Will the Wise? More like Will the Sorcerer.
Volume 1 of Stranger Things 5, which is now streaming on Netflix, ends in a fist-pumping spectacle. With our heroes under attack by an army of Demogorgons, Will (Noah Schnapp) taps into an unlikely source to save his friends — his connection to Vecna.
Leaning on happy memories — like his makeshift fort, Castle Byers, and his friendship with Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) — Will responds to Vecna’s (Jamie Campbell Bower) taunts by taking down the Demogorgons psionically. It’s a full-circle moment for the boy who was abducted in Season 1 and who had been controlled by the Mind Flayer in Season 2.
“One of the earliest ideas in [Season 5] is, ‘What if Will were able to harness this connection and use it against our villains?’ ” co-creator, executive producer, writer, and director Ross Duffer says. “We also felt it very natural to re-center the story on Will. He was the kid who was taken in Season 1, so it felt right for the story to come full circle. If anyone [was] going to be the key to ending Vecna, it needed to be Will.”
The big moment arrives just as Will accepts who he is, unlocking a new power within that gives him the potential to end the Vecna nightmare once and for all. “There is a lot that Will has been dealing with over the course of the four seasons prior to this — so many emotions and inner conflicts that remain unresolved,” co-creator, executive producer, writer, and director Matt Duffer explains. “So we wanted him to grow as a human and become a fully formed version of who he is. … And once he’s able to do that, he’s able to harness these incredible powers.”
So where do we go from here? Keep reading to delve deeper into the first four episodes of Stranger Things 5, along with what’s in store for our friends in the episodes to come.
What is Vecna’s plan, and why does he need Will?
Season 4 culminated with Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Robin (Maya Hawke), and Steve (Joe Keery) sending an injured Vecna into hiding after their fiery attack on the Stranger Things villain at his family home, the Creel House. So when Vecna resurfaces in Season 5 at the end of Episode 4, he’s a monster on a mission.
“We knew that when he arrived, we wanted it to feel like this huge moment,” Ross Duffer says of Vecna’s menacing walk through the military’s MAC-Z gate to the Upside Down — a moment inspired by Darth Vader’s memorable entrance in the 2016 film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. “The minute he walked out of that gate, you felt the power of Vecna. You felt how scary he was.”
With Will in his grasp, Vecna reveals his plan to refashion the world. To do that, he needs 12 children, which he deems the “perfect vessels” because they’re easily shaped and controlled. And it was Will, Vecna admits, who showed him what was possible when he took the boy as his first vessel in 1983. Now Vecna intends to use Will as his spy one last time.
But Will fights back, white eyes and all, in a moment that Millie Bobby Brown, who plays Eleven, says had her “gagged to the floor.”
Schnapp called it a dream that Will stands up for himself against the show’s big bad. “He’s such a walked-all-over character who never gets to [use] his own voice. Through the first few episodes, you see that he wants to [express] his opinion,” Schnapp tells Tudum. “Getting to be strong and direct and powerful is just so satisfying as an actor.”
The hand motion that Will uses to channel all that power was “originally supposed to be like an Eleven move” with his palm facing downward, Schnapp says. However, they landed on “this move of the outstretched hand [facing] up” as though Will is “pulling the powers from Vecna.”
What’s the deal with the military in Season 5?
Following the opening of the rifts at the end of Season 4, the military has placed Hawkins under quarantine. Secretly, though, officials have been conducting experiments on various Upside Down creatures in their shadow-dimension military base.
Leading that front is military scientist Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton), whose focus is on finding Eleven. All the “cataclysmic stuff that is happening around her does not shake her from her mission,” Hamilton explains. Searching for Eleven is a full-time gig that leaves little time for niceties, so Dr. Kay’s relationship with her subordinates is fraught. She “treats them like they are insignificant unless they can bring her what she wants.”
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