Nancy in Stranger Things season 5: Holly's night, the shot at the sphere and the epilogue
Nancy · November 1987 · Season 5
A local radio station, a kidnapped sister, a shot. You will find the plan of the crawls, the investigation into Mr. Whatsit, the wall, the melting room, the Abyss, then the Herald. Not every episode is told again: one scene, and the link to its recap.
Nancy in Stranger Things season 5 starts at the radio station, not on the mic. From November 3, 1987, to the spring of 1989, you follow Holly's night, the tracer, the shot at the sphere, then the epilogue.
The essentials
- Start: November 3, 1987, at the Wheelers' breakfast
- Radio: WSQK, local radio station: Robin on the mic, Steve on sound, Nancy in the group
- Night: Karen injured, Ted injured, Holly kidnapped
- Mr. Whatsit: the name from the book, then the first name Henry, written by Karen
- Tracer: rifle cartridge, test shot, then the Demogorgon at the Turnbows
- Sphere: shot at the end of Shock Jock; the blast comes in the next episode
- Split: in the melting room, on good terms, with Jonathan
- Epilogue: spring 1989, trainee at the Herald, Emerson left behind
Contents
November 1987: radio and fear
November 3, 1987 comes up on screen, at the Wheelers' breakfast. Joyce, Will Byers and Jonathan are at the table: the Byers are staying with them. Ted asks how long this is supposed to go on. Karen refuses to put them out on the street. The page on Natalia Dyer already sums up Nancy in 1987 in a few lines. The thread below goes chapter by chapter, well past this recap.
The group's local radio station is called WSQK. Robin introduces herself on air as the DJ, and it is her 500th show. Steve is on sound. Nancy is part of the team: she prepares the crawls with Mike. She does not host the station. One clarification is enough: the station keeps broadcasting, as cover, and the basement is hidden behind a bookcase.
This chapter is called The Crawl. Murray brings the news: a “burn” is happening that same evening. Nancy puts times on the plan. Hopper has to be in the tunnels before 21:00. The convoy is in town at 22:00. The episode recap records that more than thirty crawls have already taken place. Nancy and Mike are looking for proof that Vecna is dead. Steve wonders about it out loud. Jonathan recalls the vision from 1986: the town in flames, Karen and Holly dead. Nancy answers that she is scared. “I am scared.” And the others should be scared too.
The crawl goes wrong. Will Byers sees a Demogorgon racing toward the Wheelers' house. Nancy leaves Robin at the radio. The order is clear: warn Hopper and the boys, call home, tell everyone to get out. She drives off with Eleven. Eleven will say so later: “Nancy drove me.”
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November 3, 1987 The Crawl
From the radio Nancy puts times on the night: tunnels before 21:00, convoy in town at 22:00.
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That same evening The Wheeler house
Karen is injured. Ted is injured. Holly is kidnapped.
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Episode 2 The hospital
Karen cannot speak. She writes a first name: Henry.
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Episode 3 At the Turnbows
Nancy hits the Demogorgon with the tracer before it escapes through the gate.
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Episode 4 The Upside Down
The car, the Roane cemetery, then the wall.
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Episodes 5 and 6 The lab
The sphere on the roof, the shot, then the melting room.
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Episodes 7 and 8 The Abyss
Holly is called back up, then found.
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Spring 1989 The Herald
Emerson is left behind. Nancy has a trainee post.
Clear acrylic keychain, silver carabiner: WSQK logo in blue and yellow, “The Squawk”, “Hawkins Hitmaker!”, and below “Hosted by Rockin' Robin”. The drawing says that Robin is the one hosting.
In the shopWSQK The Squawk radio keychain12,90 €See the product
The night Holly is kidnapped
The bathroom attack is already told elsewhere: the page on Karen gives the bathroom, the bottle and the dryer, and The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler does the recap. Here, what comes next fits into one scene. Eleven says “It's inside.” Nancy answers “I see it.” Karen is covered in blood, Ted is injured, Holly is kidnapped.
