ALMOST EVERY PARTY MEMBER (AND OTHER CHARACTERS) HAVE GOTTEN THEIR OWN STRANGER THINGS BOOKS FROM THEIR OWN PERSPECTIVES???
DUSTIN, LUCAS, MAX, APPARENTLY NOW EL??? BUT I HAVEN'T READ THAT LAST ONE YET-
NOT ONLY THAT BUT THERE'S A HOPPER BOOK, AN EDDIE BOOK, A ROBIN BOOK, A TERRY FREAKING IVES BOOK
THE FRIGGIN RONANCE BOOK FROM NANCY'S PERSPECTIVE COMES OUT IN LESS THAN A MONTH
BUT NO BOOK FROM MIKE OR WILL'S PERSPECTIVES?
Gosh if there isn't one for each of them after the show ends I'll be so pissed...
Come on exploring Mike's internalized homophobia and yearning and Wills trauma desperation for childhood and 'unrequited' love from THEIR PERSPECTIVES would be so cool
Plus Mike is one of my favorite characters cause he's one of the most relatable to me and I want to be inside his head so bad...
the amount of times that max describes lucas’s eyes as “kind” in runaway max is actually so important to me. esp compared to the vivid descriptions we get of billy’s eyes being vacant and cold and bored. they are SO important to me duffers please let them have their happy ending
It contains a breakdown of his character that includes all the context provided by the book Runaway Max, a contextualization of what’s shown in the episodes, and a couple of personal inferences. If you have any questions, feel free to ask; if they’re addressed in the book or in another canonical source, I’ll let you know!
I should note that Billy is a bit more complicated than Eddie (I will post tomorrow), both because the book is not entirely about him or from his POV, and because chronologically events are referenced in a more scattered way.
This may be useful if you want to read "Why do you cry?", my fanfiction on Billy and Eddie "surviving" the canon event. [click here to read]
| Eddie | Billy |
From the book Runaway Max:
Max didn’t know Neil had a son; Neil vaguely mentioned Billy without even saying his name. Susan, on the other hand, not only knew about Billy but was aware of the violent, abusive dynamic even before agreeing to marry Neil. While they were still in California, Billy gave Max a cigarette to try; they were laughing and were relaxed. Susan caught them and intervened by yelling, but as soon as Neil stepped in the garage she threw the cigarette into her coffee and reassured him it was nothing. This happened before Max ever saw her stepfather raise his hands to Billy for the first time. Later in the book, Max says she would come to understand that Susan wasn’t afraid of him, but afraid for him. + The first time Max witnessed one of Neil’s beatings, even before it started, both Billy and Susan were frozen because they both knew what was about to happen, and there Max realized that Susan was not surprised because she was already aware.
At first Max adored Billy; the moment she saw him, her impression was that he looked like a movie star, and that he resembled his car, fast and hard-edged. Max even asked if he wanted to go to the bumper cars; Billy replied that he didn’t see why he should when he had a car, and then took Max for a “bitchin’ ride.”
The nickname “Mad Max” was given to her by Billy as a joke (not a mean one).
Neil started asserting himself as Max’s father almost immediately. Susan said she was thinking of signing Max up for summer camp; Max didn’t respond, and Neil told her to answer her mother when she spoke to her. Long story short, while they were still eating at a restaurant, Neil sent Max to wait in the car. Billy made an excuse to leave and went to the car as well, kept her company, and then told her that that man was horrible and definitely couldn’t be a father to her, let alone to him.
Billy’s psychological state worsened day by day. There was strong emphasis on his gaze being constantly blank, sleepy and absent, but alongside the dissociative state there was the fact that every instance of abuse clearly made him worse, to the point where even Susan and Neil were no longer sure they could contain him.
The break between Billy and Max happened because of Neil. The first time Max witnessed a beating, Susan eventually left the kitchen without urgency and without saying anything. Max didn’t know how to stop what was happening, so after the first two blows and a strike with the belt she screamed to stop it. Neil looked at Billy and told him he didn’t know he had raised a loser who needed a little girl to fight his battles for him, then went back to beating him with the belt until he was left on the floor, bruised and bleeding. That was when the idea formed in Billy’s mind that Max was an enemy.
Billy was constantly dissociated, but during physical abuse he became completely absent. When Neil hit him he did nothing; he didn’t speak, step back, scream, cry, or try to dodge. He stayed still, hoping it would end as quickly as possible.
Max tried to offer him help while he was on the ground, checking how he was and offering to get him some ice, but in that moment she saw only hatred in Billy’s eyes. Billy, unsurprisingly, refused the help and told her to go away.
My personal interpretation was that, beyond Neil’s words changing his perception of Max, there was also shame. Max had seen him in that state and had come to feel pity for him; for Billy, that represented a tear in his dignity. Part of that hatred came from the fact that Neil made it impossible for him to tolerate the idea of being seen as fragile, so the only method of self-defense was to show that he was not weak, fragile, or emotional.
One way he tried to erase that image from Max’s mind, in my opinion, was what became the reason they left California. While Max and one of her friends, Nate, were trying to build a ramp, a project they’d had in mind for a while, things escalated without becoming outright violent, until Nate stepped in and Billy, looking Max in the eyes, slowly broke his arm just to make a statement.
Because of this, as an aside, Neil didn’t beat him. They didn’t even talk about it, probably because Neil saw violence as virile and normal, something he considered healthier than, say, a man styling his hair with all the hairspray that Billy used.
Billy’s beatings were so normalized that they were treated almost casually. Another one that was mentioned, happened on the night of the season two party: he came home late and drunk, staggering. Max went to her room before things escalated, but she heard the noises, heard Neil yelling, and then Billy on the floor.
When these incidents were mentioned casually, they were referred to as “disciplining him.”
Girls and parties were his way of avoiding being at home, but Hawkins had few parties and the girls had curfews, which was why, as he spent more time at home, the abuse increased.
Billy was completely broken, and this wasn’t my wording, it was Max’s during a moment of reflection. He had been psychologically shattered to the point that in his head there was no longer himself, only Neil. Whatever Neil said became law for Billy; he acted directly in response to every comment, to the few words addressed to him, usually while he was being beaten. After the last abuse we were shown, the one in season two, Billy completely snapped.
From season two/three, with the context of Runaway:
Billy driving Max around to the arcades wasn’t because the family asked him to. Ever since they had arrived in Indiana, he had been the one taking her everywhere, and he had even been asked to stop by her school to make sure the paperwork was in order (like, five minutes before his classes started). As a bonus detail, Susan didn’t like Max going to the arcades, it was a thing between her and his father.
This started because Billy broke her skateboard, but it turned into a habit because theirs was the most dysfunctional household in the show, and Neil and Susan stopped acting as parents.
Billy didn’t hate Indiana on principle, but because it was gray, small, far from the ocean, static, and there was little to do, which, as mentioned in the book section, meant more time at home.
On the night of the Halloween party, they dumped Max on Billy and told him to take her trick-or-treating. He dropped her off after she asked to be let out, but didn’t stay with her, he went to Tina’s Halloween party instead. He was late picking her up, Max thought he wasn’t going to pick her up anymore and ended up going home alone. A few minutes later he came back too, completely drunk, lied about a flat tire and Neil, who was not having it, beat him.
“Plant your feet” was, even if it didn’t seem like it, genuine advice from Billy. That was how he usually endured a couple of blows before being thrown to the ground by his father. The scene with Steve in season two, before the fight, was meant to be an exact mirror of Billy behaving exactly like Neil.
For the scene with Lucas, where Billy saw him in the parking lot, Max provided the context that Neil had both forbidden talking about politics and forced the whole family to align with the conservative party, and that he had drilled into Billy the idea that there were people who didn’t belong to “our world,” referring to Black people and anyone who wasn’t Lutheran. It was one of many scenes showing that Billy had Neil in his head instead of himself, along with the season three flashbacks, the fight with Steve, and the other elements from the book mentioned above.
The equipment and weights used to be in the garage in California; in Indiana the garage was awful and small, so everything was kept inside the house. Since there was little to do, Billy spent part of his time at home, when Neil wasn’t around, lifting weights.
The day we saw him lifting weights while Max was fixing her skateboard was because Billy had run over it with his car. Max was trying to repair it with her backpack already packed and money taken from her mother, because she was preparing to run away and go live with her father.
The open shirt and cologne in his underwear were a Dacre thing, not something from the writers or from Brenna. It wasn’t related to Runaway, but I was looking at a file with all of Billy’s scenes while writing and didn’t want to forget it.
