‘Stranger Things’: 5 Weird Details You Probably Forgot About From Season 1

The Beginning is the End?

Okay, I know hardcore Stranger Things fans might roll their eyes at this, because, duh, but I had completely missed how much the cold open Dungeons & Dragons game set up the rest of Stranger Things Season 1 and beyond! My memory was just, uh, kids in a basement; not an epic piece of foreshadowing that teases Will’s abduction and maybe even his end?

Stranger Things Season 4 firmly convinced me that Will Byers — not Eleven — will eventually be pivotal in the defeat of Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). The new Stranger Things 5 trailer seems to only highlight that although Eleven is the most powerful warrior on the side of good, Will is pivotal to the end of this saga. Vecna literally controls Will at one point, telling him that he’s going to help him, one last time.

Stranger Things‘s cold open sees “Will the Wise,” Will’s D&D character, forced to choose between a protection spell or fireballs to defeat a Demogorgan. Will opts for fireballs, but rolls only a seven when he needed at least a thirteen. Will the Wise’s fireballs become a recurring theme, via a picture Joyce remembers him drawing. The show continues to double down on Will as Will the Wise throughout the series. Although he’s mostly played a passive, protective role in fights… Will Will manage fireballs in Season 5? Stranger things, heh, have happened on this show…

What is X-Men 134 About? Dark Phoenix Joining the Hellfire Club

Immediately after the D&D game ends, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) challenges Will to a bike race home, with the winner getting any comic book they want. Will charges forth and demands a hyper-specific issue of X-Men. Why? What happens in that issue?

X-Men 134 details a face-off between the X-Men and the evil mutants of the Hellfire Club. The issue culminates with Jean Grey’s Phoenix switching sides and joining the Hellfire Club as Dark Phoenix.

Is this potentially foreshadowing for Will betraying his friends? He’s already been possessed once, before, by the Mind-Flayer and come back from the dead. Will Vecna lure him to the Dark Side in Season 5?

Or, and hear me out, is there an “Upside Down” reading of this? After all, our main heroes have co-opted the Hellfire Club for themselves. Eleven’s powers mirror those of Jean Grey and she was raised in Dr. Brenner’s (Matthew Modine) dark version of Professor X’s school for mutants. Is it a nod to El joining Stranger Things‘s Hellfire Club?

Bed…Hopper?

I have many fond memories of Season 1 Hopper (David Harbour). I remembered the internet going bananas for his dad bod. I recalled his bad mental state, his alcoholism, and his grief. I knew that Stranger Things had softened him over the years, letting him take both a more paternal and heroic role in the story. But what I had totally forgotten was that Hopper used to be a total womanizer!

Besides an off-hand remark speculating that Joyce and Hopper used to be a thing, we see him in bed with someone named Sandra whom he callously rebuffs and we learn he jilted Marissa, the town librarian. I sat up multiple times during my rewatch, wondering who these women were, how I could have forgotten this detail about Hopper’s personal life. I also wondered if recent gossip reports about Harbour’s alleged real-life shenanigans were what made these moments leap out to me, but either way, Hopper got around!

IT is Everywhere

As someone who is also covering IT: Welcome to Derry for DECIDER, I’ve been boning up on a ton of related Stephen King adaptations lately. Last weekend I rewatched the original 1990 ABC ITminiseries for the first time in decades. Then, when I rewatched Stranger Things Season 1, I was gobsmacked by how much the Duffer Brothers had lifted from that specific series.

I knew that Stephen King was a clear influence on the show. I even had read that the Duffers had originally hard-pitched WB on letting them adapt IT before Cary Fukunaga and Andy Muschietti entered the mix. But it was only in watching these two series back-to-back that I saw how closely related they are.

Whether we’re talking about the scene where the “girl” aces target practice, a slingshot factoring in against a monster, the creepy clown mobile in baby Eleven’s room, the Henry Bowers-esque bullies, or the terrifying horror hunting kids in plain sight…IT is everywhere in Season 1.

Uh, I Completely Forgot These People Were On This Show

This is maybe my most embarrassing admission yet, but I totally forgot that This Is Us‘s Chris Sullivan, Search Party‘s John Reynolds, or The Girlfriend Experience‘s Amy Seimetz were all on this freaking show.

I knew at one point that Seimetz was Eleven’s cynical aunt, but I had sort of forgot in the intervening years. I also feel extremely dumb that I never connected the guy from Search Party with the cop who literally is part of Will Byers’s search party. However, I feel most bummed to forget Chris Sullivan’s Benny Hammond.

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It’s not just that Chris Sullivan went on to star on a very popular drama. His character’s actions and sacrifices have been largely ignored by the Stranger Things fandom. Everyone wept for Barb, but no one seemed that bothered about the nice diner owner who first fed and helped Eleven, only to be killed for it! Justice for Benny! And Chris Sullivan!