If you’ve made it this far, I’m going to go ahead and assume you don’t care about spoilers, so let’s get right into things!
As Stranger Things season 5 begins, we catch up with all of our favorite characters. When we first see Dustin, he arrives at school wearing a Hellfire Club shirt which immediately makes him a marked man. While he knows the truth about Eddie, everyone else sees Eddie as the devil and holds him responsible for what happened.
Dustin’s decision to wear the shirt catches the attention of literally everyone in school, including Andy, Jason’s friend from the basketball team. Andy tells Dustin the Hellfire Club is over as he begins to tear the shirt and throws him against the locker. Lucas breaks things up, but Dustin doesn’t back down from the bully.
Dustin takes a snake from one of the classrooms and hides it in Andy’s locker with an accompanying message, “Hellfire Lives” written inside. The prank might have made Dustin feel good at the moment, but he ends up paying for it later in the episode.
STRANGER THINGS. (L to R) Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson and Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler in STRANGER THINGS. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022
Dustin’s fate is left unclear after Stranger Things season 5 episode 1
After school, Dustin heads to the graveyard to visit Eddie’s grave. Upon arriving, he finds that the headstone has again been vandalized and prepares to clean it, only it’s not paint that’s been used to write the message. The message has been written in blood, blood from the snake Dustin had put in Andy’s locker which was cut up and left in the grass in front of the grave.
Just then, Andy and his friends arrive and begin to surround Dustin. Dustin starts to laugh as he recalls how during Eddie’s last campaign, he used a Prismatic Spray to defeat the villain. Dustin grabs the chemicals he brought with him to the grave and throws them in the faces of Andy and his friends. While it gives Dustin a temporary upper hand, they quickly overtake him and begin brutally assaulting Dustin. They throw him to the ground and begin kicking him as he lies on the ground in bad condition.
The episode then leaves Dustin’s fate up in the air, without any update on his fate for the remainder of the premiere. This leaves fans to panic about whether Dustin is okay, and the show fails to give us an answer to this question until well into the second episode of the season.
While Andy and his friends gave Dustin a bad beating, they did not kill him. About 20 minutes into the second episode, Dustin meets up with Steve and Jonathan while walking along the road. Interestingly, Dustin keeps the truth about how he was injured hidden from the pair – as well as everyone for that matter – telling everyone he crashed his bike rather than admit got jumped by Andy.
We’re certain the truth will eventually come out, but as of the fourth episode of the season, Dustin holds back the truth from his friends.
