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Stranger Things (3x06): “E Pluribus Unum” Review

If you haven't yet, be sure to check out my other Stranger Things Reviews:

Stranger Things Episode Reviews:

Season 1:

The Vanishing of Will Byers

The Weirdo on Maple Street

Holly Jolly

The Body

The Flea and the Acrobat

The Monster

The Bathtub

The Upside Down

Season 2:

MADMAX

Trick or Treat, Freak

The Pollywog

Will the Wise

Dig Dug

The Spy

The Lost Sister

The Mind Flayer

The Gate

Season 3:

Suzie, Do You Copy?

The Mall Rats

The Case of the Missing Lifeguard

The Sauna Test

The Flayed

Stranger Things Play:

Stranger Things The First Shadow

NOTE: If you’d like to listen to the Behind The Scenes: Stranger Things 3 Podcast, this link here will take you to all three videos.

“E Pluribus Unum” (Latin for “Out of many, one”) is the inverse of “The Mall Rats” in terms of me re-evaluating this season. When I first saw it, I considered this my favorite episode of season 3 while “The Mall Rats” ranked at the bottom next to “Suzie, Do You Copy?” Rewatching again, my opinion has shifted. I think better of “The Mall Rats” now despite its flaws, whereas “E Pluribus Unum” is one I’ve grown critical of over time. It’s not a bad episode by any means, but there are problematic aspects (some of which have been building up over multiple episodes and previous seasons) which fester here and stick out like a sore thumb.

Back in my season 2 review of “The Mind Flayer,” I discussed Franchise Original Sin. This was the idea that elements in an earlier work (i.e. tropes, plotlines, characters, story beats, recurring gags, etc), which may have been tolerated at the time when they were first introduced (either because they were groundbreaking, because the writers found a way to make them work in the story they wrote, or some other reason), become controversial for the audience the more they get rehashed. This has to do with the way they’re implemented later on, which ends up calling attention to their flaws. I even talked about a few specific elements from the show which applied to the trope of Franchise Original Sin during my review of “The Mind Flayer.” The difference though (and I hope I emphasized this at the time) is that I wasn’t as bothered by those elements in that specific episode because they didn’t overshadow the plot, and there were other mitigating factors which helped balance everything out, to the point “The Mind Flayer” still remains one of my favorites.

That is not the case with “E Pluribus Unum.” I already had issues with the way season 3 was written, as well as the story and character choices they made (which is NOT how I felt about season 2), so many of the elements I might have brushed aside in previous seasons were not ones I was willing to overlook this time. And judging from the opinions I’ve seen during my time in the fandom, these were elements people also took issue with.

For as much as I’ve grown scathing about fandom opinions in general, as well as my disdain for sites like TV Tropes, Reddit, and even Tumblr at times (primarily because of the half-baked, heavily biased takes that dominate fan conversations, to say nothing about the lack of critical thought put into those takes), that doesn’t mean I always disagree with fans. I’ve been out of the Stranger Things fandom for nearly 2 years now (for varying reasons), and I’ve had time to reevaluate my position and decide whether I think certain fan criticisms about specific aspects of the show have merit or not. For the ones I’m calling out in this review, it’s because I had legitimate grievances with them.

Let’s get started.

Part 1: Steve’s Torture

I want to be clear that while I recognize Robin was tortured as well, there is something specifically related to the way Steve gets treated which has been a constant since the first season, and continues well past this episode into season 4: The way he’s become the show’s designated punching-bag. He’s the one who takes the most humiliation and abuse compared to other characters (notice that, unlike Robin during this episode, Steve’s face is beaten to a bloody pulp by the Russians while also getting left with a nasty concussion), and unlike other characters’ injuries which are usually taken seriously (as we see with Mike and Max’s argument over El straining herself to find the Flayed), the show has a tendency to either play Steve’s injuries and trauma for dark comedy, or else brush them aside. This isn’t just my take either. This is something I’ve seen other fans bring up, specifically when it comes to his torture here. The more I’ve thought about this, the more I realize there is a certain truth to that claim, and it’s something that started way back in season 1.

It's interesting because when I rewatched Steve’s torture at the hands of the Russians, I was drawing parallels to another movie which also contained an infamous torture scene: Marathon Man.

Marathon Man is a 1976 conspiracy thriller based on William Goldman’s 1974 novel (with Goldman writing the screenplay for the movie). The main story deals with a Nazi named Dr. Christian Szell, an infamous torture technician at Auschwitz known as the “Weisse Engel” (White Angel) because of his white hair, who ran an “experimental camp” that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Jews. Towards the end of World War II, when he saw there was the possibility the Germans were going to lose, he struck deals with the Jews he tortured: He would provide them escape in exchange for their wealth. He started out with gold (which he extracted from dental fillings from the prisoners’ mouths) before working his way up to their diamonds. He later fled to Uruguay while his Nazi brother, Klaus, was smuggled into America with the diamonds. The only reason Szell evaded justice is because he struck a deal with a U.S. government agency known as “The Division” to hand over other Nazi fugitives in exchange for not facing prosecution for his crimes. Adding on to this, Szell had a courier network he used to transfer diamonds that he could sell on the black market to make himself rich. When Szell’s brother is killed in a road rage accident in New York City with another Jew (who recognized Klaus as a Nazi), Szell becomes paranoid that his diamonds are at risk of being stolen since there were only two keys to the deposit box in the bank with his diamonds, and his brother had one of them. To counter this, Szell proceeds to systematically kill his couriers and anyone else he deems a threat. Eventually, this puts him in the path of Thomas Babington “Babe” Levy, a college student in New York City whose brother (Doc Levy) worked as one of Szell’s couriers, and is later stabbed by Szell because he believed Doc was planning to rob him. Despite his lethal injury, Doc manages to make his way back to Babe’s apartment before he dies, which Szell learns about later. Believing Doc may have told Babe about the diamonds, he proceeds to track Babe down, leading to their paths crossing and an intense showdown between the two.

Like Babe, Steve is a random citizen who’s ignorant of a conspiracy brewing underneath him. Babe was unaware of Doc’s dealings (mistakenly believing Doc worked for an oil company) whereas Steve worked for Starcourt Mall and was unaware of the Russians in Hawkins until Dustin brought him the message he recorded on Cerebro. Both characters are working to get through life (Babe through college, and Steve through his job) and both are athletic and take an enormous amount of pain they’re forced to withstand. Steve mentions to Dustin earlier in the season he still desires to keep in shape, and Babe is a runner (hence the title Marathon Man). When both characters become aware of these respective conspiracies, it puts them in the crosshairs of the main antagonists.

Marathon Man was cited by Brett Gelman in Beyond Stranger Things as inspiration for Murray’s character, but I waited until this season to cover it because not only does the movie hold better parallels to Steve’s arc, but Babe’s infamous torture scene from that movie eerily echoes the torture Steve experiences at the hands of the Russians. The scene in question involves Szell and his associates tying Babe down and repeatedly asking the question “Is it safe?” as a means of finding out how much Babe knows about the diamonds. Much like how Steve is repeatedly asked “Who do you work for?” in regards to why he’s there in the underground base.

I remember seeing this clip of Marathon Man during my psychology class in 11th grade. We were doing a whole unit on classical and Operant conditioning, specifically in regards to negative reinforcement and how human behavior works under torture. In this case, Babe is trying to give Szell the answer he thinks Szell wants to hear to prevent more pain. Szell for his part doesn’t believe Babe, and thinks Babe is playing coy like his brother Doc did, so he utilizes his skills as a dentist to get the information he thinks Babe has. It’s only after he’s inflicted the maximum amount of pain on Babe that he possibly can (including having his associates arrange a fake escape to give Babe a false sense of hope so that he’ll reveal any concealed details to his apparent savior) that he finally realizes Babe doesn’t know anything, and orders him to be disposed of.

Likewise, Steve is repeatedly beaten, threatened with having his fingernails pulled out, and is also given a truth serum to get information out of him. He isn’t lying when he claims he doesn’t work for anyone other than Scoops Ahoy (or that they found out about the Russian base by accident), but he does conceal Dustin and Erica to protect them (at least before the truth serum kicks him and he accidentally blabs about Dustin). In both Babe and Steve’s cases, the torture is designed to wear them down so that they’ll willingly talk and have no secrets to hide. In the case of Szell and Commander Ozerov (the Russian Colonel who interrogates Steve and Robin), they still aren’t satisfied with the answers provided, and up the ante in the hopes it gets them the information they want to hear.

The main difference between Steve and Babe’s torture scenes (aside from circumstances) has a lot to do with their tone and the way they’re framed. Babe having his teeth drilled into by Szell is played for sheer horror, and the encounter is terrifying, intense, and painful. Steve’s torture at the hands of the Russians, on the other hand, is played for dark humor despite the severity of Steve’s injuries. It’s in some of the lines Steve delivers (“You think I just wear this?! That I’m a spy in a sailor’s uniform?!”), his hysterical insistence the Russians could just let him and Robin go, his desperate promises of free ice cream for everyone (“USS Butterscotch, I mean, you gotta try it!”), and even during the scenes when he’s drugged and becomes loopy.

There’s a tonal dissonance with what happens to Steve that always bothered me because, all jokes aside, the situation itself isn’t funny. Steve is literally scared out of his mind, frantically trying to get the torture to stop, and is reduced to pleading for that effect. It’s easy to cringe at that, or think he’s being a doofus (particularly when he insists no one knows he and Robin are down there, which would just be more incentive for the Russians to kill them so the base is kept secret), but he’s a teenager who’s panicking, not thinking clearly in a stressful situation, and way over his head in what he’s dealing with. That’s also not getting how it’s probably dawned on him that he hasn’t told anyone else where they are (meaning both he and Robin are facing the reality of possibly dying alone down there) and his only hope is that Dustin and Erica got out alive. From his perspective, it’s a terrifying situation.

