The wait is finally almost over: Stranger Things Season 2 is arriving on Netflix October 27, which is this Friday. I for one, can remember back in February when the first trailer arrived, and I remember thinking I didn’t think I could wait till Halloween. But the day is finally here, and I plan to binge-watch it the second it comes out. Here are some things you can expect from the new season (SPOILERS WARNING):

1. Eleven is back! We knew this for a while, since the first picture of the season 2 read-through was posted on social media, with Milly Bobby Brown among the other regulars. From the trailers, we know she escaped from the upside-down recently after she got there, and it seems she spent most of the year between the seasons hiding in the woods near Hawkins. Another trailer shows authority figures (from Hawkins lab?) questioning a defiant Mike about her whereabouts. So people might suspect she is out there. Also, one clip shows her opening a door that appears to belong to Terry Ives house. Will her mother escape the trance-like state she has been stuck in for several years when she sees her daughter has come back to her? We can only guess at this point.
2. We are going to see a lot more of Will than we did in season 1. Obviously he was a major character; most of the plot in the first series of episodes started with his disappearance. But he still didn’t get much screen time, so this season we will be able to see much more  of his acting skills. And though he escaped from the upside-down, he is far from free. We saw him coughing up slugs in the last season, and now he is going to be experiencing much worse. It also seems that he is taken to Hawkins lab for help regarding these issues
3. There are going to be several new characters. Among them include Max, for whom it seems the first episode is titled after (“Madmax”) and who is a girl with long red hair (and a talent for video games) who joins the boy’s gang. There is also going to be Billy (Max’s brother), a teenager who drives a Camaro and is not going to be a very good person. According to the Duffer Brothers, they wanted to show how human “evil” can be just as bad as the supernatural “evil”, and it seems this character is meant to highlight that.
4. Barb is really dead. This comes as a major blow to many fans, and it is true that season 1 really did pull on the heartstrings with the deaths of innocent characters (such as Barb, Benny Hammond, and Hopper’s daughter). But the Duffer Brothers said that there will be justice in a sense; Barb is gone but not forgotten. Nancy will be severely affected by this loss, and there are others who are trying to get to the bottom of her mysterious disappearance.

It has been a very long wait (several months over a year!) but hopefully it will be worth it. But all the facts we’ve been given sow far it’s looking like something special.