Stranger Things Trivia Quiz

Answer: Eleven / Jane Ives

Eleven was played by English actress Millie Bobby Brown. Eleven (called El by her new friends) was born Jane Ives. Jane's mother Terry was the subject of an experiment called MKUltra conducted by Brenner. This affected Jane as she was being carried in the womb at the time. When Jane was born she was kidnapped by Brenner and taken to Hawkins National Laboratory where she was one of a number (at least 11!) of children with supernatural abilities. She was able to demonstrate special psychokinetic abilities which pleased Brenner. She was detained here, referred to as "Eleven" and was denied access to the real world.

In 1983, when she was being coerced into making contact with a monster in another dimension, she inadvertently opened a gateway to this dimension (subsequently called the "Upside Down"). During this chaos, she escaped the Hawkins facility and was found by three boys.

Answer: Mike

Mike (played by Finn Wolfhard) is the leader of a group of boys who are best friends. The audience first met Mike at his house hosting a "Dungeons and Dragons" game in his basement with his three best friends. When three of the four found Eleven, Mike was the most sympathetic to Eleven's plight. He took her back to his house and let her stay (secretly) in his basement where he made her a bed and brought her food. (She really liked Eggo waffles.) When Eleven's telepathic powers are revealed, it was Mike who believed that El could find their missing friend.

Mike was the most upset of everyone when it appeared that Eleven sacrificed herself to defeat the monster (referred to as the Demogorgan by the group of boys).

Answer: Will

Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) was the smallest, and shyest of the group of four boys. He was very artistic and spent much time drawing supernatural scenes. When he rode his bike home at night after their usual game, the monster/Demogorgan (that had escaped from nearby Hawkins National Institute) found him and took him back to the alternate dimension (but the audience didn't know this at the time).

Will escaped from the monster for a week but could not escape from the Upside Down alternate dimension. He was finally caught. When he was finally rescued, he was unconscious as a tendril was inserted down his throat (presumably to provide sustenance for a creature within the Upside Down). Back in the real world, Will appeared to have recovered after a short stay in hospital.

Answer: Lucas

Caleb McLaughlin portrayed Lewis Sinclair, one of the group of four friends that eventually became known as "The Party". When Lewis met Eleven for the first time, he was the one who was most suspicious of Eleven, her behaviour and the way she acted. He thought she was taking advantage of Mike. This caused a rift between Mike and himself, causing Lewis to investigate the Hawkins lab on his own.

It was Lucas who realised the threat and the dangers associated with the lab. He also was the first to realise El was trying to protect the boys from the 'government agents' in the lab. This realisation facilitated a reconciliation with the other boys, and with El, they kept on looking for Will.

Answer: Dustin

Dustin, played by Gaetano John "Gaten" Matarazzo III, was perhaps the nerdiest of the group of boys. Having a rare genetic disorder (cleidocranial dysplasia) that did not allow his teeth to develop properly, made him an easy target for bullies and Dustin suffered badly. However, he was a good mediator between Mike and Lucas when they clashed, bringing them both back to the task of finding Will.

While the boys correctly deduced that Will was in an alternate dimension, it was Dustin that determined that the gate into the alternate dimension would be located where there was a change in the Earth's magnetic field and worked out this change would be able to be detected by compasses.

Answer: Joyce

Joyce Byers was played by Winona Ryder in what was a master stroke of casting. Joyce was a single mother of two boys, struggling financially after her husband left the family for a younger woman. When Joyce found out Will was missing, she had an unshakable belief that Will was still alive. Most of the rest of the community thought she was having a mental breakdown when she believed Will could communicate with her through interruptions in the electricity supply. This was exacerbated when she strung multitudes of Christmas lights in her home along with painting the alphabet on the wall. She encouraged Will to spell out words by causing the coloured light to flash next to the correct letter.

"Maybe I am a mess, maybe I'm crazy, maybe I'm out of my mind! But, God help me, I will keep these lights up until the day I die, if I think there's a chance that Will's still out there!"
- November 11 1983

Even when Will's body is found, she refused to believe it was Will. It was Joyce who found Will in the Upside Down, unconscious but alive.

