Karen Wheeler

Karen Wheeler (née Childress),[3] portrayed by Cara Buono, is a main character in Stranger Things. She is the loving but somewhat clueless mother of Nancy, Mike, and Holly, and the wife of Ted.

In 1983, after her son's friend, Will Byers, went missing, Karen enforced strict rules that no one in her household would go outside late. This caused friction between her children, particularly Nancy. She remained largely unaware of the events around her, especially her son keeping an escaped experiment in her basement and her daughter searching for a monster from another dimension. When a group of agents arrived at their house telling her and her husband that his son and friends might be hiding the experiment, Karen became extremely distraught. She eventually tearfully reunited with Mike at the local middle school and went to the hospital where Will had been recovered.

In 1984, she remained the same; blissfully unaware of what her children were doing after they lied and say they were having a sleepover (when, in reality, Mike was tending to a possessed Will, while Nancy teamed up with Jonathan Byers to shut down Hawkins National Laboratory). She did, however, become sexually attracted to Billy Hargrove, the older brother of Max Mayfield, who reciprocated the feelings.

On the surface, Karen is shown to be the stereotypical superficial upper-middle class housewife. She and Ted purely married out of convenience, with her youth and Ted's wealthy background being the main pillars of why they started a family. Karen grows frustrated over Ted's apathy towards their children, being tone-deaf when there's tension and leaving Karen to pick up the pieces. It's hinted that Karen was once like Nancy, hoping to break the status quo and defy what people told her to do, but caved into tradition from societal pressure. As a mother, Karen aches for her two older children to open up to her, though due to the supernatural evil they fight on a daily basis, Nancy and Mike understandably hide the truth from their mother. But for smaller, manageable problems - Nancy experiencing sexism while working at the Hawkins Post or Mike grieving over his best friend's "death" - that Karen can handle, Nancy and Mike have a strong relationship with their mother. Karen tells Nancy that she's a fighter, encouraging her to investigate and prove to the people above her wrong. Karen loves to baby Mike, loving to take pictures of him dressed up for Halloween or for the Snow Ball, much to Mike's annoyance.

Upon meeting Billy Hargrove, Karen increasingly grows tired of Ted's laziness, and almost cheats on him when Billy invites her to a motel for "swimming lessons". However, seeing Ted sleeping with Holly on his lap makes her realize that she couldn't hurt her family and restrains herself. However, she still remains begrudgingly annoyed at Ted's continued attitude.

Despite her lavish lifestyle, Karen never looks down on her children's friends and her peers. Despite Joyce Byers being lower-class, Karen considers her a good friend and an equal, baking her a casserole and comforting her when her son, Will, is missing. She also treats Mike and Nancy's friends like they're family, feeding them and letting them sleepover in their basement, glaring at Ted when he makes snide remarks at them.

Karen is described as being in her late 30s, suggesting she was born between 1944 and 1947.

She hates when you or other teenagers refer to her as “Miss Karen” or “Miss Wheeler”, such preferred to be addressed as just Karen.