Look up “jam-packed” in the dictionary, and you’ll find Stranger Things Season 5, Volume 1’s finale, titled “Sorcerer.”
The fourth episode in Stranger Things‘ final season threw everything at the giant fleshy wall in the Upside Down… and then some. Max (Sadie Sink) made her triumphant comeback, revealing she’s been living in a prison of Henry Creel/Vecna’s (Jamie Campbell Bower) memories this whole time. Kali/Eight (Linnea Berthelsen) returned after several seasons away. And Vecna and his Demogorgons burst back into Hawkins to kidnap all the town’s children for Vecna’s new nefarious plan.
But the most exciting — and dare I say, strangest — development of the entire episode was none other than Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) unleashing psychic powers of his own, in a final sequence that had me glued to my screen. So what are Will’s powers, how did he get them, and what’s next for him in Stranger Things? Let’s break it down.
What are Will’s powers in Stranger Things Season 5?
Throughout Season 5, Will has been forced time and again into Vecna’s Upside Down hive mind. That means he’s been able to see through Vecna’s eyes, and through the eyes of the Demogorgons that Vecna has loosed on his victims. Every time he’s had a vision, Will has been a passive participant. But in “Sorcerer,” after Vecna ridicules him for being weak, Will decides to show that no, actually, he’s not weak. As the Demogorgons threaten his friends, Will seizes control of the hive mind. He holds the Demogorgons still in mid-air, then proceeds to lift them up and mangle their bodies, exactly as Vecna did to his murder victims in Season 4. That means Will shares Vecna’s telepathic powers, putting him on the same playing field as Vecna, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), and Kali. He’s moved on from his days of spooky neck goosebumps, and he’s in the big leagues now.
So, how did Will get these powers?
Noah Schnapp in “Stranger Things.”
Credit: Netflix
Will got these powers as part of his connection to Vecna, which goes all the way back to the beginning of Stranger Things. As we learn in Season 5, episode 1, Vecna interacted with Will during his time in the Upside Down in Season 1. He stuck one of the Upside Down’s tentacles in an unconscious Will’s mouth and then began pumping him full of what looks like nasty Upside Down goo. That’s how Will ends up coughing up an Upside Down slug at the end of Season 1. It’s also how he became connected to the Upside Down hive mind.
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As of Season 5, Vecna is repeating the tentacle process with Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) and the other Hawkins children he’s captured. As he explains to Will in the “Sorcerer” finale, he chose children to “reshape the world” because they are “easily broken, easily reshaped. Controlled. The perfect vessels. And you, Will, you were the first. And you broke so easily.”
While Vecna’s plans to reshape the world, likely in the image of the Upside Down, haven’t fully become clear yet, the mention of the children as “vessels” is particularly fascinating. Are the children going to be vessels for Vecna’s power? More eyes for him to see through? If so, that means Will was the original Vecna host. And in “Sorcerer,” he realizes that his relationship with Vecna isn’t a one-way street. If Vecna can divert his power through Will, then Will can grab hold of it and use it for himself.
The trigger for Will to realize this in “Sorcerer” comes from a pep talk Robin (Maya Hawke) gives him in the episode. Throughout the season, Robin has realized that Will is also queer, and that he’s having a hard time accepting himself (and that Mike isn’t romantically interested in him). In one heart-to-heart, she tells him that, in order to come into her own, “I just needed to stop being scared of who I really was.”
These are the words Will remembers as he freezes the Demogorgons. They also cue a flashback montage of his friendship with Mike (Finn Wolfhard), starting from their very first meeting as toddlers. (Yes, the Byers bowl cut is around, even then.) Between Robin’s words and Will making a big show of his powers, the scene is positioned as Will coming into his own as a person. Yet the sequence is muddled: Robin’s words are specifically tied to Will’s queerness, but Stranger Things is positioning them in a different context that makes them lose their power somewhat. Is the show conflating Will embracing his queerness with him embracing his powers? It’s a bizarre move in an otherwise galvanizing closer to the episode.
What’s next for Will and his powers?
Will having Vecna-style abilities bodes well for the Hawkins party, as they now have another powerful (if untrained) psychic user on their side. However, could Vecna wrest back control of his powers from Will? And then use him as a vessel of his powers in the real world? There are still a lot of unanswered questions as to how this could play out.
The most intriguing element going forward may be less about the fate of Hawkins, and more about what these new powers mean for Will as a character. The episode’s title, “Sorcerer,” is a reference to Will’s new abilities. As Mike tells him earlier in the episode, Will’s Upside Down connection makes him the equivalent of a Dungeons & Dragons sorcerer. That means that unlike a wizard, who gains magical powers from study, he’s actually innately magical.
Will’s original Dungeons & Dragons character, Will the Wise, was actually a wizard. But now that Will is metaphorically jumping into a different Dungeons & Dragons class and going full sorcerer mode, could that represent a total transformation from who he once was, both in terms of accepting his queerness and his powers?