The moment Neil put his hands on him in season two was one of the very few times in Billy’s life when he tried to defend himself verbally, attempting to argue instead of just dissociating and mentally preparing for what came next. The first time this happened was when he came home drunk from the party.
It was also the only moment where we knew that, when he was alone, he cried. From Max’s point of view we never saw what happened afterward, and he seemed to remain completely dissociated until he was safe in his room. In the season two scene, for a brief instant, we saw him throw his keys and start crying while rubbing his face, and those were the only moments where he wasn’t absent.
As mentioned before, after that scene came Billy’s final psychological break. That was why, when Harrington gave him the signal that he could fight back, Max saw something snap in him that felt completely dangerous, as if she knew Billy wouldn’t have stopped that night until he killed him.
After the fight with Steve, Billy completely stopped talking at home. He and Max rarely even ran into each other, but he didn’t speak to anyone anymore. He hadn’t been speaking to Neil even before, same with Susan, and with Max, once the conflict reached its peak and stabilized, he stopped talking as well.
Things that weren’t explicit but could be inferred with some context:
Billy’s abuse was so normalized that no one was shocked by it anymore, and no one seemed to treat it as a shocking factor. Max herself started dissociating like her mother, even if she didn’t want to watch so she always made sure to not be in the same room. Making things worse was the fact that, beyond not knowing how to stop it, Billy refused help.
As already said but worth repeating, the break with Max happened in part because his father drilled into him the idea that weakness was a problem, that needing help was for the weak, that he had to be a man. The moment a thirteen-year-old girl reached out to him with pity, he felt completely humiliated and stripped of his masculinity.
The need to always appear virile and never weak, combined with being constantly dissociated and never fully lucid, was what made him unstable. He did things like burning the carcass of a cat just to show he was manly enough.
His friends, Sid and Wayne, seemed to be metaphors for the two sides of Billy’s character. Sid was chubby, decent, kinder, more caring, and stable, while Wayne was skinny with a weasel-like face, who not only encouraged chaos but did so by shouting things like “at least he’s man enough to do it.” Sid, unsurprisingly, eventually left.
The sauna scene was brutal because Billy wasn’t flayed yet. This was made clear because the moment the Mind Flayer was about to take possession of him, Will felt the tingling in his neck. There was so much going on that Billy’s mind could no longer create shields, and dissociation wasn’t enough. When he cried and said “I’ve done bad things” that was really him, or rather, the Billy who hadn’t existed for a long time. That was when he asked for help, and Max clung to the door trying to reassure him, because for the first time he wasn’t clouded by how he was supposed to appear or by Neil’s words, and he was genuinely asking for help.
That was why, in season four, Max remembered that scene during Vecna’s ‘nightmares’. Max hated him in part, but she was also angry at Susan for choosing that fate both for herself and for her daughter. Max knew and admitted that Billy was dangerous and had become a monster because he was an extension of his father.
When Max saw him in the sauna, it was as if she was back in that kitchen, seeing something ugly and wrong but not knowing how to stop it or how to actively help Billy. This would haunt her forever, because she would always feel guilty for not having been able to intervene.
The final scene where El stroked his face and he cried was even more devastating with the added context that, between a father who only looked at him to beat him, Billy spending his days either alone in his room with music blasting or in near-total silence, and Neil (again) destroying his emotional sphere by filling his head with ideas about fragility, vulnerability, and how wrong emotions were, making for him impossible to have a healthy relationship, Billy hadn’t been touched with affection for roughly ten years.
I'm talking about who ever blurts out, "Where are they?!"
The first, whispered version sounds like plausibly Max/Sadie Sink's voice (maybe overlaid, like when we hear El breathing in the NINA-tank). Or the whisper could also sound like Nancy’s voice.
But the louder, "where are they?!" sounds like a grown-ass woman to me.
Okay, maybe it could be a grown-up version of Alice, Sara Hopper, or even Patty. Idk.
The S2 script attributes both lines to Max, though:
Hm...
Whoever it is, I still think there's some clues about who Max is / is connected to in these two scenes.
I finished reading Runaway Max by Brenna Yovanoff.
The book is set before and during season two. We get more insight into what Max’s home life was like in California before her mom married Neil Hargrove.
Some spoilers under the cut.
Since the book takes place during season 2 it was interesting getting Max’s perspective on certain moments and her views of certain characters.
When she meets Steve for the first time in the junkyard she expects him to be at worst mean and at best dismissive, because Billy is her only example of older teenage boys. Instead, he just starts fortifying the bus and asks if she’s going to give him a hand.
And later when the demodogs attack them in the junkyard she observes this about Steve:
I think there’s enough evidence in this book to headcanon that Max at least on a subconscious level wishes Steve were her brother. Especially within this bit of detail in her observation of Dustin at the Snowball Dance.
He looked ridiculous, but comforting and familiar too.
Max may not have put it together that Dustin was styling his hair like Steve Harrington’s, but we do and so can conclude that she finds it familiar and comforting because it reminds her of Steve.
One last point about Max that’s revealed is her difficulty with making friends with girls and that context makes her friendship with El all the more special.
Stranger Things (2x02): “Trick or Treat, Freak” Review
If you haven't yet, be sure to check out my other 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
Stranger Things Play:
Stranger Things The First Shadow
It’s March 22nd, 2025. Happy Birthday Will! 🥳🎂🍾 I wish it was under better circumstances.
Assuming Will survives season 5 and lives a happy life once the show ends, he will officially be 54 years old as of today. Hopefully, if the Duffer Brothers are smart, they’ll write in a scene for season 5 with the characters celebrating Will’s birthday after the whole Birthdaygate fiasco from season 4.
In regards to this episode, Halloween has always been a mixed bag for me (no pun intended). I’ve had fun and memorable ones (like from last year) and I’ve had ones that were awful (like the year before that). A lot of it had to do with the people involved. There are those who get into the spirit of Halloween without being nasty or unkind, and know where the lines are between acceptable vs unacceptable behavior. And then there are the assholes who take Halloween as carte blanche to get away with as much shitty behavior as they want to (Billy, Tommy, the Zimmerman brothers who briefly harass Will in this episode, etc). The latter group takes away any fun with the holiday, and I’ve had my experiences with people like that. Sadly, Will, Jonathan, and Steve appear to be in the same boat as me in that regard, though I haven’t yet developed into Jonathan “I’m going as a guy who hates parties” Byers.
This episode does a great job capturing the good and bad aspects of Halloween, and contains some neat movie references via the costumes (Dracula, Flashdance, Footloose, Animal House, Risky Business, Friday the 13th, Ghostbusters, John Carpenter’s Halloween, The Karate Kid, etc). It also has creepy and unsettling imagery combined with humorous moments, just like how the spirit of Halloween is supposed to be FUNNY and SCARY at the same time.
More importantly: Rewatching, specifically with Vecna and the Mind Flayer in mind from season 4 and The First Shadow, puts certain moments from this episode in a different perspective. Considering that the Duffer Brothers were already planning for this show to span 4-5 seasons by the time season 2 was about to premiere, it’s a safe bet to say this was intentional on their part. Certain scenes and tidbits of information that were dropped may have seemed inconsequential when season 2 first aired, but arguably have more relevance when you factor in later seasons and the play. I would even go as far to say that they will likely have an impact in season 5 as well.
I know I haven’t warned people before in previous reviews, but I’m going to here: This review will be SPOILER HEAVY for The First Shadow, particularly in regards to Henry/One/Vecna, his connection to the Mind Flayer, and his parallels with certain characters. Some of this will be analysis, and some of this will contain speculations for season 5. You’ve been warned.
Part 1: Will’s connection to the Mind Flayer (and his parallels with Vecna)
I know I’m not the first fan who’s noted parallels between Vecna and Will. Both Noah Schnapp and Jamie Campbell Bower have also discussed the connection both characters share, including the idea that there’s unfinished business that will likely drive the conflict for most of season 5.
For now, let’s explore with what parallels have been presented: Both Will and Vecna have been described as “sensitive” by their parents (or at least Victor Creel thought his son was), both were outcasts, both have a love for drawing, both are unique individuals who feel oppressed by the attempts of society to mold them into something they are not, both have an attraction to someone in an era where their love for that person would be deemed “unacceptable” by the norms established as well as the prevalent bigotry in those decades (Will’s attraction to Mike in the 80s, and Henry/One/Vecna’s attraction to Patty Newby in the 50s), both of them have been to the Upside Down and encountered the Mind Flayer, and both have come back altered in some way.
