Yes, they do find Will in Stranger Things , and his rescue is actually the core plot of the first season and a big part of season 2.

What happens to Will in season 1?

  • In the very first episode, Will goes missing after encountering a creature from the Upside Down near his home in Hawkins.
  • The rest of season 1 follows Joyce, Hopper, and the kids as they piece together clues, eventually discovering that Will is trapped in a parallel dimension called the Upside Down.
  • By the end of season 1, Hopper and Joyce locate Will in the Upside Down and bring him back to the real world, though he is weakened and clearly changed by the experience.

What about season 2?

  • In season 2, it’s revealed that Will didn’t come back “normal” — he has a lingering connection to the Mind Flayer and starts seeing visions that are actually real events tied to the Upside Down.
  • The entity partially possesses him, and the group eventually manages to “burn” it out of him using heat and their knowledge of how the creature reacts to temperature, freeing Will from direct possession.

Will’s role later in the series

  • Even after he’s physically safe, Will keeps a psychic link to the Upside Down and Vecna, which becomes important again in later seasons, especially in Stranger Things 5 Volume 1 where his connection becomes more active and central to the plot.
  • This makes him less the kid who needs to be rescued and more a key figure in the final battle against the Upside Down, with creators emphasizing that his arc and connection were planned as central to the show’s endgame.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.