Furthermore, there’s the way the Russians themselves (specifically Commander Ozerov and Dr. Zharkov) are represented on the show. When I mentioned how the portrayal of the Russians this season was akin to Saturday Morning Cartoon Villains, I was thinking about their scenes in this episode. These are people that, by definition, should be scary (they’re literally torturing teenagers), but their portrayal is so over-the-top “mustache-twirling” that it’s hard to take them seriously. I was a lot more intimidated by Dr. Brenner’s interrogation of Joyce, and Hopper’s torture at the hands of Connie Frazier in season 1, than I was by anything the Russians were doing to Steve and Robin. This is one of those instances where the comedic tone and attempts to make light of the situation backfires on the show, and it also makes me irritated with the writers: I want to take Steve and Robin’s dilemma seriously, but not at the expense of undermining their torture scenes with black comedy, or making the Russians look like buffoons who have circles run around them by kids.

To add insult to injury, not only is Steve forced to suck it up once he escapes, but any trauma or PTSD that should have been explored with him and Robin over what they endured in the Russian Underground Base is glossed over. Season 4 doesn’t bother to cover it, nor do any of the tie-ins that take place prior to season 4 for that matter. One would be forgiven for thinking Steve and Robin were perfectly fine with no lasting repercussions. And while I recognize that’s a problem for Robin as well, it’s a bigger problem for Steve because of how the show has handled his character in the past.

I’ve seen a growing chorus of fans who’ve criticized the Duffer Brothers for never really exploring Steve’s trauma the same way they’ve done with other characters (i.e. Hopper, Joyce, El, Will, Mike, Nancy, etc), and for treating Steve’s injuries in a risible way, with the nasty implication that this is karma for how he acted in season 1. This may seem like an overreaction to some, but I know this has happened on other shows before. True Blood is one such example that comes to mind, particularly with the character of Jason Stackhouse and how they handled his arc. True Blood always had a contentious history with the way it presented hot button topics like rape and sexual assault (I would even go as far as to compare it to the controversies Game of Thrones experienced when it broached those topics on its show), and while the first three seasons of True Blood at least made some attempt at treating those topics with gravitas and dealing with the trauma of the characters in a way that wasn’t exploitative (i.e. Sookie’s molestation at the hands of her pedophile uncle, Tara’s PTSD over the kidnapping and rape she was subjected to under Franklin Mott, etc), all that got thrown out the window in season 4 with what happened to Jason: He’s subjected to an extremely graphic gang-rape where the effects and trauma of what happened to him were not only ignored in later episodes (the werepanther arc gets dropped entirely afterwards and is barely mentioned again), but both the showrunner and director for the episode which Jason’s gang-rape takes place in proceeded to make comments suggesting they viewed the situation as Jason deserving it.

It doesn’t help there were certain so-called “feminist” reviewers at the time (like Billie Doux from Doux Reviews, and E. Slay Belle from Persephone Magazine) who ran with the idea that this was karma for how Jason acted in the past, which…………..YIKES!

Given the number of rape deniers/rape apologists that have popped out of Leftist circles in the past 2 years regarding real life situations (i.e. the Israel-Palestine conflict, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, etc), I find this to be sickening. Regardless of True Blood being a fictional TV show, the idea of rape being someone else’s “karma” or “comeuppance” for how they might have acted before is nothing more than an invitation to perpetrate rape culture and normalize it. This would be like Stranger Things fans wishing that on Angela in season 4. I despise Angela, and consider her to be one of the worst characters Stranger Things ever introduced, but I draw the line at wanting to see that inflicted on her. It’s already bad enough witnessing real life situations where people shamelessly make excuses for why someone would be deserving of that.

Getting back to Steve, while Stranger Things has (thankfully) steered clear of something as callous as what True Blood did, there is something to be said about how Steve repeatedly gets injured or beaten up, and it’s either framed in a darkly humorous way (like the Russian torture scene), or there’s the ugly implication that he’s deserving of it because of his behavior in season 1 (and possibly before that). This also includes the way the show has handled his trauma. One of the Franchise Original Sins finally coming home to roost this season.

Let’s start with Steve’s trauma since this is a little more complicated than fans have made it out to be. I’ve analyzed in past reviews how Steve was shaken by his encounter with the Demogorgon from season 1, as well as his guilt over how he behaved towards Nancy and Jonathan, which carried over into season 2. It’s not that Steve’s trauma was nonexistent in season 2, but it was subtle compared to other characters (Nancy, Will, Joyce, etc) whose trauma was more overt and given sharper focus. Steve’s attempts to return to normal activities, and his push for Nancy to do the same, was his method of coping. The idea that if he acted like everything was normal, it would desensitize him to the horrors of what he encountered. Unfortunately, Nancy wasn’t the kind of person who could do that, and the lack of resolution between her and Steve over how to handle the situation was one of many reasons their relationship fell apart. Tie-in novels like Rebel Robin also indicated that this coping method wasn’t working the way Steve hoped it would, and even though he was throwing himself into other activities to distract, he was still constantly reminded of what happened:

It's not that the show hasn’t explored Steve’s trauma in the past. It’s just that it hasn’t been given as much focus as the trauma of other characters. It was there though, and it did play an important role in Steve’s arc during season 2. It’s why he was devastated when his relationship with Nancy dissolved, and why he was left aimless and disillusioned until Dustin took him under his wing and gave him something to hold onto so that he wasn’t going through his struggles alone.

That is not the case with the Russian arc. While Steve does get a stable friendship with Robin out of this, the show demonstrates zero interest in exploring the PTSD and trauma that should have been there from the torture Steve experienced. Same goes for Robin and the hell she went through. Maybe that’s something the show will delve into during season 5 (assuming they decide to revisit the Russian arc again), but it honestly should have been examined in season 4 when it had only been a few months since that incident and was therefore still relevant.

This leads me to the next accusation I’ve seen thrown at the show: The way Steve’s injuries are trivialized, along with the implication that he’s somehow deserving of it because of his past behavior. To be fair, this did have its origins in season 1 when Jonathan beat the shit out of Steve. The difference though is that Steve was framed as an antagonist in that season (at least until the last two episodes of season 1), with Jonathan as the underdog in that confrontation. On top of that, the fight in question was also framed as Steve finally crossing a line with his behavior, and Jonathan exploding in rage not just because of what Steve was saying to him, but because of everything Jonathan had been through up till that point. It doesn’t surprise me many fans view Jonathan’s beating of Steve as justified the same way most fans feel about El smashing Angela’s face in with the roller skate.

But that was back in season 1. Steve has long since made amends for his past behavior, and worked to be a better person going forward. For the show to continue with the abuse of his character, while having others around Steve constantly remind him of how much of an asshole he was back then (like Robin does in this episode), not only comes off as harsh, but also mean-spirited. It doesn’t help that the show has this tendency to make light of Steve’s injuries and the horrifying situations he’s in. Dustin’s comments towards Steve in the next episode about how he should have “toughed it out like a man” did NOT go unnoticed by me. 😒 There’s this implication that, no matter how severe Steve’s injuries are, he’s expected by the narration (and by other characters around him) to grit his teeth and persevere.

The problem with this is it undermines scenes when the show then expects us to take the injuries other characters experience seriously. Case in point: Angela’s broken nose and grade 2 concussion from season 4:

There are a lot of issues I had with this scene, which I will be doing a full in-depth analysis of when I get to season 4, but one of them involves how the show wanted the audience to be horrified by Angela’s injuries when they’d spent the past 3 seasons brushing aside Steve’s injuries, including the multiple concussions he’s gotten from the beatings he took under Jonathan, Billy, and the Russians. I want to be clear that I’m NOT talking about how “realistic” these injuries are, or how the characters push through them. I’m talking about how these scenes are FRAMED by the show. With Angela, the show expected the audience to do all this moral pearl-clutching over El hitting her with the roller skate, with other characters around El either acting alarmed (or even disgusted) by El’s behavior, or else rushing to coddle Angela. With Steve, his injuries and concussions aren’t nearly treated with much sympathy by the characters or the narration.

At best, it makes the Duffer Brothers look insincere over how they deal with character injuries on the show. At worst, it makes them look like they’re perpetrating a double-standard.

The result is I find myself taking an opposite view from what the show likely expected me to: Regardless of how they frame Steve’s injuries, I feel bad for him because he has repeatedly put his life on the line for others (which is how Dustin and Erica were able to escape from the Russians in this episode) and strives to be a better person than he was before, which makes the insinuations that his injuries are karma for his past behavior look like disproportionate retribution. By contrast, I have no sympathy for Angela, who was nothing more than a sadistic Hate Sink there to make El miserable, and was completely unrepentant about her behavior. Because of this, I found the attempts to get the audience to feel bad for Angela when she was screaming, crying, and bleeding all over the floor to be obnoxious and grating. Doesn’t help that Angela’s final act on the show was sending the cops on El, and that the Duffer Brothers quickly cast Angela aside the moment she was no longer useful to the plot, which gives me even less incentive to care about what happened to her.

There’s also how, to add salt on the wounds, the show never really allows Steve to have any victories of his own. I’m not talking about his fights against monsters from the Upside Down, but about the human antagonists Steve’s had personal history with who’ve torn him down: Tommy in season 1 (who threatened to beat up Steve when Steve confronted him about his behavior at the theater, and later returned in season 2 with more spiteful taunts at Steve’s expense before disappearing off the show entirely and becoming a Karma Houdini in the process), Billy nearly beating Steve to death in season 2 (which is somewhat mitigated by Steve ramming into Billy’s car to save Nancy’s life during “The Battle of Starcourt,” but isn’t the same as Steve winning a one-on-one fistfight against Billy), and Commander Ozerov (whose only appearance is in this episode before he vanishes without facing any karma/comeuppance for what he put Steve and Robin through). Meanwhile, the hits just keep coming. 😒

My hope for season 5 is that the show course corrects and starts treating Steve’s trauma and injuries as legitimate. I’m not interested in seeing Steve reduced to a comedic punching-bag, or for the show to continue hounding on how he used to be an asshole. We get it. It’s old news. Please move on from that, give Steve an arc where he truly comes to terms with all the horrific crap he’s been through, and allow Steve some kind of victory against a significant human antagonist that isn’t just throwing him a bone (like knocking out that random Russian in the previous episode).