In Henry’s case, The First Shadow reveals that, prior to moving to Hawkins, Henry lived in Rachel, Nevada. This was also the location where Brenner was heading the Nevada Experiment at the time, with the end goal of trying to recreate what happened to the USS Eldridge when it disappeared into the Upside Down in 1943. One day, Henry was playing in the caves when he encountered a rogue scientist from the Nevada Experiment who had stolen key technology from Brenner. This technology transported both Henry and the scientist into the Upside Down. The scientist was killed, but Henry was in the Upside Down for 12 hours where he saw various monsters and encountered the Mind Flayer. He was eventually able to return to this world, but following his trip to another dimension, his blood was altered (which is how he got his psionic abilities), and he had a connection to the Mind Flayer that would haunt him for the remainder of his life.
In my review for The First Shadow, I questioned the idea of whether Will’s blood was altered as well during his week in the Upside Down, due to his exposure to the Mind Flayer. Given the visions (or episodes) he was having BEFORE the Mind Flayer infected him with its black particles in the next episode, and the connection the two continue to share AFTER season 2, it would make sense if that was the case. The other question is whether Will has any psionic abilities like Henry had once he escaped the Upside Down. The whole reason Brenner was able to create “special kids” like El and Kali was because he used Henry’s altered blood to do so. Assuming Will’s blood has been altered as well, why hasn’t he shown any special abilities outside of his connection to the Mind Flayer and his “true sight” (as Mike calls it in the next episode)? Are those specific powers dormant for right now? Is the Mind Flayer using its connection to somehow suppress them? Or is the connection to the Mind Flayer just the extent of Will’s abilities, and he has no other powers beyond that?
It's interesting to see the Mind Flayer’s fixation on both Will and Henry, and how they compare and contrast with one another. Both kids get terrifying visions of the Mind Flayer and other hallucinations. In Will’s case, these visions come off more like it’s trying to scare him; to let Will know there’s no escape. The same can be said for Henry, with the difference being it was also corrupting Henry with these visions by chipping away at his personality and nudging him to embrace his negative emotions and the darker aspects of his powers. The Mind Flayer knew Henry’s personality flaws, insecurities, and fears, and it worked hard during the play to exploit them to full effect. Worst of all: It succeeded. There’s a BIG DIFFERENCE between the Henry Creel we meet in 1959, who was shy, awkward, and still had some kind of conscious underneath, vs the cold calculating sociopath we encounter at Hawkins Lab in 1979.
In Will’s case, while the visions are terrifying, they don’t seem to be designed to twist Will into becoming evil. In fact, at no point can I recall the Mind Flayer acting as the Devil on Will’s shoulder the same way it did with Henry in the play. God knows there are plenty of things the Mind Flayer could exploit in Will’s life, from the bullying Will’s experienced, to the fact he’s a gay teenager forced to suppress his identity in homophobic 80s Hawkins, to the fear that he’ll never be accepted for who he is, to the sheer amount of cruelty, stupidity, and unfairness that exists in the world that would overwhelm anyone (as we are seeing with certain individuals in today’s culture). Instead, it goes for brutal force in assaulting Will with its particles in the next episode. Like it has to strong-arm Will to get control of him instead of tempting or manipulating Will into committing vile acts with his own agency.
All of this begs the question as to why? I will talk more about Will’s possession story as it develops, but I don’t completely buy the idea that the Mind Flayer needed Will as a spy, especially when it had Vecna (who has the same ability to remote view as El does). It clearly wants Will for something, and I find it telling that both Will and Henry survived whereas others did not: The crew of the USS Eldridge in 1943 were slaughtered when the ship briefly transported to the Upside Down, with Brenner’s father later dying after he told his son what he experienced. The scientist who also got transported with Henry to the Upside Down perished, whereas Henry lived. Even in season 1, Will is really the only survivor of those who were taken by the Demogorgon. Barbara, the two hunters in the woods, and the two Hawkins Lab scientists were killed off almost immediately, as if the Mind Flayer had no real use for them, except either as Demogorgon food or to use their bodies to make future Demogorgons (as it did with Barbara).
In Henry’s case, the Mind Flayer was molding him to become a weapon it could use. Dustin wasn’t far off in suggesting Vecna was its “Five Star General.” I’m reminded of The Witch King of Angmar, or even Saruman from The Lord of the Rings: Both are dangerous individuals with great power who cause death and destruction across Middle Earth (with Saruman and Vecna even sharing the same trait of pettiness), but at the end of the day, they are merely puppets Sauron can use to further his agenda of enslaving the world. Vecna comes off the same way: For all his proclamations to El about remaking the world into something beautiful, these are delusions. He is merely a tool for the Mind Flayer, and the moment he is no longer useful is the moment the Mind Flayer will dispose of him.
Maybe that’s why Will got targeted: The Mind Flayer could be looking to replace Vecna by bringing in new blood, so to speak. Like what Emperor Palpatine tries to do in the original Star Wars trilogy with replacing Vader by tempting Luke to the Dark Side.
But that just brings me back to my original point: There is no temptation for Will like there was for Vecna. Part of what made Henry/One/Vecna’s descent into villainy so horrifying wasn’t just the Mind Flayer’s influence, but the fact Henry had choices through all of his tribulations. He wasn’t violently possessed by the Mind Flayer’s black particles the same way Will was in the next episode, or even Billy and the Flayed from season 3. Instead, it was a consistent degradation of Henry’s personality while the Mind Flayer played on his fears and insecurities to get Henry to commit vile acts and exercise his powers under the guise it would give him some kind of mastery over his life. Henry grew up resentful of being forced to “conform” to the 50s idea of normalcy while people in his life constantly treated him like he was broken. His powers, as frightening as they were to him at the time, were a liberation as much as a curse. A way for him to get some kind of control and push back against the oppressiveness he felt around him. However, at the end of the day, the Mind Flayer was still pulling the strings from behind-the-scenes, and Henry’s surrender to its influence not only cost him his agency, but also his freedom. He spent 20 years locked up in Hawkins Lab as Brenner’s prisoner, and getting banished to the Upside Down later didn’t truly free him: He just returned to the source of all his problems, and has gotten WORSE.
I wonder if the Mind Flayer realized it couldn’t engage in the slow corruption of Will like it did with Henry all those years ago (either because Will’s negative traits weren’t as severe as Henry’s, or it realized Will would be more resistant to that) and that’s why it violently assaulted Will with the black particles and forcibly tried to assimilate his consciousness into the hive mind. It also may have been experimenting since this is the first time it could possess another human with the black particles that was its form (which Henry/One/Vecna was responsible for giving it). If so, there’s a lot it didn’t factor in, like how maladaptive it would be to Earth’s environment and heat temperatures, or how its host could turn the tables on them. But like any scientist going through an experiment, it learned. And the next time it comes after Will (which I’m sure it’s going to do in season 5), it will try a different approach if it's smart.
Will admits to Mike that his visions come off like a View-Master caught between two slides, which I think works as an interesting metaphor not just for Will, but also for El and Vecna. All three characters are caught in-between two worlds (this world and the Upside Down) where they feel like they’re being pulled in both directions, yet simultaneously rejected by both worlds at the same time. The way each character reacts to this dilemma is telling: In Henry/One/Vecna’s case, he has completely abandoned his human origins and embraced the Upside Down as his true home (even as he continues to reside in a twisted version of the Creel House from his childhood). In El’s case, she’s veered back and forth between the two (though she hasn’t ever considered the Upside Down to be her home), and while she has found friends and a family, she still hasn’t found the sense of belonging that she craves in this world. In Will’s case, while he desires to remain rooted in this world, the Upside Down is working overtime to pull him in to its hive mind. The comic book The Other Side (which came out after season 2) plays with this idea when it features this hallucination Will has following his capture by the Demogorgon:
I’ve suggested this before in a previous review, but I wonder if Will and El’s arcs in season 5 will be about trying to find a reconciliation between the Upside Down and their world. I don’t believe the Mind Flayer or Vecna will survive past season 5 since they’ve been established as the root causes for the evil inflicted on the characters, but I also think an alternative to the complete annihilation of the Upside Down could be healing it, or fixing something within that is broken, allowing both Will and El to find peace. The core theme of this show centers on the characters accepting themselves for who they are, warts and all, and part of that acceptance involves finding a balance between the different worlds (both literal and metaphorical) that these characters come from. They could go the route of destruction, but thematically, I would argue it would be antithetical to the show’s message. That’s what Vecna is currently doing: He could never reconcile the part of his human self with the part of him formed in the Upside Down when he was transported there all those years ago. As a result of being torn apart by both worlds, he has settled on one (the Upside Down) as his identity while working to destroy this world and sever all his past ties to it. This is presented in the show as Vecna’s anger and self-hatred taking things to the extreme. If Will and El intend to take a different path from the one Vecna is on, they will have to go with an alternative beyond simple destruction. Nor can they just close the Gate again with the threat still there like they’ve done for the past few seasons. There’s a reckoning that needs to happen, one that will likely result in a permanent change to the world, its characters, and the Upside Down, but will ultimately be for the better.
