Stranger Things’ New Spinoff Completes a Forgotten Season 4 Story

The newest Stranger Things tie-in is an essential part of the story, tying up one forgotten plot from Season 4. To most people, Stranger Things is only a TV franchise – albeit one of the biggest and most successful TV shows of all time. In reality, it’s far more; Netflix has successfully expanded the story into other mediums, ranging from a Broadway show to various tie-in novels. The stories haven’t always woven well across these other mediums (Season 4 seemed to contradict some comics), but Stranger Things Season 5 even explicitly referenced the Broadway show.

A new Stranger Things spinoff has just released, set between seasons 4 and 5 and even playing an important role by completing a story the TV show forgot.”One Way or Another” is a novel billed as “A Nancy Wheeler Mystery,” written by Caitlin Scheiderhan – one of the actual writers of Season 5. It’s a fantastic read, perfectly capturing the character voices, and it’s quite unique in that it ties up a Season 4 character arc that has been completely forgotten.

The Relationship Between Jonathan and Nancy Has Real Problems

The love triangle between Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan is in full bloom in Stranger Things Season 5 (set in March 1986). Jonathan and Steve are competing for Nancy’s attention; Jonathan is even thinking of proposing, a move that smacks more of desperation than anything else. But it’s easy for viewers to forget that all this began because the relationship between Jonathan and Nancy was strained back in Season 4, with the couple struggling to make a long-distance relationship work. Nancy planned to go to Emerson College after graduating high school, unaware that Jonathan hadn’t applied to join her.

Season 5 hops forward over a year, to November 1987, and neither Nancy nor Jonathan have gone to Emerson. The Byers family arrived back at Hawkins just before mysterious particulates were emitted from the Upside Down, and the whole town has now been placed under quarantine, meaning it’s not exactly easy for a college graduate to head out of Hawkins to Emerson. No doubt Nancy could pull it off; she’s a determined kind of person who has overcome impossible obstacles before. But she clearly decided to stick around and help her family against Vecna.

Jonathan, of course, is another story. He never actually intended to go to Emerson in the first place, even when he was living in California rather than Hawkins; he hadn’t even applied. He never really shared Nancy’s dreams of going to university, but he was simply avoiding a difficult conversation that would have meant admitting they had different ideas of what life should look like. This tension has clearly gone unresolved, but the time jump means it all feels a little disjointed because the specific college problem has been forgotten.

Stranger Things’ Tie-In Reveals What Happened to Nancy & Jonathan

“One Way or Another” is set two months after the end of Stranger Things Season 4, and it shines an important light on the relationship between Nancy and Jonathan. Rather than have a conversation about life goals, Jonathan simply claimed he couldn’t leave his family in the chaos of Hawkins. He never admitted to Nancy that he didn’t apply to Emerson, instead claiming Vecna’s attack changed everything for him, and he’s abandoned his plans. Nancy chooses to remain to help in the fight against Vecna, but her gaze is still fixed beyond Hawkins. The tension is unresolved.

Jonathan would probably think this is good. But there’s an undercurrent of deception at the heart of his relationship with Nancy, and she knows it; she even begins to wonder whether Jonathan ever applied to Emerson, but she too decides not to have the awkward conversation of asking him. They’re burying their problems rather than confronting them, undermining their relationship, and establishing a status quo where things are never resolved. It’s easy to see why the competition between Steve and Jonathan is still ongoing by November 1987.

Stranger Things Season 5, Volume 1 is streaming now on Netflix. “One Way or Another” is on sale now from retailers, including Amazon.

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