Ten is having visions of horror, a bloodbath.
Brenner investigates: Dead children, shattered glass, blown-out doors.
“What have you done?”
Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) with the leader of the Hellfire Club, Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn).Netflix
Whathasshe done, exactly?
Cue “California Dreamin'.”
We jump ahead to March 1986.
Joyce Byers in the look of the season.Netflix
El’s also not being entirely honest.
Thankfully, she has something to look forward to: Mike’s planned spring break visit.
In Hawkins, our teenage heroes are now in high school.
David Harbour and Tom Wlaschiha in ‘Stranger Things’.Netflix
They’re also slowly drifting apart from each other.
Mike and Dustin don’t care; they feel betrayed.
They find it inErica(Priah Ferguson), a.k.a.
Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas, Sadie Sink as Max, Joe Keery as Steve, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin.Netflix
Lady Applejack, a “chaotic good half-elf rogue, level 14.”
Looks like some of Lucas' “nerd” tendencies rubbed off.
Relatable teenage drama, by and large, but, this being Hawkins, something supernatural is afoot.
Robert Eglund as Victor Creel in ‘Stranger Things’ season 4.Netflix
Dark, horrifying things, the kind she could never tell straight-laced boyfriend Jason about.
Monstrous visions of her mother, for example, or a spectral grandfather clock filled with spiders.
The Sinclairs win it for both camps: Lucas scores the winning basket and Erica lands the killer blow.
Drive, Argyle, drive!.Netflix
And then there’s Max (Sadie Sink), who is drifting in her own way.
Inside the trailer, Eddie leaves Chrissy alone as he digs up his product.
The visions return, worse than ever.
Eleven’s in for a rough ride.Netflix
Chrissy sees her mother as a rotting demon, her father with his eyes and mouth stitched shut.
And then there’s a hulking, groaning humanoid beast.
“Don’t cry, Chrissy,” it says to her.
The jocks of Hawkins.Netflix
“It’s time for your suffering to end.”
In Eddie’s eyes, Chrissy is catatonic, her eyes rapidly blinking.
She begins to levitate and, as he watches in horror, her bones snap in unnatural directions.
The crew searches for answers.Netflix
Her eyes spill blood, then suck back into her skull.
Remember how Joyce blew it up and Hopper right along with it?
He…jumped out of the way, apparently?
Thought it would be a little more complicated!
Anyways, he’s alive and mostly unscathed.
Unfortunately, the Russians quickly scoop him up and begin to torture the everloving hell out of him.
They want to know who he works for.
They want to know who Joyce is.
Who is this man?
Joyce, never one to hesitate, sprints to the bank to get the money.
As “Wipeout” blares over the speakers, the bullies surround Eleven before dousing her with a milkshake.
As she licks her wounds, Will reveals to Mike that Eleven has been lying to him.
When Angela cruelly rebuffs her, taking a shot at Hopper in the process, Eleven snaps.
A bad day just got immeasurably worse.
In Hawkins, Max wakes from a nightmare to find cops speeding towards Eddie’s.
Outside, she sees Chrissy’s mangled body.
Could he have killed Chrissy?
A petrified Eddie is hiding in the boathouse.
He tells the four of them about what happened to Chrissy, assuming they’ll think he’s crazy.
They tell him about the Upside Down.
Not so crazy anymore.
News reports of Chrissy’s death are rippling throughout Hawkins.
In fact, they should pursue the entire Hellfire Club, which he deems a “cult.”
Popularity, it’s a hell of a drug.
Nancy, investigating the murder with Fred, finds the devil in the air, too.
“The devil lives here in Hawkins,” says one resident of Eddie and Max’s trailer park.
Nancy talks to Eddie’s uncle Wayne (Joel Stoffer), who has his own theory.
It wasn’t Eddie who killed Chrissy, but Victor Creel.
Decades back, Creel was said to have killed his entire family, cutting their eyes out.
Chrissy’s eyes were gone, too.