Speaking of Will and El, a constant that I noticed in their stories this episode center around Mike: When both are in the Upside Down (El after her battle with the Demogorgon, and Will with his vision of the Mind Flayer), the first thing they do is call for Mike. In a way, Mike acts as an anchor for both characters. It’s Mike that wakes Will up from his vision (and may have even prevented the Mind Flayer from possessing Will in that moment), and it’s Mike’s house that El goes to once she crawls out of the Upside Down.
While this is heartwarming, it does make me worried for Mike in season 5. Putting aside how one of the episode titles for season 5 is “The Vanishing of ***** Wheeler” (with either Mike or Holly being likely candidates), I’ve suggested the theory that Vecna may come after Mike as a means of hurting both Will and El. I know fans will likely reject the idea of Mike being killed off (Although who knows? The Duffer Brothers could always surprise us.), but if Vecna is serious about breaking El and Will’s morale, targeting Mike would be high up on his list. Mike is their anchor, and if Vecna breaks that, it’s going to have devastating consequences for both Will and El.
Finally, in regards to Will and Mike’s interactions in this episode, I enjoyed them, even if the circumstances behind them were bittersweet. I took note in the last review about how Mike was giving Will the space he needed without being intrusive or infantilizing Will, and we see it pay off here after Mike takes Will to his place and Will finally opens up about what’s going on with him. Will knows Mike can’t do anything about his situation, but it’s nice to have someone who understands where he’s coming from without fretting or ringing their hands about his health. The same can be said when Mike opens about still missing El, and Will listens without any judgment or condescending suggestions to “get over it.” The Duffer Brothers admitted in Beyond Stranger Things that a key theme behind Mike and Will’s pairing this season was both characters were frozen from what happened the previous year, and were trying to lift each other up. Mike and Will have spent months feeling like they have no one to fall back on, which means they’re falling back on each other for support.
In a very loose way, Will and Mike’s dynamic reminds me of the dynamic between Marshall Teller and Simon Holmes from Eerie, Indiana. Both kids are in a town where weird and supernatural occurrences happen on a constant basis (to the point it’s hard to trust anyone or anything) and they both have to rely on each other for trust, stability, and support as a result. Marshall has taken Simon under his wing (especially given Simon’s living situation) and part of Marshall’s drive during the show is rooted in helping others while solving mysteries and combating malevolent forces. Mike in many ways mirrors Marshall with that motivation, and just like with Marshall’s concern for Simon, Mike doesn’t want Will getting swallowed by the horrors around him.
Part 2: Eleven (and her parallels with Vecna)
Just as quickly as El returned to the source (the Upside Down), she was just as quick to get out. Did anyone else notice that she coughed up liquid when she woke up in the Upside Down, similar to what happened to Barbara in season 1 when she got taken? Almost like being submerged underwater, except there is no water in that dimension. 🤔 When Barbara was taken, I assumed at the time the liquid she coughed up was from the pool water in Steve’s backyard since the Demogorgon attacked her there. Seeing that the same thing happened to El here, I’m not so sure about that anymore.
The scene with El using her powers to create a bigger hole in the wall to escape was nice foreshadowing to her using that same power to close the Gate in the season finale. In hindsight, it also acts as further foreshadowing for the overall reveal about El’s abilities being connected to the Upside Down. The ease with which the membrane-like hole collapses to fit her size contrasts with some of the instances in this world where it appears like she has to use more energy and force, as if the Upside Down responds more naturally to her abilities than this world does.
One thing I’m curious about is the hole continuing to be there following the Demogorgon’s destruction. In “The Flea and the Acrobat,” we saw the hole in the tree Nancy crawled through beginning to close and eventually shutting for good just as Jonathan pulled Nancy out. Likewise, during the instances when the Demogorgon tore through Joyce’s walls, the walls would reassemble themselves almost instantaneously. Even when Joyce communicated with Will in “The Body,” it was only for a brief moment before the fleshy wall began closing up. So why didn’t the hole the Demogorgon created at the Middle School close up already? Was it just that violent and visceral of a tear (similar to what El did when she opened the Gate for the first time) that it took longer to heal?
And then there’s Vecna and the Mind Flayer: One question I’ve always had whenever I rewatch season 2 now is if they knew El was alive at this point. I’d have to imagine they didn’t. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they have sent every Upside Down monster they controlled to either capture or kill El (especially as the Gate was beginning to expand underground)? I’d even say Vecna would have made the journey himself into the real world to finish El off as revenge for what she did to him four years ago. He had the ability to remote view, so this isn’t like he couldn’t have located El during the year between seasons 1 and 2 if he wanted to. The only explanations that come to mind is that either they thought El perished when she and the Demogorgon dissolved at the Middle School, or they were waiting for the right opportunity to strike (and waited too long as a result).
There are plenty of references and inspirations for Hopper and El’s story that I intend to cover in future reviews, but I want to focus on the ones present in this episode.
There are two obvious references for the ghost costume El wears: The first is John Carpenter’s Halloween (with Max dressing up as Michael Myers later in the episode) when Lynda believes her boyfriend Bob is playing a joke on her:
The second (and the one I first thought of when I saw this scene) is E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, when the kids disguise E.T. and try to pass him off as Gertie.
In both cases, those characters get away with the disguise, with others none the wiser. I can see why El would think it would be a good cover, and I can’t blame her for wanting Hopper to go along with it: She’s been cooped up in that cabin for close to a year, and while I believe she appreciates having a home, that doesn’t mean she is happy about being confined to one limited location.
And I get where Hopper is coming from in regards to her safety and it being a risk, but at the same time, it’s not enough anymore if El is starting to feel trapped, nor does it help that he completely forgets his promise later in the episode and misses the deadline. I know Hopper teaches the word “compromise” to El in this episode, but she actually is the one who offers a compromise to Hopper before she even knows the word: She disguises herself as a ghost to emphasize that she could go Trick-or-Treating without being spotted, with the implication that Hopper would come along and watch from his sheriff’s car (under the guise of watching over the safety of other Trick-or-Treaters out there). It ties into something I’ve been emphasizing about El for a long time (especially towards certain fans who made disgustingly ableist remarks about El int he past): Just because El doesn’t have the words doesn’t mean she can’t understand concepts or is ignorant of them.
This leads me into the next reference when Hopper is late and El watches Frankenstein to pass the time. When they showed the scene with the little girl, Maria, befriending the Monster, I wondered if El related more to the girl or to the Monster. Or maybe even both. In that particular scene from the movie, after the Monster escaped Dr. Henry Frankestein’s lab, it wanders off into the German countryside where it encounters the girl, who shows him the flowers she collects and how they float on the water. Initially, the Monster is delighted by the flowers (even cracking a smile) and throws them in the water like Maria does. But when the flowers run out, he ends up tossing the girl into the water, causing her to drown.
The sad thing is the way the scene is framed gives the impression that the Monster was under the assumption the girl would float just like the flowers. His distressed reaction to her drowning indicates his intention wasn’t to kill her. The movie itself plays with the idea of whether the Monster was evil from its creation (especially since it has the brain of a corrupt criminal) or if his circumstances drove him down a dark path. While the Monster does kill people, the first two deaths (Fritz and Dr. Waldman) could arguably constitute self-defense since they intended harm to him, and Maria’s death (which kickstarts the angry mob that goes after the Monster) was framed as manslaughter as opposed to cold-blooded murder.
In El’s case, that question has been in her mind for a while: Whether she’s the monster or not. She’s had that fear since season 1 when she opened the Gate, and it resurfaces in season 4 after her experiences in Lenora and her confrontation with Angela.*
*(On a personal note, I will go to my grave insisting Angela got exactly what she deserved and should be grateful El didn’t take it further, especially after Angela was such a sadistic brat and a vile human being).
Even though the movie is the obvious reference here, I couldn’t help but think of Mary Shelly’s book and how it applies to Stranger Things as well. I remember reading Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus in high school, and finding it much more interesting and complex than the Universal Pictures movie. While Boris Karloff’s version of the Monster will always be iconic, I’ll admit I found the Monster more frightening in the book: Instead of slow and lumbering, the Monster has super speed and strength. Instead of being a dumb brute, the Monster is dangerously intelligent. Instead of communicating in grunts and screams, the Monster can speak clearly and understands language. He can also read, and gets through the entirety of John Milton’s Paradise Lost at one point (even comparing himself to the fallen angel, Lucifer, when he’s attempting to paint himself as tragic to Dr. Frankenstein).
