Stranger Things: Recap and Ending Explained What Happened So Far! Read Before Season 4 Release

What do you need to know before watching Stranger Things season 4 on Netflix? Where did we “leave” the young protagonists of Hawkins? Here is a key summary of the previous Stranger Things installments with the events, point by point, from the third season.

Stranger Things: The Beginning Of The Third Season

The third season of Stranger Things opens in the summer of 1985. Hawkins’ children are now grown up and are starting to have strong feelings like love. Max and Lucas are a couple, as are Eleven and Mike, while Dustin claims to have a long-distance romantic relationship with a girl named Suzie but few believe him (it turns out only at the end of season 3 that Dustin wasn’t lying). Will, on the other hand, has no interest in the girls (s) but still prefers to play the Dungeons & Dragons RPG with his friends.

Nancy and Jonathan are a couple and both work at the local Hawkins Post: she as a (mistreated) secretary and he as a photographer.

Steve works at the new mall – the Starcourt – as a shop assistant – the Scoops Ahoy – which sells ice cream. Here he meets one of the new protagonists of the series that is Robin Buckley.

Police Chief Jim Hopper is busy trying to be the father of Eleven, whose name is now Jane Hopper, and in the meantime plans to get back together with Joyce.

Max’s brother, Billy, is a big factor in Season 3: at first, he works as a lifeguard in the pool.

The Russians and The Mind Flayer Plan

The beginning of the first episode shows that on June 28, 1984, the Russians started drilling the ground to try to open a passage with the Upside Down. During the series, it turns out that, however, since the 1984 experiment was unsuccessful, the Russians have built a laboratory right in the depths of Hawkins and more precisely in the land on which the Starcourt Mall was built. In the summer of 1985, this laboratory is fully functional and operational. The Russians built the laboratory with the consent of the Mayor of Hawkins (possibly corrupt, perhaps forced).

As written, it is not the Americans of the HNL or Hawkins National Lab who work in this laboratory, who is responsible for the experiments on Eleven and the opening of the portal in season 1 but the Russians. This is because the series is set in the middle of the Cold War, and therefore the Soviets cannot pass up the possibility of trying to use a powerful weapon like the Upside Down.

The various solicitations of the complex machinery of the Russians, designed to open the portal, awaken the Mind Flayer, who immediately puts into practice his plan to conquer the earth. The Mind Flayer plans to possess – as it did in the season 2 episodes with Will – a stronger adult-like Billy to make him not a lone soldier but the leader of an army of possessed.

In short: once he has Billy, the Mind Flayer through Max’s half-brother begins to infect animals (such as mice) and people, who respond to his commands to expand the army even further. All possessed beings (called flayed in the Italian dub) sacrifice themselves to give their bodily essence to a single giant being capable of killing Eleven, or the only one capable of stopping the Mind Flayer.

The Role Of The Protagonists

In the third season, some teams are formed that lead different paths. Each team follows a lead and solves a piece of the puzzle within Stranger Things 3:

• The largest team is the one formed by Mike, Eleven, Lucas, Max, and Will: they find out what happened to Billy
• Dustin, Steve, and Robin with the addition of Lucas ‘younger sister Erica overhear a coded message from the Russians, decipher it, and discovers that the Soviets have built a laboratory under Hawkins’ Starcourt Mall.
• Jim and Joyce with the addition of Murray Bauman discover the presence of the Russians in Hawkins and some houses used as strategic positions. It all starts with an intuition of Joyce (the magnets on her fridge come off for no reason) and ends with the three who get help from the Russian head of the laboratory, Alexei, to understand how to turn off the machine, which the Russians are using to open the portal with the Upside Down
• Jonathan and Nancy follow a news lead, which leads them to the home of an old lady who has problems with rats. It turns out that the mice are all infected with the Mind Flayer and then come together to form a giant creature.

The puzzle is made up in the final two final episodes when everyone gathers at the Starcourt Mall for the final battle. The plan is for Hopper and Joyce to reach the Russian car to shut it down, Murray joins them too. By turning off or blowing up the machine, the connection between the two worlds will cease to exist and so will the Mind Flayer’s control over the monster formed with the fused bodies of people.

Erica and Dustin are well acquainted with the Starcourt Mall basement and therefore lend themselves to leading the group of Hopper and Joyce by radio. Since the Russian laboratory is very deep and has walls that disturb the normal radio signal, Dustin and Erica must reach the hill seen at the beginning of the first episode, where Dustin has installed his handmade “Cerebro” antenna. super effective.

All the others wait at the Starcourt Mall but find themselves in danger due to the presence of the huge monster and the fact that Eleven seems to no longer have its powers. In the finale, the boys can do nothing against the giant monster and watch Billy capture Eleven and bring her in front of the monstrous creature to be absorbed. Eleven, however, begins to talk to Billy by telling him a memory that she saw in her mind: Billy happy child on the beach with his mother Di lei. Billy comes to his senses and stands between the monster and Eleven, saving the latter from certain death. Billy dies at the same moment in the laboratory of the Russians Hopper detonates the machinery, closing the door between the world of the living and the Upside Down. The explosion also disintegrates Hopper who, however, we know to be alive since the first teaser trailer of season 4 of Strange Things.

How Stranger Things Season 3 Ends

• The news reports talk about the Starcourt disaster but no one knows what happened
• The corrupt Mayor of Hawkins is arrested
• The Byers family moves out of Hawkins. Joyce takes her two children with him and Eleven too. Before leaving, the latter reads Hopper’s touching letter (and makes us all cry)
• Will leaves his collection of Dungeons and Dragons books and manuals to Erica
• During the season Mike had said he loves Eleven, in this ending, she is the one who says “I love you” to Mike. The two make an appointment for Thanksgiving
• Robin and Steve start work at the “Family Video” VHS rental shop

The scene shown during the credits takes the viewer back to Kamchatka, Russia, where the Soviets have managed to open the portal, as they are trying to train a Demogorgon. This is fed by a prisoner, who is locked in the cell next to an “American”. Already from here, it began to be suspected that the explosion of the machinery has somehow transported Hopper to Russia: as will be discovered with the new episodes of the fourth season of Stranger Things, available on the Netflix from May and July.