Stranger Things Season 5: Will Byers' Powers (And How They Work), Explained

Stay away from any Demogorgons or the Upside Down if you haven't finished the first four episodes of "Stranger Things" season 5 — spoilers ahead!

At the end of the fourth episode of the fifth and final season of "Stranger Things," the hit Netflix series created for the streamer by the Duffer brothers, something wholly unexpected happens. As Noah Schnapp's Will Byers faces down the show's big bad Vecna (also known as One or Henry Creel, played in all forms by Jamie Campbell Bower), who took Will into the nefarious underground region known as the Upside Down at the very beginning of the entire series, all hope seems lost ... until it's revealed that Will, like his friend Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), has unique powers that can fight Vecna. Using these new powers, Will controls and destroys a few of Vecna's Demogorgons that are about to kill his friends, and to top it all off, he gets a nosebleed — something that always happens to Eleven after she uses her own powers.

In an interview with Variety, the Duffers — Matt and Ross — were up front about the fact that Will was always going to get powers by the end of the series.

"We've been talking about Will having powers for as long as I can really remember," Ross told the outlet before continuing, clarifying that Will's and Eleven's powers are not identical. "It's different in that he's able to channel Vecna's powers," he went on. "But they're all related. Vecna and Eleven their powers are similar. The powers aren't within him. He's able to channel these powers from Vecna and use it, sort of puppeteering." (If that sounds a little familiar, "Harry Potter" did the same thing, kind of.)

The important thing about the way Will first wields his powers, according to Matt Duffer, has to do with the "hive mind" that controls the Demogorgons and is usually piloted by Vecna. "He taps into the hive mind, and then he can manipulate anything within the hive," Matt teased. The Duffers were also careful to say that Will's ability to tap into said hive mind is "proximity-based," so if "he's not close to the hive mind, he's not able to access or tap it." The Duffers also noted that if Will had never ended up in the Upside Down in season 1 — the event that, again, kickstarted the entire series — he wouldn't have powers, which makes him distinct from Eleven, who had her powers long before she ever visited the shadowy realm under Hawkins, Indiana.

Not only that, though, but Matt Duffer said that back in the show's second season — which sees Will struggling to adapt to his normal life after spending pretty much all of season 1 captive in the Upside Down — Will was already connected to the demonic being known as Vecna. "He could see what [Vecna] saw, but he didn't realize that at the time he was able to tap into it in a way and use it against Vecna. That's something he doesn't learn till this season," he clarified. "It took us a while to build there, but it was something we always intended to do. The details of it were a little rough until we started working on it." So why does Will develop his powers for the final season? Why hasn't he been able to access them since season 2?

Something we've known about Will Byers since season 4 of "Stranger Things" is that he's queer and struggling with his sexual identity — probably because he's harboring feelings for his best friend Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard), making it all much more difficult to grasp. It's notable that a talk with Maya Hawke's queer teen Robin Buckley directly precedes Will's inaugural use of his powers. Per the Duffers, that's no accident. 

Noting that Will has evolved and changed throughout "Stranger Things," Ross Duffer said Will hasn't stepped up before but his using his powers is doing just that. As he mused:

"Throughout the seasons, he's been a little more fearful than the others. He hasn't been a leader. He hasn't accepted himself in the way that some of our characters have. So I think it was really talking about if he really is able to at least start to accept himself for who he is, will that give him the kind of strength that he needs in order to access these powers? That's really where Episode 4 — and really the arc of the first four episodes — led for him."

As far as Vecna goes, he doesn't kill Will because, as Matt Duffer said, the villain underestimates the boy. "[Vecna] perceives [Will] in the way that so many others have in his life, which is as weak, as nothing, as incapable of achieving anything great," Matt said. "So he completely underestimates him in that moment. Whether that's going to happen again, you'll have to watch Volume 2."

Noted. Volume 2 of "Stranger Things" season 5 releases on Christmas Day with another three episodes, and the series finale drops on December 31.