Everything you need to know about 'Stranger Things' — the Netflix show people are obsessed with

Netflix

"Stranger Things" has become Netflix's latest smash hit.

The first season of the series, set in the 1980s, from brothers Matt and Ross Duffer ("Wayward Pines"), which is set to return for a second season in 2017, follows the disappearance of a young boy and the monstrous chain of events it launches in the small town.

Not only does the show star iconic '80s actress Winona Ryder, but it introduces a whole new cast of kids viewers can't help but fall in love with.

It's not hard to see why fans have taken so passionately to "Stranger Things," which borrows heavily from the era's most beloved movies including "E.T." and "Stand By Me." The more devoted viewers are tearing apart every scene, finding new clues and developing wild theories.

But in case you're a little behind or just plain don't want to watch all eight episodes (or maybe monster stories just scare you too much), Business Insider has created this quick recap of all the major plot points.

Here's everything you need to know from the first season of "Stranger Things" (spoilers galore, of course):

'Chapter 1: The Vanishing of Will Byers'

A monster is loose: It's 1983. In an isolated laboratory in Hawkins, Indiana, some kind of monster has escaped from its holding cell and is killing whoever gets in its way.

A boy goes missing: Young Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) and his friends Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) are playing an intense role-playing game. The game is cut short by Michael's mom. Will, Dustin, and Lucas grab their bikes and leave for home.

While racing, Will separates from the other guys and finds himself close to the laboratory when he senses something is following him. When he gets home, he finds that his mother and brother aren't home. Sensing that the monster is still after him, Will runs to a shed behind the house, arms himself with a gun, and holds his ground. None of that helps. With a flickering light, poof, Will is gone.

The next morning, Will's mom, Joyce (Winona Ryder), and older brother, Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), discover that Will isn't home. She decides to report Will missing to the police chief, Jim Hopper, a mess of a man.

He insists on speaking with Joyce's ex-husband — Will and Jonathan's father — but she is sure Will would never go to him. She insists that he look outside her family for Will's abductor.

A young girl with strange powers is on the run: Meanwhile, a young girl named Eleven arrives at Benny's Diner. Her head is shaved, she's wearing a hospital gown, she has limited speech, and she's ravenously hungry.

After Benny feeds her, he calls for social workers to come and pick her up. But instead of the social workers, armed agents arrive to take Eleven. In the end, Benny is killed, and somehow Eleven fights off the agents and escapes.

Worlds collide: Tired of waiting for the police to do something, Will's friends decide to search for him on their own. That's when they meet Eleven.

Joyce gets a phone call. Despite the static, she swears she can hear Will breathing on the other end.

'Chapter 2: The Weirdo on Maple Street'

Eleven knows where Will is: The boys bring Eleven back to Mike's house. They can't tell his parents about her because they weren't supposed to be out at night looking for Will. Plus, Eleven says that "bad people" are after her.

As Eleven becomes more comfortable with the boys, she shows them some of her powers, closing Mike's door with her mind. After recognizing Will from a picture, Eleven tells the guys he's hiding from a monster.

While hiding in a dark closet from Will's mother, a scared Eleven flashes back to being dragged into a dark cell at Hawkins Laboratory.

Another strange call for Joyce: Joyce gets another phone call, which she believes is from Will. The lights go nuts and the walls start to warp.

The monster claims another victim: Mike's older sister, Nancy (Natalia Dyer), has started a relationship with one of the cool guys at school, Steven (Joe Keery). He's always trying to have sex with her, and asks her to join him and and another couple for a pool party at his house. A sexually naive girl, Nancy asks her best friend, Barb (Shannon Purser), to come along.

Meanwhile, Jonathan is taking photos in the woods when he happens upon Steve's house and realizes that his crush, Nancy, is at the pool with a few friends. For some reason, he takes pictures of the teens splashing about.

When the others go upstairs to hook up, Barb stays at the pool. Soon she finds herself being pulled away by the monster.

'Chapter 3: Holly, Jolly'

The Upside Down world: We find out that Barb (along with possibly Will) is stuck in some kind of world based on the one we live in. It looks like our reality, but it's darker and emptied of furniture. Barb is apparently running from the monster.

Nancy comes clean on Barb: After trying to buy some time to find Barb on her own, Nancy finally tells her mom that Barb is missing.

Eleven's terrible life: While the boys are at school, Eleven explores Mike's house. Different things bring back memories of her life in the lab.

A scientist named Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) is behind the testing, but also acts as a father figure to Eleven. She's asked to move things with her mind. At one point, she's forced back to her cell and ends up killing the men who took her there.

The search for Will goes cold: Chief Hopper wonders if Will's disappearance has something to do with the strange secrecy surrounding Hawkins Laboratory. He talks his way into the lab and finds very little. But upon watching security footage from the night Will disappeared, he realizes there's no rain in the footage. That's strange because there was a big storm that night. Hopper begins to think Brenner may know more than he's admitting.

Convinced that Will is using the electricity and phone lines to speak to her, Joyce has hung up hundreds of Christmas lights all over her living room. Some correspond to an alphabetical grid, kind of like a Ouija board, that she's written on the wall. It seems to work.

She asks Will if he's alive, and the lights indicate "yes." Then she asks him if he's safe and the answer is "no." Things go haywire and something looks to be stretching into her walls. Will is on the run.

Meanwhile, the boys ask Eleven to lead them to Will. When she brings them to his house, they go crazy on her. They don't understand that he could very well be right there, but in the Upside Down version.

They then hear sirens and follow them to a quarry where they see a body being pulled out of the water. It looks like Will.