The biggest kicker though: Instead of killing in self-defense or on accident, the monster from the book is a lot more malicious, and purposefully murders despite understanding how morally wrong that is. Granted, there are factors that drove him to that point, from being abandoned by his creator, Victor Frankenstein (who comes off deeply unsympathetic for his refusal to take responsibility for his creation, as well as keeping everyone else in the dark about the Monster while it kills innocent people), to being rejected by humans for its hideous appearance, to having its actions in saving a girl from the river being interpreted as him intending harm to her and getting shot at by the girl’s father as a result (contrast that with how the movie played the scene between the Monster and the girl). At the same time, it makes it harder to sympathize with the Monster the way one might be able to with the movie’s version. The characters in the books are messy and flawed, and the point of the book isn’t just about exploring the themes regarding what makes someone evil, but also about the process of creation and the responsibility that comes with it.
I see the book’s version of the Monster mirroring aspects of Henry/One/Vecna, and even El to a certain degree. Despite everything he does later in the book, deep down, the Monster craved acceptance and wanted to spend life with another sentient creature like itself. It’s why he bonds with the blind old man at the cottage (before his family drives the Monster away), and it’s why he later insists that Dr. Frankenstein make him a female companion. Likewise, Henry in The First Shadow, even while the Mind Flayer works to corrupt him, desires those same things as well, which leads to his relationship with Patty Newby as she’s one of the only people in Hawkins who can understand him (and visa versa). Unfortunately, that isn’t enough to cancel out Henry’s worst qualities, and with all the negative circumstances in his life (including Brenner’s manipulations), he eventually succumbs to the darkness within him. By the same token, El looks for the same acceptance, not just with her friends and family, but from the world. Just like the Monster though, she’s been hunted and ostracized, and whether that will eventually cease remains to be seen. In spite of lashing out at Angela (which, given how deeply cruel and evil Angela was towards her, El's actions weren't completely devoid of understandable context), El does comprehend morality, and doesn’t get any sadistic pleasure in hurting others, not even in anger the same way Vecna and Billy do.
In the case of this season, El is trapped in the middle. She has found some kind of acceptance from Hopper, but their relationship isn’t perfect (and will be tested in later episodes), and it still doesn’t cancel out that she’s currently being hunted and has no clue where her life is going from here, or if her circumstances are ever going to change. When things aren’t okay and continue to remain the same for an extended period of time, it’s going to inevitably cause problems. El is already beginning to make her frustrations known about her situation (and how she feels powerless to change it despite having powers that, from her perspective, should allow her to) and it’s going to force her to question if this life is what she really wants, or if she’d be better off in the world looking after herself.
Part 3: Billy (and his slight parallels with Vecna)
There are two ways I intend to cover Billy’s character in these reviews: From a practical standpoint (i.e. his character’s contribution to the mytharc, his parallels with certain characters, etc), and from a personal perspective.
While I still hate that moment in the car between Billy and Max (for obvious reasons I’ll cover in a minute), it’s interesting rewatching this scene again having seen The First Shadow. The conversation in the car heavily implied that, despite his attempts to pass blame onto Max, Billy had done something which caused the family to move to Hawkins. Runaway Max reveals what this was: During her time in San Diego, Max had a best friend named Nate she used to hang out with. Billy at this point had already scared off Max’s other friends (Eddie and Ben) to isolate her, but Nate was still with her at the time. One day, when they were constructing a bike ramp, Billy showed up, and proceeded to be an asshole to them. When Nate told him to leave them alone, Billy proceeded to intentionally break Nate’s arm. It was serious enough the paramedics had to be called, and Billy intimidated Max into keeping silent about what happened. Nate lied to the paramedics on Max's behalf, but in the process, it permanently wrecked his relationship with Max and drove him away.
Unfortunately for Billy, his cruelty worked a little too well. Billy had been out of control for a while now (including setting fire to a dead cat and getting sick pleasure from doing so), and the incident with Nate was the final straw for Neil and Susan. They decided a fresh start was needed, which is what prompted the move to Hawkins. Billy, of course, viciously blames Max for all of this, because God forbid he actually takes any responsibility for his behavior 🙄.
The First Shadow did something similar with Henry/One/Vecna: The whole reason the Creels moved from Rachel, Nevada to Hawkins, Indiana, was because of an incident between Henry and another child that left said child in a wheelchair. We never find out the particulars surrounding this incident, or whether Henry intentionally attacked the kid or if it was an accident (as Henry didn’t have complete control of his powers at that time). The theme, however, remains the same: Family moves for a “fresh start,” which is really about the fact they have a problematic kid who is acting out and making life difficult for everyone, and the only thing the move does is build up resentment in said kid while the problems in the family go unaddressed. The differences are that Billy’s father was the abuser (both physically and emotionally) whereas Henry’s mother took on that role in being emotionally abusive to him. And while Henry still had some semblance of humanity and a consciousness left when he moved to Hawkins, Billy has long since abandoned that and we are seeing him at his absolute worst here.
There’s also how both of them are deeply angry individuals lashing out at the world. The big difference is that, while Billy’s anger is hot and more overt, Henry’s anger is colder and more contained. In a way, it makes Henry/One/Vecna a lot scarier than Billy. There are people like Billy who think exploding at everyone will frighten them into compliance, but there comes a point where it’s just predictable as it is repetitive, which causes his bursts of rage to lose their impact. Vecna’s rage, on the other hand, is anger that has been weaponized in such a way that he almost appears calm on the surface, like he’s in control and not showing the lack of restraint Billy does. Given he’s spent 20 years as Brenner's prisoner, he’s had plenty of time to learn that kind of self-control. In some ways, I’m reminded of The Red Queen and Queen of Hearts (two characters who are often mistaken as the same despite their different personalities) from the Alice in Wonderland Novels, and how Lewis Carroll described them: “I pictured to myself the Queen of Hearts as a sort of embodiment of ungovernable passion – a blind and aimless Fury. The Red Queen I pictured as a Fury, but of another type; her passion must be cold and calm.” The Queen of Hearts is a character I’ve always found to be childish, petulant, and using her rage to bully people into going along with her agenda. The only reason she was dangerous is because she was in a position of power to order your head chopped off if you displeased her. Otherwise, she had as much brains as the Mad Hatter, and would fall to pieces the same way Trump would if his power and money were taken away from him. The Red Queen on the other hand was a lot more unnerving because of how her “cold and calm” attitude made her unpredictable, intelligent, and cunning. She is someone you didn’t want to cross.
Moving past the practical and onto the personal, I make no secret that I despise Billy. Putting aside how deeply nasty, hateful, cruel, and repulsive he is (all within that car scene with Max no less), I can testify that I have dealt with people in the past who’ve behaved like this, which factors heavily into how negatively I view his character. I have been on the receiving end of people who’ve used their rage to annihilate anyone in their way, to say nothing about these people constantly project their issues onto others. This isn’t exclusive to Billy either: When I get to season 4, I’m going to have a field day covering Angela.
The result, after having put up with this kind of bullshit for most of my life, is me being firm in certain convictions: I don’t like bullies. I don’t like abusers. And I have zero patience for people who make excuses for either of those groups.
There are plenty of personal stories from my childhood and my time at church (which is one of many reasons I quit and will not go back), but there was an unpleasant experience I had a few months ago that not only came to mind when I was watching Billy’s exchange with Max in the car, but also was something that re-awoke a bunch of trauma that had been dormant for a while now.
Long story short: I got targeted by a malicious user on here (who has since had their account nuked by @/staff) that had taken reblogs and posts of mine out-of-context in a deliberate bad-faith attempt to make it seem like I was saying something I wasn’t. There were other people as well that this creep was targeting, and they later created a List that resulted in certain users getting harassed. @stillhidden can verify this, but when I found out about what they were doing, I privately messaged several mutuals who had been following me to warn them about what was going on so they could block this asshole, including those mutuals that had been targeted by this individual. I should mention (and @stillhidden can verify this as well) that I’ve done this before in other cases, but only with mutuals I've followed and who follow me since there's an established relationship there. Usually, these people let me know they block the person after I give them the info, and that’s that. I don’t pursue it any further, and I don't make a public spectacle about it either. If any of these mutuals had messaged me to let me know they didn't want these warnings, I would have stopped immediately. With one of the mutuals who’d been following me since last year (we’ll refer to them as X), they had gotten targeted as well, and I messaged them about it. My intention was to warn them so they could block this person. Nothing else. Apparently, there was a rule with them I was unaware of (which they had never told me about either) where X had asked people not to do that. So after I privately messaged them via DM, they blew up at me the same way Billy did with Max in the car, acting like I should have known about that rule in the first place, and accused me of purposefully exposing them to negativity. It was ugly and hostile, and left me feeling bad about what happened. I apologized to X, and later donated money to their Ko-Fi after they put out a post claiming they needed money for bills to smooth things over. They seemed to appreciate it, but also continued to act like I had committed some perceived slight against them, which was off-putting. They also didn’t give a damn I was still being targeted by the person I was trying to warn them about. No skin off their teeth, as far as they were concerned.