Part 2: The Scoops Troop

For all the issues I have with Steve’s treatment on the show, and how the writers glossed over the trauma Steve and Robin should have experienced, I will say the bonding scenes between Steve and Robin, as well as Dustin and Erica, worked well. These were not only some of the best moments in this episode, but also for season 3 as a whole. A good chunk of that had to do with the 80s movie which was analogous to this arc and complimented it well: The Breakfast Club.

This movie is well-known in popular culture, but I’ll give a brief synopsis for the sake of this review: The Breakfast Club is a 1985 John Hughes film centered around five teenagers forced to attend Saturday detention where they must each write essays for Principal Vernon as punishment. Each of these teens come from different social cliques: Bender (Judd Nelson) is known as a criminal and troublemaker. Andrew (Emilio Estevez) is a wrestling jock. Claire (Molly Ringwald) is a rich popular girl. Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) is a nerd who’s invested in academics and keeping his grades up. And Allison (Ally Sheedy) is an outcast whom nobody pays attention to. Initially, all five characters fail to get along, and dig into each other over social status and other petty issues. Eventually, they open up to one another about their insecurities, the expectations placed on them by their peers and parents, the events going on in their lives, and the reasons for why they’re all in detention to begin with.

I remember watching this movie when I was in high school, and it left an emotional impact on me going into my senior year when I was facing the prospect of adulthood. I was a lot more naïve back then, caring way too much about the opinions of others (similar to the teens in this movie). 12 years later, my ability to relate to the characters and their inner turmoil is still there, but now it comes with a retrospective outlook due to bitter and harsh experiences I’ve had since then. I’m a lot more cynical than I was 12 years ago. My faith and trust in people have been permanently shattered, and I find myself indifferent these days to the opinions of the masses, especially when certain individuals have revealed themselves to be selfish, cruel, hypocritical, self-absorbed, condescending, deeply hateful, and lacking in self-awareness.

It's why I relate to Steve’s comments about how having acceptance and popularity isn’t as cracked up as it appears to be. Or how the things people say matter is just bullshit: Because it is. Steve’s had the bitter experience of realizing his popularity didn’t make him happy, that the people he surrounded himself with (i.e. Tommy and Carol) didn’t truly care about him, and how they weren’t above using him for their own selfish ends. Or how quickly they (along with the rest of Hawkins High School) cast Steve aside the moment he chose not to follow the norm. It’s sadly similar to Andrew’s (Emilio Estevez’s) and even Claire’s (Molly Ringwald’s) arcs in the movie: Both are killing themselves trying to mold into the image of what their parents and peers expect them to be, all while those people remain oblivious to Andrew and Claire’s personal unhappiness and how it is eating them from the inside. It’s easy to judge them for their personal choices (and they did have agency over how they acted) but the peer pressures put on them by others can’t be dismissed for how it contributed to those choices. The movie does end with them recognizing those faults, but it’s left ambiguous if this will result in a permanent change, or if things will revert to the way they were before. Steve went through that at the theater in season 1 with his slut-shaming of Nancy and cruel comments towards Jonathan, which he was later remorseful over (similar to Andrew’s remorse over the kid he bullied and the humiliation he put him through to please his dad), and it resulted in Steve being disgusted enough with himself to never want to go back to doing anything that hateful again. Steve’s arc is what I hope Andrew progresses to in his life where he breaks free of the toxic influence his dad has over him (akin to the toxic influence Tommy and Carol initially had over Steve) and becomes a kinder person in the process. His friendship with the other four members of the Breakfast Club (especially Brian) and the romance he develops with Allison implies he’s well on his way to doing that.

In Steve’s case, he’s had enough distance from the popular crowd and school to do serious self-reflection about his past choices. You can see it in his regretful look when Robin confronts him about whether he recognized her from Mrs. Click’s class, and his wishes that he’d gotten to know Robin sooner because she’s an enjoyable person to be around. It’s also the same story with Robin, who’s comparable to Allison (Ally Sheedy) from The Breakfast Club in being the apparently weird loner who secretly wants companionship. Rebel Robin revealed Robin’s previous friendships deteriorated, either because those friends revealed themselves to be awful people (Dash), showed a self-absorbed side to themselves (Kate), or simply moved on with their lives to other activities which didn’t involve Robin (both Kate and Milton), all of which prompted Robin to take on an off-putting approach going forward. I wonder how many others out there in real life spend years catering to the worst kinds of people who’d cast them aside at a moment’s notice, and miss out on those who would have made them happy because they either ignored them (Steve with Robin) or had preconceived notions which colored their perspectives about who that person was (Robin with Steve). It’s a tragedy heard all too often: What could have been.

Thankfully, for both Robin and Steve, it isn’t too late, and they’re given another opportunity to try again with a fresh start. I don’t know what the future holds for either of them in season 5, or if they’ll both survive, but they at least got some time to build a new relationship not dictated by social norms or previous biases. That’s more than most people gain in a lifetime. It’s also the same blessing the teens get at the end of The Breakfast Club: Their friendships (as well as the possible romantic relationships between Bender/Claire and Andrew/Allison) don’t have to end just because detention is over and they go back to school on Monday. If anything, given the amount of damage they did in the library, they’ll likely all be coming back next Saturday to meet up again. Why shouldn’t they take that opportunity to build off their established group dynamic?

Then there’s Dustin and Erica’s friendship. For all the snark Erica gives Dustin in this episode, there is a certain level of respect she develops for his intelligence. She accepts the Upside Down story (minus her brother’s involvement for petty sibling reasons) given everything else she’s witnessed at this point, she shares Dustin’s love for calculations and numbers (leading to Dustin bluntly pointing out she’s a nerd like he is), and she aids with his plans for rescuing and escaping with Steve and Robin by getting the Demogorgon cattle prod for Dustin to wield. I wouldn’t even be surprised if she also suggested the idea of using the green liquid to create a distraction. “Erica’s Quest” revealed she took one of the canisters in her backpack and was planning to sell it for money. You can probably already guess how that went.

Unlike Dustin, I’ve never seen My Little Pony (barring Rescue at Midnight Castle for this review), so I can’t speak for that franchise or its fandom. What little I know is it does have a male following in addition to a female one, so it doesn’t surprise me Dustin knows about that franchise, or the TV special Rescue at Midnight Castle. I wouldn’t even be shocked if Dustin became a Bronie later as an adult (assuming he survives season 5). People find the media that makes them happy, that they can relate to, or that they find interesting, and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as they’re not being hurtful or toxic to others.

By the way, Rescue at Midnight Castle is available on Youtube for free, and clocks in around 22 minutes:

On a story level, the parallels between the television special and this episode aren’t subtle. Both feature friends captured by evil forces (Steve and Robin by the Russians vs the ponies kidnapped by Tirac) and the rescue enacted by the protagonists which involves infiltrating the fortress of their enemy to get them back (Dustin and Erica in the Russian Base vs Firefly, Applejack, Twilight, Bow Tie, and the human girl Megan at Midnight Castle). On a bigger level, this is one of those 80s properties next to The Dark Crystal which feature a world corrupted and the defeat of the main villain (Tirac and the Skeksis’s) restoring balance: Tirac’s forces from his “rainbow of darkness” are transformed back into their original selves following his defeat, and both the Skeksis and the urRu Mystics are reunited as urSkeks once the crystal is fully restored. It could be one of two possibilities that occurs with the Upside Down in season 5: Assuming the destruction of the Mind Flayer doesn’t kill everyone and everything in the Upside Down due to the connection to the hive mind, an alternative could be that once the Mind Flayer is gone, the Upside Down can become a thriving world without the Mind Flayer’s corrupting influence. Whether the rest of the Upside Down inhabitants (Demogorgons, demobats, etc) perish with the Mind Flayer, remain as they are, or are restored to their pre-corrupted forms (assuming they had a different form to begin with) remains to be seen.

Getting back to Dustin and Erica, in terms of The Breakfast Club analogies, Dustin reminds me of Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) in having embraced himself as a proud nerd and geek, minus the pressures Brian felt to keep his grades up from his parents (to the point of almost committing suicide and landing in detention due to his gun going off in his locker). I see Dustin as a future version of Brian who’s become close friends with Andrew (like Dustin’s friendship with Steve) and everyone else in the Breakfast Club, all while working through his insecurities and finally getting a girlfriend. Out of everyone in both the Scoops Troop and the titular Breakfast Club, I would argue both Brian and Dustin serve as the lynchpin and the Heart of their respective groups. They’re the ones who can best connect with others despite everyone’s varying social status, and they’re the ones who work to relate to everyone else. I admire both for that.

As for Erica, she’s a more complicated example. She has the snarkiness of Bender, which is a coping mechanism to deal with people who look down on them, combined with the initial snootiness of Claire in not wanting to be associated with those that would get her ostracized (i.e. nerds).

There’s been speculation made about Erica’s initial disdain for nerds. I’ve seen some fans suggest it’s a way for her to feel superior to Lucas and put him down, but I see that as a gross oversimplification which misses context. For one thing, I’m sure Erica is painfully aware of the negative stereotypes surrounding nerds (not helped by what she’s likely heard about Lucas’s treatment in school) and she’s gone the extreme way of distancing herself from that stereotype so she won’t get bullied. For another (and this is something that the end of season 3, the majority of season 4, as well as tie-ins like Erica the Great and “Erica’s Quest,” indicate), for all her snark directed at Lucas and his friends, she secretly wants to be a part of their group. She is interested in Dungeons & Dragons and happily jumps on the opportunity to learn about it, as well as demonstrate her knowledge and skills in the game. There’s also the implication she’s better able to relate to Lucas’s friends than with her regular friends. We even get a hint of this in season 2’s “The Spy” when she takes Lucas’s He-Man toy to play with, and is inferred to have gone into his room several times because he has stuff she’s interested in. The problem is she’s too embarrassed to admit it, and resorts to projection and disparaging jabs to compensate for that. It reminds me of how Hellfire Club member Doug Teague was first introduced in “The Rise of Hellfire” comic: Making snide remarks about D&D initially before revealing he had an interest in the game, and embracing his inner nerd when Eddie brings him into the club.