Answer: Hopper

Jim Hopper, portrayed by David Harbour, was Chief of Police in Hawkins, Indiana, where he appeared rather laidback, "Mornings are for coffee and contemplation" though he hid a tragic past when he watched his child, Sarah die from cancer. The collateral damage of this tragedy cost him his marriage.

When Will went missing he tried to placate Joyce (an old friend) by suggesting innocuous reasons for his disappearance. He still supported Joyce when she appeared to be breaking down. He was the one that suspected all was not kosher over at the lab and he investigated. He also thought there was something fishy about the circumstances of how Will's body was recovered and subsequently discovered that Will's body was a fake.

It was Hopper that accompanied Joyce into the Upside Down to recover Will and it was Hopper that brought Will back to life (when he couldn't do the same for his daughter). These two events were portrayed side by side in the episode and demonstrated both the heartbreak of losing a child juxtaposed with the utter relief of finding someone alive. This was a very clever depiction of the spectrum of human emotion.

Answer: Nancy

Nancy (Natalie Dyer) was Mike's older sister. Nancy tolerated Mike. Her biggest problem was working out who to spend more time with, her best friend Barb, or her new boyfriend, alpha male Steve. However, when Barb disappeared, and few people seemed to care, she teamed up with an unlikely ally and tried to find Barb.

She found a gate into the Upside Down but did not find Barb (Hopper found Barb there - dead - later) and her new ally needed to rescue her to get her out. Later she and her ally devised a plan to lure and kill the Demogorgan. With the unlikely assistance from Steve, the trio were partially successful.

They trapped it and set fire to it causing it to retreat into the Upside Down.

Answer: Jonathan

Jonathan, played by English actor Charlie Heaton, was Will's older brother. He was an outsider at school and a keen photographer. Looking for his brother at night in the woods he photographed Barb, Nancy and Steve having a party at Steve's place. Next day Steve found out about the photos and broke Jonathan's camera and tore up the photos. However, Nancy picked up the torn photos and later reassembled them. They showed a shadowy figure, possibly the Demogorgon. She took the photo back to Jonathon and they both went back to the high school to make bigger copies from the negatives. The Demogorgon was revealed. Jonathon now believed his mother and Nancy too was convinced. The two of them now allies, went into the woods near Steve's house to find the Demogorgon.

Nancy found a small gate into the Upside Down in a tree in the woods and entered the alternate dimension. She found the Demogorgon, eating a deer, who saw her and roared at her. Scared she ran back to the gate but it was closing. Jonathan managed to pull her through the gate into the real world. The two shared an experience that bonded their friendship but they did not become romantically attached at this point in the story.

Answer: Brenner

Matthew Modine played Dr Martin Brenner, who was a research scientist at Hawkins National Laboratory. He had several children/test subjects, but one of them killed them all except Eleven. Brenner was only interested in testing Eleven's supernatural abilities to find her limits. She called him Papa, but there was no love in the relationship. When the Demogorgon and Eleven both independently escaped from HNL, Brenner was only interested in finding Eleven.

As the three groups (Joyce and Hopper, Nancy and Jonathan, the four boys) all now believed in the Demogorgon, they collectively hatched a plan. They asked Eleven to try to contact Will telepathically, but she was emotionally exhausted. They decided to build a temporary sensory deprivation tank out of a kiddies' wading pool and a super-saturated salt solution to try to focus her abilities. Nancy and Jonathan tried to lure the Demogorgon away from the Upside Down to kill it, while Joyce and Hopper entered Hawkins surreptitiously and travelled through the gate to the Upside Down. The boys stayed with Eleven.

The plan worked until Brenner and his agents tracked them down and burst into the school gym where the tank had been set up. Eleven managed to kill the agents telepathically but not Brenner. However, the Demogorgon was attracted to the spilled blood and entered the gym. It appeared to have killed Brenner and then went after the boys. However, Eleven pins it against the wall and using all her powers tore it apart, with the force of the power vapourising both the Demogorgon and presumably Eleven who was no longer there.

Will recovers, and life in Hawkins Township goes back to normal more or less but Mike grieves for Eleven. The episode ends with Hopper leaving an Eggo in a lock box in the woods, and Will, having dinner with his family, going to the bathroom and vomiting up a slug that disappeared down the drain.