Two days afterwards, I blocked X (for reasons I'm not going to get into besides this incident), and haven’t spoken to them since. I don’t wish any ill on them, but at the same time, I want nothing to do with them. People will probably patronize me about how I should have handled this better, or that I just should not have said anything at all, and in hindsight, I wish I’d never interacted with this person. They could have just told me “Please don’t message me about this stuff” without being vicious about it, and I would have complied. It has resulted in me being a lot more restrictive about who I privately message now because I don’t ever want a repeat of that situation again. The whole incident brought back a wave of trauma regarding people projecting their issues onto me during my life, or making bad-faith assumptions about me, or accusing me of being “negative” or “argumentative” or whatever, all while they hypocritically proceeded to be as vicious as they pleased.
I even talked about one of these individuals in my Rebel Robin review: u/Daze_Confuse. He was a former Reddit user and a real piece-of-work who got his kicks out of baiting people, constantly put others down in mean-spirited ways (and then claimed it was a joke if the moderators got involved), and was a deeply nasty person who hypocritically pretended to be against bullying 😒. To say I was happy when his account got permanently suspended (which is a rarity on Reddit these days) is an understatement. He embodied Billy’s sadistic cruelty and refusal to take responsibility to a tee.
In fact, that’s what really gets under my skin about Billy’s treatment of Max and his attempts to run Mike, Dustin, and Lucas off the road: Putting aside how vile of a joke that is (especially if one of those boys had fallen off at the wrong moment and either cracked their skulls, broken their necks, or else got run over by Billy’s car), it’s the sheer entitlement on his part to behave like this that’s repulsive. It’s the same type of entitlement Angela would demonstrate in season 4 when she was bullying El. These are individuals who act like they have some kind of privilege to project their issues onto people without giving a shit about the trauma they’re inflicting. Not only do they know perfectly well that what they’re doing is cruel, they also know it's wrong and just don’t care because they they have convinced themselves that their behavior is justified. How am I supposed to empathize with that?
What’s grotesque is seeing fans who unironically defend Billy’s behavior here, from victim-blaming Max to downplaying the severity of what he tried to do to Mike, Lucas, and Dustin. I get there’s a lack of maturity in this fandom (particularly with people who stan for Billy because he’s hot and see him as a character that they can project themselves onto), but damn I really wish people would grow the hell up already.
By the way, for those wondering what was going through Max’s head during this scene, it was horrifying from her perspective:
I don’t give a rat’s ass how many fans want to claim “LOL Billy was just joking, stop taking it seriously.” If Max was scared enough to the point she had to intervene with the wheel because of what Billy was doing…………that is damning in regards to how it reflects on Billy. A theme readers are about to find out real fast with these reviews is I’m not mincing my words about Billy’s abusive behavior, or my lack of patience for the stupid abuse apologies fans have made for his character in the past (or are continuing to make in the present).
Part 4: The Adults (Hopper, Joyce, Bob)
Hopper and El’s dynamic I will analyze more in the later reviews, but out of all the people El could have been taken in by, it makes sense it would be Hopper. Not just because he was previously a father and has some experience raising a kid (barring Joyce), but because he is the LAST PERSON anyone would suspect of harboring El at this point. He’s the one who gave up El’s location to Brenner in exchange for rescuing Will (which almost resulted in El’s capture by Brenner’s men), he’s a part of law enforcement (meaning he has a better grasp of all the backdoors and loopholes around government surveillance), he has a lot to lose if he was ever caught aiding El (which includes how other people, especially Joyce, were reliant on him to keep the uneasy peace between the town and the Lab), and he had the whole arrangement with Hawkins Lab and government agents over how they’d proceed keeping the Upside Down out of the public eye. I’m sure they probably bugged Hopper’s trailer again the same way they bugged Mike’s House (and presumably Will, Dustin, and Lucas’s houses), but it doesn’t matter since he’s barely there anymore, to say nothing about how his reputation as a drunken, drug-addict means people likely assume he’s out on a bender somewhere when he can’t be found at the trailer. And he’s smart enough to use Morse Code instead of a traditional telephone. It’s the perfect cover.
I liked seeing Hopper try to reassure Joyce over Will’s picture of the Mind Flayer and explain why he’d lie about it (because Will doesn’t want his mom to keep fretting over him), as well as how they’re all experiencing trauma and can’t go back to the way things were. In hindsight though, Joyce had the right idea that these weren’t just “episodes,” but were actually real on Will’s part. She has the same intuition Mike does about knowing something’s going on with Will, with the big difference being Will is better able to open up to Mike for the reasons I've previously laid out. Should Will have been honest with Joyce about the Mind Flayer picture? Sure. However, I get why he lied, and in the grand scheme of things, I don’t know if telling her would have stopped Will from being possessed in the next episode.
Hearing Hopper allude to his time in Vietnam and how men he knew came back with PTSD from that war makes me realize that, aside from Hopper’s talk with Dmitri/Enzo in season 4, the show has never explored what Hopper’s experiences were like in Vietnam. The closest we get is in the tie-in novel Darkness on the Edge of Town where he describes it as “ancient history” and “like part of some other person’s life.” He doesn’t consider it a personal trauma, but there’s the implication that he’s desensitized himself to the horrors of what happened over there. If anything, the trauma and PTSD Hopper exhibits (besides his encounter with the Upside Down and Hawkins Lab) has more to do with Sara’s death (as we see when he keeps having flashbacks in the season 1 finale while looking for Will in the Upside Down). Even when he’s talking with Dmitri/Enzo about mixing “Agent Orange,” it’s almost in a detached manner. It isn’t until he mentions Sara and how his exposure to chemicals led to her developing cancer that Hopper become emotional. We know Sara will be coming back in season 5 (either in a flashback, a vision, or a hallucination), but I’m curious if the show intends to explore more about Hopper’s past in Vietnam. The BTS photos for season 5 allude to the idea that a war is about to break out in Hawkins between the military and the Upside Down, and that aspect of Hopper's character could become relevant to that conflict in some way.
David Harbour in Beyond Stranger Things pointed out similarities between Joyce and Hopper’s dynamic and the one shared between the characters of Jake Gittes and Evelyn Cross-Mulwray (played by Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway) in Chinatown. The film’s even referred to in this episode by Callahan when Eugene shows up to the police station to complain about his dead crops/pumpkins and how the rot (which he believes is sabotage from Merrill) hit all the farm areas the night before (Jack O’Dell, Pete Freeling, Rick Neary the Christensens, etc). I can see parallels between the couples, with Hopper and Jake being men of their times (Jake being a 1930s hard-boiled detective with politically incorrect attributes vs Hopper embodying the hyper-masculine 1980s cowboy cop) forced into investigating something that first appears inconsequential (Hopper initially looking into what appears to be a case of rotting pumpkins vs Jake being hired to investigate a possible case of spousal cheating) only for that case to be the tip of the iceberg into a massive conspiracy (The Mind Flayer’s planned invasion of Hawkins via the tunnels vs Jake uncovering how irrigation water during a drought in Los Angeles is being dumped into the ocean, causing farm crops to die and forcing farmers off their land so it can be bought cheap and the villain can then build a reservoir to profit from all of it). On top of that, both men are in a relationship with a traumatized woman (Joyce from the disappearance of her son and the events of last year vs Evelyn from the rape and abuse she’s suffered under her father) who works with them to uncover the conspiracy and put a stop to it. The difference is while Hopper and Joyce succeed (at least for this season) ……………..let’s just say there’s a reason the phrase “Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown” became an infamous quote from that movie.
I get that Chinatown won’t appeal to many newcomers (not helped by the fact it’s directed by Roman Polanski), but I will say that the film sadly feels relevant given the current political climate, and its themes of how corrupt rich people can get away with their crimes because the social system enables them to do so.