That’s pretty much what Dustin does with Erica. He doesn’t call her out in a harsh way, but instead points out how she fits the term of “nerd,” and encourages her to embrace it. It’s significant that Erica doesn’t have much of a comeback for that, and her seething indicates on some level that she knows he’s right. To her credit, she does listen to him, and it leads to some nice growth for her where she’s still snarky, but not as derogatory, and works to lift others up rather than tearing them down.

For what it’s worth, despite the jabs Erica made about Lucas being a nerd, I never got the impression Lucas was as irked with the accusation so much as annoyed that his sister was constantly trying to get under his skin. His snapping at Erica in the mall during the season 3 premiere had a lot more to do with him being in public with Max and Erica trying to make him look bad (which didn’t help that he descended to her level in terms of childish taunts) than it did about being called that specific term.

Before we move on, there are two homages I’d like to acknowledge. The first involves Robin and Steve tied up and attempting to break free, similar to the scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Indy is tied up with his father and trying to escape the Nazi base. Their efforts are more successful than Steve and Robin’s, but not before they make a hash of it.

The second involves nods to Star Wars, particularly with the Russians marching across the base like the stormtroopers on the Death Star.

It’s even stated on the Season 3 Podcast that the interior for the Russian Base was modeled after the Death Star.

Unfortunately, they took the parallel between the Russians and the Empire literally, right down to the way the Russians behave this season. There’s a reason stormtroopers had a reputation for the longest time as “not being able to shoot the broad side of a barn” and how their combat skills were considered an informed attribute in the Original Trilogy (which the Prequels and supplementary materials worked to correct). This is something which seems to have carried over to Stranger Things in their attempts to pay homage to those movies. Alexei’s comments about how the Russian Base is “An underground fortress, designed by the greatest Russian minds, guarded by their greatest warriors,” and “Breaking in is impossible,” isjuxtaposed with the Scoops Troop having infiltrated it and running circles around everyone there, as well as Robin calling out Commander Ozerov for broadcasting their encrypted message all over town (which allowed them to learn about the Russian Base in the first place). It’s one thing to pay homage to the Original Trilogy, but it’s another thing to incorporate its flaws, treat them as tongue-in-cheek, and then expect the audience to still take the Russians seriously as a threat. At least the Empire had powerful and competent figures like Grand Moff Tarkin, Darth Vader, and Emperor Palpatine at the top, who were dangerous, intelligent, played seriously whenever they appeared on-screen, and gave credibility to the Empire as a threat to be reckoned with. The Russians don’t, and Commander Ozerov is no Grand Moff Tarkin, or Darth Vader for that matter.

Part 3: Bald Eagle

Between 7-11 in the previous episode, Burger King and Marlboro in this episode, and Lucas’s tangent about New Coke in the next episode, Season 3 was NOT subtle about its product placement. They were really trying to outdo Eggos in sales. I don’t know if they were successful in that regard, but it reminded me of that F.R.I.E.N.D.S episode, “The One with The Apothecary Table,” which was one huge shameless self-promotion for Pottery Barn. I’m usually indifferent about product placement in movies and TV shows, but when they’re not even trying to be subtle about it, I have to laugh.

I was talking with one of my family members the other day about Hopper in season 3, and what I’ve realized over the course of these reviews is that, even though Hopper gets criticized for his toxic behavior this season, my irritation with him has more to do with when he treats other main characters (i.e. Mike, Joyce, etc) badly than it does with the accusations of “police brutality.” I already pointed out the holes in those accusations during my review of “The Sauna Test” (as well as how disingenuous those arguments look coming from Leftists today with the way they’ve acted for the past 2 years), but even in this episode when Hopper blows up at Alexei, I found myself taking Hopper’s side: Alexei was jerking their chain, and trying to milk their empathy while dragging his feet on giving information. Meanwhile, the main characters were on a deadline, and at risk from Grigori and the other Russians eventually finding them. I get why Hopper finally lost patience and kicked Alexei out: It was the wake-up call Alexei needed.

This leads me to an unpopular opinion that I’m sure is going to get me flak, but I’m going to say it anyways: I don’t like Alexei as a character. Or at least, I like him a lot less than I did when Season 3 first debut. I know he was beloved by fans when his character appeared on the show, and many were upset by his death in the next episode, but as the years have gone by, my opinion of him has soured for a multitude of reasons.

The first has to do with the character himself and the way he’s framed: For all the attempts to make Alexei seem like a naïve innocent who doesn’t understand the joyous wonders of America and capitalism, it doesn’t change the fact that, at the end of the day, he was still working for the Russian government in opening a Gate to another dimension with the end goal of harvesting man-killing monsters. All the while, he was perfectly aware these monsters were going to be weaponized and used for malicious purposes. That’s also including how his actions in opening the Gate this season allowed the Mind Flayer to return and got a bunch of innocent people killed in the process.

I know fans are going to insist that Alexei didn’t have much of a choice since he would’ve been killed otherwise, and that he wasn’t aware of the Mind Flayer. I’ll concede the former point in acknowledging that his head was on the chopping block (as we saw in the season 3 premiere) and his country was engaged in the Cold War with the United States. However, that still doesn’t make him an innocent, nor does it make him any less complicit in the deaths of multiple people. Designing the key and opening the Gate had consequences, and he knew that. This isn’t like he was wholly ignorant of the power he was tapping into. As for the latter claim over not knowing about the Mind Flayer, that is SERIOUSLY QUESTIONABLE given the piece of the Mind Flayer we see caged at Kamchatka in season 4. Maybe he wasn’t directly aware of the other piece of the Mind Flayer operating in Hawkins and possessing people at the time, but that hardly matters since it still resulted in multiple deaths thanks to the Gate being opened in the first place, meaning Alexei still has blood on his hands. It’s not like the Russians would’ve cared either, so long as it wasn’t their people being possessed by the Mind Flayer.

Adding on to this, the only reason Alexei is aiding Hopper, Joyce, and Murray now is because he doesn’t have any other choice. He knows he’ll be killed by Grigori otherwise, meaning his actions are motivated by self-preservation and trying to save his own skin. He is not helping them out of the pure goodness of his heart. I wouldn’t nearly have as big of an issue with this if the show wasn’t trying to infantilize him, and act like his bratty behavior (or his desire to sit on his ass and watch cartoons) was cute. It doesn’t help that we never really get the sense Alexei had any misgivings about how his work on the key could endanger other people, or any internal conflict about what his government was doing. The result is it makes it hard to sympathize with Alexei.

On top of that, out of all the side characters who’ve been introduced only to get killed off later by the Duffer Brothers for dramatic effect, Alexei’s death probably had the least impact on the characters because of his tenuous connections to them. When I talk about a Franchise Original Sin, this is one of them. Say what you will about Barbara, Bob, and Eddie, but they at least were fleshed-out, had stronger relationships with the main characters, and their deaths had major repercussions not just for the characters they were attached to, but for the overall story. Barbara’s death left Nancy wracked with guilt, to the point it wrecked her relationship with Steve, and her attempts to get justice on Barbara’s behalf was a major plot point for season 2. Furthermore, it contributed to her long-standing rivalry with Vecna, especially when season 4 implied he may have killed Barbara himself. Bob’s death was not only one of the reasons Joyce was reluctant to date Hopper this season, but was also a major factor in Joyce finally deciding to move out of Hawkins. The revelations in The First Shadow about Henry/One/Vecna’s relationship with Patty Newby only makes Bob’s death look more horrifying in hindsight since Vecna is now complicit in the slaughter of the adopted brother of the girl he loved. As for Eddie, his death not only devastated Dustin, but the trailers and promotional material for season 5 indicates Eddie’s demise is going to be a major plot point in the final season, especially when it comes to the future of the Hellfire Club and how Eddie is being unfairly scapegoated in death for Vecna’s actions.

Alexei on the other hand is someone who barely had any relationship with the main characters before he was unceremoniously killed off. The closest we get to anything tangible is Alexei’s fleeting friendship with Murray. And while Murray is briefly devastated by Alexei’s death, he ends up quickly moving on (along with Joyce and Hopper). I could be wrong, but I don’t recall Alexei’s name being mentioned at all in season 4, or any of the main characters discussing how his death impacted them. That’s how insignificant he was compared to other side characters who left their mark on the main characters.

Back in 2022, the Stranger Things writers revealed that one of the planned storylines for the Russian arc in season 4 involved Hopper meeting Alexei’s father, with the implication that he would have teamed up with Hopper to get him out of Kamchatka and possibly avenge his son’s death. I honestly don’t know how to feel about that. On the one hand, it might’ve fleshed-out Alexei’s character better, and helped the audience understand his backstory and perspective in a clearer light. On the other hand (as pointed out in the article), Hopper and Alexei’s father meeting in the same prison would have been way too much of a coincidence that would break suspension of disbelief, to say nothing about how Hopper already avenged Alexei when he kills Grigori in “The Battle of Starcourt.” I’m personally glad they went with Dmitri/Enzo instead. I liked his character better than Alexei, and Hopper bribing a prison guard to aid in his escape (especially around the time when the Soviet Union’s economy was beginning to decline, with inflation rising and black markets springing up everywhere) came off as more realistic.

Alexei’s comments about how many keys were designed, as well as how the Gate could only be opened in Hawkins because the previous tear in the fabric of space-time was still healing, caught my attention. It’s still unclear how much the Russians know about the Upside Down, or the circumstances behind the Gate opening the first time, but I’d have to imagine that if they knew about El, they would’ve tried to kidnap her at some point, and force her to open another Gate in Russia. The fact they didn’t (and that she doesn’t even register on their radar this season) implies they’re ignorant of her existence. So what information were they given about what happened at Hawkins Lab, and how did they obtain it?

