Joyce Byers is a major protagonist in Stranger Things.
Biography[]
November 7, 1983[]
She talks to Jonathan, asking him where Will is so he can go to school, but they are unable to find Will. Joyce calls Mike's house to see if Will stayed there, but Karen tells her that he left the night before.
Joyce hurries to the police station to talk to Chief Hopper, who she hopes can help find her son. As Hawkins is a quiet, sleepy town, Hopper questions Joyce's claims and doesn't take her too seriously. Hopper's first instinct is to question her ex-husband Lonnie, but Joyce insists that any potential involvement of his in Will's disappearance is unlikely - nonetheless, she agrees to call him.
In a flashback scene, Joyce is in the woods at Castle Byers surprising Will with tickets to see Poltergeist. In the present time, Joyce and Jonathan are at the fort, looking for Will. Joyce tries to call Lonnie, but is hung up on by his girlfriend, Cynthia.
Joyce and Jonathan go through family photos. Jonathan breaks down, feeling guilty about his brother's disappearance. Joyce tells him it's not his fault and claims that Will is close, that she can feel it. They choose a picture for his "missing child" flyers. Joyce receives an ominous, static call on her home phone. Joyce says to Jonathan that she can hear Will breathing. There's static, some growling, and the lights flicker. The phone surges with electricity, briefly electrocuting Joyce.
November 8, 1983[]
Joyce talks to Chief Hopper about the creepy, static phone call she received. Hopper is reluctant to believe her story, but admits the charring on the phone from the surge of electricity is weird. Later, Joyce heads to her workplace to buy a new phone and demand two weeks pay in advance from her boss. He shows some sympathy for Joyce after he realizes her kid is missing, and gives in.
Joyce receives another creepy, static call which surges with electricity and shocks her again. The lights in her house begin to turn on one by one, leading to Will's bedroom. Suddenly, one wall begins to move and takes on some weird shapes. Joyce quickly runs out of the house and into her car, but later turns and goes back into the house.
November 9, 1983[]
Joyce Byers buys a lot of Christmas lights and hangs them all around her house in hopes of communicating with Will. After she has finished, Karen Wheeler arrives with Holly. As the mothers are speaking in the kitchen, lights start flickering, leading Holly to Will's room. Holly witnesses the wall distort, and the Demogorgon comes out of it. The Demogorgon is halfway through flaying Holly when it hears Joyce and Karen coming, and jumps back into the wall. After asking if Holly had seen anything, Joyce asks Karen to leave.
Meanwhile, Joyce's Christmas lights start flickering, which leads her to a crawl space with more lights in her hands. Will begins speaking to her through the lights, with one blink for "Yes" and two blinks for "No". He then tells Joyce that he is alive. She asks if he is safe, but Will replies no. Since their communication is stuck to one word answers, yes and no, Joyce paints the alphabet on her wall and uses the Christmas lights as an Ouija board.
Back at the house, Joyce has Will spell out where he is. Will lights up "RIGHT HERE", and "COLD DARK EMPTY". Joyce, becoming more scared, asks Will if he can describe what it looks like. Will spells out "COLD", "WET", "DARK", "EMPTY", "BLUE" and "VINES". Joyce quickly becomes more distressed. Will then spells out "RUN" as a mysterious monster starts crawling out from the wall. Joyce runs out of the house as all of the lights begin flickering erratically.
Simultaneously, Joyce is running down the road away from the monster and encounters Jonathan. They hug as police cars come down the road toward them.
Chief Hopper tries to convince Joyce the visions she's having of communicating with Will and the monster she saw coming through her wall are all in her head as her way of grieving. However, Joyce knows that she's not crazy, and wants Hopper to believe that Will is not dead.
November 10, 1983[]
Despite the body being confirmed as Will, Joyce still doesn't believe he's dead. Hopper is surprised to hear that state officials performed the autopsy on the body rather than Gary. Joyce asks to see the birthmark on Will's body and storms out, convinced that the body she saw wasn't her son's.
Meanwhile, Jonathan is ready to plan Will's funeral which gets him into an argument with Joyce. The two argue about if Will is really dead, causing them both to storm off.
Joyce suddenly hears Will's cries when Eleven uses her powers to try to talk to Will through the ham radio which surprises the boys as well through the wall in her home.
Joyce is panicking at home and begins hearing Will calling her name. She believes that it is coming from inside her walls and, in an attempt to rescue her son, rips down the wallpaper, only to find a weak and terrified Will in the alternate dimension. El and the boys are able to hear Joyce and Will's conversation through the radio. However, The radio catches on fire and explodes, like Joyce's phone in a previous episode, before they can make further contact.