In any case, even though Joyce is currently in a relationship with Bob, it’s pretty obvious Hopper still has feelings for her, with that attraction being there in The First Shadow as well. I still liked Bob and Joyce’s relationship, however brief it was, but I guess it was a given the show always pushed for Hopper and Joyce as early as season 1. I did appreciate how the story of them sharing cigarettes between fifth and sixth period in high school got brought back for the season finale when they’re smoking outside the Snow Ball.
Speaking of Bob, his scene of dancing with Joyce and suggesting they move out of Hawkins together was bittersweet in hindsight. Not just because of Bob’s death, but because when Joyce finally did move at the end of season 3, it was after she had lost both Bob and Hopper (or so she thought with Hopper at the time) and was shown to be just as stressed and overworked in Lenora as she was here. Like I’ve been saying with Henry/One/Vecna, Billy, Max, and El, moving to a new location doesn’t mean your old problems automatically go away. There will always be places like Hawkins in the world (Lenora being one such example) with its unpleasantries and nasty people to accompany that.
In any case, I would have liked to meet Bob’s parents in Maine, especially given the events of The First Shadow and Patty Newby’s role in the play. Who knows? Assuming the Duffer Brothers plan to incorporate story elements from the play into season 5, we may still meet them. At the very least, we’ll get to see their reaction to what happened to their son and adopted daughter if they do.
Part 5: Teen Halloween
You know that phrase Lucy utters from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown? “A person should always choose a costume, which is in direct contrast to their own personality.” That phrase kept repeating in my head while watching this episode.
There are certain characters who go with that philosophy: Bob dressing as blood-sucking Dracula despite not being a leech to Joyce the way Lonnie was. Carol and Nicole dressing up as Alex Owens from Flashdance and Ariel Moore from Footloose, despite sharing NOTHING in common with the characters from those movies (Alex and Ariel had flaws, but were decent people compared to how nasty and unpleasant Carol and Nicole are). Nancy dressing up as Lana, Joel Goodsen's love interest from the movie Risky Business, despite having long fallen out of love with Steve and barely having anything to do with his story following the next episode. Max dressing up as Michael Myers for Halloween despite having a heart under her outwardly indifferent persona. Even her reasons for picking Myers (as detailed in Runaway Max) have a whole layer to them:
“I’d picked Michael Myers for Halloween because he had no weaknesses. He never moved fast, but he still caught up to you every time. He was impossibly strong – you couldn’t overpower him and you couldn’t outrun him. He was unstoppable.” (41)
“Michael Myers was the kind of monster I was most afraid of because he was real.” (41)
There is the scariness of Max's abusive situation with Billy and Neil combined with her desire not to feel week or vulnerable. She has no desire to take on the pure evil qualities Myers has, but she does want that invulnerable feeling of not being afraid anymore the way Myers appears detached from all emotions and almost everything around him.
On the opposite side, we have teens dressed as other movie characters with personal similarities to themselves. In this case, the boys went with the Ghostbusters crew to great effect. Putting aside how the Ghostbusters deal with supernatural phenomenon and end-of-the-world scenarios (Gozer) the same way the boys deal with the threat of the Upside Down (The Mind Flayer), the characters from that movie that they choose are spot on. Ironically, Finn Wolfhard (Mike) would later go to star in the sequels Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
I know there’s the argument between Lucas and Mike over who’s Venkman, but I think the show leaned towards the idea of Lucas being more like Winston in how pragmatic and loyal both of them are to their respective friends. It’s even confirmed in Beyond Stranger Things that Lucas’s line about Judgment Day in the episode “The Mind Flayer” was referencing Winston’s line from the first movie. In any case, my unpopular opinion is I like Winston better than Venkman, but that's just me.
Tommy is dressed as Johnny Lawrence from The Karate Kid, which………is accurate. Both of them are hot-headed bullies. In Tommy’s case though, he knows his behavior is vile (without the same Freudian Excuse Johnny would later be given in Cobra Kai), and he just doesn’t give a crap. And while Johnny has some kind of standards from the movie (even genuinely congratulating Daniel when he won the tournament), the same can’t be said for Tommy. He has dropped Steve quicker than a hot-potato and is lining up to kiss Billy’s ass. Putting aside how blatantly obvious it is that Tommy's made zero effort to try to reconcile with Steve (which showcases just how shallow and one-sided his entire relationship with Steve was), it’s honestly pathetic he’s still vying for Steve’s attention despite pretending not to care.
Speaking of Steve, he is dressed Joel Goodsen from Risky Business. I’ve talked a little before about this movie in previous reviews, but this season is where the parallels between Joel and Steve really take off: Both characters are put into a position of having to take responsibility once things go wrong in their lives. In Joel’s case, it’s being forced to make money quickly to pay for repairs to his parents car (and later buy back all the furniture from Lana’s pimp, Guido) after the shenanigans Joel and Lana engage in cause problems and nearly wreck Joel’s future. In Steve’s case, it’s being forced to come to terms with the fact Nancy has moved on from him, but also forming a new friendship with Dustin while becoming the Party’s protector in the process. There are shenanigans involved with Steve’s attempts to be the older brother/babysitter, but they’re more rooted in selflessness compared to Joel’s self-centered motivations, which helps elevate Steve’s character.
It's funny how fans seem to fixate on that scene with Steve and Billy pictured above because I always found that eyeroll-inducing. Contrary to the fanon interpretation of some great rivalry between Billy and Steve for King of Hawkins High School, this always came off as one-sided projection on Billy’s part which Steve couldn’t have cared less about at that point. I never took the look he gives Billy in the picture above to mean “Bring it on” so much as “Go project your issues onto someone else, dude.” It’s even reflected in how Steve behaves at the party: He’s trying to watch over Nancy as she’s quickly growing intoxicated, and unsuccessfully tries to get her to slow down on the drinking. He doesn’t give a shit about Billy being the new “Keg King.”
Steve and Nancy’s scenes in this episode were difficult to get through. I’ve said before that Barbara’s death hangs like a black cloud over their relationship, and this episode emphasizes that hard: The voice-over with Barbara and the last thing Nancy ever said to her, and Nancy blaming both herself and Steve for Barbara’s death (albeit when she’s drunk). There’s an ugly sense that the guilt Nancy feels has warped into resentment towards herself and Steve, and now she views that moment of sex between them as something abominable, like it never should have happened. She probably feels the same way about her entire relationship with Steve at this point.
I said in the previous review that I get where both Steve and Nancy are coming from in regards to Barbara, and that is true: Nancy is right that there needed to be closure, not just for herself, but for Barbara's parents. And regardless of whether Brenner and his cronies were gone from Hawkins Lab, that place was still complicit in Barbara’s death and faking her disappearance, and never got held accountable for it. I don’t know what would have happened if Nancy, Jonathan, and Murray had not put together the story to expose the Lab once the Gate was closed, but places like that were already reeking with corruption and secrets. Even if Dr. Owens appeared to be in charge, that didn’t mean there weren’t others there (especially Owens superiors) with their own agendas, or that the Lab wouldn’t have restarted its illegal experiments if it was deemed to be in the interest of U.S. security.
At the same time though, Steve’s concerns weren’t invalid. There are so many ways exposing the truth to Barbara’s parents could have gone horribly wrong, and it’s a miracle that it didn’t for Nancy and Jonathan. I’m sure at this point Steve’s been filled in on everything that's happened, including the circumstances around Benny’s death, which adds another layer of his fear towards the Government. Forget about putting them in jail, or destroying their families lives: What happens if they go for the extreme option of killing them and faking it to look like a suicide? That’s also including the paranoia he feels about being watched (as evident when he goes for the blinds while talking with Nancy in the Library).
I think Nancy was hoping Steve would swallow his fear and take a leap of faith with her in this regard. You can see the look of hurt and disappointment on her face when he didn’t (excellent job to Natalia Dyer for conveying that in her performance), and instead insisted on going to the Halloween Party to pretend everything was normal:
I know there are fans who call it cowardice on Steve’s part. I see it more as she’s in a different place than he is right now in his character development. We know Steve isn’t a coward (as we saw in the season 1 finale), but he also isn’t in a place of wanting to take on that load of responsibility and all that it entails. This isn’t something Nancy can force him to do either. He has to want that by his own choice.
This is a big reason why I was glad when Steve and Nancy broke up, no matter how bitter it was. It’s also why I maintain having Steve partner up with Dustin was the smartest thing the Duffer Brothers ever did. Not only did it allow for much needed growth for Steve in being responsible for other people, but it also proved he could have that character development without it being exclusively tied to Nancy, or hinging on whether Steve ever got back together with Nancy. For all the complaining I see about how “It isn’t the female character’s responsibility to act as the wind beneath the wings of the male character,” people seem to overlook how Steve’s story this season subverted that trope. Even though Steve doesn’t get back together with Nancy, he still chooses to be a better person and NOT because he thinks it’ll win him the girl either.