On top of that, if there were multiple keys designed throughout Russia, does this mean there are other facilities besides Kamchatka that house the monsters of the Upside Down? Or was the Kamchatka Facility the only one, and its destruction has now deprived them of their prizes? Given the amount of money and resources they pooled into this project, I’m hard pressed to believe the Russians would just give up easily following the destruction of the Kamchatka Facility, and wouldn’t try again to infiltrate Hawkins for more monsters if they lost their only stash. It might be difficult with the current U.S. military occupation of Hawkins in season 5, but if the Russians find out about El’s existence, that would be bad news if they could find a way to kidnap El and use her for their own ends. Maybe that’s what both the “Missing Poster” of El, as well as Hopper’s Russified look, could imply: That El did get taken by the Russians, and Hopper went in disguised to rescue her:

I know I’m spit-balling theories, but Hopper with the Rasputin beard and Russian look in the trailers leads me to believe that the Russian arc isn’t over yet. Season 5 may stay exclusively in Hawkins, but the Russians might still factor into the final fight against the Upside Down somehow.

Then there’s Alexei’s observation about the previous tear healing. Again, a lot of this may be contingent on what Alexei currently knows about the Upside Down, but what does that infer? Does “healing” mean that the Upside Down was on a course correction to revert to the way it was before the Gate opened in 1983 (i.e. as a hellish landscape instead of a dark mirror of Hawkins and the rest of the world frozen in time)? If El closing the Gate in season 2 wasn’t enough to “heal” the tear between worlds, what will? Can it even be healed at this point, given the damage Vecna did in season 4?

In regards to the phone call Hopper made to inform Dr. Owens about the Russians in Hawkins, I found it amusing he kept his identification code written down in his wallet. It reminds me of all those times people jot down passwords to their accounts because they either constantly forget them, the passwords keep changing, or because they use different passwords for different accounts. Murray might not understand that, but I’ve known people who do this.

Speaking of which, for all Murray’s hand-wringing in this episode about Hopper compromising him and how he’ll need to relocate, season 4 shows he’s still at the same house he’s always lived in:

What a drama queen. 😂

By contrast, I didn’t have as big of an issue with Joyce calling back and demanding the military hurry it up. Given how the army only arrives AFTER the Gate closed and Hopper was presumed dead, I’d say she was a lot nicer to them than they deserved.

I should talk briefly about Mayor Kline and Grigori’s scene together. If the damage Hopper did to Kline’s nose was enough to leave him looking like that, I’d love to see how El’s roller skate to Angela’s face in season 4 messed her up. She got hit right in the center between the eyes, and was whining to the paramedics later about how she couldn’t breathe, which implies she’s also going to have black and purple eyes (same as Mayor Kline), as well as a disjointed nose for a while. I wouldn't even be fazed if Angela develops a hematoma in the process. Should've made better choices, sweetheart. 🤷

As for Grigori, for as much as he blames Mayor Kline for the mess Hopper is creating, Kline has a point that Hopper got the better of Grigori. That’s also including how Grigori failed to kill Hopper and Joyce at Hawkins Lab despite having the perfect opportunity to do so. His attack on Kline comes off like he’s aware of that truth to some degree, but choosing to project his anger onto Kline instead of owning up to his behavior. It undercuts his credibility as an effective professional killer. It doesn’t help that Grigori’s on-screen kills have only involved strangling Alexei’s supervisor in the season 3 premiere and murdering Alexei himself in the next episode, neither of whom were able to defend themselves even if they wanted to, making Grigori little more than a bully (something that’s also emphasized here with his attack on Mayor Kline, whom he knows won’t be able to fight back against him). Not that I sympathize with Kline at all given how much of a bully he’s been to the residents of Hawkins, or the Hot Dog vendor at the beginning of the episode. Both Grigori and Kline deserve each other.

Part 4: The Griswold Family

Both the hospital fight and the end scene with the Flayed gathering at Brimborn Steel Works were the highlights of this arc. The Flayed Creature (made up from a combination of Tom and Bruce) was delightfully nasty. If the Mind Flayer comes back in season 5 to possess more people, I wouldn’t mind the characters encountering more Flayed monsters like that again. Or even seeing what new monsters the Mind Flayer could make in the future. Humans have pretty much become its Petri Dish, and God knows what else it could do with them if it expanded its imagination.

It's interesting to me that even though Jonathan was limping and would have been a much easier target to go after, the Flayed instead chased down Nancy and ignored Jonathan altogether. Was this because it was familiar with the layout of the hospital and knew the direction Nancy was running would lead to a dead end? Or was it because, even though Tom and Bruce had merged into the creature, they still had some semblance of their original personalities remaining, which included their contempt and misogyny towards Nancy, and that’s what motivated the Flayed’s decision to chase Nancy down? This latter interpretation is based on several components: Lucas’s theory in Lucas on the Line about the Mind Flayer being attracted to the darkness within a person. The way Billy’s negative memories within the storm El wades through are bleak, chaotic, distorted, and reflect the worst moments of Billy’s life. What we see in The First Shadow with how the Mind Flayer corrupted a young Henry Creel by playing on his insecurities and fears. All of this makes me inclined to think that when the Mind Flayer latches itself onto a host, it feeds on the negative aspects of the host’s personality, both to keep the host under its control and to weaponize their rage, hatred, and darker impulses against its enemies. In other words: Tom and Bruce’s hatred of Nancy empowered the Flayed Creature.

In regards to inspirations, there are two films that come to mind. Both of which are 80s remakes of classic horror movies from 1958, but are still beloved for doing their own thing and improving on the original flicks: The Blob (1988) and The Fly (1986).

I discussed the 1958 version of The Blob in my review of “The Mall Rats,” but the 1988 version is something to behold. It’s a darker take on the movie that goes all in with the scares, gory special effects, and subversion of expectations. That’s meant as a compliment. Unlike the Blob from the original movie, which was an alien-like substance in a meteorite from outer space, the Blob in the remake is a man-made experimental virus sent into space, causing it to mutate and become a plasmic life-form that hunts other beings once it came back to Earth. It was designed to be used for biological warfare, and was made for U.S. Defense against the Russians. Much like how Vecna, El, Kali, and the other special kids at Hawkins Lab were raised on the show to be weapons in the Cold War.

In fact, it’s amazing how much this remake features multiples parallels to Stranger Things, to the point I wouldn’t be surprised if the Duffer Brothers took inspiration from this movie beyond the Flayed plotline for season 3. Dr. Brenner from season 1 acts almost like an expy of Dr. Meadows from this film, right down to the white biohazard suits they (and their men) wear, their attempts to cover up a dangerous threat that’s been unleashed on an unsuspecting town, and the callousness they display towards the loss of human life in pursuit of their scientific goals. Then there’s the main character of Brian Flagg, a juvenile delinquent who serves as the town’s scapegoat for the deaths the Blob causes, much like how Eddie Munson in season 4 gets blamed for the murders Vecna commits. As for season 3 parallels, the Blob and the Flayed not only have a similar design (right down to the graphic way their victims are dissolved), but the inhuman way they move (including traveling through the sewers to evade their opponents) and how maliciously they operate make both monsters formidable. There’s even a similar scene involving a kid (Adam on the show, and Eddie in the movie) getting consumed by the monster in a disturbingly grisly manner, with the difference being Adam was possessed beforehand prior to offering himself to the Mind Flayer.

Fun fact: Frank Darabont, who’s also served as writer and director for The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Mist (all based on Stephen King’s works) and the AMC show The Walking Dead, was a screenwriter for this movie. I bring this up because he’s set to come out of retirement to direct two episodes for the final season of Stranger Things. I’m excited to see what he brings to the show.

As for The Fly (1986), the remake deals with scientist Seth Brundle (played by Jeff Goldblum) whose work with telepods goes awry when he accidentally merges with a fly in one experiment, resulting in a slow decay as his human body transforms into a grotesque fly-like monster. I see analogies with how Bruce and Tom become the Flayed monster at the hospital, as well as the other Flayed assembling and merging into the Meat Flayer due to the chemicals they ate wrecking their systems and creating biomass for the Meat Flayer to build up its massive form with.

The remake of The Fly has been given subtle nods to before in previous seasons (Joyce’s costume design in season 1 was based on Seth’s love interest, Veronica “Ronnie” Quaife, and the outfits she wore), but this season is where the movie parallels work better when it comes the theme of body horror and the grisly transformations of humans into fleshy abominations. The Fly was also directed by David Cronenberg, whose films (including Rabid and Videodrome) served as inspiration for season 3, helping to strengthen that theme.

I wish the Griswold Family dynamic in this episode had been half as interesting as the fleshy monsters and amazing special effects because, once again, the conversations the characters had weren’t nearly as engaging. It’s the same problem from “The Case of the Missing Lifeguard” and “The Flayed.” The group is just regurgitating information the audience already knows, while also indulging in petty arguments on the side, and it’s just repetitive and dull at this point. I shouldn’t want to be rooting for the Mind Flayer and its possessed victims to come in and cause havoc just to keep invested. In an odd way, it’s the opposite problem I have with the Scoops Troop arc: I’m more invested in the character dynamics of Steve, Robin, Dustin, and Erica compared to the mythology involving the Russians. Meanwhile, with the Griswold Family arc, I’m more invested in the Upside Down mythology and couldn’t care less about the exchanges these characters are having.

Speaking of which, this is the episode where my patience for the constant arguments between Max and Mike finally evaporated. I didn’t like their conflict in season 2, but I was able to tolerate it at the time because the way it was presented wasn’t aggravating: Max’s abrasive personality due to her abusive upbringing clashing with her desire to be a member of the Party vs Mike’s hostility over seeing Max as a replacement for El’s memory, combined with the grief over El’s supposed death which he was still dealing with. Mike and Max were at odds back then, but the end of season 2 hinted that their “friendship” was going to improve once those roadblocks were cleared up and they got to know each other better.

