No, but Eleven can’t find her, even in her own headspace. As Vecna told Eleven: “This is only the beginning. When Eleven looks back at the town in the final moments of episode 9, it’s clear the Upside Down is starting to take over Hawkins. Though our cast of main characters certainly knows better than the regular townspeople what’s spreading through the air and beneath their feet, they don’t look any more capable of stopping it - yet. And soon everyone in town is looking up, trying to make sense of what happens now. Will’s Upside Down Spidey sense lets him know the storm clouds are setting in. The Upside Down seems to be bleeding through to our world, as vines make their way through the rifts and up buildings, electrical storms pop up, Upside Down dust starts to rain down, and the infected ground kills the plants surrounding the town. We have to kill him.” What does that mean for Hawkins?Ī few days after Vecna’s attack, many of the people of Hawkins are already moving away from the “earthquake” that caused the massive rifts through town. Not until he’s taken everything and everyone. But I can still remember what he thinks, and how he thinks. “It’s strange, knowing now who it was this whole time. And he’s hurting, but he’s still alive,” Will told Mike. “Now that I’m here, in Hawkins, I can feel him. His Upside Down Spidey senses told him that One/Vecna/Henry is still very much alive. What happened to Vecna?Īlthough Nancy, Robin, and Steve’s ground offensive successfully incapacitated Vecna - they both shot him out a window and burned him extensively - by the time they got outside he had vanished, leaving just a soot mark on the Upside Down ground.ĭoes that mean that Vecna is well and truly dead? No, at least not according to Will. And that’s all before we get into solving their latest Upside Down problem.

While Stranger Things is known to inflate some episode lengths, there’s still a (relatively) limited window to wrap up the journeys of everyone in the cast. Knowing that the end is so close, naturally every lingering question feels a little more weighted than it might otherwise. Plus, there’s still the Upside Down particle monster/shadow that Joyce and Hopper glimpsed in Russia.Īll this sets up a pretty major final season for the streaming juggernaut, in which I’m sure the Upside Down monsters will be worse than ever. Though they survived the battle, the war still looms in a very real way, as Vecna’s efforts to merge the Upside Down and regular world are a bigger threat than ever now that four rifts between the worlds scar the town they love.

In the final run of episodes, the whole cast of characters finally converged on Hawkins and beat Vecna - sorta. Upon its release, Stranger Things 4 part 2 was a doozy, and not just because of the run time.

Stranger things 3 ending explained