When the World Yields to the Self: The Politics of Individualism in Stranger Things

The finale of Volume 1 in Season 5 of Stranger Things turns on a single charged image: Will, cornered by Vecna, suddenly awakening to powers that had supposedly lived inside him all along. A rush of home-movie memories flows through his mind, scenes of friendship, queer attachment, and family care, and almost instantly this inward turn converts into outward force as he freezes and shatters the Demogorgons. Power arrives through self-recognition. Robin’s earlier insistence that the answers