If you haven’t already check out my review from last week on season 1 of Stranger Things, its all mild spoilers, as this one will also be, so if you haven’t watched the show yet, it has the plot down but not the entirety of the show, so hopefully you’ll be surprised by some things!

Season 2 of stranger things starts out in a similar way to season 1 and once again focuses on the four boys, however with one big difference; Eleven is gone. Throughout the season her absence is felt strongly by Mike who over the course of season 1 had developed feelings for her. (Don’t fret, my avid readers, ill be making a blog post about romance in stranger things next week) The other big difference is that Will is present in the season, whereas last season he was absent because he was in The Upside Down.

All seems well with the boys, until a new girl shows up, Max, who quickly causes a rift to form between Lucas and Dustin. This also causes a rift later on in the series when they want to tell Max what went on last year with Will and Mike is strongly against it. As the season progresses she soon becomes a trusted member of the group who, initially disbelieves the story, but quickly understands that everything they’re saying is true and she strives to help.

In the first episode we see a group of criminals that manage to escape local police in a very strange way, and we later find out that one of the girls was also subjected to the same experiments as Eleven and we find out that she is number eight and we learn a little more about her backstory and her abilities, as well as more about what happened to the other stolen children.

Will, throughout the season, must visit the Hawkins Lab frequently for check ups and we meet a new head scientist there who, initially, seems to care more about Will than anything else. We quickly learn that Will is somehow connected to a mysterious monster in The Upside Down. This causes problems when the monster quickly realizes this and uses it to its own advantage when trying to prevent it’s destruction by the team of scientists at Hawkins Lab.

In the same sense as last season, Joyce is still extremely worried about her son, but this time it is because she knows that he keeps having visions of The Upside Down. Whereas last season it was because he was missing. She shows this worry by constantly trying to get him to share things that he, for right or for wrong, keeps hiding from her. She is also worried because it seems to her like Will is being bullied, which later in the series, we find is correct when she sees a home video Will shot when he went trick or treating for Halloween.

Whilst all this is happening with Will and Co, we find that Hopper is also hiding something. Or moreover someone. It comes to light that Eleven is alive, and living with him in the forest around Hawkins. She has been there for a year with him and kept away from her friends for her own good. She soon starts to look for her mother and after finding her, and moving on, she finds the girl from the beginning of the season, Kali, who takes Eleven, who finds out her name is Jane, on a trip to get revenge on people that hurt them. During this trip we hear that Papa, the main torturer of Eleven and Kali, could still be alive, from one of his trusted co-conspirators. Eleven eventually decides that she needs to leave Kali and return to Hawkins and Hopper who had become her father figure.

When she returns to Hawkins she assists the group, consisting of the boys and max, Hopper and Joyce, Joyce’s new boyfriend Bob, Nancy, Jonathan and Steve in destroying the shadow monster and saving Will.

The season ends at the school dance where friendships and relationships are deepened and finally, with a shot of the shadow monster standing menacingly over the school.

This season could easily have been a comfortable ending for the show, however they left enough unanswered for there to be a third season. In my opinion this season was very enjoyable and when I was watching it I could barely tear myself away.

All in all, I’d say it was bitchin’

The image above does not belong to me and can be sourced from:

http://strangerthings.wikia.com/wiki/Stranger_Things/Season_2