Midway through the first season of Stranger Things — the hit Netflix series, set in 1983, which returns for its second season today — the Goonies-like group of boys at the center of the show urge a preadolescent girl, an abused government test subject, to use her psychic abilities to locate their missing and presumed-dead friend, Will Byers. As the girl, Eleven, concentrates on the shortwave radio that amplifies her powers, the boys repeat their request for her “to find Will,” as though they were conjuring a spell in one of their Dungeons and Dragons campaigns.

The show’s creators, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, intercut this scene with images of the nefarious Dr Martin Brenner — whom Eleven calls “papa” — as he encourages her to find a different person, presumably a Soviet spy. Through her clandestine, cross-temporal work, Eleven accidentally opens the gate to the Upside Down, releasing the humanoid-orchid beast that devours Barb, captures Will, and threatens the whole of space and time whenever it crosses from its Hawkins to the one Will and his friends call their own.

The scenes mirror each other narratively and visually: in the present, the tile walls of the school where the boys have hidden Eleven echo the walls of the lab where she grew up, buried deep within the town’s power plant. And in both moments, she finds herself compelled to use her abilities to gain the affection of those around her. When she locates the spy in the past, she earns her “papa’s” adoration; if she finds Will for Mike and his friends, she’ll cement her place in their group of misfits. Love, or at least belonging, is directly tied to her success at work.