Just a few more months until the return of Stranger Things on Netflix. As we get closer to the final season, join io9’s own Hellfire Club for a rewatch of the series leading up to November’s final season premiere. If you’re new, here’s our first-season refresher.
On this month’s catch-up, we look at Stranger Things season two. The sophomore installment expanded the Hawkins crew with the addition of Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink) and the newly returned Will (Noah Schnapp), who now take part in the ongoing supernatural town happenings. Will is caught in between worlds in a way that’s a danger to him and his friends. Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is kept hidden from Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and their friends for her protection by Hopper (David Harbour). The two become a found family and encounter danger in ways that bring the tangled web of the Upside Down’s dangers so much closer to home and raise more suspicion surrounding the new leadership at Hawkins Lab.
Here are the 10 most important takeaways from Stranger Things season two.
1. Eleven and Hopper become an unlikely family unit
Hopper takes Eleven in after the events of season one when she stumbles out of the Upside Down. To protect her from Hawkins National Lab, whose agents continue to poke about the lives of Mike, Will, and their friends’ families, he insists she stay away from them until they back off. Eleven is promised she’ll see Mike and her friends again, but Hopper keeps putting off the when, pretty much setting up their combative, overprotective father-and-daughter dynamic. But hey, she gets to stay home and have Eggo waffles all the time.
2. Max and Lucas meet cute
Max and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) becoming each other’s sweethearts is the cutest story in the season. Although we have to point out there were unnecessary issues with Max’s presence: one, having her be a girl that Lucas and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) fight over initially, and two, somehow also being seen as a threat by Eleven. That’s without even mentioning Max’s racist stepbrother Billy (Dacre Montgomery). Plot devices aside, the Max-Lucas friendship and romance evolves naturally and so does her joining the gang’s adventures. Max calls herself a zoomer because she’s fast—a special ability that comes in handy when they need a driver.
3. Dustin and Dart the Demodog
In probably one of the series’ oddest choices, that slug Will puked out and told no one about gets found by Dustin, who decides to rescue it. Somehow Dustin thinks Dart, his newfound friend, is a new normal Earth species. Despite knowing weird things come out of the Upside Down, he tries to domesticate Dart, who is very clearly a hybrid homage to Gremlins and Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors in the way it grows. Eventually the rest of the gang get in on it to try and tame Dart even though it keeps putting them through dangerous hijinks as it hungers for flesh. By the time Will finds out about its existence, Dustin is already too attached in a bizarrely antagonistic way that endangers their whole crew. They finally realize it’s some sort of Demogorgon-esque creature once it eats Dustin’s family cat and decide to name the species the Demodog. Quickly after that they discover it’s not the only one.
4. Hawkins Lab’s interdimensional gate grows
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