Joyce Byers

Joyce Byers (née Maldonado), portrayed by Winona Ryder, is a main character in Stranger Things. She is the financially struggling single mother of Jonathan and Will Byers, the foster mother of Eleven, and the best friend/eventual fiancée of Jim Hopper.

Personality

Joyce is highly generous, amicable, and a tremendously benevolent mother who would do almost anything to keep her sons, particularly Will, out of harm's way. After Will's disappearance, Joyce enlisted Chief Jim Hopper to find him and posted several missing-person posters with the help of her other son, Jonathan. Even after Will's presumed dead body was found, she was still convinced that her son was alive and undertook extreme measures to contact with him, such as chopping a hole in the wall of her house to find him. Ultimately, her commitment was rewarded when it was revealed that Will was alive, and, with Hopper's help, she saved him.

However, when it was found that Will had been experiencing visions of the Upside Down, Joyce wasted no time bringing him to Dr. Owens for routine medical exams. Her extreme concern for Will led her to discover that the shadow creature from the Upside Down had overwhelmed and possessed him, causing him to behave strangely. After Will convulsed and suffered from severe pain during the burning of the tendrils, Joyce was terribly dismayed to learn that her son started showing memory problems, which caused her to berate the doctors.

Eventually, it was her immense determination to protect her son that allowed her to save Will after she forced the shadow monster out by exposing her possessed son to extreme heat.

In November 1983, after Will mysteriously disappeared, Joyce was certain that he was communicating with her through the lights in her house. Despite everyone treating her as if she were having a mental breakdown, Joyce refused to believe that Will was dead, even after his alleged corpse was found. Through cooperation with her friend and local police chief Jim Hopper, Will's friends, and Jonathan, she eventually uncovered the circumstances of her son's disappearance. She entered the Upside Down to rescue him.

A year later, in 1984, Joyce struggled to live a normal life with her charming boyfriend, Bob Newby, while also growing overprotective of Will, who had been suffering from visions of the Upside Down. As her son's health declined rapidly, she, Bob, Hopper, and Will's friend Mike discover that Will had become possessed by the Upside Down's most dangerous inhabitant: the Mind Flayer, who summoned an army of adolescent Demogorgons called "Demodogs" to attack Hawkins. After losing Bob to those creatures, Joyce refused to lose her son to the monster, burning it out of Will and saving him once again. However, she struggled to recover following the aftermath of Bob's death.

By the summer of 1985, Joyce was extremely lonely and rebuffed Hopper's romantic interest, despite growing an interest in him. But everything changed when she discovered her magnets losing their magnetism. Believing it had to do with the Upside Down, Joyce convinced a reluctant Hopper to investigate, and they discovered that Russians had infiltrated Hawkins to weaponize the Upside Down's inhabitants. They were using the town's power to open a new gate. Soon, Joyce, Hopper, a Russian scientist named Alexei, and Hopper's acquaintance Murray Bauman raced back to Hawkins and teamed up with their children to close the Gate once more, all while being chased by a Russian assassin, Grigori. Joyce successfully closed the gate, but at the cost of Hopper's life, as he seemingly disintegrated upon the explosion of the machine, which opened the gate.

Relationship with characters

Jim Hopper

Hopper and Joyce have known each other since high school. They were fairly close, often skipping class to smoke together, even being caught by a teacher on at least one occasion. Their friendship continued well into adulthood and remained even after Hopper returned to Hawkins after living in another city for several years. After Will vanished, Hopper and Joyce gradually drew closer together, confiding in one another as they attempted to find answers to the mysteries materializing around them. They agreed to go on a date before Hopper was taken by Russians, but Joyce finds him and they return to Hawkins, now in a relationship. Three years later, Hopper proposes to Joyce and she accepts. They move to Montauk, New York and become a married couple.

Lonnie Byers

Joyce met Lonnie at some point in her life and fell in love with him. They later married and had two sons, Jonathan and Will Byers. According to their eldest son, Jonathan, Joyce and Lonnie once loved each other, but their marriage became strained and they divorced sometime in 1982. Joyce began to hate Lonnie for his uncaring nature and stopped contacting him until Will mysteriously disappeared. Joyce was against contacting Lonnie to see if Will was with him, and Lonnie blamed Joyce for Will's disappearance. When Lonnie came to Will's "funeral", Joyce seemed surprised to see him there until she discovered that Lonnie only come to collect profit from Will's supposed death. As a result, Joyce angrily ordered Lonnie to get out, thus permanently breaking off any contact with him.