Sadly, season 3 proved me wrong on that count. Given the very limited time Mike and Max had together in season 4 (which was only one episode), and how season 5 indicates Max is still in her coma, it’s seriously questionable if we’re ever going to get any positive interactions between Max and Mike that don’t involve them fighting. It makes it hard to buy into the idea these two are friends when most of their scenes on the show have been them at each other’s throats.

It doesn’t help that the way this conflict was set up to make Mike look possessive of El and jealous of her spending time with others besides himself is at odds with how this all started. Contrary to what Max claims is the reason El dumped him, the situation was kickstarted by Mike’s idiotic decision to lie to El about not wanting to see her due to Hopper threatening him, and then continuing to lie when she later confronted Mike at the mall about it. This wasn’t him blowing her off because he was bored of her, or because he wanted to dictate how she did or didn’t do things.

And I know the show tries to frame Mike’s attitude about El and Max hanging out with each other as them “conspiring” against him, but that isn’t an entirely invalid claim. Aside from them trash-talking Mike on the side, Max is the one who jumped to conclusions about Mike’s motivations in “The Mall Rats” without knowing the full context behind them. And while she may not have forced El to spy on Mike, Lucas, and Will, she certainly didn’t make any effort to dissuade her, or point out how creepy that would be if the situation was reversed and Mike had the ability to spy on the girls at any given time. That’s something I wish Mike had pointed out instead of his hypothetical toilet scenario.

To be clear: I don’t object to Max’s claims that El is her own person and can decide what her limits and choices are without Mike fretting over her. I object to the contrived way the show got to this point, and how inorganic and one-sided the argument comes off as a result.

Also, what I wouldn’t have given for Max to be in Lenora during season 4, see El bash Angela’s face in at Rink-O-Mania, and then have her dismiss the idea of Angela getting brain damage to Angela’s face the same way she dismisses brain damage as a real thing here in her argument with Mike. That would have been golden.

Adding on to this, for as much as the characters act surprised over Mike’s fears of losing El again, I wasn’t shocked by that, and I didn’t understand why they were either. It’s why he had been milking as much time as possible with El since she came back (to the point of annoying Hopper). It’s also why he went into a year-long depression between seasons 1 and 2 when she was presumed dead. Even his declaration that he loves El shouldn’t have taken them aback (though Lucas was the only one who didn’t look fazed by that revelation). Mike’s demonstrated his love before through his actions (like fighting back against Flayed Billy in “The Sauna Test” when he was strangling El), and not just with El either. Remember when he was prepared to walk off a cliff in “The Monster” to save Dustin’s life? Or his verbal assurance that Dustin was still his friend despite Dustin’s insecurities over how Mike had known Lucas longer? Or the lengths he went to for Will in the first two seasons? Contrary to how some fans (and even the show) have depicted Mike, this isn’t like Mike is incapable of expressing his feelings. Nor is it the first time up to this point that he has done so.

I’ll talk about El’s foray into Billy’s mind in a separate section, but I was interested in the layout of how El travels through other people’s memories as a passerby, and how there are specific memories that surface in the process. Terry’s memories in season 2 were ones on a repeated loop that she had been holding onto following Brenner frying her brain so she could show El one day what happened to her, and encourage El to find Kali.

(Side Note: If Mike and the others know about El’s mom, does that also mean they know about Kali? Did El tell them about her?)

In both seasons 3 and 4, El goes into Billy and Max’s minds where they both have a key memory tied to their identities that acts as a nexus point to all the other memories in their minds. For Billy, it’s him surfing as a little boy on the beach while his mom cheers him on. For Max, it’s her skateboarding in San Diego. In the latter case, it isn’t a wholly positive memory since she gets made fun of by a bully, but she proceeds to brush him off because she loves skateboarding and won’t let others dissuade her from that. It’s a memory tied to her identity: The girl who persevered through injuries and rejected gender norms of how girls were supposed to act in favor of what she wanted to do. In Billy’s case, the memory was his innocent self before Neil’s corrupting influence (and desire to mold Billy into what he believed Billy should be) took over. In both the positive memory of his mother, and the negative memories of his father, there is a constant: Billy wanting their approval and acting in a way to get that. Whether it was surfing the waves to make his mom smile, or becoming the toxic bully who refuses to show any weakness to please his abusive father. Compared to later in his life, where Billy has long stopped trying to get his father’s approval (because he knows nothing will ever be satisfying enough for Neil) but has now equated respect with being feared, we see how that poisonous approval from others came at a steep price: He has become his father, and is worse off because of it. Max certainly shares the same issues regarding self-esteem, but that had less to do with craving other people’s approval the way Billy does, as opposed to guilt over circumstances in her life (like Billy’s eventual death) which haunt her and make her question if she’s a good person.

Then there’s the storm clouds with red thunder that El sees in both memories, signifying that Vecna or the Mind Flayer are nearby. Like I pointed out with Bruce and Tom earlier, the way this storm occurs during some of the worst memories in Billy’s life suggests the Mind Flayer feeds on the emotional negativity of those memories to empower itself, and even forces the host (Billy) to relive them as a means of keeping them down while tapping into the worst aspects of the host’s personalities (i.e. Billy’s rage, Bruce and Tom’s misogyny, etc) to weaponize against its enemies. It’s a lot like what Vecna does to Max in “The Piggyback” when he brings up memories of Billy trapped in the sauna, and begins to pervert the one positive memory Max has of the Snow Ball to break her. Her guilt is his power.

All through this, the implication is the host is aware of everything that’s going on, but is powerless to do anything about it. We see that with El’s vision of Heather in the Void during “The Case of the Missing Lifeguard,” and it makes a return here when Billy is used as a mouthpiece by the Mind Flayer to tell her he’s planning to annihilate everyone. If you look closely, you can see a tear from Billy, highlighting the part of him submerged under the Mind Flayer’s influence that’s desperately trying to break free.

For all my dislike towards Billy, I’ll give credit that this scene is unsettling and effective. So is the final moment when all the Flayed gather under Brimborn Steel works to become one with the Meat Flayer. It isn’t just the grotesque body horror that’s scary, but the idea that everyone possessed there is still alive and conscious as they’re assimilated into the monster. They know what’s happening, but there’s nothing they can do about it.

I think back to that quote from David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (which I analyzed in my review of “The Mall Rats”): “Long live the New Flesh.” In the context of the movie, it was centered around the debate over whether the malignant tumors created from the Videodrome signals were part of an evolutionary process in humans to a different plane of reality, or if these were simply delusions. Here, that quote applies specifically to the Mind Flayer alone, and how the bodies of its hosts are being unwillingly offered so it can build up its Meat Flayer form. It’s evolution and expansion come at the cost of everyone else. Long live the New Flesh, indeed.

Part 5: Billy

I’m doing a separate section for Billy because (as I said way back in my “Trick or Treat, Freak” review) while I’m willing to analyze Billy from a story standpoint, that doesn’t cancel out my personal outlook on the character due to real life experiences on my part dealing with people who behave like him. And in the case of how his arc played out, there is a major aspect in this episode I had an issue with, which colors how I view Billy’s death and last-minute “redemption.”

To explain what I mean, it’s necessary to talk about another show I referenced earlier (i.e. True Blood) which did a similar thing with how certain flashbacks tied to a character were framed in order to influence the audience to accept a certain direction the writers planned to go with said character. Fair warning: This will go into SPOILERS for the last season of True Blood.

In True Blood, one of the main protagonists who dominated most of the central storylines was Bill Compton, a former Confederate soldier turned vampire who was initially introduced as attempting to integrate into human society with other vampires who’d “come out of the coffin” and made their existence known to the human population. While he was originally presented as a mainstreamer (i.e. someone who drank a synthetic beverage known as True Blood and didn’t feed on humans) who claimed to value human life, the show gradually revealed his darker, manipulative side, as well as his less-than-stellar history when it came to his treatment of humans and anyone else he deemed inferior to himself (including other vampires). Over the course of the show, Bill’s actions and behavior got increasingly worse as he committed heinous crimes (terrorism, forced prostitution, human trafficking, etc), all while fully understanding how morally wrong his choices were, but proceeding to make excuses/justifications anyways. To say Bill was a controversial character on True Blood is an understatement: He is a prime example of what happens when the writers TELL you a character’s actions are sympathetic while SHOWING you the opposite. The number of times True Blood and its writers loved to preach about Bill being a good person with noble intentions while they portrayed him as a deceitful, abusive asshole is too many to count. The cognitive dissonance was stunning.

Anyways, during the final season of that show, in an attempt to make Bill sympathetic to the audience again, the writers not only did a complete 180 on his villainous behavior from past seasons by whitewashing/downplaying the worst of his crimes, but proceeded to give him a poorly written redemption arc that relied heavily on random flashbacks to Bill’s past life as a human. The end goal was to make the audience feel sorry for him so that we’d be devastated when his “redemptive death” (and I say that term loosely) occurred. It was bad enough True Blood tried to gloss over the worst of Bill’s sins, or had him get back together with the love interest he’d used and abused during the past 6 seasons (all while presenting their relationship as romantic), but the biggest kicker had to do with how the flashbacks retconned important details about Bill’s human life which had been established in previous seasons. For instance, Bill went from fighting on behalf of the Confederacy during the Civil War because he was “uneducated” and knew “little of the political or ideological conflicts that had led to this point” (his words from season 1, not mine), to suddenly being “educated” and getting involved with the politics of the Civil War. This included preaching to a bunch of Pro-Confederate and Pro-Slave Southerners about how succeeding from the Union was a “lost cause” (which predictably gets him kicked out) and later takes part in an underground railroad (in broad daylight) that also ends in failure when he’s caught. None of this had ever been mentioned, referenced, or implied in previous seasons.

Granted, the writing for season 7 was embarrassing to begin with (so many plot-holes and Fridging of recurring characters for shock value), but the blatant attempts at retconning to try and squeeze condolences out of the audience for a character who’d pissed away any goodwill and long overstayed his welcome was just tasteless. It was a desperate attempt to make Bill appealing again because the writers were unable to erase the reasons for why he had become unlikable over multiple seasons. Unsurprisingly, for many True Blood fans, this didn’t work, and just came off as emotionally manipulative.

