Stranger Things is such an awesome amalgamation of fantastical monsters, thick-and-thin friendship, and horror mystery that it’s hard to pick which element of the series made it the defining streaming hit of the last decade.
One could argue that, while the show isn’t on the level of something like Breaking Bad when it comes to plot twists, Stranger Things does have a knack for revealing the unexpected. Sharp U-turns in the story have made it easily bingeable and a classic example of Netflix’s library popularity.
Now that the show is finished, it’s the right time to look back on the biggest twists that made Stranger Things what it was!
7. Hopper is alive and in Russia
So . . . we all saw this one coming, but it’s still an effective twist because of the events that come from it.
Hopper “dies” at the end of season 3, only for the audience to find out that he’s been kidnapped by the Russians and stowed away at a secret wintry base deep in the bowels of the U.S.S.R. This was a classic fakeout death that was almost too predictable to be called a twist, but it’s still on this list because the Duffer brothers intended it to be such a major plot point in the series.
The rescue mission that Joyce and Murray go on to find Hopper and bring him back to Hawkins is one of the major subplots of season 4. Although it does take away from some of the Vecna action we kept craving in the main storyline, the moment when Eleven reunites with her found father in the season’s epilogue results in surefire waterworks every single rewatch.
6. Dustin’s girlfriend is real!
Love was in the air in season 3. Mike and Eleven can’t stop making out, Lucas and Max are the show’s ultimate power couple, and Joyce and Hopper’s sexual tension oozes out of the screen with every quick-witted insult.
Dustin claims he’s just as romantically involved as every other character in Hawkins, except that nobody believes his girlfriend is real. It becomes a running gag that both Dustin’s friends and the fans at home think his girlfriend is as fantastical as a game of D&D, but only until Suzie saves the day.
The reveal that Dustin’s long-distance love is very real and that of an equally nerdy and genius kid living in Utah who has all the answers the gang needs sets up the show’s iconic “Never Ending Story” musical number.
5. Will is being controlled by the Mind Flayer
Will is never the same when he comes back from the Upside Down in season 2. He battles demonic visions that doctors describe as post-traumatic stress, but the culprit is actually the big bad guy of the entire universe, the Mind Flayer!
Will’s possession by this antagonist is the basis of the entire plot of the second season, but it isn’t revealed until the penultimate episode that the Mind Flayer is in complete control of the young boy’s thoughts and actions, turning him against his friends and family and using him as a spy to take over Hawkins.
This twist was the type of turning point that let audiences know just how much danger the small Indiana town was in and that the scale of the conflict was going to grow as out of control as one of the rabid Demodogs thirsting on Bob’s flesh (rest in peace to the show’s best guest star).
4. Robin comes out of the closet to Steve
Before Will’s coming out scene set LGBTQ storytelling back several centuries in season 5, the show actually stuck the landing, and then some, with Robin’s sexuality reveal.
The chemistry between Joe Keery’s Steve Harrington and Maya Hawke’s Robin is enough to short-circuit a breaker in season 3, that is, until Robin tells Steve that he has the perception of the relationship completely wrong. The audience was equally shocked that Robin was a lesbian.
The power of this coming-out scene demonstrated the show’s ability to serve as a conduit between a time period in which it wasn’t okay to be gay and a present one in which queer people are still being attacked daily, yet Robin made it be known that a little bit of courage and a whole lot of laughter can make everything feel okay.
3. Will’s body is a fake
The first season of the series is the most mysterious of the five. The characters play detective as they try to track down missing Will Byers, and the police finding his body in the first several episodes felt like a gut punch.
Joyce didn’t care that everyone thought she was nuts; she was going to find her boy. Hopper ripping open the phony Will doll the government used as a cover-up was the biggest mic drop of the debut season. Stranger Things was here to stay and had more than a few tricks up its sci-fi-infused sleeves.
2. Will is a sorcerer
Season 5 was a little bit of a disappointment for a large portion of the audience, but the moment Will Byers takes Vecna’s powers and uses them against his army of demogorgons to save Mike, Lucas, and Robin is the type of legendary scene that can make up for a myriad of sins.
Will becoming the sorcerer from Mike’s D&D analogy is the payoff Stranger Things‘ most abused character always deserved. In fact, this twist is so climactic that it basically sets up the final four episodes for failure. Nothing could live up to this absolute peak *insert Martin Scorsese absolute cinema meme*.
1. Vecna and 001 are the same person
Season 4 of Stranger Things meanders along with a lot of different storylines and a few too many characters, but it all pays off in the end.
One of the characters that a lot of people didn’t understand the point of originally was 001. Dr. Brenner’s original lab rat takes Eleven under his wing and shows her the ins and outs of the operation throughout the season, but fans couldn’t quite dissect his importance in the grand scheme of the plot.
The moment when 001’s actual identity as Henry Creel and the villain of the show, Vecna, comes to light is as satisfying a slow-burn payoff as there has been in years on TV.
Conclusion
For some fans, the most unexpected twist might’ve been that there was no twist ending at all. When the finale of Season 5 released, diehards couldn’t believe that Eleven didn’t get her happy ending, so the theory was that a mysterious countdown was leading to a final secret episode. In the end, it turned out to be an unrelated prank, but it certainly had fans going.