Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2 finally arrived on Christmas Day, picking up the story at full speed and pushing every character closer to the end. Here’s what goes down in Volume 2, and how it tees up the series finale.
After Volume 1 left Hawkins barely standing, Volume 2 splits the group across Hawkins, the Upside Down, and Henry Creel’s memories. By the time the credits roll, Vecna has reshaped the board once again, and the group is no closer to stopping him for good. Spoilers ahead, of course.
Will’s powers
A lot of Volume 2 quietly revolves around Will Byers. After that shocking moment in Episode 4 when he uses his powers to save Mike, Lucas, and Robin, Will finally finds out the power is not really his; he is borrowing it.
Unlike Eleven, who can tap into her abilities almost anywhere, Will can only use his when the hive mind is close. He is siphoning Vecna’s strength instead of generating his own. By the end of Volume 2, Vecna has slipped away again, leaving Will unsure if he will be able to access that power when it truly matters.
Eleven and Project Indigo
But Will isn’t the only one siphoning Vecna’s powers, as Volume 2 also spells out the link between Eleven and Henry through a direct conversation with Kali. After escaping the military base, Kali explains that Dr. Brenner used Henry’s blood in experiments on pregnant women, which is how children like Eleven and Kali gained their powers. She also reveals that Dr. Kay is now extracting her blood to try to restart the program, but the results are failing.
This confirms Eleven’s abilities are not separate from Vecna at all. They come from the same origin, tying her fate directly to Henry’s and setting up a finale where stopping him also means confronting where her powers came from.
Henry’s past and the Upside down
As for the source of the power himself, Volume 2 digs deeper into Henry Creel’s memories, and what Max and Holly see makes his past harder to ignore. While searching for an escape, they witness a moment in which a young Henry brutally beats a man, which goes to show that his capacity for violence existed long before he became Vecna.
They are also led to a cave Henry feared as a child, where a 1959 memory shows him encountering a scientist and a smoke-filled briefcase tied to a secret experiment. After opening it, Henry is pulled into the Abyss and later returns changed, confirming his exposure to something unnatural years before Hawkins Lab or Eleven’s involvement.
November 6
While that’s all in the past, volume 2 circles back to November 6 with one of its most unsettling moments. At the Creel House in Camazotz, Henry gathers the kidnapped children, including Delightful Derek and Holly, seats them around a table, lights candles, and has them hold hands before quietly saying, “It’s time.” As part of the ritual that sets his plan in motion, the children close their eyes and their necks snap in unison, as if possessed.
The scene ties November 6 back to Vecna’s core method: using children as conduits through forced connection. It makes clear that the finale will hinge on breaking that control, not just stopping Henry himself.
Plan to stop Vecna
By the end of Volume 2, the group finally settles on a plan: Vecna has to keep pulling the worlds together, because that is the only way to reach the Abyss. When the Squawk radio tower breaks through a rift, it creates a path upward, which will give Eleven the proximity she needs to reach him.
In the end, Erica, Murray, Mr. Clarke, Hopper, and Nancy smash into the military base with a truck, overpower Dr. Kay’s operation, and plunge back into the Upside Down with the rest of the group hidden in the trunk.
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