Katherine Williams

November 13, 2017

 

        Stranger Things is an Original Netflix sci fi show. It takes place in a small Indiana town in 1983. The main characters differ from the two seasons. In the first season it’s Eleven, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Nancy, Jonathan, Joyce and Hopper all looking for Will. The second season consists of the same characters but also with a new one Max and more of Steve. The seasons show many differences that separates them from good and bad.

        In the first season it’s about the group of kids finding their friend, Will, with an escaped lab girl they call Eleven. They call her Eleven because she has a tattoo on her wrist of “011” implying she was the eleventh person that was tested on in the Hawkins Lab. She escaped because the scientists or “bad men” were torching her so she enables powers like moving things with her mind.

Other characters who help try and find Will are his mother, Joyce, who ends up acting crazy because she can’t find her son. Police chief Hopper helps Joyce through it and actually believes her throughout the season unlike other people in the town who just believes she’s insane. Other characters who are helping are Will’s brother, Jonathan, and his friend Nancy.

While in the beginning they just believed Will was kidnapped or ran away but then as the boys put piece and piece together they realize he’s in another dimension called the Upside Down. The Upside Down is pretty much the world they live in but it’s overrun by monsters and demons like the Demigorgon that opened and maintained by Hawkin’s Lab. The Demigorgon is a  monster that they play against in the game Dungeons and Dragons.

Throughout the season as they’re searching for a way into the Upside Down they’re trying to hide Eleven from the “bad men” from Hawkins Lab because they’re searching for her since she escaped. At the end of the season they get Will back but in the last few minutes of the last episode Eleven disappears along with the Demigorgon. No one knew whether she died or it brought her to the Upside Down.

       

The second season or Stranger Things 2 is about the same group of kids plus a new girl named Max trying to help Will get through his traumatic experiences of being in the Upside Down. He sometimes feels like he’s in a dream of being there but in reality he actually is in his mind. In the beginning it was just him being there and seeing a storm then coming back to reality, but later on he actually sees a shadow monster and it takes control over him. He then has to go to Hawkin’s Lab so they can run tests on him and try to help him get the monster out. He slowly starts to lose his memory about the people he knows and his life. They end up burning the shadow monster out of him in of the last episodes.

        In the beginning Dustin finds a small reptile like creature that he can’t identify. He starts to form a bond with the creature and names him Dart. He feeds him, talks to him and genuinely shows the affection he would show for a pet to him. When Dart starts to rapidly grow the group realizes he may be a demon from the Upside Down. Even though Dustin agrees he still has this affection for the creature, letting him go when they want to kill him. Days later he comes home to Dart eating his cat and him being twice the size he was the day before. He ends up growing to be the dog form of the Demigorgon, aka a demidog, and that there’s dozens more trying to help the shadow monster take over the reality side of the world through Will.

While that’s happening Jonathan and Nancy are trying to figure out how to help their friend Barb who died in the first season by the Demigorgon in the Upside Down. When she died the police just told the public and her family she was missing like Will so no one really did anything about it or tried to look for her.

Unlike the first season Steve has a more descriptive role other than being Nancy’s boyfriend. His character really plays into the show after him and Nancy break up. Dustin needs help after he’s seen Dart eat his cat. With Mike being with Will and his mom at Hawkings Lab and Lucas with Max he can’t find anyone but Steve. Steve acts as more of a parental figure for Dustin helping him find Dart and simultaneously giving him advice with girls and school.

During the whole season everyone thinks Eleven is dead but she’s really being hidden by Hopper in a house in the woods so the “bad men” from Hawkins Lab won’t find her and take her away. Mike tries to talk to her through  walkie talkie because he wants to believe she’s still alive. Even though she hears it she’s not allowed to talk back because she’s in hiding. After a year of her sitting in the house lonely she decides to rebel against Hoppers rules and go and try and find her mother. When she finds her she learns that her actual name is Jane and she was taken from her mother when she gave birth by the man who used to own Hawkins Lab. Her mother tells her to go find her “sister” that was also from the lab. The girl not being her biological sister but another girl who was tortured to gain powers. She has the ability to make people see what she wants them to see. Unlike Eleven, or Jane, she uses her powers for bad with her gang of homeless misfits to kill the people who used to work for Hawkings. When Eleven can’t get around to kill she goes back to her town and rejoins her old friends. Of course everyone is shocked and happy because they thought she was dead.

The season ends with her closing the Upside Down so no more demidogs or the shadow monster can get through. While they’re at their middle school dance the scene quickly flashes the Upside Down meaning it will come back in season three.

As a whole the show is absolutely incredible. Some people prefer one season to the other but it’s all based on opinion. While season one sets up the whole plot and keeps the original characters, season two had better graphics and many more storylines. Both seasons are thrilling but maybe season three will give them a run for their money.