On a final note in relation to Steve, Joe Keery gave a great performance in this episode. That scene where his voice breaks in the restroom with Nancy, and it finally hits him like a ton of bricks that Nancy doesn’t love him, is heartbreaking. You can hear his voice crack when he utters the line “Like we’re in love?” and damn does it hit hard.
Up until this point, Steve assumed the problems they were having had to do with Barbara’s death. Now it’s finally dawning on him that Nancy either has fallen out of love, or never loved him when they tried to restart their relationship. Her heart already belongs to Jonathan.
Speaking of Jonathan, they do a lot of call-backs to his character from season 1 in this episode: Jonathan making breakfast while Joyce is worried about where Will is. Acting like the fun other brother to Will and allowing him to go Trick-or-Treating without supervision. Working with a camera (with a little help from Bob). Showing up to a party (which he was invited to this time) with the implication that despite appearing aloof, he wants to have the same fun as everyone else is having. Observing Nancy from a distance, with his attraction to her being pretty obvious to the audience. And ultimately being the one to take Nancy home (though Jonathan claims to Nancy in the next episode it was at Steve’s insistence) and making sure she gets to bed safely. It’s like history repeating itself for Jonathan, except with slightly different beats this time. It’s almost like the universe saying “Hey, here’s a second chance for a relationship with the girl you love. Take it.”
I mentioned in my review of “The Flea and the Acrobat” that a flaw I see in Jonathan’s character is his tendency to project his issues onto people, and that shows up a little with how he complains about Bob to Will in the car. I get that Lonnie did a number on him, Joyce, and Will, to the point that he has trust issues, but I wish he had given Bob a chance the same way Joyce and Will did. This isn’t like Bob wasn’t trying to bond with Jonathan (like when he’s showing Jonathan how to work the video camera), or that Bob belittled his interests the same way Lonnie did. I don’t know if the show ever gives an exact time for how long Joyce and Bob had been dating at this point, but I’d have to assume it was for a significant enough period that the Byers were acquainted with him and had to have realized that Bob was nothing like Lonnie. It’s especially sad since, after the next episode, Jonathan goes off with Nancy on their quest to take down Hawkins Lab, meaning there wouldn’t be any more opportunities for Bob and Jonathan to get to know one another after this. While the show emphasizes the impact Bob’s death had on Joyce, and the comic Tomb of Ybwen does the same for Will, we never get to explore whether Bob’s death had any impact on Jonathan. It comes off as a missed opportunity.
Part 6: Miscellaneous
Ordinarily, I’m not a fan of love triangles because of all the contrived and petty bullshit that surrounds them, but this one between Dustin, Max, and Lucas was endearing. It’s painfully obvious to Max (but also amusing to her at the same time) that Dustin and Lucas have never talked to girls before, and in any other conversation, their attempts at appealing to Max would have just been weird and off-putting. Instead, she's charmed, and it helps they’re earnest in wanting Max to be a part of their group, which is something Max appreciates.
I will talk more about Mike’s attitude towards Max in the next episode, but while I don’t agree with it, I do think there is context behind his behavior that shouldn’t be dismissed like it has been in the past. For what it’s worth, I find it telling that even though he has a problem with Max Trick-or-Treating with them, he never cites Billy nearly running them off the road with his car earlier (while Max was with him) as a reason for why she shouldn’t be with them. He’s unhappy about what's going on, but he isn’t petty enough to try and stop Lucas, Dustin, and Max from doing what they're doing right now.
I did enjoy the characters trying out different accents. El mimicking "People are going to be aghast" from watching TV (you can hear Millie Bobby Brown's British accent slip through a little during that scene), and Dustin and Lucas attempts to imitate a surfer when they're saying "totally tubular."
Last, but not least, there’s Dustin finding D’Art in the trash can. Technically, D’Art was already there in the first episode, but I consider this his official introduction. This is a story I remember enjoying when I first saw the show, and I’m excited to cover it in my reviews.
Part 7: Conclusion - Song Choices
“Monster Mash” by Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett and “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr. are pretty self-explanatory for why they were chosen. The former fits in with the theme of Halloween, and the latter ties to the Ghostbusters costumes the boys wear.
One Halloween song that they included in the trailer for season 2, but not in the season itself, was Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” That’s always been one of my Top 5 favorite Halloween songs, and I was disappointed when it didn’t make an appearance in this episode.
Next song is “Wango Tango” by Ted Nugent, which plays when Billy picks up Max and later starts verbally abusing her in the car while they’re speeding down the road.
I am not putting up a link to this song because I’m not interested in giving it any coverage beyond talking about its relevance to this scene. I get how the lyrics tie into how sleazy and shitty of a person Billy is (especially in regards to his views on girls, whom he compares to cows in this episode), as well as emphasizing how Billy’s the embodiment of toxic masculinity, but damn it doesn't make this song any more pleasant to listen to. I hate this song. I hate the beat. I hate the lyrics. I hate the music. I hate the fact Ted Nugent (who’s a racist, anti-Ukrainian, antisemitic, avid Trump supporter, who may have also committed statutory rape if his song “Jailbait” is anything to go on) likely got royalties from this. One of the lines from this song is literally “Yeah, you look so good, baby, I'm startin to drool all over myself.” 😒 Do I really need to explain this? Or how it applies to Billy? I’m usually accepting of the Duffer Brothers song choices, but this one has me side-eyeing them hard.
Next song is “Blackout” by Swing Set.
This plays when Jonathan is driving Will to go Trick-or-Treating with his friends. Just like “Hazy Shade of Winter” and “Nocturnal Me,” there’s an eerie and haunting quality to the song, which describes a blackout (which could either interpreted both literally or figuratively) and the theme of needing someone to hold onto in the darkness. (“And you're lonely tonight. And you need someone, someone to hold on. Living in darkness, looking for light (Oh). And there's nothing left, nothing's in sight.”) The song applies literally to Will later when he has his vision in the Upside Down, experiencing a kind of “blackout,” with Mike being the one who pulls him out of it and Will holding onto him. One could argue the same happens for Nancy when she blacks out from intoxication, and Jonathan is the one who takes her home and puts her to bed (with Nancy even calling his name).
Next song is Motley Crue’s “Shout at the Devil,” which can be heard at the Halloween Party during the Keg drinking contest.
This song has an interesting history of people associating it with Satanism, and it doesn’t help that Motley Crue’s band members were on their worst behavior during the time they released this album. To say the song and the band were controversial is an understatement.
In any case, the song fits with the theme of how out-of-control and animalistic Billy is, and it calls back to something Max says about Billy in Runaway Max: “Billy liked chaos better.”
The last song featured at the Halloween Party (but not the last for this episode) is “Girls on Film” by Duran Duran, when Jonathan arrives at the party, and has his conversation with Samantha (who’s dressed as a band member from KISS).
Am I the only one who sees this song as a precursor to Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi”? Both songs deal with dehumanization that comes with celebrity status and public spectacle. Duran Duran admitted that “Girls on Film” was meant to explore “the dark side of glitz and glamour” with Sunsent Boulevard being cited as an inspiration for the song. Likewise, “Paparazzi” explores that theme of understanding the toxicity associated with fame and glamour (represented by the titular paparazzi) yet still craving it and wanting to make it your own.
In the case of this song, while no one is filming at the Halloween Party (at least not from what we’re seeing), we do see a public spectacle with Nancy getting drunk and the fight she has with Steve. Given the way the rumor mill works in Hawkins, I’m dead sure people at the party will take the fight out-of-context to dehumanize Nancy or Steve or both of them. They've already established how shallow people are in that town.
Finally, to end on a slightly more positive note, the last song is “Islands in the Stream” by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. This plays when Bob and Joyce dance together on Halloween.
The lyrics provide a sense of comfort during this scene (“You do something to me that I can't explain. Hold me closer and I feel no pain. Every beat of my heart. We got something going on.”) Even Bob’s suggestion to move to Maine with Joyce conveys the sense that even if they did move, it would be okay because they have each other (“Sail away with me to another world. And we rely on each other, From one lover to another.”). It's harsher in hindsight, knowing what’s going to happen to Bob, but it does convey the hope that Joyce is able to love again after her previous marriage, and that one day things will work out for her.
To finish the review, here is the Party dressed for Halloween:
find it a little odd that in both max and lucas’ books, they describe a strange chill running up their neck whenever something is about to go wrong?? max, i can understand, since vecna has probably been keeping an eye on her since she arrived in hawkins. but lucas??
