Possible JAWS parallels for Vecna’s end + Mike fake-out death
Ever since I posted my analysis on the JAWS poster motif in ST—with JAWS representing Vecna, the placement of the poster in Will’s rooms during Byler heart-to-hearts, and it showing just how much Mike in particular is being targeted by Vecna—I’ve been thinking a lot about the last ten minutes of the film. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how the film ends on Hooper and Brody.
Hooper, the oceanographer who discovered with Brody just how much of a threat Amity was under because of the monster shark (and goes out to sea with Brody and Quint as a means to put an end to it), enters the water in a shark-proof cage to lethally inject the shark via hypodermic spear.
The shark rams the cage, Hooper drops the spear, and it falls to the seabed.
The shark bends the bars and pushes its head into the cage, trashing it in an attempt to kill Hooper. Hooper fights back—
—and manages to slip past the shark while it thrashes around in the cage’s remains. Hooper swims down to a rock formation on the seabed and hides there.
Cut to when Brody, atop the sinking Orca, utters the famous line “Smile you son of a bitch!” and shoots at the shark, hitting the tank in its mouth and blowing it up.
He did it. Finally. Brody defeated the shark. There’s relief and triumph in his laughter as the mangled corpse sinks amid its blood. As the shark sinks, so does the victory in Brody’s face. Adrenaline is calming. He’s likely processing everything that’s happened while thinking he’s the only one left out there on the water.
But Hooper surfaces. He’s alive, unharmed, and he swims over to Brody. The two, completely exhausted from the fight they just endured and overcame, share laughter. As in, yeah, we survived that.
Since Worlds Turned Upside Down mentions “the Duffers often cited the villainous shark as a key inspiration for the monster haunting Hawkins,” and that JAWS is also “the Duffer brothers’ favorite film,” I am entertaining the possibility that Vecna’s eventual demise could resemble the shark’s. AND this includes a fake-out death for Mike (Hooper) as well as Will (Brody) being the one to ultimately kill Vecna while thinking Mike is dead before he ‘comes back to life.’ There could be scenes paralleling Hooper and Brody during the fight and in the aftermath. For Will and Mike of course, everything would have its own details that fit for them and I can’t imagine it not being crazy emotional. Mike being attacked, fighting back with all he has within a literal grasp of death, ‘dies’ but is actually okay, Will doesn’t know it, Will has an insane final confrontation with Vecna before he kills him, Will thinks he’s alone… but there Mike is. Coming back to him.
The catharsis of it all would be so unreal. I can’t even fully imagine it myself.
Also. I can’t not think of the fact that the final battle in JAWS takes place in the water. Most of the movie takes place around or in the ocean, so it’s a given. But in context with all the water references/imagery/motifs in ST and negative associations with it (many relating to some kind of conformity or death), it has me wondering about how the final battle in ST might look despite there being no water in the UD. I do keep thinking about the quarry though… and the void…