Creel’s locked in Pennhurst Mental Hospital.
Has been for years.
“He’s a real boogeyman,” says Wayne.
“Boogeyman” is one word for whoever’s terrorizing Hawkins.
Fred learns as much when he begins seeing monstrous visions of his own.
First, a leering cop grows tentacles and accuses him of being a murderer.
Later, he sees the same grandfather clock that Chrissy did before she died.
It’s surrounded by rotting, zombie-like figures who echo the cop’s accusations of murder.
Fred eventually finds himself on a lonely, dark road, where a flaming car brings back traumatic memories.
He was in a car accident the year before.
He lived and the other driver died.
“I want you to join me,” it says.
“Boogeyman” isn’t good enough for Dustin, though.
Dustin, lest we forget, has a talent for naming the many creatures ofStranger Things.
For this one, he draws upon Eddie’s grand creation: Vecna.
“A spellcaster,” he says.
“A dark wizard.”
Chapter Three: The Monster and the Superhero
“Hawkins is in danger.”
Yeah, Dr. Owens,we know.
Owens, on the other hand, thinks Eleven could be the cure for what’s afflicting the town.
They have a plan.
“What if I’m not good?”
“What if I’m the monster?”
That question, I’d wager, will hang over this entire season.
Speaking of monsters, Hopper’s stay in Kamchatka is turning our beloved sheriff into something verging on inhuman.
Demonstrating an unfathomable tolerance for pain, Hopper retreats to his cell without alerting the guards to his injury.
It’s all in service to his escape, which Antonov, a.k.a.
Enzo (Tom Wlaschiha), is helping to facilitate.
It’s Hawkins, though, that sees the majority of the episode’s action.
Vecna, it appears, has deep roots in Hawkins.
Huh, Max thinks, Ialsohave severe headaches, nightmares, and bleeding noses.
And then a voice.
And a grandfather clock embedded into the wall of the school.
Vecna’s come for Max.
Owens spoke of a “war” that’s coming to Hawkins.
Vecna’s part of that, sure, but it’s about more than the town’s supernatural maladies.
Jason and the jocks, whether they realize it or not, want a holy war.
Sides are being chosen.
Englund’s casting isn’t just a stunt, though.
The question, though, ishowhe survived.
First, let’s check in on Hopper, whose dreadful injuries have all been for nought.
He’s already drugged them in advance of their flight to Russia.
In California, Mike, Will, and Jonathan are under house arrest.
Owens' cronies tell them about the Hawkins murders and how Eleven is working on getting her powers back.
For now, they aren’t allowed to talk to anyone or go anywhere.
A striking single-shot shootout unfolds, leaving both guards wounded.
The diversion, however, clears the path for escape.
Meanwhile, Max is reckoning with the realization that she’s Vecna’s next victim.
She’s firmly in the Upside Down now, lost in an eerie red fog among the gravestones.
Vecna appears, restraining her against a trunk with tentacles.
The answer, Robin realizes, is music.
He was listening to Ella Fitzgerald at the time, and it drew him out of Vecna’s nightmare.
The boys grab Max’s Walkman, her tapes, and fish out Kate Bush.
She makes it, crashing to the ground.
For now, at least.
So maybe it’s time to address Steve’s (valid) questions.
How, exactly, is Vecna choosing his victims?
Is he connected to the Mind Flayer?
He’s back, by the way, and not just in flashback.
Eleven, who remains petrified of Brenner, feels betrayed.
Thus, the reemergence of Brenner, as effective as he is cruel.
Hopper, meanwhile, is in despair.
“The minute I sent for Joyce I sentenced her to death,” he laments.
Taking a cue from Will, she draws pictures of what she saw in the Upside Down.
Buried in the drawings, Nancy notices, are fragments of Victor Creel’s old house.
When they venture to the boat house, Eddie sets off in a dingy boat with a broken motor.
Patrick, you see, has seen the grandfather clock.
His time has come.
Vecna looks like it’s growing stronger.
