Plot

Refusing to believe Will is dead, Joyce tries to connect with her son. The boys give Eleven a makeover. Jonathan and Nancy form an unlikely alliance.

Joyce is not swayed by the discovery of Will's body. Nancy and Jonathan begin to work together. The boys take El to school. Can she speak to Will? Hopper continues to uncover strange answers, and the facility sends someone into the anomaly.—Marc Crowther

Joyce discloses to Hopper that she is in contact with Will and that there is a monster in the wall, but he believes she is delusional. In the morgue, Joyce does not confirm the body is Will's. Hopper does not understand why the autopsy was not carried out by Gary, but by state officials. El shows Mike that Will is alive using his walkie talkie and he summons his friends to the basement. They decide to take El to the school to use Mr. Clarke's radio that is more powerful. In the Hawkins Laboratory, one man crosses the gate to the other dimension attached by a line but he is attacked and vanishes. Nancy seeks out Jonathan to discuss about the photo he took of Barb at the swimming pool. El and Joyce contact Will at the same time. Hopper decides to investigate the truth about Will's body and comes up to surprising discoveries.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Hopper is at Joyce's house telling her that they have found Will's body in the quarry. She refuses to believe them, saying that she just talked to him. She tries to explain how Will communicates through the lights, but both Hopper and Jonathan dismiss her crazy sounding claims. Hopper sympathetically tells Joyce that he went through a similar type of grief when his daughter died, but Joyce insists that Will is not dead. Hopper leaves and Joyce gets an axe from the shed.

In his basement, Mike is looking through Will's drawings and Eleven is listening to static on his walkie talkie. He snaps at her to stop it and then yells at her for lying about Will being alive. Eleven continues to fiddle with the walkie talkie until they can hear Will's shaky voice singing "Should I Stay or Should I Go."

Jonathan wakes up Joyce (who fell asleep on the sofa with the axe) that they have to go to the morgue to identify Will's body. At the morgue, Joyce and Jonathan see the body through a window. Jonathan runs away, and Joyce yells at the coroner that whatever she is looking at is not her son's body. Hopper and Jonathan try to reason with her, but she refuses to identify the remains as Will's. Jonathan tells her that she can't fall apart and Joyce tells him she knows she sounds crazy but maintains that she heard Will talk to her.

Mike tells Karen that he doesn't think he can go to school and Karen doesn't fight him, letting him stay home alone. Once she is gone, he calls Lucas on the walkie talkie and tells him that he and Dustin need to meet with him. Lucas is skeptical, but agrees. At Mike's house, they listen to the walkie talkie but can't hear anything definite. They realize that they will need a better radio and will need to use Mr. Clarke's Heathkit radio at the school. They disguise Eleven in an old dress of Nancy's and a blonde wig. Seeing her new look, Mike calls her pretty. Eleven looks at herself in the mirror and seems pleased with her appearance.

At Hawkins Lab, a scientist named Shepard dressed in a full body hazmat suit goes into the web that leads to the other world. Dr. Brenner has him attached to a cable so he can be reeled back in. Shepard disappears into the unknown and the web wall closes behind him.

Nancy is taken out of class by police officers questioning her about Barb's disappearance. They tell her and Karen that Barb's car is no longer near Steve's house and that she probably ran away. Nancy argues that Barb wouldn't do that. They ask about what Nancy and Steve were doing together and Nancy says that they were just talking. Karen seems upset.

At the police station, Hopper asks his coworker Gary about the state troopers who brought in Will's body. Gary tells him that they claimed jurisdiction on the case and did not let Gary see the body.

The boys and Eleven bike to school and attempt to enter the radio room, but it is locked. Mr. Clarke discovers them and tells them that the assembly for Will is about to start and that they should be there. They try to argue but Mr. Clarke give them the key to the room and tells them that they can use it after the assembly. The boys introduce him to Eleven as Mike's Swedish cousin Eleanor.

At the Wheeler house, Nancy and Karen fight over what Nancy told the police. Nancy admits to Karen that she slept with Steve, but that it doesn't have anything to do with Barb's disappearance and expresses her frustration that no one seems to care that her friend is missing. She runs up to her room and looks at the ripped up photo of Barb sitting by the pool. As she puts the photo back together, she sees a strange figure off to the side. She tapes the photo back together.

