Stranger Things Just Revealed Nancy Wheeler's Missing Story

At the start of Stranger Things Season 5, we’re dealing with a whole new Nancy Wheeler. But when did she become such a badass? Part of the answer to that question can be found in a new official book called Stranger Things: One Way or Another, written by Caitlin Schneiderhan.

Inverse is proud to present a very special sneak peek from One Way or Another, which continues the team-up between Nancy and Robin that started in Season 4. According to Penguin Random House, “Author Caitlin Schneiderhan worked alongside the Duffer Brothers on the show’s writing team, and her behind-the-scenes knowledge is on full display in the book.” In the story, Nancy Wheeler and Robin Buckley are out to solve a new mystery in Hawkins before the events of Season 5.

So, this story totally counts as part of the real canon of Stranger Things, and if you’re looking to delve deeper into the motivations and intricacies of Nancy and Robin, this is where you start. Here’s the first part of the first chapter of One Way or Another.

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Chapter One

On the bright side, dying in a funeral home meant that cleanup and transportation would be easy, at least.

Nancy Wheeler refused to voice this thought as she stood in the wreckage of what once had been the Farrier Family Funeral Home lobby, the beam of her flashlight taking in the toppled velvet furniture, the thick layer of dust, and the rubble of the collapsed far wall.

Robin did not share Nancy’s restraint. “If we die in here—”

“Convenient,” Steve chipped in.

“Small blessings,” Robin added. The pair of them moved past Nancy, pacing out onto the ruined green carpet.

“They’re a couple of rays of sunshine,” Jonathan muttered. He was scanning their surroundings with an appropriate level of wariness, considering the fact that the four of them had disregarded at least five condemned danger, caution danger, or do not enter danger signs on their way into the building.

“Come on,” Nancy said. “This way.”

Together, they picked their way toward the heavy oak door that hung off its top hinges just past the lobby. A bronze plaque gleamed anemically under a thick layer of grime, but Nancy didn’t need to wipe it clean to know that it marked the room beyond as the funeral home’s main office; the sturdy desk opposite the twin cushioned chairs made that obvious.

Jonathan padded to a stop behind her, walking carefully so his footsteps wouldn’t echo off the somber, bare walls. “Flashlights?” he whispered.

“Flashlights,” she agreed. Together, they flicked off their flashlights—

And waited.

Waited. Nancy had been doing a lot of waiting in the two months since Vecna’s “earthquake” had torn through Hawkins. Countless buildings like this one, which stood within spitting distance of the spiderwebbing Rift, had been partially or completely destroyed in the disaster. Countless lives had been destroyed as well.

The days that had followed had shaken the town even further. A quarter of Hawkins’s population had cut its losses and fled, even as the U.S. Army had rolled in to take their place, establishing an impassable perimeter under the guise of “quarantine.” Crossing that perimeter was nearly impossible, achievable only for the select few—supply deliveries, case-by-case approvals, and, very recently, humanitarian aid.

And if the town’s borders were rigorously protected, then the blockade around downtown Hawkins was practically draconian. What had once been the town’s bustling hub was now a military no-fly zone. Within moments of their arrival in Hawkins, the military had zeroed in on the epicenter of Vecna’s destruction, the spot where his four Rifts had intersected. A radius of a few blocks had been drawn from that point, sketching out the circumference of what would become the military’s own personal black hole. Whatever happened within that perimeter was a mystery to everyone in Hawkins, including Nancy.

All that security. All that destruction. And despite everything—there hadn’t been so much as a whisper of Vecna since Nancy had shot him in the disgusting, decaying head.

He can’t hide forever, she told herself. We’ll find him. I’ll find him.

It sounded good, as affirmations went. Nancy had given it a workout, put it through its paces. But affirmations were just words if you didn’t put in the work to back them up.

Which was why she, Jonathan, Steve, and Robin had broken into this half-collapsed funeral home in a disaster zone at ten p.m. And it was why she was now blinking into the darkness, watching her unlit flashlight for the tiniest flicker of a glow.

Was this the first time she’d found herself in a situation like this? No. Was it the first time she’d found herself in a situation like this this month? . . . No. But if she was going to find Vecna—and she was—then she wasn’t going to be able to do it by sitting around and waiting for him to walk through her front door. If there was a tip, a hunch, a whisper—she was going to hunt it down.

She just wished that her friends shared her conviction.

“Nancy . . .” Jonathan’s disembodied voice whispered out of the dark from somewhere on the other side of the room.

“Shh.” He can’t hide forever.

“Nancy. He’s not here.”

Nancy resolutely studied her flashlight. There was a kernel of something empty growing in the pit of her stomach. She willed it down. We’ll find him.

“Nancy—”

I’ll find him.