Thankfully, Eleven does, too.
After emerging from NINA, she makes another break for it.
Exhausted, she tries (and fails) to do the same to Brenner.
When he reaches out a hand to her, she takes it.
Maybe it’s the realization that she can’t escape.
Or maybe it’s the thrill of using her powers again.
Either way, old feelings die hard.
A part of her will always see him as Papa.
Chapter Six: The Dive
The demogorgon is back, baby.
He and his fellow inmates, they’re the entertainment.
Yuri knows as much.
The smuggler informs Joyce and Murray they have until nightfall to save Hopper.
Thankfully, the trio (rather conveniently) crash-landed within spitting distance of the prison.
Murray grabbed a pistol; surely he can take out a few dozen ice-cold, rifle-toting Russian prison guards.
Hopper’s as prepared as he can be, having nicked himself a bottle of booze and a lighter.
Fire, after all, is one way to defeat a demogorgon.
How, though, does one kill a Vecna?
A stake through the heart?
Cut off his head?
“Let us cast out this evil and save Hawkins forever!”
he rallies, inciting a witch hunt that spits in the face of Powell’s newly instated curfew.
Erica’s insistence that Hellfire is nothing but a “club for nerds” falls on deaf ears.
That leaves our Hawkins contingent with little time.
The goal: Cross over through a “snack-sized” Upside Down gate and confront him.
Before we dive into the lake’s chilly waters, let’s talk about what’s happening out west.
And it’s to Nevada they go.
In Nevada, Eleven is still immersed in her memories.
There’s more tests and more bullying.
What it all means is unclear for now.
“I killed them all,” she says.
It sucks him through, but not before he’s able to alert Nancy, Robin, and Eddie.
They dive in after him.
Will they arrive before the tentacles and bat-like beasts tear him to pieces?
I hate to think of Hawkins without Harrington.
As such, he wants to help her escape.
Eleven offers to remove it.
After she does, Peter reveals that he has powers, too.
And that massacre we all thought was unleashed by Eleven?
That’s Peter’s handiwork.
But Peter is not just Peter; Peter is One.
Brenner’s first pet.
He’s also related to another figure looming over this season, but let’s circle back to that.
That’s good news.
First stop: Nancy’s house, where she’s got guns stored in her closet.
When they arrive, though, they realize that the Upside Down is stuck in the past.
Next stop for both parties?
Eddie’s trailer, where Chrissy died back in the first episode.
In Russia, Murray is able to convince the Kamchatka warden that he’s Yuri.
Hopper prepares his torch, distracting the warden and allowing Murray to make his move.
He pulls a gun and demands the Russians open all the gates.
They won’t do it, so Joyce begins smashing buttons.
This allows Hopper and Antonov to escape alive and reunite with Murray and Joyce.
It’s sweet and emotional, but, you know, there’s still a demogorgon on the loose.
Storylines begin to converge once we get to Eddie’s trailer.
Dustin helps Robin and Eddie pass through the gate and back into the real world.
Nancy, however, is ambushed by Vecna, who intercepts her between dimensions.
He steals her away to the pool where Barb met her fate Barb corpse cameo!
and then ushers her to the Upside Down’s version of the Creel House.
There, we learn that Eleven’s pal Peter, a.k.a.
One, is Victor Creel’s son.
Nice talent, that.
He describes humans as “pests.”
She refuses and Peter begins snapping her bones.
On the verge of death, she has a vision of birth (?)
that I’m sure will make more sense later.
Yeah, it’s a lot.
Also, remember that everything Eleven is experiencing here is in her memories.
It actually happened in 1979, four years before the events ofStranger Things.
That means Peter’s lived as the creature we call Vecna for all that time.
And this raises some questions: What kicked off his latest killing spree?
Is he really a “five-star general” for the Mind Flayer, as Dustin suspects?
And what the hellisthe Upside Down, anyway?
Stranger Thingsseason 4, volume 2 drops July 1.