Joyce is still talking to Will, and she tells Will to hide as the monster is coming back for him. Joyce destroys the wall with an axe, attempting to get to Will, but unfortunately, she only succeeds in breaking through the wall to her front porch.
November 11, 1983[]
Will's father Lonnie comes to town and convinces Joyce that she has imagined everything since Will's disappearance. Later, she discovers he is only interested in suing the company responsible for managing the quarry where Will's body was found, and she demands he leave.
November 12, 1983[]
Hopper describes to Joyce what he saw after he broke into Hawkins Lab. Hopper comes to the conclusion that he may have found another missing kid while searching for Will - he speculates this could be the allegedly kidnapped daughter of former test subject Terry Ives.
Elsewhere, Hopper and Joyce track down Terry Ives. They find Terry in a catatonic state, seemingly unable to talk. Terry's sister Becky explains that Terry's role in Project MKUltra; she would take psychedelics and be placed in a sensory deprivation tank in order to "expand the boundaries of the mind". Terry did not know it, but she was pregnant at the time and was told she had a miscarriage in her third trimester. However, Hopper speculates that the miscarriage could have been a cover-up.
Hopper and Joyce arrive at the local police station and demand Callahan and Powell release Jonathan. The officers refuse, and reveal the stash of hunting gear in Jonathan's trunk. Hopper demands to know why he had such items, but Jonathan claims he wouldn't believe him.
Hopper, Joyce, Nancy, and Jonathan go to the Byers house where they use Will's Supercom to contact the kids. However, they debate over if they should answer, fearing it could be a trap. As Hopper is about to give up, Mike answers and tells them their location.
Hopper and the kids meet up with Joyce, Nancy, and Jonathan at the Byers house. Mike, Dustin, and Lucas explain the Upside Down, telling them that Will and Barbara are trapped there. When Eleven fails to find Will and Barb, she proposes that she can find them in "the bath." Dustin calls Mr. Clarke, asking the requirements for a makeshift isolation tank.
The group travel to the middle school, setting up a kiddie pool and filling it with deicing salt. Eleven enters the pool, delving into a deep psychic state. She first finds Barb's corpse, witnessing a slug slither from her mouth, causing Eleven to break down and scream. After she is comforted by Joyce, she finds Will hiding in the Upside Down version of Castle Byers. She tells him that his mother will be coming for him, and he tells her to "hurry." Suddenly, Eleven loses contact and Will vanishes.
Hopper and Joyce decide to go to Hawkins Lab in order to get Will back. Nancy and Jonathan resolve to kill the monster, and steal their hunting gear back from the police station along with a fire extinguisher, while Dustin, Lucas and Mike stay with Eleven at the school. Hopper and Joyce attempt to break into the lab, but are apprehended by agents and security guards before they are able to enter the building.
After getting caught sneaking into the Hawkins Laboratory, Hopper and Joyce are being interrogated by Dr. Brenner and his men. Brenner reveals to Joyce that the scientists at the Laboratory do not understand the the Monster's behavior, and he needs her help to stop it. Joyce refuses and tells him to go to hell.
In another room, Hopper reveals everything he knows about Eleven and the Laboratory's experiments. The agents threaten to inject him with drugs, however Hopper makes a deal with Brenner so that he and Joyce can find Will.
Meanwhile, Joyce and Hopper set off to find Will in the Upside Down, putting on special suits to protect their bodies from the toxic atmosphere. Inside the gate, Hopper recalls a memory of his late daughter, Sara, having trouble controlling her breathing after Joyce experiences some shortness of breath. Joyce and Hopper reach the Upside Down's version of Castle Byers, where Will was hiding when Eleven contacted him. The shack has been destroyed and Will is nowhere to be seen. Hopper notices a small stuffed lion laying on the ground. The toy triggers another flashback where Sara is holding a similar stuffed tiger as Hopper reads to her in a hospital bed, as she slowly dies from cancer.
Joyce and Hopper have tracked the wounded monster to the public library in the Upside Down. There are bodies of humans who have been taken along the shelves with vines and tendrils surrounding them. Joyce and Hopper find Will with a tendril extending down his esophagus.
In the Upside Down, Hopper and Joyce preform CPR on Will. Hopper recalls a memory where he watched Sara die in the hospital as the doctors try to use CPR to revive her. Hopper is pounding on Will's chest when Will suddenly gasps for air. Joyce and Hopper breathe a sigh of relief.
