Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) has a deep connection with his Dungeons & Dragons character, the wizard Will the Wise. He sometimes dresses in costume, and the character’s name is on his fort in the woods. When Will the Wise is defeated in a battle with the demon lord Demogorgon in the Stranger Things series premiere, it foreshadows Will’s abduction later that episode.
That connection was reinforced in the season 2 episode “Will the Wise,” where it’s revealed that Will returned from the Upside Down connected to a dark force dwelling there. But in season 5, Dungeon Master Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) makes the case that Will has less in common with a wizard and is more like a sorcerer, which gives the character an idea that’s critical to the group’s survival. But to follow along, you’ll need to understand exactly what the difference is between a wizard and a sorcerer in D&D. Don’t worry, we’re here to help.
[Ed. note: The following contains major spoilers for Stranger Things season 5, volume 2]
In episode 3 it seems like Demogorgons are going to kill Will and his mom Joyce (Winona Ryder) until they stop in their tracks. Mike posits that Will might have been instinctively using his powers to control them, giving him the idea to use his connection to the hive mind in episode 4, “Sorcerer.” Tapping into inner strength from his happiest memories, he’s able to kill multiple Demogorgons and save his friends.
Wizards vs. sorcerers in Dungeons and Dragons
In D&D, wizards and sorcerers are both arcane spellcasters, capable of channeling the most powerful offensive magic in the game, like the fireball Will the Wise used against the in-game Demogorgon in the show’s first episode. The main difference comes from how they get their powers. Wizards study magic out of spellbooks, collecting their knowledge in tomes they must peruse each day and memorize so they can cast them in battle.
Mike calling Will a sorcerer is an anachronism since the class wasn’t introduced until 2000, after Wizards of the Coast bought D&D publisher TSR and released a new version of the game. The 3rd Edition rules added sorcerer as a somewhat easier way to play a spellcaster since they don’t need to choose what spells to prepare each day or manage a long selection from their spellbook. Instead, sorcerers have a more limited number of spells they can cast again after a good night’s sleep, but their advantage is they can cast them more often than a wizard.
Magic comes more easily to sorcerers because they are born to it. Most 3rd Edition sorcerers are descended from dragons. While wizards rely on their intelligence for book learning, a sorcerer manifests their magic through force of personality. Mike’s advice is even more anachronistic because it wasn’t until 5th Edition in 2014 that the D&D class came to represent a wide variety of bloodlines like connections to celestials, fey, and demons. (Paizo’s Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, which uses the base rules of D&D 3.5, introduced a wide variety of sorcerous bloodlines in 2008.)
The 2020 D&D book Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything introduced the Aberrant Mind sorcerer, casters who have psychic powers from contact with an alien influence. That descriptor works very well for Henry Creel (Jamie Campbell Bower), who got his powers from being exposed to a force from another dimension. It would also apply to Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and her sister Kali (Linnea Berthelsen), since both received their powers from being infused with Henry’s tainted blood. That means Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton) is essentially trying to use Kali to breed a new army of sorcerers.
Actually, Will is a warlock
Except, maybe Will isn’t really a sorcerer, either. One big difference between Will and Eleven is emphasized by the ways the characters move their hands when calling on their abilities — what D&D would call somatic components. Schnapp explained the distinction during a virtual round table that Polygon attended.
“It was supposed to be kind of that same outstretched hand that Millie uses, but it wouldn’t make sense because in volume 2, [the Duffers] explained that [Will’s] powers come differently,” he said. “They’re not innate. They’re from Vecna. So changing it to this outstretched hand to show that he’s siphoning it in just made more sense.”
That’s not a sorcerer. That’s a warlock, a type of D&D spellcaster that draws powers directly from a powerful patron with their own agenda. Warlocks typically get their power from making pacts — like the classic deal with a devil – but they can serve willingly or seek to undermine their patron’s agenda. They are also the vessels that these powerful beings use to work their will on the world, much like how Vecna used Will to build tunnels throughout Hawkins. Now, Vecna is seeking to further his agenda by forming pacts with more children, using the kindly guise of Mr. Whatsit to get them to serve him willingly.
Calling Will a warlock would still be anachronistic, but not by as much since the concept was first introduced as a variant on wizard in the 1990 book The Complete Wizard’s Handbook. It became a full class in D&D 3.5 and one of the core D&D classes in 4E. It’s a dangerous path to get power from another entity, which Will learned when Vecna held him in a trance and forced him to divulge information. But Will’s new powers are sure to be extremely important to protecting Hawkins in the series finale.
The first seven episodes of Stranger Things season 5 are available to stream on Netflix now, with the finale airing on New Year’s Eve.
