Stranger Things Finally Does Right by Will Byers — And Delivers the Ending He Deserves

If you ever felt like the show forgot about Will Byers after season 1, Netflix just quietly patched that hole. The new spinoff, Stranger Things: Tales From '85, slips into the timeline between seasons 2 and 3 and does something the main series largely didn’t: it puts Will back in the middle of the story and actually builds the growth that season 5 tried to pay off.

The quick rewind

Season 1 made Will the heartbeat of Stranger Things — missing kid, Upside Down, the whole town mobilizing. Then seasons 2–4 mostly pushed him to the edges, with brief spikes of attention that were usually about his trauma and everyone protecting him. Season 5 brought him back to the front against Vecna, but it couldn’t retroactively fix years of undercooked development or make his ending feel fully earned on its own.

So what does Tales From '85 do?

It takes advantage of that gap year. Set squarely in 1985, the show re-centers Will and seeds the stuff that makes his season 5 arc land better later. The secret weapon is a new character, Nikki Baxter, who transfers into Hawkins and almost immediately gets a crash course in the town’s brand of weird when a nasty new creature nearly snatches her. From there she starts connecting the dots about everyone’s past — including Will’s — and refuses to treat him like a fragile relic.

Meet Nikki, the catalyst Will always needed

Once Nikki learns what Will’s been through, she basically hands him back his agency. She flips "zombie boy" from a slur into a badge of honor, and — crucially — she’s the one who says out loud what nobody else really does until season 5: surviving all of this while still doing normal high school life is its own kind of strength. The show leans into that in a big way by episode 3, where their dynamic really locks in.

The hammer, the monster, the turn

There’s a small but perfect beat: Nikki gives Will a carnival hammer. Later, when a grotesque creature is about to make a snack out of the group, Will bolts and mutters "not again" — you think he’s bailing. Then he comes back swinging the same hammer, cracks the thing off his friends, and helps drive it away. After, Nikki just grins and tells him:

"I told you you were a rockstar"

It’s not a one-off confidence boost either. Down the line, Nikki even outfits Will with a custom weapon built from a piece of the busted hammer — a literal upgrade that matches the emotional one.

Why it matters

This is the kind of step-by-step growth Will never really got until the end of the main series. Tales From '85 gives him agency, courage, and momentum in the space where the original show mostly benched him. That extra context doesn’t rewrite season 5, but it absolutely makes his ending feel more earned.

• Timeline: Set between seasons 2 and 3, firmly in 1985
• New face: Nikki Baxter arrives in Hawkins, nearly taken by a new creature, and becomes the spark for Will’s evolution
• Key beats: "zombie boy" reclaimed; episode 3 cements Will and Nikki’s bond; the carnival hammer moment; Nikki later forges Will a custom weapon
• Cast in Tales From '85 includes: Benjamin Plessala as Will, Braxton Quinney as Dustin, Brooklyn Davey Norstedt as Eleven, and Luca Diaz as Mike
• Big picture: Will moves from protected victim to proactive hero, laying groundwork that strengthens his season 5 arc

Stranger Things: Tales From '85 is streaming now on Netflix.