This episode opens directly after the previous one ended, with Nancy lowering her smoking gun in a shot not dissimilar to the opening of Dirty Harry. We see the energy from the Upside Down pulsating and with a sonic boom, a blinding light stretches across the sky, pushing Nancy and Jonathan to the floor. El, Hopper, and 008 see the light crash into the Upside Down wall and slowly start to destroy it.
Be warned: spoilers ahead.
After the credits roll, Dustin reunites with Steve for the first time since their big fight in the previous episode. Dustin reveals that he found Brenner’s notes from the lab. He realizes that the energy that Nancy just shot and destroyed is actually some very unstable matter that is holding the Upside Down up. What this means is that because Vecna didn’t make the wall, he isn’t on the other side, and neither is Holly. Instead, outside the wall is nothingness. The Upside Down, as Dustin puts it, is not another dimension but rather a wormhole to another world. As the wall begins to collapse, El, Hopper and 008 make a mad dash to a gate and escape just before getting sucked into nothingness. Before the credits roll, we get a view from beyond the wall, connecting Hawkins and a mysterious other plane of existence.
This episode, like many others in this volume, has a lot going on at once, and it’s best described by going through each plotline individually. Starting with Dustin, Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan at the lab.
Steve and Dustin begin their search for Nancy and Jonathan, despite the clear dangers of moving closer to the unstable matter at the center of the lab. Jonathan and Nancy wake up stuck in a white goop that’s melting the floor they stand on. They’re stuck in a room with no clear exit, and have no way of reaching Steve and Dustin. As the goop starts to melt down to Steve and Dustin’s level of the lab, Dustin grows weary of continuing on. Steve is determined to save Nancy and tries to bridge the gap over the melting goop. Before he can risk his life, Dustin pulls him back, begging him not to go. He’s in tears, afraid he’ll lose another friend. Steve agrees to find a safe way.
Jonathan and Nancy start to lose hope as the room fills with goo. They scream for help as a last resort but no one can hear them. As they accept their fate, the two have an emotional heart-to-heart where they’re honest with each other for the first time since the previous season. Here, Jonathan takes the ring that he’d been saving for her, and “un-proposes,” realizing that they’re not right for each other after all. He throws the ring aside and hugs Nancy, ready to die. However, Nancy notices that the ring doesn’t sink. Instead, it sits on top of the now hardened goop. Neither of them will die.
As this is all happening, the team at the squawkt —his includes Joyce, Robin, Will, Lucas, and Mike —must figure out a way to both get in contact with El and Hopper in the Upside Down and wake Will up from his coma. Robin theorizes that Will, Max, and Holly are all stuck inside Vecna’s mind. Instead of being in a coma, Robin proposes that she’s actually in a trance induced by Vecna. As Robin and Lucas leave for the hospital, in a last-ditch effort to wake Max out of her trance using the powers of Kate Bush, El, Hopper, and 008 arrive in an old jalopy, barreling down the dusty road towards the Squawk. El tries to wake Will up using her ability to see into his mind.
El finds Will in the Upside Down, covered in vines, and bleeding from his eyes. She realizes that Vecna has him under his control, using him as a spy. Through Will’s eyes, Vecna finds out where Max is being hidden and sends Demodogs after Robin, Lucas, and Max. When Will wakes up, the gang at the Squawk departs for the Hospital to help save Max.
In the hospital, Robin is intercepted by Vickie. Vickie confronts Robin about stealing Benzo’s from the hospital, and Robin tells Vickie everything about the Upside Down, about El, and about their current objective. Vickie concludes that Robin is a drug addict in withdrawal when military officers burst into their room and drag Robin out. Before the soldiers can leave with Robin, two demodogs attack and kill them. Vickie and Robin barely escape and are able to warn Lucas that there are monsters after him and Max. Max’s heart rate increases as Kate Bush starts to work and she draws nearer to the escape from Vecna’s mind. Lucas picks up Max and the cassette player and meets up with Robin and Vickie where they hide in a laundry room. Just as the demodogs close in, and it seems like all hope is lost, Mrs. Wheeler, a current patient at the hospital, is able to make a distraction and blow up the monsters before they can kill Max and Lucas.
During all of this, Max and Holly make it safely back to the cave. With Vecna targeting Max in the physical world, Holly deduces that the reason Henry is so hesitant to enter the cave is probably that it’s a traumatic memory, meaning it could be a way out of the mind trap. As they wander the desert outside the cave, Holly finds a secret oil well and remembers Henry killing a man holding a briefcase. After this murder, Henry is covered in blood and opens the case, but before we can see what is in it, Max finds a way out of the mind trap
The final scene of this episode is one that can only be described as terribly ridiculous. Just as Max is about to escape from this prison she’s been stuck in for two years, she turns to Holly and has a ten-minute discussion with her where she tells her that she not only won’t be able to come back into Hawkins with her, but she will also have to find her own way out. Though meant to be emotional, it comes off as a fairly stupid decision from Max. She got trapped in the mind prison in the first place because she took too long to escape last time, and she basically lied to Holly for the entire time they were working together.
The episode ends before we can see if either of them made it, but it is assumed they both found ways out of the mind trap. This episode was exciting, but was victim to a couple of illogical moments. The Max and Holly conversation before leaving Vecna’s mind was enraging to watch, and Nancy and Jonathan had a confusing, yet open-hearted speech, leaving the nature of their relationship up for debate.
Rating: 7/10