It’s been a minute since Season 4 of Stranger Things dropped on Netflix (over three years ago, in 2022) — let alone when the show debuted in July 2016, when President Obama was still in office.

The long wait to find out the fate of the beloved Hawkins, Ind., crew, in their battle against Vecna will come to an end when Volume 1 of the fifth and final season starts streaming this Wednesday, Nov. 26, at 8 p.m. ET. Volume 2 will drop on Dec. 26 and the final episode will stream on Dec. 31 and will also be shown in select movie theaters.

Many fans (like this one) may need a refresher before Wednesday to get primed and ready for Season 5. For those who don’t have time to rewatch all four seasons, show creators the Duffer brothers recommended rewatching these key episodes before the final season:

• Season 2, episode 4 — “Will the Wise”

• Season 2, episode 6 — “The Spy”

• Season 4, episode 7 — “The Massacre at Hawkins Lab”

• Season 4, episode 9 — “The Piggyback”

Yahoo also has you covered with some brief recaps of each season, so warning: Spoilers ahead!

Season 1 recap

It’s Nov. 6, 1983, in Hawkins, and 12-year-old Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) disappears on his way home after encountering a spindly-looking figure in the woods, which is eventually revealed to be a Demogorgon monster. Will’s panicked mother, Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder), is desperate to find her son and discovers she can communicate with Will through flickering lights in her home.

A body is discovered in the rock quarry, which state authorities say is Will. Joyce is not convinced that the body belongs to her son and insists he is still alive. Police Chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour) investigates Will’s disappearance and discovers that the boy’s apparent body being guarded at the morgue was a fake.

Will’s friends, Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin) and Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo), meet Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), a mysterious girl with telekinetic powers who escaped from Hawkins National Laboratory, where Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine) was raising the girl as test subject 011 — and a human weapon.

Eleven becomes friends with the boys and ultimately helps them discover that Will is trapped in a parallel dimension they call “the Upside Down.” We learn that Eleven had opened a gate between Hawkins and the Upside Down after she was instructed by Brenner to locate a Demogorgon in a vision while in a sensory deprivation tank at the lab.

Will’s brother, Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), is motivated to find him, while Mike’s sister, Nancy (Natalia Dyer), is worried about her friend Barb (Shannon Purser), who also disappeared. The two team up and are determined to track down and kill the Demogorgon monster, with the unexpected help of Nancy’s boyfriend, Steve Harrington (Joe Keery).

Joyce and Hopper save Will from the Upside Down, while Eleven destroys the Demogorgon, but vanishes. A month later, Will is haunted by visions of the Upside Down, and coughs up a slug from the other world. Meanwhile, Hopper leaves food, including Eggo waffles — Eleven’s favorite — in a wooden box in the woods.

Season 2 recap

It’s October 1984 in Hawkins, nearly a year since Will vanished into the Upside Down. While he’s been back home, he continues to be haunted by visions of the parallel world, and sees a colossal dark shadow, which the crew later refers to as the Mind Flayer. Will attends therapy with Dr. Sam Owens (Paul Reiser), who is Brenner’s replacement, at Hawkins Laboratory in an effort to monitor his lingering symptoms from the Upside Down.

Will’s visions become more frequent, and the Mind Flayer violently swirls into Will’s body, and partially possesses him, using him as a spy. In an effort to describe his visions to his mom and Hopper, Will furiously scribbles on hundreds of sheets of paper. Hopper believes the drawings are vines connected to the “now memories” that Will characterizes as “growing and spreading and killing.”

We learn that Eleven survived the battle with the Demogorgon and is living in hiding with Hopper, out of sight from the government, while she learns to control her telekinetic powers. Searching for answers from her past, she discovers another child who was a test subject at Hawkins Lab, Kali (Linnea Berthelsen), aka Eight, who pushes Eleven on a dark, vengeful path. Mike continues to search for Eleven throughout this season, and the two are reunited.

