Mike, Lucas, Dustin,
and Will are all playing DND in Mike's basement. After getting told to wrap everything up,
the boys get ready to leave. Will is the last one to get home but before he does, he sees something terrifying.
Nearby, a sinister secret lurks in the depths of a government lab. Lucas, Mike and Dustin try to talk to the girl they
found (Eleven) in the woods. Joyce gets a phone call that sounds
like Will and Hopper questions her about it. After the party Nancy
and her friend Barbara went to, barbara goes missing and
Nancy looks for her and finds out what Jonathan's been up to.
A body is found in the water and it looks similar to Will, but Joyce refuses to believe
Will is dead so she tries to connect with him. The boys give Eleven a makeover to sneak
into the school so they can use their science teachers radio to connect with will
better and Nancy and Jonathan form an unlikely alliance.
As they're in the AV room, Eleven uses her powers to connect with Will and his friends hear him
calling out for his mom. Joyce hears it too, coming from inside her wall, so she tears apart
the wallpaper to reveal a fleshly transulescent barrier, behind which she finally sees her son.
He tells her he's in a place that's like home, only it's dark and empty and cold, and she promises
to save him before he has to run off and hide from the Demogorgon coming to get him.
The trans-dimensional transmission ends with a fire in the AV room that Dustin puts out with an
extinguisher, but with her beliefs finally vindicated, Joyce feels confident enough to start
hacking away at her wall with an axe. Unfortunately, her efforts don't get her anything other than a
new window. At a bar, Hopper talks to the guy who found "Will's" body in the quarry. When he catches him in
a lie about how he made the discovery, the dude shuts down and tries to leave and through some
physical intimidation, he learns that the the guy was told to call Will's body in and not ask any questions.
Hopper breaks into the lab while Nancy and Jonathan confront the force that took Will. The boys ask their
science teacher Mr. Clarke how to travel to another dimension. Jonathan looks for Nancy in the darkness, but Steve's
looking for her, too. Hopper and Joyce uncover the truth about the lab's experiments. Eleven struggles to reach Will
due to her energy loss, while Lucas warns that "the bad men are coming." Nancy and Jonathan show the police what Jonathan
caught on camera. Dr. Brenner holds Hopper and Joyce after they try to break into the lab
while the boys wait with Eleven in the school gym. After finding out what took Barbara, Nancy and Jonathan figures out
what gets the monster to arrive and prepare for battle.