Among the vague teases and promises leading up to Stranger Things 2, one of the most frequently repeated has been a vow: there will be justice for Barb, A.K.A. Barbara Holland, A.K.A. a character who only appeared briefly in a few episodes, but still took the Internet by storm. (She even got an Emmy nomination! Well, Shannon Purser did, anyway.)

Barb was, to some, a blink-and-you’ll-miss her character. In Season 1, she was Nancy’s dowdier, more conservative friend—the voice of reason Nancy routinely ignored. As you’ll recall, Barb went missing during a party at Steve’s house, after Nancy decided to go upstairs with Steve following a fight with Barb. As it turned out, the Upside Down had a thirst for dejected teens—because that’s where she was taken, and that’s where she died. Although all of Hawkins seemed bent on finding Will Byers in Season 1, Barb’s disappearance was treated with far less urgency—something her fans would never let Matt and Ross Duffer forget. The hashtag #JusticeForBarb became a rallying cry as Stranger Things became a pop culture phenomenon, and in the run-up to Season 2, the show’s creators, the Duffer Brothers, have repeatedly promised closure for her arc.

“People get very frustrated, understandably, that the town doesn’t seem to be really dealing with Barb,” Matt Duffer said in an interview last year. “That stuff is all happening. We’re just not spending any screen time on it. . . Season 1 actually takes place over the course of six or seven days—it’s a really short period of time. So part of what we want to do with hypothetical Season 2 is to explore the repercussions of everything that happened.”

Now the moment of truth has finally arrived. How, exactly, did the show honor Barb’s memory and explore those repercussions? Friends, rest assured: Barb might be gone, but she was definitely not forgotten this season.

Although Purser never shows up in the flesh during the second year of Stranger Things, this new season is steeped in her memory. In its first episode, as Nancy and Steve pay a visit to Barb’s parents, the couple reveals that they’re selling their home in order to hire an investigative journalist to track down their missing daughter. The teens, however, know better: Barb will never be found, because she’s dead in the Upside Down. Nancy, especially, can’t get past what happened to her friend; she blames herself for Barb’s death. Because of that, a rift grows between her and her well-coiffed boyfriend.

Later in the season, Nancy teams up with Jonathan Byers—older brother to the formerly missing Will Byers, and one-third of the teenage love triangle that ended last year in Steve and Nancy getting together. The two decide to help the Hollands’ quirky journalist, but soon find themselves tangled up in a scientific dilemma that’s a lot bigger than either of them. In the end, the Hollands get some closure—if not the total truth—about what happened to their daughter, as Hawkins Lab and the Department of Energy take the blame for Barb’s death, pinning it on a made-up “experimental chemical asphyxiant, which had leaked from the grounds of the lab.” (It’s a win-win situation, even if it’s a lie: the Hollands get closure, and the lab pays for its wrongdoing without exposing the Upside Down’s existence to the world, particularly hostile foreign powers that might try to use or duplicate it as a weapon.)

And with that, the finale officially laid Barb to rest with a proper funeral. Guess this means it’s time for us to say goodbye as well, now that justice has, at long last, been served.