Lucas becomes close with the new girl at school, Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink). Her headstrong stepbrother, Billy Hargrove (Dacre Montgomery), is also looking to cause trouble. Meanwhile, Dustin thinks he found a pollywog and names it Dart, but it turns out to be a baby Demogorgon, which is part of a growing threat in the Upside Down. And Steve’s character transforms from high school bully to the “world’s best babysitter” (according to fans) as he protects the younger kids in town.

It’s later discovered that Will’s drawings are a map of an underground network of tunnels that are filling up with toxic vines controlled by the Mind Flayer. Joyce, Jonathan and Nancy end up forcing the Mind Flayer out of Will by cornering his body with intense heat.

Hopper and Eleven descend into the Hawkins Lab, where the access point to the Upside Down’s gate is located. With Eleven’s powers now stronger, she seals the gate, cutting off the connection to the Mind Flayer.

Hopper, who we learned in Season 1 had a daughter who died of cancer, officially adopts Eleven by the end of the season. And while the Hawkins crew is able to enjoy the school’s Snow Ball, we see the Mind Flayer still looming over Hawkins from the Upside Down.

Season 3 recap

It’s the summer of 1985 in Hawkins and the crew is enjoying some teenage normalcy at the flashy new Starcourt Mall, where much of the season takes place. The group navigates friendships and love interests: Mike and Eleven are a couple; Lucas and Max are also an item; Dustin has a girlfriend from science camp; and Jonathan and Nancy are dating as they work together at the Hawkins Post. Will, meanwhile, just wants to remain a kid and play Dungeons and Dragons with his friends.

Joyce and Hopper develop feelings for each other, but Joyce is still getting over the death of her boyfriend Bob (Sean Astin), who was killed by a Demogorgon in Season 2.

Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman), a conspiracy theorist, turns out to be right about the Russians who have built a secret underground base beneath the Starcourt Mall, and have reopened the gate to the Upside Down.

Steve, who has become close friends with Dustin, gets a job at the mall, serving ice cream at Scoops Ahoy, and develops a friendship with coworker Robin Buckley (Maya Hawke). The three of them try to convince Lucas’s younger sister Erica (Priah Ferguson) to help them uncover the Russian conspiracy.

Meanwhile, the Mind Flayer is back for revenge and this time chooses to possess Max’s stepbrother Billy. Jonathan and Nancy discover that the Mind Flayer’s strategy is to re-create itself by possessing humans, and liquifying them to form a solid body.

Joyce, Hopper and Murray infiltrate the Russian base below the mall to try to close the gate to the Upside Down. Meanwhile, the teens are upstairs in the mall trying to battle the Mind Flayer with fireworks after Eleven realizes her powers are gone.

Joyce is forced to vaporize Hopper in order to close the gate to the Upside Down, and Hopper appears to die in the explosion. Eleven is able to free Billy from the Mind Flayer, and Billy sacrifices himself in order to stop it. Once Joyce closes the gate, the connection to the Upside Down is broken, killing the Mind Flayer.

Three months later, Joyce, Jonathan, Will and Eleven leave Hawkins and move to California.

Season 4 recap

It’s 1986 in Hawkins, and traumatized teens are being targeted by supernatural killings being carried out by Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), ruler of the Upside Down. But authorities in Hawkins believe the suspect is Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn), a Hawkins High School senior, a metalhead who is also head of the school’s Hellfire Dungeons & Dragons Club.

Dustin, Steve, Nancy, Robin, Lucas and Max investigate and learn that Vecna is actually Brenner’s first subject at Hawkins Lab, Henry Creel (aka One). We learn that Eleven banished Henry to the Upside Down years earlier.

Meanwhile, it turns out that Hopper wasn’t vaporized at the end of Season 3, but he was transported to a brutal Soviet-era camp that experiments on creatures from the Upside Down. Joyce and Murray get word that Hopper is alive and travel to Russia and rescue him.

In California, Eleven is bullied at her new school. After being arrested for assaulting her bully with a roller skate, she is taken to a secure facility where Owens and the resurrected Brenner try to restore her powers with memories.

Vecna targets Max as his next victim, and the crew battles Vecna in the Upside Down, while Eleven psychologically intervenes. But we learn in the last episode that Vecna has opened big gates to the Upside Down throughout Hawkins, setting the stage for total war in Season 5.