In the eighth episode of the second season of Stranger Things (“The Mind Flayer”), Neil Hargrove comes home and finds that no one knows where Max is. He confronts his son: Billy was supposed to be watching her and got distracted by a date. Neil asks him what they had talked about, and Billy Hargrove, the boy who makes everyone at Hawkins High nervous, answers like a lesson learned by heart. Then Neil makes him apologize to his stepmother, cancel his date and go out to look for Max, and does not let up until Billy repeats “Yes, sir”. Shortly afterwards, Billy finds Max with her friends at the Byers house and gives Steve Harrington a beating that leaves him unconscious. He had arrived in Hawkins that season, in 1984, with his father, his stepmother and his stepsister: the new boy at school, older, good-looking, with a Camaro and a dangerous reputation. He treats Max with contempt and threats and forbids her to go near Lucas, whom he insults for being Black. In the third season, the Mind Flayer possesses him and Billy becomes the monster’s instrument for capturing other people in Hawkins. In the final confrontation, Eleven tells him about a memory of him as a child with his mother on the beach. Billy puts himself between the monster and Eleven, and dies. The order of the second season’s scenes is the argument of social learning theory: first the father, then the son.
// The theoryViolence is learned by watching
In 1961, Albert Bandura carried out the Bobo doll experiment: children who saw an adult hit a doll later imitated it, with the same blows and the same words. From this came social learning theory: we learn behavior by observing models, especially those with power or affection over us, and repeat it if we see it works. Ronald Akers brought it into criminology: crime is learned like any other behavior, through association with others, imitation, definitions favorable to violence and the reinforcement it brings.
The father as model
Billy reproduces the very model he has at home. His father uses humiliation and blows to impose respect; Billy does the same with Max, with Steve and with anyone weaker than him. He imitates the racism too: the ban on Lucas is not his invention. And he learns that violence works, because in his house the one who hits is the one in charge. Bandura and Akers’s theory explains that continuity: the child learns not just to be violent, but when, against whom and for what.
// The subjectA boy who is also a victim
Stranger Things treats Billy with more nuance than it first seems. He is cruel, but the series lets us see his fear when his father shouts at him, and how that humiliation turns into rage towards others. His mother left when he was a child, and he remembers her on the beach, happy. That memory is what the Mind Flayer cannot erase, and what lets him, in the end, choose differently. His sacrifice does not absolve him of what he did, but it shows that learned violence was not all there was to him.
The series shows both sides in very specific scenes. In the second episode of the second season (“Trick or Treat, Freak”), Billy drives Max to school, makes her say whose fault it is that they are stuck in Hawkins and, on seeing her new friends, floors the Camaro towards them and boasts that he would get bonus points for hitting them all in one go; the car misses them by inches and he whoops in celebration. It is the scene the series will later show in his home, with himself in his father’s role: the one in charge demands that the other take the blame and proves his power through fear. And in the last episode of the third season, Eleven describes to him the memory the monster has not managed to erase: a boy telling his mother that the wave was seven feet high and running to her along the beach, the seagulls, the hat with a blue ribbon. Neil is nowhere in that memory.
Billy Hargrove
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// The crackLearned, but not inevitable
Social learning explains Billy’s behavior well, but it risks presenting it as fate. Not every child who suffers violence at home reproduces it, and Max, who lives in the same house and suffers Billy’s abuse, does not become violent. Between experience and behavior there are temperament, other relationships and decisions.
Nor does the theory fully explain Billy’s cruelty in the third season, when the Mind Flayer controls him. The fiction adds a supernatural element that wipes out responsibility: the monster acts through him. It is a convenient narrative solution that criminology does not have.
The cycle of violence
Research by Cathy Spatz Widom, who followed hundreds of children with documented abuse cases for decades, found that they were at greater risk of arrest for violent crime as adults than a comparison group. But she also found that most of them did not become violent. The cycle of violence exists, but it is not a law. That is why early interventions, support for families and the presence of other adult role models matter: what Billy never had.
Three key ideas
- Bandura’s (1961) and Akers’s social learning holds that aggression is learned by observing close models and seeing that it works.
- Billy Hargrove humiliates and hits whoever is weaker, just as his father does to him, and reproduces his racism too; in the end, a memory of his mother lets him sacrifice himself for Eleven.
- The crack: learned violence is not fate (Max does not reproduce it), and supernatural possession wipes out a responsibility that in real life is not wiped out.
Sources · further reading
- Bandura, A., Ross, D. and Ross, S. A. (1961). “Transmission of Aggression through Imitation of Aggressive Models”. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63(3), 575-582.
- Akers, R. L. (1998). Social Learning and Social Structure: A General Theory of Crime and Deviance. Northeastern University Press.
- Widom, C. S. (1989). “The Cycle of Violence”. Science, 244(4901), 160-166.
- Bandura, A. and Walters, R. H. (1963). Social Learning and Personality Development. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Billy Hargrove?
Billy Hargrove is a villain from Stranger Things, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. His father hit him in front of his stepsister.
Why does Billy Hargrove become a villain?
Bandura showed that aggression is learned by watching. Billy Hargrove learned at home, and in Hawkins he repeats on Max, Lucas and Steve what his father does to him.
Which criminological theory explains Billy Hargrove?
Billy Hargrove's case is analysed through Social learning. Social learning theory holds that behavior, including violent behavior, is learned by observing others, especially those close to us, and seeing what consequences it has. Billy Hargrove, of Stranger Things (Netflix, seasons 2 and 3), is Max’s older stepbrother. He is aggressive, intimidating and racist towards Lucas, and in the second season he gives Steve a brutal beating. The series shows the origin: his father, Neil, humiliates him, insults him and hits him. In the third season, possessed by the Mind Flayer, he becomes its instrument. In the end, a memory of his mother lets him stand up to it and he sacrifices himself to save Eleven.
