LOVE." Mike and Will have an awkward reunion and Will, looking disappointed, doesn't give Mike the painting. As they exit the airport, we see Murray (Brett Gelman) hopping into a cab on his way to meet Joyce and figure out what the hell is up with that shady letter from Russia. When he gets to the Byers residence, he reads the full message: "Hop is alive.

Horror icon Robert Englund—best known as Freddy Kreuger—joins the 'Stranger Things' for season 4 as Victor Creel.

With Wes Craven's 1984 horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street, Englund began playing one of the most iconic villains in the horror genre: Freddy Kreuger. Freddy is one of the most popular Halloween costumes year-in and year-out for good reason, and that reason is that he's absolutely terrifying. In this case, we got to see Englund as more of a Dr. Loomis (from the Halloween films) than Freddy himself. “The fact that he came to us in a season that’s so deeply inspired by the Nightmare series and by his performance especially in those movies, it felt like fate,” Matt Duffer said. Englund only appears in one single episode of Stranger Things Season 4, but it's a vital role that is referenced both before and after his actual appearance. Ahhh! Yeah, that was us when we saw how ol' Victor looked in the image above when he was introduced in Episode 4 of Stranger Things Season 4. The people behind Stranger Things have never been shy about how much they like paying tribute to two things: the horror genre and the 1980s.

The Unexpected Hero of Stranger Things 4? Kate Bush. The backstory behind Max's favorite song and other music choices in the super-sized new season.

Felder doesn’t quite have a favorite song pick this season, but she does love the way “Running Up That Hill” evolves through the story. Songs used ranged from ‘Tarzan Boy’ by Baltimora, ‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’ by Dead or Alive, and of course the Surfaris classic ‘Wipe Out’ was featured.” “A lot of brainstorming went on as this song [selection] really had to be something unique and special serving as such an integral part of the story,” Felder says. While “Running Up That Hill” takes center stage this season, Felder was also able to include other ‘80s hits in other moments. “Her friends also quickly realize that this song could be the key to freeing her from this powerful monster.” “And if we could actually swap each other’s roles, if we could actually be in each other’s place for a while, I think we’d both be very surprised!

The new season of the Netflix hit went out on a climactic note, alternating between Eleven battling a powerful nemesis (more on that below) and Nancy facing ...

That means that Lucas, Max, and Dustin are technically on the run from the cops, which will no doubt interfere with the Upside Down matters at play. But we’re wondering how many other Kate Bush needle drops there will be in the two episodes (and nearly four hours) left of the season. There’s also the fact that Will had been painting a lot but refused to show anyone what he’d been working on. Even if they are able to make it out of the prison camp unscathed, there’s still a ton of Iron Curtain to get on the other side of — which will be difficult given that Yuri’s plane went kaput. “What if the people you care about the most don’t like the truth?” Many have interpreted these moments as indicators that Will is going to come out as gay. Nancy spent the season trying to downplay her concerns about her long-distance relationship with Jonathan, who has (unbeknownst to her) decided not to move across the country to go to college with her. Eleven lost her powers after an Upside Down monster got (literally) under her skin at the end of the third season. And if Eleven can manipulate time, what does that mean for her — and the world — moving forward? Hopefully Mike and the others get to El first, because she is seriously needed in Hawkins right about now. That date definitely has resonance in this world — it’s the day Will vanished into the Upside Down, kicking off the events of season 1. One started with torturing animals and terrorizing his family with visions before eventually killing his sister and mother in 1959 (and leaving his dad to take the rap). Though Robin and Eddie made it through the gate no problem, Nancy fell under Vecna’s spell just as she tried to climb through to the regular world.

“We filmed this season of 'Stranger Things' a year ago. But given the recent tragic shooting at a school in Texas, viewers may find the opening scene of episode ...

“We are deeply saddened by this unspeakable violence, and our hearts go out to every family mourning a loved one,” the card reads. “We filmed this season of ‘Stranger Things’ a year ago. Volume 2 is set to debut on July 1.