Will is recovering in the hospital where Joyce, Jonathan, Mike, Lucas, and Dustin all see him and fill him in on all the surprising events that had happened while he was gone. As Hopper leaves the hospital, he is stopped by a car which signals him to get in.
December 24, 1983[]
One month later at the Byers house, Joyce, Jonathan, and Will are enjoying their family dinner. Will excuses himself to go to the bathroom to wash his hands. He coughs up a black slug into the sink, and he momentarily phases into the Upside Down. The lights flicker again, and Will is back in his world. He returns to dinner with his family, but doesn't disclose the event to them.
Joyce Byers in Season 2.
October 29, 1984[]
Will, who has been experiencing the episodes frequently, is taken by Joyce and Hopper to Hawkins Lab, where he is seen by Dr. Owens, the new head scientist. Meanwhile, Joyce has begun seeing Bob Newby, a classmate from high school and the manager of the local RadioShack.
At the Byers house, Joyce discovers an image of Will's vision, including a vague outline of the shadow monster, on the video Will recorded while trick or treating. After seeing the tracing of the outline matches with a picture Will drew, Joyce goes to the middle school. Will finds Dart, but this triggers another episode, where he comes face to face with the shadow monster. Will follows Bob's advice and confronts the monster, but the monster forces a tentacle down Will's throat.
Will awakens from the episode to the concern of Joyce and his friends. Joyce takes Will home, but he begins acting strangely, and begins drawing scribbles on multiple pages. Joyce calls in Hopper, and they find the scribbles line up, which form a network of vines.
Will sees a vision of Hopper's state, but Joyce cannot figure out the meaning of the vision. She enlists Bob for help, as his nickname in high school was "Bob the Brain". Bob is able to identify the tunnels as a map underneath Hawkins, and is able to roughly locate where Hopper was trapped.
Joyce, Bob, Will, and Mike are able to rescue Hopper, but lab personnel arrive and blaze the tunnels with flamethrowers. When the fire is set, Will collapses in agony.
Will is rushed to the lab where he displays memory loss, unable to remember Bob or Hopper. Owens speculates that the shadow monster is like a virus that has infected Will and that any damage to the tunnels might be lethal to him.
Will. Mike, Will, Hopper, Joyce, Bob, and Owens flee into the security room, where they are trapped. The power goes out, and Bob, knowing how to reset the power, volunteers to do so. Bob successfully activates the power, and Owens stays behind in the room to guide out the group. Mike, Will, Hopper, and Joyce are able to escape to the lobby. Bob makes it to the lobby, but is caught and killed by the pack as Joyce screams and cries over the loss of her boyfriend as she gets taken out the hospital by the others. The remaining four regroup with the others outside the gate and go to the Byers' house. The group deduces that the shadow monster is a hive mind controlling Will and the pack, and if they kill it, its influence on those they control will end. Mike, who previously deduced that the shadow monster is using Will like a spy, tells the group, who decide to remodel the tool shed so Will doesn't know where he is so the shadow monster cannot spy. Will awakens, where Joyce, Jonathan, and Mike share their fondest memories of Will in an attempt to get him to snap out of it. Will doesn't respond vocally, but taps out a message in Morse code, which reads "CLOSEGATE". However, the house phone rings, leading to the monster to identify their location. As the pack moves in, the group barricades themselves in the Byers' house, armed, but the pack is surprisingly dispatched by Eleven, who has returned to Hawkins. Mike and Eleven get emotional to see each other alive after a year and embrace together.
The group briefly reunites with Eleven. When Eleven convinces Hopper that she can close the gate, Mike points out that it may also kill Will. Joyce remembers something Will said about the monster in the lab, "he likes it cold", and decides to burn the monster out. Hopper and Eleven go to the lab to close the Gate. Before leaving, Eleven promises Mike that he will not lose her again. Meanwhile, Joyce, Jonathan, and Nancy take Will to Hopper's cabin. The group turns on the fire and heaters, and are finally able to purge the virus from Will after Nancy prods him with a hot iron.
Outside, Joyce talks with Hopper. Eleven shows up, where she dances with Mike. Lucas and Max kiss, and Eleven and Mike kiss right after. The students enjoy themselves at the dance, unaware that the shadow monster is still alive, towering over the school in the Upside Down.
Trivia[]
- She is played by Tim Burton movie actress Winona Ryder, who was Annalee Call from Alien Resurrection.