After waiting three years, Venca is back.
Stranger Things season four was last seen on Netflix on May 27, 2022, but now the final season is out and making comebacks with three different release dates. Luckily, volume one came out on November 25th, 2025.
Where did Will’s powers come from? Mr.Whatsit? Why are the Military involved?
In episode 4, “Sorcerer”, we see at the very end that Will Byers gains powers that he inherited from Vecna and saves his friends Mike Wheeler, Robin Buckley, and Lucas Sinclair. In this season, we see Will finally come out as a confident character rather than his normal, shy/scared character. In previous seasons, he would always want to do things on his own to help out the group, but his mother Joyce Byers is a protective mom due to the whole upside-down kidnapping in season one. Robin Buckley has a one-on-one conversation with Will in a previous episode in the season about how whenever he feels like he’s being overpowered by Vecna that he needs to think of the good memories that he has. We see this happening at the end of espouse four, when he gets flashbacks of him and Mike meeting when they were younger, memories of coloring with his mom when he was younger, and we see him and Robin talking. When Will did this, he gained the powers and saved his friends by killing the demogorgons that were trying to attack Mike, Robi,n and Lucas. Will’s powers are different then Eleven’s, so Noah Schnapp (the actor who plays Will Byers) made sure to make it different when acting it out. Noah Schnapp claimed that he was very excited for this episode, and he couldn’t wait for everyone to see the episode.
Mr. Whitsit is an imaginative friend that comes into the kids head to make him think he’s real, however we figure out that it’s actually Vecna in his human form, Henry. This version of Vecna comes to kids in their head to make it seem like he’s real, but no adults can see him. Only the kid that is speaking to him can see. We know he does this to gain the kids’ trust, so later he can use them as vessels. . He does this because he took over Will Byers throughout the whole show, so it showed Vecna what he could do. For Vecna’s plan of taking over the world he needs twelve kids to complete his cycle. We see in the season that Vecna takes Holly Wheeler (played by Nell Fisher) to a “magical world” ; it turns out it’s only a memory that is locked away in Henry’s head of his old childhood home. A bigger plot twist in the show is that we see Max Mayfield (played by Sadie Sink) who is supposed to be in a coma in this world. Max Mayfield went into a coma last season due to Vecna trying to kill her but instead he got in interrupted by Nancy Wheeler (played by Natalia Dyer )
“They are weak and easily controlled,” Vecna said in episode four.
One very unexpected twist is that the military is also in Upside Down hiding something or should I say someone very important. There is a new military scientist who is leading operations and determined to find Eleven and control her, Dr.Kay (played by Linda Hamilton). We’ve seen Jack Sullivain (played by Sherman Augusts) before. In the past season he is also a leader at this military base who is haunting Eleven who believes she is the cause of all the chaos in Hawkins. At the beginning of season 5 volume 1 we see that there is a military base in Hawkins surrounding an opening to the upside down. They all decide it is time for Hopper to sneak into the base and go into the Upside Down he hides in one of the military trucks. Hopper enters successfully but then all of the trucks are stopped by a demagorgian, by the end of the attack Hopper and a military guy are left. Eleven decides to go in and save Hopper once she finds them they explore the Upside Down but they are suddenly stopped by a huge wall that was never there before. They eventually went to the military base in the Upside Down and decided to try and enter. After some trying they enter it successfully. They are met by Dr.Kay and military soldiers who they fight and win obviously. They see a big vault and know that it can not be good. They finally enter it and it was the most unexpected plot twist. What they saw was 008 aka Kali Prasad (played by Linnea Berthelsen).
Overall, this season is one of the best ones yet. With season 5 and 4 it really ties the story together as a whole, so far there are still a bunch of mysteries that need to be solved in the other volumes coming out such as the upside down. We got a little bit of background on it but it is very unexplainable and I’m not sure if even the directors will fully explain it to the audience. The next volume comes out on christmas eve, then the final episode comes out on new years.
