【About】

It's almost time for Halloween,About and for your pre-Halloween Stranger Things 2binge so you can dress up as a topical Season 2 reference (we know your plans, Netflix). It's been little over a year since the show's first eight episodes had everyone talking in the summer of 2016 (simpler times), but what do we really remember of this twisty sci-fi binge?

Upside Down, demogorgon, waffles, pudding – that's the general gist, but for a more detailed refresher, read on.

SEE ALSO: 'Stranger Things: The Game' is just as adorably retro as the show

It's early November in Hawkins, Ind. when Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) goes missing. He was last seen at his friend Mike's house (Finn Wolfhard) playing Dungeons & Dragons, and he had a bad roll of the dice ("The demogorgon got me"). Will's mother Joyce (Winona Ryder) and brother Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) are besides themselves with worry; they enlist the help of Sheriff Jim Hopper (David Harbour) and the local police, but Will's disappearance is already under surveillance from more sinister and unseen entities.

While looking for their missing friend, Mike, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) find Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) in the woods. She's scared and lost and she barely speaks and her name is a number – but Eleven grows to gradually trust the boys, so much so that she reveals her telekinetic abilities to defend them against bullies.

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Mike's sister Nancy (Natalia Dyer) has a whole deal of her own, and that deal's name is Steve (Joe Keery). The long-lost father of Jean-Ralphio Saperstein is trying to date this intelligent good girl, and while she's not entirely sure she can trust his intentions, she issure about wanting to make out with him (and then some). While they round the bases, Nancy's friend Barb (Shannon Purser) mopes by the pool and disappears on the spot.

Joyce starts getting mysterious phone calls at home – all we can hear is static, but she hears and recognizes Will's breathing. Lots of lights flicker and fuse, and a strange creature tries to break through the walls. Nancy sees the same creature when she goes looking for Barb in the woods, and Jonathan puts two and two together – and also happens to have some photo evidence.

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Will's body turns up, but Joyce refuses to believe it, as do Mike and the boys, who hear Will singing through their walkie-talkie with the help of Eleven's mysterious abilities. As Hopper learns, the body is a fake, and the people who allegedly did the autopsy are no friends to Hawkins; they're looking for Eleven, and they'll kill anyone who gets in their way.

We piece together Eleven's past in flashbacks; she spent a significant amount of time as the subject of scientific experiments in the lab where the series began. The lab is also the site of an apparent breach between our world and...something else. Something Eleven calls "Upside down."

Characters separately begin to discover the Upside Down and the creature within it; Nancy and Jonathan on a nighttime excursion into the woods, Mike and the boys with Eleven's abilities, Hopper when he infiltrates the lab. Hopper and Joyce do some digging and connect the lab to the disappearance of a young girl named Jane with telekinetic abilities, a girl who was taken from her parents and submitted to sensory deprivation and immersion tanks for experiments...could this be Eleven??

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By episode 7, everything comes to a head. The "bad men" come for Eleven and our three separate parties of truth seekers come together to protect her. They help her look into the Upside Down, where she finds Barb's body and Will – cold and weak, but alive. Hopper has heartbreaking flashbacks to his daughter Sarah, who passed away from cancer, and it doubles his resolve to find and save Will.

Joyce and Hopper negotiate with the bad men to get into the Upside Down while Jonathan and Nancy attempt to lure the demogorgon back into the Byers' home (Steve shows up. He is overwhelmed). The boys stay at school with Eleven, but the bad men and demogorgon arrive in succession. Eleven casually kills several people with her mind and faces off against the creature, which bursts into pieces and disappears – as does she.

The boys are happy to have Will back, though Mike clearly misses Eleven and has kept her bed set up in the basement. Hopper, who's made some shady deal with the men from the lab, is apparently leaving food for her in the woods. Unbeknownst to his friends and family, Will is having flashes of the Upside Down and occasionally throwing up slugs, Ron Weasley-style. Also, Nancy gave Jonathan a Christmas present. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Luckily, we'll find out soon. Stranger Things 2premieres Oct. 27.

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Topics Netflix Stranger Things