I’ll say this in Stranger Things defense: For all its flaws, the show never tried to present Billy as a good person despite the terrible things he did (that would be his stans who engaged in that), and the flashbacks to his past life in this episode weren’t retcons designed to make Billy look better, nor did they come in contradiction to information presented about Billy beforehand. If anything, there’s something to be said about how the Duffer Brothers handled Billy’s death: They struck a good balance between showing the kind of person Billy could have been (as we see during the final moments of his life when he protects El from the Meat Flayer) while acknowledging that he was still an abuser at the end of the day (with his treatment of Max leaving a negative impact on her mental health) and that his death doesn’t wash his sins away.

Despite that though, my issue with the flashbacks for Billy is the same one I had with the flashbacks for Bill in True Blood’s final season: They are specifically tailored to milk sympathy for an unsympathetic and controversial character after several seasons of showing said character at their absolute worst. In Bill’s case, his “redemption” was centered on sweeping his vile actions under the rug while making sure he got everything he wanted (regardless of whether he truly deserved it) before his death. With Billy, the writers were attempting to endear Billy to the audience after repeatedly emphasizing in past episodes how much of a repulsive sleaze he was.

This is another example of one of the Franchise Original Sins when it comes to the way they wrote Billy. I was scathing in my review of “The Mind Flayer” about the lack of redeeming qualities established with Billy’s character during season 2, and the reliance on that scene with Neil and Susan to get us to feel bad for him, but I was able to roll with it at the time because the purpose of that scene was to EXPLAIN why Billy acted the way he did without making excuses for his behavior. At the end of the day, Billy was still depicted as a terrible person, and the episode following that when he threatened Lucas and viciously beat up Steve only reinforced that. As I said before, the fandom chose to make excuses and downplay/whitewash the worst of Billy’s qualities. Not the Duffer Brothers.

Season 3, on the other hand, is a lot more problematic with its flashbacks to Billy’s past because it’s no longer about explaining Billy’s behavior anymore; they’re trying to set him up for a believable last-minute redemption arc before his inevitable death. The problem, however, is the Duffer Brothers are stuck milking the abusive dad angle down to its teats for that effect because it’s the only thing Billy has going for him. He has no other established redeeming qualities to fall back on.

The funny thing is, in the years since Stranger Things first premiered, there have been characters arcs like Billy’s which not only were an improvement, but also managed to make the character in those shows gradually likeable while redeeming them in a way that was earned. Jamie Tartt from Ted Lasso is a great example. Like Billy, Jamie was originally was introduced on the AFC Richmond team as a bully to the other characters, with a huge ego, belittling attitude, and sad backstory regarding his abusive father to explain the worst of his behavior. Unlike with Billy though, Ted Lasso wasn’t just reliant on Jamie’s backstory to get the audience to sympathize with him. He had to actually put in the effort to be a better person. And it wasn’t easy either. Jamie ended up burning a lot of bridges before he got some much-needed humility knocked into him, and when he finally did return to Richmond in season 2 (courtesy of Ted), he was NOT welcomed back with open arms by the team because of his past behavior. He had to do some serious penance to show everyone he truly changed (such as working to uplift his teammates instead of putting them down, or joining Sam’s Dubai Air protest because he recognized it was important to Sam and wanted to make amends for previously being awful towards him), all while trying to shake off the negative influence of his father. It also helps that Jamie was given several Pet the Dog moments in season 1 to make his eventual redemption credible: His kindness towards Ted’s son, Henry (which carried over into later seasons). Jamie coming to the team bonfire on behalf of Dani despite Dani competing for Jamie’s spot on the team. Even Jamie’s decision to take Ted’s advice and let someone else score the goal in the season 1 finale as opposed to hogging the spotlight for himself. Jamie’s character didn’t rely solely on his backstory with his abusive father for his redemption to work.

This even applies to Steve in Stranger Things season 1: We’ve never gotten much details about Steve’s relationship with his dad beyond the idea that the two of them never truly got along, but it doesn’t matter because Steve’s redemption wasn’t contingent on guilt-tripping the audience into feeling bad for him over that. It was contingent on Steve deciding whether he was going to continue letting his own insecurities, the toxic influences of his former friends, and the thrill of popularity continue to dominate his behavior. The show had hinted there was a decent person underneath, and that he was a lot more uncomfortable with the mean-spirited cruelty of Tommy and Carol than he let on (with Steve gradually losing patience with them over that), but he’s the one who ultimately had to make the choice to improve as a person, regardless of the negative influences in his life. And he did. It cost him his popularity and his crown (something Billy was eager to swoop in and scoop up for himself), but he’s a lot better off compared to how he started in season 1.

By contrast, Billy doesn't have the kind of personal growth that Jamie and Steve do. He starts out as a vicious bully, and continues to be one well up to the point the Mind Flayer possesses him. The Duffer Brothers had an opportunity in the season 3 premiere to demonstrate Billy was working to improve as a person if that’s was what they were aiming for, but instead they wrote Billy fat-shaming a kid at the pool and nearly hooking up with a married woman. All of that infers they weren’t interested in giving Billy long-term character development the same way they did with Steve on the show. The result is they're stuck with these flashbacks of Billy’s childhood to pull at the heartstrings. It’s the same thing they did with Bill Compton’s flashbacks to his previous human life in True Blood season 7, with the difference being the writers for that show botched the character badly enough that they were working overtime to do damage control for him.

In both Bill and Billy’s cases, my reaction is the same: Even if they started out decent at some point (Billy as a kid vs Bill as a human), it doesn’t cancel out the horrible things they’ve done since then. Billy became an expy of his toxic father and was willing to annihilate anyone who crossed his path, and Bill indulged in numerous morally-bankrupt vices while spending the first five seasons building a political career on the bloody remains of his victims. Trying to highlight how they may have been in the past doesn’t make their repulsive behavior in the present any more palatable. It’s the same way I feel about Henry/One/Vecna: I pity what happened to him as a kid in The First Shadow, as well as the negative influences in his life that led him to becoming a monster, but it doesn’t excuse the lives he has destroyed since then, or what he’s currently doing on the show. A sympathetic backstory can only get a character so far. If they’re being a terrible person, then they’re being a terrible person. There’s no way around that.

Then there's the issue of Billy's mom. Aside from the fact that this is her only episode before she disappears and we never see her again, we don't really get the chance to know her well enough as a person to form any kind of emotional connection to her. Like Neil, she is a flat character. One could even go for the stereotypical characterization of her being the Angel in Billy’s life (dressed in white on the beach) to contrast Neil as the Devil.

It’s a related issue I took with Bill’s human wife, Caroline: She was only there in service of Bill’s arc, and otherwise wasn’t fully fleshed-out. It’s a classic example of a female character (mother, wife, etc) being used to prop up the male characters while they act as their morality chains before the story casts them aside once they’re no longer relevant. People might say there’s an argument to be had over whether this also applies to Patty Newby in The First Shadow given her relationship to Henry/One/Vecna. The difference though is The First Shadow expanded past that with how they wrote Patty’s character: They gave Patty an arc of her own where she was dealing with bigotry in 1950s Hawkins while the play also explored her personal interests (like her passion for singing, and wanting to meet her biological mom) and delved into the relationships she had with other characters outside of Henry/One/Vecna (like her adoptive sibling relationship with Bob Newby, as well as her connection to Principal Newby). Billy’s mom, on the other hand, is given nothing except her ties to Billy and her dissolving relationship with Neil before she vanishes from the story. Hell, she doesn't even have a name given to her. That's how underdeveloped she is.

I recall a few years ago when season 3 aired that Billy’s mom got viciously blamed by certain fans for “abandoning” Billy to Neil. We don’t really get the full context of what happened from the brief visions El sees, but given the number of abusive men in real life who’ve resorted to dirty tactics to keep control, I would not be surprised if Neil used every maneuver in the book (no matter how underhanded) to make sure he had custody of Billy and prevent his mom from ever seeing him again. It’s ambiguous in the flashbacks if Neil’s accusations of Billy’s mom cheating on him were real, or just Neil making baseless claims (none of which remotely excuses the abuse Neil inflicted on her and Billy), but if he was able to use that as a reason to get sole custody of Billy, I wouldn’t be shocked. It also wouldn’t be the last time he did something like this either. Runaway Max revealed that once Neil inserted himself into Susan and Max’s life, he worked to ensure that Max was limited from seeing her biological dad. That ended up becoming permanent once Neil and Susan forced Billy and Max to move to Hawkins. In case the flashbacks in this episode didn’t convey it clearly, Neil was a monster.

(Side Note: Out of all the people who end up possessed by the Mind Flayer, I’ve always wondered how Neil avoided that fate, given Billy was patient zero. If they went after Heather’s parents once Heather was possessed, then one would think they would’ve also targeted both Neil and Susan.)

I’ve mentioned before that I foresaw Billy’s death early on, which was one of many reasons I had zero investment in his character, but the other reasons had to do with how deeply unlikable he was. I get he has a backstory that demonstrates why he became the person he did, but it still doesn’t make his abusive treatment of others excusable, nor does it make me sympathize with his cruelty and willingness to tear other people down to make himself feel better. I’m reminded of that scene from The Breakfast Club when Bender (Judd Nelson) angrily calls out Claire (Molly Ringwald) for admitting she’d snub the others at school if they met again despite knowing how shitty that is to do to someone. That’s exactly the same sentiment I feel towards Billy: This isn’t like he doesn’t understand how his sadism and bullying hurts others. He does. He’s been through that enough times with his father to know how it feels to be on the receiving end of that. He just doesn’t care, and has decided that because he must put up with it, that means everyone else can be subjected to it as well despite knowing how wrong that is to inflict on someone else.

