#stranger things 3x04

[onlyharrington]

[wlwarhammer]

Of course Micheal Ragebait Wheeler was the one they used to piss the mindflayer off enough that he'd voluntarily get in a sauna

[hihuddy]

I don’t know who made this video if this is what the Duffers actually think went on in this scene or if this is what was supposed to but that’s not what happened on screen.

El went into Billy’s mind and saw some weird shit involving Heather so Max and El went to investigate what was going on. All the while Max kept saying nothing was wrong. Which btw the writing on that was stupid af. It would have made so much more sense to have Max be the first one to notice something was really wrong with Billy and have her then go to The Party to have them investigate it. It would have definitely helped to make Max look like she genuinely cared about what was happening to Billy throughout S3 considering for the most part it seemed she didn’t care.

Anyway so Max and El start to investigate what’s going on eventually landing at Heather’s and they see how strange everything is. El is more and more upset by things Max meanwhile still tells El she’s over reacting which again wtf with this writing? >_<

So the next day the boys call the girls for a code red and Max tries to ignore it and go back to sleep. Here was another moment with Max that bugged me this season. The show did so little to show how she was actually integrated into The Party and this moment would have been good to show she understood what their code red meant and that it was serious and it was like she didn’t care. They were more interested in showing funny teenagers (like Max telling the boys off and turning off the walkie) than they were keeping with good character building and canon storytelling.

Eventually El and Max go to Mike’s house where Will tells them he’s still feeling the Mind Flayer. They talk about how it’s likely found a new host which eventually leads the kids to the pool. Where we get yet another scene of Max basically telling everyone that Billy seemed fine and normal. He’s sitting there in the heat at the pool covered up from head to toe and Max is like yeah that’s normal. 🙄 It literally took the other kids to point out how weird it was which they don’t even know Billy that well how does that make sense?

So at the pool Will talks more about the Mind Flayer and they devise a plan to see if Billy is the host

Mike: “We need to find out if he’s the host.”

Mike and the boys run off to the men’s locker room to figure out Mike’s plan which is to get Billy into the sauna

Will: “Will it get hot enough?”

Mike: “220 degrees. We just have to figure out how to get him in here.”

Will: “We’ll lock him in.”

Lucas: “Heat him up.”

Mike: “No matter what happens we’ll know. We’ll know for sure”

----

Their plan was NEVER about saving Billy it was about finding out if he was the new host. When they were making this whole plan there wasn’t a single regard for what might happen to Billy like there had been for Will in season 2 with so many people caring about him. I know these are kids and I know Billy is probably one of their least favorite people but he was still a terrified teenager with no idea what was happening to him it was so messed up that no one tried to help him.

Once Billy was in the sauna Max did say to him “It’s gonna be okay, we want to help you. You just have to talk to us.” But it came off more like she was just telling him what he needed to hear so that he would tell them what was was going on with the Mind Flayer than that she was genuinely trying to help him. Because again the original plan for the sauna was never about helping Billy, Max never took the time to notice or care that anything seriously wrong was going on with him, and even after Billy broke out of the sauna and was fighting with El and got smashed through a wall and took off into the night Max didn’t really seem too concerned about him. Not once did she go to The Party or El and say please help me save my brother. Which you’d assume she would after what happened at the sauna but she barely even talked about him after that focusing much more on Mike and how she felt he was controlling El. I really don’t think I’d be caring about other people’s relationship drama if my brother was being possessed by some supernatural being and could die. 

I have a big problem with anyone especially the Duffers who would try and say that anyone made an effort to save Billy in season 3 because no one did. They were only focused on stopping the Mind Flayer and didn’t spend one minute talking about how they might save Billy all season. Which is so messed up when you compare how hard everyone worked to bring Will back in both season 1 and 2. Not one person cared enough for Billy in just that he was a human being to try and save him. Even El when she brought up his mom wasn’t trying to save Billy she was trying to save herself. Even when Billy came back to himself and stood up to the Mind Flayer to save her no one stopped him, or tried to help, or anything they all just stood there and watched him die.

I’ve said this before but this has changed how I feel about a lot of these characters. The fact that especially El and Max never once said that they needed to help Billy is pretty disturbing to me. The fact that El saw into Billy’s head saw how scared he was and didn’t try more to reach him or even talk to The Party about helping him just feels out of character for her. The fact that I was supposed to sympathize with Max screaming over Billy’s dying body or her sitting alone somberly in Billy’s room at the end yet she spent the majority of the season not focused on the horror her brother was going through just doesn’t make sense. The writing is just bad. The person I do sympathize with is Billy both for how tragic his storyline was and how they could have done so much better. It just makes me so angry not just that he died but that no one fought for him no one treated his life like it was worth saving not even the Duffers.

[obsessedwithbillyhargrove]

Screencaps of Billy Hargrove from Stranger Things 3x04- The Sauna Test

Original gif format credit- @granpappy-winchester

[landonmikaelson]

So I get that Eleven saying “I make my own rules” is important and plays a part in her becoming more of her own person, but why was it added in the context of a privacy issue? Eleven and Mike clearly made a previous agreement for her to not spy on him in the Void, obviously for privacy reasons, which makes perfect sense and is completely valid. If it was the other way around, I’m sure Eleven would want Mike to agree to the same thing. But she breaks this privacy rule (encouraged by Max), and then responds with “I make my own rules” for the sake of it sounding empowering? Why couldn’t that have been written into the script in some other way instead of trying to make it seem not just okay, but admirable, for El to break this rule between her and Mike? Because if it was the other way around, everyone would be attacking Mike for violating Eleven’s privacy when he said he wouldn’t. Under different circumstances, Eleven making this statement would be empowering, but I feel like it was poorly done in this scene. El becoming her own person is important and necessary, of course, but the way it was done this season could have been done much better, in my opinion.

[huntingpeople-savingsam]

NANCY WHEELER YOU CRACK THAT STORY YOU BAD REPORTER BITCH, ILY GIRL

[hihuddy]

The scene is an emotional roller coaster. I'm up I'm down, I'm all over the place. And it was physically exhausting as well, I put everything that I had into it. I think it was a great opportunity to fight with this thing that's happening to me. So I did a lot of study about people with Bipolar disorder and Split Personality disorder and bout how one personality has the spot and it controls everything else that's going on. But what's the other personality, the main personality doing behind the scenes that doesn't have control of the spot right? And what is the struggle? So I kind of looked at it like an elastic band and finally at the end of the season it snaps. But in that early scene that's the first scene that we see the tension being drawn straight across within myself in their character arc.

Dacre Montgomery, talking about s3ep4 The Sauna Test

[huntingpeople-savingsam]

Nancy and Karen are making me cry right now omfg Karen is coming in so clutch right now ❤️❤️