Nancy pushes Eleven to follow the creature. She stays with her mother and talks to her until help comes. “I'm right here.” At the hospital Karen goes into surgery.
She tells Mike it is their fault. They could have gotten the family out of Hawkins, or at least told the truth. For her, the vision Vecna showed in 1986 is coming true, and he wants to punish them. She names Holly, her mother, her father. Lucas has his doubts: why leave the parents alive, and why send “one of his pets”?
Later Mike comes back to that line. He agrees with her: they could have done more. “We could have done more.” He says it while defending his theory about Mr. Whatsit, and the investigation starts at once.
Mr. Whatsit, then the tracer
The theory comes from Mike: what if Mr. Whatsit, Holly's imaginary friend, were real? At breakfast on November 3 she was reading A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle. Nancy thinks of the imaginary friend drawn from the book. Mike clarifies: “it's Mrs. Whatsit in the book”. The character in the book is called Mrs. Whatsit. Holly kept the name, not the lady from the novel.
Mike calls his sister a “genius investigative reporter”. Her beginnings as a journalist go back to the 1985 internship, told in the Hawkins Post. She went in there as an intern, not with a column of her own.
The receptionist hates Nancy. Mike has to sweet-talk her: she says it herself, “she hates me, and you're cute”. The doctor refuses to let them see her: Karen's larynx is badly damaged, and because they found her in time, they saved her life. Nancy distrusts a doctor who smokes, or who calls her sweetheart. They ignore his advice. Karen cannot speak. She writes, in this order: “Teacher saw talking to W.”, then “Pocket watch”, then “Tall. Vest.”. The first name Henry comes after that. The episode recap gives it: Mr. Whatsit is called Henry. Nancy and Mike understand who is hiding behind the imaginary friend.
In The Turnbow Trap Nancy explains it to the group. Vecna approached Holly in the shape of Henry, as a friend. “He appeared as Henry.” The trap is set at the Turnbows, and Derek is its anchor: the chapter describes the house, not this page. Nancy slides Murray's tracer into a rifle cartridge. Murray objects. The heat of the powder and the recoil will destroy it, he says. She asks whether that is a fact or a theory. “A theory.” She picks up the nickname Murray gives himself, “Santa”, before the test shot. After the test: “Another miracle.” That evening she is the tagger. “In position and set.” She hits the Demogorgon with the tracer before it vanishes through a gate.
The wall, then the lab roof
Steve wants to ram the gate with his car. Nancy answers “Do it.” They follow the creature across the Roane cemetery, then the car slams into the wall. This chapter is called Sorcerer. The wall is not a hedge: the impact stops them dead.
Over the radio Hopper talks about a solution, without saying what it is. Nancy refuses to wait. When Jonathan tells Steve to stop making the decisions, she answers that the decision was hers too, because it is her sister. “It was mine because it's my sister.” Dustin then shows that the wall forms a circle. The center is the Hawkins lab.
In the Upside Down lab, Nancy first suggests teams of two. “Search in teams of two.” Then she imposes the usual teams. “End of discussion.” Steve had wanted to go up with her, and Jonathan was annoyed about it: she cuts it short. Later, alone with her, Jonathan blames her for hesitating. They cross melted rooms. Soldiers are fused with the walls. A sphere floats above the roof.
In Brenner's notes Dustin understands that he was wrong. The radio no longer gets through: “They're out of range.” Jonathan asks Nancy if she is sure. “You sure about this?” She answers “No.” She shoots anyway. It is the last scene of episode 5 of season 5. The mechanism of the sphere is not described: Nancy and Jonathan saw in it the shield generator Dustin had theorized, from an idea in Return of the Jedi. The shot does not destroy it.
Nancy in building bricks, brown hair, red jacket over a blue top, a long rifle in one hand, a red bike beside her. The product listing names no season.
