Hawkins High in Stranger Things: Hawkins High, from the Tigers to the Hellfire Club

Who enters Hawkins High, and when

Hawkins High existed before the younger ones. Nancy, Steve, Jonathan are already there when the middle school party is still playing in the basement. The building does not wait until 1986 to have lockers. It waits until 1986 to become the center of the story.

When Mike, Dustin, and Lucas enter it, they first look for a place to keep playing. The club is already there. Lucas, for his part, looks rather at the gym. That arrival is not a back-to-school filmed with new backpacks. It is a choice of room, and the choice breaks the group.

To place the school back in the town, the map of Hawkins is enough: the high school is one of the buildings the routes force one to draw, between the houses and the center. The story, for its part, films it from the inside.

1. Before 1986 The older ones already at Hawkins High

   Nancy, Steve, and Jonathan know the hallways well before the middle school party.

2. The younger ones go back Three boys, two rooms

   Mike and Dustin go toward the game table. Lucas goes toward basketball.

3. March 21, 1986 The night of the title

   The Tigers win. The same night, a high school girl dies.

4. The next day The team no longer celebrates

   Jason turns the grief into a hunt against the club.

5. The town hall The word cult

   The captain describes Hellfire in front of a full room.

6. The office Ms. Kelley

   The counselor has the files. She does not let one go to Max.

The Tigers

The Tigers are the high school's basketball team. In March 1986, the captain is called Jason Carver. The story films him first as the boy who wins, popular, a believer, dating the cheer captain. Not yet as a hunt leader.

Lucas plays on this team. That is the subject of the article on basketball: he is on both sides, the jersey and the friends of the table. On the night of the championship, he is not sitting with the club. His sister takes his place in the game.

On March 21, 1986, the Tigers win a title the same evening a high school girl dies. The next day, the team no longer celebrates. It looks for a culprit, with the same jackets, behind the captain. The gym has changed function without changing the floor.

The Hellfire Club and Eddie

The Hellfire Club meets in a classroom, in the evening. Eddie Munson presides: he is repeating a year, he plays guitar, he provokes the athletes in the cafeteria, standing on a table. The March 21 campaign is titled “The Cult of Vecna”.

Around the table, that evening: Dustin, Mike, and Erica, who replaces Lucas under the name Lady Applejack. Gareth and Jeff, two other members of the club, are also at the table. The full list, the game, the t-shirt: the club article holds them. Here, the high school is only the room that shelters them.

The club has no room of its own. It borrows a classroom, after school. That is enough for the town, later, to treat a game table like an organization. The school building becomes the set of a rumor.

Chrissy, Jason, the panic

Chrissy Cunningham dies on March 21, 1986, limbs broken, far from the gym, in a trailer. She had been through Hawkins High before: cheer captain, seen in the hallways, and received by the counselor. The building is not the murder site. It is the place where everyone knew each other.

Jason does not believe in a creature. He believes in a cult. In front of a full town hall, he describes the club as satanic. Wanted notices circulate. The basketball team, which had just won a title, becomes a hunt. The high school supplied both the grief and the hunters.

Lucas understands the shift because he wears both outfits. The story does not give him a speech to stop the captain. It gives him an untenable place: teammate by day, friend of the table by night.

The adults at the high school

The adult the story lets into that spring is called Ms. Kelley. She is the guidance counselor. Chrissy went to her house before dying. Max will want a file. Kelley refuses. The keys will leave anyway, elsewhere in the story.

One does not invent a class for her, nor a subject, nor an office bigger than what the scenes show. She holds files. She says no. That is already a power, in a high school where the teenagers settle the rest among themselves.

The other adults in the building stay in the background: a match, a cafeteria, a rumor that rises faster than any detention. The high school of March 1986 is not saved by a principal. It is crossed.

What the high school shows

Hallways, cafeteria, classroom after hours, gym. Four rooms are enough. Eddie speaks standing on a table. The Tigers win there. Max walks there alone, at the start of spring. The building does not need a secret wing. It needs to be full.

It is the opposite of the middle school of the early years, where science fit in a club and a radio. Here, the school sorts. The jersey on one side, the black t-shirt on the other, the counselor in the middle with closed files.

The filming was done at Patrick Henry High School in Stockbridge, in Georgia, which also served as the set for the middle school. What matters on screen is the use. Hawkins High is the place where a sports victory and a death fall on the same evening, and where the next day nobody simply goes back to class.

The building stays useful because it is ordinary. No secret basement, no machine in the gym. Just lockers, a table after the bell, a match floor, a file office. It is in this ordinary that the rumor becomes a hunt, and that a champion title no longer protects anyone.

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