It doesn’t help seeing Billy stans in the past who’ve ironically bullied and harassed people that dared to express these reasons for disliking Billy (talk about channeling the very behavior the show was preaching against 🙄). I talked about some of them in my review of “The Mind Flayer,” including people like mai-the-crow who personally picked fights with fans who had issues with Billy, and seemed to care more about the trauma of fictional characters over the experiences of people in real life who’ve had to deal with individuals like Billy. This is also that same person I called out in that review when they made that dismissive ableist comment towards El (way before Angela pulled that bigotry on the show), which only makes their hypocrisy look worse. There are also other idiots who’ve purposefully picked fights with people, and resorted to making up crap like this.

It’s a big reason I’ve blocked Billy stans: I don’t have the stomach anymore to deal with fans who pull this, and it still doesn’t change my opinion on Billy. The dude was an abusive asshole, and no amount of dredging up his backstory makes his behavior okay.

Like, I’ve said, I’ve encountered plenty of people who behave like Billy, both on social media and off it. The kind of people who use their emotions to annihilate others they have a problem with. The ones who treat individuals as either their personal punching bags, or else as collateral damage to their rage. The ones who cruelly and purposefully tear into others, to make them feel small so they can build themselves up and compensate for their own insecurities. The ones who, at the end of the day, do not give a damn about the negativity they inflict while they themselves feel free to project their own issues onto everyone else with zero self-awareness.

Reddit has plenty of people who behave like that: u/Daze_Confuse (who got reprimanded by moderators on different subreddits before their account was permanently suspended), u/NotKatieCase (who ended up deleting her account after getting called out multiple times by other Redditors who were sick of her constant annoying need to be the smartest person on any given subreddit, and the childish temper-tantrums she threw at people who disagreed with her takes), u/I-fuc-yo-mudda (someone with two accounts who was a right-winged misogynistic suicide-baiting incel who had nothing of value to contribute except spewing toxicity everywhere before finally pissing off to God knows where). I could go on.

Same goes for Tumblr users on here who’ve come and gone over the years. Whether it’s those who’ve rudely barged into other people’s inboxes guns-blazing because they read posts in bad-faith (amiiboacid), or who’ve gone out of their way to cruelly put down others out of a misplaced and warped sense of self-righteousness and moral superiority (whenmagicfilledtheair, kanelia, heritageposts, falldeere, comrade-emma, etc).

Then there are those who pull unhinged shit like this.

In this individual’s case, I was unaware this person had threatened to doxx another user until I saw this post from another mutual calling them out on it. Had I known beforehand, not only would I have never interacted with the individual to begin with, I would have immediately blocked them without a second thought. Talk about unacceptable on so many levels. That’s not even getting into some of the other ways they've behaved, which other users have called them out on, or how they feel entitled to viciously lash out and accuse people of exposing them to negativity while they purposefully and repeatedly project their own negativity onto others, or picking fights with fellow mutuals to the point it comes off like they’re looking for a reason to be offended.

I could list other examples since social media is brimming with creeps like these. My point though is, in real life, people like Billy are AWFUL to deal with. They are both an emotional and mental (and in some cases, financial) drain. Because they will not stop with their behavior, they either proceed to drag others down with them, or eventually self-destruct as they continue to burn bridges.

All of this shapes my perspective on how I view characters like Billy, and even Angela: No longer does it work anymore to present loathsome individuals like this, and then try to guilt-trip the audience into feeling bad for them with a sob story (Billy) or when they face horrific consequences for their behavior (Angela). I get both Billy and Angela are damaged, but this show has never been about romanticizing damaged people who make everyone else around them miserable. If I wanted that, I’ll go read Wuthering Heights or watch the anime Hell Girl. Stranger Things is about people who make the choice to still be kind to others despite being treated badly, who go out of their way to improve and be better versions of themselves, and who are heroes that go unthanked and unrecognized for their contributions outside of their group. I see enough people in real life who behave like Billy and Angela while making zero effort to try and change for the better, and it’s exhausting having to deal with their bullshit. The result is my sympathy for people like that has long since evaporated. Doubly so for people who want to excuse and enable that kind of toxic behavior.

Part 6: Song Choices

First song we hear in this episode is “Stand Up and Meet Your Brother” by Possum Rivers. This plays when the 4th of July Festival is being set up by Mayor Kline, and Grigori meets him there.

The song’s lyrics are meant to convey a sense of coming together (“Reach out and take his hand. Help him understand”) (“Oh Lord, you gotta help us build a brotherhood”) (“We must sing together”), much like how Mayor Kline is presenting the 4th of July Festival as a fun community event to unite Hawkins. Unfortunately, this is all about appearances, and Mayor Kline couldn’t care less about the community (which is emphasized with the nasty way he treats the Hot Dog vendor), making this song’s placement in the scene deliberately ironic.

Next musical bit is instrumental, but comes from the movie Midnight Run, which I cited in the previous review as inspiration for season 3: “The Wild Ride” by Danny Elfman. This plays when Hopper finally explodes at Alexei, and throws him out of Murray’s house to call Alexei’s bluff over refusing to cooperate with them.

The music starts out slow before gradually escalating into a rapid tempo. The moment Hopper blows up at Alexei is when you can hear the high-speed part, showcasing how Hopper’s patience is finally at an end and he won’t tolerate Alexei’s petulant behavior anymore.

Following that, we have another instrumental music piece from Midnight Run: “Package Deal” by Danny Elfman. This plays when Hopper explains to a shocked Joyce and Murray why he let Alexei go, and expects him to come back soon.

The title of the musical piece itself is fitting for Alexei’s current relationship with Joyce, Murray, and Hopper: They are all a packaged deal at this point, and don’t have the option of splitting up if they want to survive. It parallels the situation between Jack Walsh and The Duke from that film: They aren’t thrilled with each other, but are forced to suck it up and work together to stay ahead of everyone who’s hunting them.

Immediately after that scene, the song “Neutron Dance” by The Pointed Sisters can be heard when Alexei starts the car and makes it to Murray’s gate before he stops and realizes he can’t leave unless he wants Grigori to track him down and kill him.

For a song whose tempo is upbeat, the lyrics convey a desperate situation on the singer’s part: (“I don't want to take it anymore. I'll just stay here locked behind the door. Just no time to stop and get away. 'Cause I work so hard to make it every day”) (“There's no money falling from the sky. 'Cause a man took my heart and robbed me blind. Someone stole my brand new Chevrolet. And the rent is due, I got no place to stay”). Everything is going wrong in this person’s life, but the message (according to Allee Willis, the songwriter) is that despite the circumstances, you gotta push through and work to change your life. Personal responsibility. That is the lesson Alexei is forced to learn the hard way despite the bad situation he’s in: Hopper is not going to continue to pamper him, and Alexei either needs to change his attitude and start contributing to the group (which he thankfully does) or risk trying to survive Grigori and the other Russians who want him dead. Hopper wasn’t kidding when he said Alexei would come back with a newfound sense of humility.

The next instrumental musical bit also comes from Midnight Run, and was even heard in the previous episode: “Stairway Chase” by Danny Elfman. This plays when Joyce makes the call for military backup to storm the Russian Gate.

I pointed out in the previous review how this musical piece is heard when Hopper uses unethical means to get Todd’s car so he, Joyce, and Alexei can evade Grigori. Here, it’s Joyce shouting at the man on the other end of the line to convey the urgency of their situation, all while making it clear to Hopper and Murray that she plans to act now and won’t wait for backup. It’s a little like Jack Walsh’s character from Midnight Run, who recognizes there are certain people he and The Duke can’t depend on, leading him to improvise and stay one step ahead.

Finally, we have the music from "Satyagraha (Highlights): Act II, Tagore, Scene 1 - Confrontation and Rescue (1896)" by Phillip Glass. This plays when the Mind Flayer (through Billy) reveals its plans to hunt El and her friends down before annihilating everyone else. This music continues till the end of the episode, and can be heard as the Flayed gather at Brimborn Steel Works to assimilate into the Meat Flayer.

The music comes from an opera by Phillip Glass called Satyragrha, which explores the activism of Mahatma Ghandi in South Africa when he and other Indians were campaigning on independence from British colonial rule, as well as to end the racial discrimination Indians like him faced from Europeans. To say this went over badly with Europeans who thrived on the oppression of those they deemed inferior to themselves is an understatement. The scene in question where this music plays involves Ghandi getting accosted by an angry mob who were pissed about him exposing how horrible conditions were for laborers in South Africa, as well as Ghandi’s intentions to bring back hundreds of Indian immigrants. The only reason Ghandi wasn’t killed by the mob is because Sarah Alexander, the wife of Durban Police Superintendent R.C. Alexander, was passing by the area when this happened, and shielded Ghandi with her umbrella while getting him to safety. All of this was based on historical events.

I’ve talked before about the theme of the “hive mind” on Stranger Things, and how it applies to situations outside of the Mind Flayer and the Upside Down. Like how Angela and the Rink-O-Mania crowd viciously bullied El because she was their designated scapegoat. Or how Jason and his basketball team whipped the residents of Hawkins into a witch hunt against the Hellfire Club since they were already the outcasts for enjoying a game that people mistakenly believed was tied to Satanism. Those examples were in my head when I saw the opera scene of the mob attacking Ghandi. The crowd’s movements are eerily coordinated, and their singing is an ominous chant sounding like a combination of laughing and seething rage. It’s the punishment of the individual for going against the majority, and seeking to destroy that individual in the process. In the context of the show, it’s all the Flayed gathering at the Mind Flayer’s direction with the intention of ending El. It wants revenge for its wounded pride, just like the mob does in the opera. El, however, doesn’t have to face the Meat Flayer alone, and has the help of her friends to combat it. And similar to Mrs. Alexander, who saves Ghandi’s life when she could have looked the other way, Billy will temporarily break free of the Mind Flayer’s control to do the same for El a few episodes from now.

No Funko Pop to end this review on, but there is a video of the opera Satyagrapha on Youtube if anyone wants to see it. If you’re looking for when that specific piece of music from the episode is performed, it’s between 55:30 and 1:15:52. Enjoy! :)

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