In the shopBuildable mini figure Nancy Wheeler on a bike14,90 €See the product
The melting room
The blast throws them back into the building. The room melts. They are trapped. Nancy has them sit, to spread the weight: a memory of Mr. Goldstein's physics class. “Sitting spreads our weight out.” This chapter is called Escape from Camazotz. The shot did not destroy the sphere. Jonathan sees it when he wakes, and Nancy adds: “Just pissed it off.”
The confessions belong in this room, and nowhere else in this article: The Clash, Slaughterhouse-Five, six minutes late and a pink sweater. Jonathan never sent an application to Emerson. “I never applied to Emerson.” Nancy answers “I know.” She says she stayed in Hawkins in the spring of 1986 because she needed space. About Steve she says “never like that with him”. Jonathan turns the question around. “Will you not marry me?” She accepts this non-proposal. “I accept your un-proposal.” They part still in love, then the melting stops. The rest is in the article on the show's couples.
According to the Duffer brothers, in an interview with Variety, it is the scene they spent the second most time on in season 5. Natalia Dyer and her scene partner prepared it for about a month. It is the last scene they shot for the episode. Shawn Levy puts it at about three days of shooting.
The Abyss, Holly, then the Herald
Steve and Dustin pull them out of the room. Dustin names the sphere: “Exotic matter.” It is exotic matter, with no instructions attached. Nancy sees Holly fall from the sky, then get called back up. She says it: something was holding her. “It was him.” She names Vecna. Later, when Dustin explains that Vecna had been hiding in the Abyss, she sees that as the reason the crawls led nowhere. She then suggests reaching Eleven through the Upside Down lab. Eleven answers with the bath. “The bath.”
The Bridge leads to the tower. In The Rightside Up the group climbs the radio tower, toward the Abyss. Mike gets a flare gun from her. Someone asks who will be the bait. Nancy answers “I am.” She offers herself. She points at no one else.
In front of the Mind Flayer she serves as bait and draws him into position. Meanwhile, Eleven and Will face Henry. Nancy then calls Holly. “Holly? Can you hear me?” Holly recognizes her. On the way back the soldiers stop them. Nancy shouts that it is her sister. “That's my sister!”
Eighteen months later, in the spring of 1989, the scene is on the roof of the station. Robin asks about Emerson. Nancy has left the university. “I dropped out.” She has taken a trainee post at the Herald. “It's a trainee position.” She had had enough of studying and wanted to try the real world. The group promises to meet once a month, at Robin's uncle's, in Philadelphia. In the conversation with Variety, Matt Duffer explains that Nancy and Jonathan had to let each other go, in order to grow and be independent.
Holly in building bricks, blonde pigtails, pale blue dress, a knotted brown scarf. The two objects in her hands are not named, and nothing says this is her 1987 outfit.
In the shopBuildable mini figure Holly Wheeler14,90 €See the product
Frequently asked questions
What does Nancy do in season 5?
She prepares the crawls with the group, investigates Mr. Whatsit after Holly's kidnapping, fires a tracer and then aims at the sphere, finds her sister in the Abyss and leaves Emerson for a trainee post at the Herald.
Does Nancy work at WSQK radio?
She is part of the group at the station. Robin is at the microphone, Steve on sound. Nancy prepares the crawls. She does not host the radio.
Why does Nancy shoot at the sphere?
She takes it for the generator of the wall that Dustin was looking for, from the idea of a shield. The radio no longer gets through, so he cannot hold her back. She says she is not sure, and she shoots. The sphere is not destroyed.
Do Nancy and Jonathan split up?
Yes, in the melting room, on good terms. She knew he had not sent an application to Emerson. They part still in love. The detail is in the article on the couples.
Does Nancy find Holly again?
In the Abyss she calls her. Holly recognizes her. On the way back soldiers stop them, and Nancy shouts that it is her sister.
Who is Mr. Whatsit?
Holly's imaginary friend. The name comes from Mrs. Whatsit, in A Wrinkle in Time. Karen then writes clues, then the first name Henry.
What becomes of Nancy at the end of the show?
In the spring of 1989, on the roof of the station, she has left Emerson. She has a trainee post at the Herald. The city of the paper is not named on screen.