At Hawkins Lab, Brenner is communicating with Shepard who describes the area as corroded. Then Shepard, clearly afraid, says that there is something else there. A deep growling can be heard and Brenner tries to reel Shepard back. The tension on the cable breaks and when the cable is reeled in, all that remains is the connector to Shepard's suit, covered in blood.

The boys and Eleven sit through the memorial assembly for Will. They hear James and Troy laughing and mocking Will. After the assembly, Mike confronts the boys who continue to insult Will. Mike pushes Troy down and Troy lunges for Mike, but stops, apparently unable to move. They all see that Troy has soiled his pants and everyone laughs at him. Mike and Eleven make eye contact and Eleven smiles, wiping her bloody nose, indicating that she caused that to happen.

Nancy finds Jonathan attempting to choose a coffin for Will. She asks him about the figure in the photo, and Jonathan has no explanation for it. He tells Nancy that Barb was there one second and then gone. Nancy confides in Jonathan about the creature she saw at Steve's house and Jonathan asks her to describe it. Jonathan realizes that the creature Nancy saw is the same one Joyce saw coming through the wall.

Hopper is having drinks at a bar and he buys a stranger a drink and tells him that his daughter just won a spelling bee. The stranger asks her name and Hopper pauses before saying her name is Sarah. Then he tells the stranger he recognizes him and the stranger explains that he is the trooper who found the body of Will Byers. Hopper asks if the quarry where Will was found is state-run and when the stranger confirms that, Hopper explains that the quarry is run by the Sattler Company and asks why the trooper is lying to him. The trooper angrily tells him to mind his own business. The shot changes to Hopper beating up the trooper outside the bar and demanding to know what the trooper was doing there. He finally confesses that he was told not to let anyone get close to the body. Hopper asks who he works for and then hears a car pull up. He runs to confront the car, which drives away. The trooper runs away.

Joyce plays "Should I Stay or Should I Go" at her house and frustratedly yells at the lights to talk to her.

Mike, Eleven, Lucas, and Dustin go into the room with Mr. Clarke's Heathkit radio and Eleven attempts to reach Will. She has a flashback to her time in Hawkins Lab. Bruner is asking her to find a man in a photo, not to hurt him but to listen to what he says and repeat what he says back to him. Eleven closes her eyes and concentrates. She sees a man in a room reading words from a list. Bruner asks her to repeat the words and the lights flicker out as the man's voice can be heard reading random words. Back in the present, Eleven is concentrating and the light in the radio room goes out. The boys hear a clanging on the radio.

Joyce hears the same clanging and turns off the music. She hears Will whimpering and calling Mom, his voice coming from inside the wall. Joyce screams that she is there at the same time that the boys call to Will over the radio. The wallpaper parts to reveal a red window into the alternate reality. She can see Will through the red but she cannot touch him. A monster growls and Will says in terror that it is coming. Joyce begs Will to tell her how to get to him. The boys hear Will on the radio say that he is in a place that is just like home, but dark, cold, and scary. Joyce tells Will that she will find him but he has to hide. The wall closes over the portal window revealing the wall as it was before. In the radio room, a fuse blows and the radio erupts in flame. Eleven, visibly fatigued seems unable to move. The boys help her up and carry her out of the room. Joyce takes the axe and chops a hole in her wall only to reveal the normal outside of her house. The camera pans away from her house as she stares out of the hole in confusion and despair.

Jonathan and Nancy develop a zoomed in version of the photo of Barb with the creature. While they are waiting for the photo to develop, Nancy awkwardly asks Jonathan about his photography hobby. Jonathan admits that he would rather observe people than interact with them. The clearer and larger picture of the creature appears and Nancy says that that is what she saw at Steve's house. They realize that if Joyce was right about the creature, she might be right about Will still being alive and if so, Barb might also be alive.

Hopper drives back to the morgue pretending that he is there to retrieve his hat. A trooper stops him, but Hopper knocks him out and steals his key. He finds Will's body and touches it, realizing that something is not right. He cuts open the chest revealing that it is a fake body stuffed with cotton. Hopper now realizes that Joyce was right.

Lonnie comes to Joyce's house late at night. He asks her what happened to the wall and she tearfully embraces him.

Hopper drives to Hawkins Lab and cuts through the chain link fence to break in.