“Hey, guys.”

Nancy could feel the beam of Robin’s flashlight as it sliced through the dusty air, practically piercing her corneas. She flinched backward, shielding her vision. “Ah—Robin—”

“Look what I found. Oh shit. Sorry, Nance.” She lowered her flashlight, far enough that it wasn’t stripping out every rod and cone in Nancy’s eyes but not so far that Nancy couldn’t make out the bouquet of white roses in Robin’s other hand. “The storage room is full of ’em.” Robin gave the bouquet a shake. Dust fell from the leaves and petals in a shower. “They’re all fake. Did we know the Farriers were using fake flowers?”

“Could be a scandal,” Steve commented from somewhere in the dark behind Robin.

“I think this town’s got bigger fish than a couple of plastic flowers,” Jonathan said.

Nancy waved her hand through the plume of dust, trying not to inhale. “Did you guys find anything real out there?”

“Nada. Zilch,” Steve said. “Reception room’s clear. Visitation room’s clear.”

“Visitation room.” Robin snapped her fingers. “Couldn’t remember what that was called.”

“There’s still a coffin in there,” Steve said. He was tossing his flashlight from hand to hand, but because he, at least, hadn’t turned the beam back on, they weren’t being treated to a blinding laser show. “It’s up at the front.”

“Casket.” Shut up, Nancy. It doesn’t matter. “Did you check inside?”

It was hard to tell in the dark, but Nancy was pretty sure that Steve blanched. “Do I need to?”

Robin smashed her bouquet into Steve’s chest, leaving behind a smear of grime. “She’s messing with you, dingus.” Then she turned back to Nancy. “You are, right? . . . Nancy?”

It was tempting to say no, to send Steve back into the visitation room—to tell the truth, Nancy hadn’t remembered the name for it either—and make him open the casket, if only so they could say that they’d truly left no stone unturned.

“I’m messing with you,” Nancy said.

“See?” Robin went to smack Steve with her flowers again, but Nancy was there, pushing between them and back out into the lobby, her flashlight still dead in her hand. She felt rather than saw Steve’s gaze on her, following her as she left. It itched at the back of her neck and raised echoes in her ears.

“You’re there.”

“You’ve always been there.”

They hadn’t talked about it since that day. There had been the attack on Vecna and then—Eddie had happened, and then Max, and then the world had ended. And then Jonathan had come back. And unsurprisingly, in the midst of all that chaos, neither of them had been eager to address Steve’s bumbling and oblique confession of—whatever it was.

Now it was two months later, and those words were still hanging over both of them like an anvil. Maybe if Nancy didn’t look up at them, then she wouldn’t have to think about . . . how they made her feel.

As far as game plans went, Nancy thought she could do worse. And anyway, there were bigger things to focus on. Things that had drawn them to this condemned building in the middle of the night.

The moon overhead was almost full, and the moonlight that filtered through the cracks in the shattered wall was bright enough to read by. Nancy dug the sheet of pilfered memo paper out of her pocket and squinted down at the scribbled words, skipping over the Hawkins Post logo emblazoned across the top.

Jeanine Farrier reports flickering lights, it said in Margaret Benik’s crabbed handwriting. Disembodied voices. Farrier Funeral Home.

This is it, Nancy told herself, trying to channel the excited certainty she’d felt that morning when she’d swiped the memo off of Margaret’s reception desk. She’d spent the last few weeks vigilant but directionless—they all had. Hopper and Eleven had retreated to Hopper’s secluded cabin, both to start the work of making the building livable again and to avoid the notice of their new military overlords. Joyce had been occupied with finding her family a place to stay, now that they had returned to Hawkins. Mike, Dustin, Will, and Lucas had supposedly been working to figure out a way for El to get around unnoticed, but with Max lying comatose in the hospital, they hadn’t made a lot of headway through their lingering cloud of grief and shock.

They were still reeling in the aftermath of Vecna’s victory. All of them were, Nancy included. The earthquake—the rupture of the world—had scattered them all to the winds, and now they were in distant orbit, trying to find their ways back to one another. A little difficult when they didn’t have a place where they could even start to regroup.

Fine. They didn’t need one. After all of Nancy’s weeks of vigilance, monitoring every tip that came through The Hawkins Post, every deluded crackpot calling in to the local radio station—her work had paid off. She smoothed Margaret Benik’s note out in the palm of her hand. Flickering lights. Disembodied voices.

Vecna. It had to be. He must be lurking in Farrier Funeral Home in the Upside Down, sinking his poisoned psychic fangs into whoever wandered nearest. And they had found him.

He can’t hide forever.

***

Reprinted from Stranger Things: One Way or Another by Caitlin Schneiderhan © 2025 by Netflix. Published by Random House Worlds, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.