After the anxiety-inducing cliff hanger at the end of the previous episode, we open on Max Mayfield, finally waking up from her Vecna-induced trance, in the arms of Lucas. After Max slowly regains consciousness, the team must find a way to escape the hospital without attracting the military’s attention. Max tells Mike that Holly is now out of Vecna’s mind trap, but stuck somewhere in the Upside Down.
We see Holly wake up in Vecna’s clutches. She scurries off, pulling a vine out of her mouth and throwing up some Mind Flayer particles. Holly narrowly escapes, falling through a crack in the ground to the Upside Down. She falls out of the sky, barreling towards the Upside Down. Nancy, still in the Lab, hears Holly screaming as she falls and runs outside to find her.
Be warned: spoilers ahead.
After the credits roll we see Murray, Erica, and Mr. Clarke successfully triangulating Dustin’s position in the Upside Down. The team at the hospital meets up with Mr. Clarke and devises a plan to break into the Upside Down again. El uses her abilities to lift a steel sheet off of one of the gates, and the team descends into the other world, retrieves Dustin, Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve, and returns to the Squawk to come up with a plan to find Holly.
Once back in Hawkins, Nancy reveals that when she saw Holly falling out of the sky, a vine came down and caught her before she hit the ground. The vine pulled her back to the sky, towards Vecna’s lair on the opposite side of the Upside Down. With this new information, Dustin theorizes that the Upside Down is not actually another dimension at all, but rather a bridge to a different dimension where Vecna is hiding Holly and the other children. Max now realizes that Vecna’s ultimate plan is to crash this other world into Hawkins and transform earth into an Upside Down-esque hellscape.
To stop this from happening, Steve proposes that the team sneak into the Upside Down, wait for Vecna’s dimension to get close enough to Hawkins for El to hijack Vecna’s mind and defeat him remotely. Once Vecna’s destroyed, the team will drop a bomb by the exotic matter and destroy the Upside Down on their way out.
Before departing to the Upside Down one last time, Hopper warns Joyce that 008 has been scaring El, and if 008 makes one sketchy move he’ll cut her off. Steve also apologizes to Dustin in an emotional heart-to-heart. Steve and Dustin both say they missed each other’s friendship, and, as a metaphorical olive branch, Dustin offers Steve the same weapon he gave Eddie the night he died.
El and 008 talk once more, when 008 reveals she’s been spying on El and Mike’s conversations. 008 warns El that nowhere will be safe, even after killing Vecna because the evil government doctors will stop at nothing to capture these superhumans. 008 proposes that in order to stop this vicious cycle of imprisonment, they will stay on the bridge and go down with the Upside Down.
Finally, just before leaving, Will realizes that Vecna is going to do everything in his power to control Will’s mind. Even use his darkest secrets against him. In a scene that can only be described as poorly timed and straight out of Disney XD, Will comes out to his entire friend group, as well as Robin, Vickie, 008, Hopper, Mr. Clarke, and Murray—forced, rushed, and poorly handled. Nonetheless, the team successfully sneaks into the Upside Down.
The other half of this episode deals with the affects of Holly’s escape attempt and return to Henry Creel’s mind trap. After being caught out of the sky, Holly wakes up in the Creel house surrounded by her friends. Though her friends try to convince her that Henry isn’t evil, Holly tries to escape again. She’s stopped by her classmates and beat up until unconcious. The final scene of the episode is Holly, half conscious around a table with her other classmates, waiting for Henry to start a ritual.
While this episode set up the finale to be an exciting, action-packed two hours of television, most of this episode consisted of the entire ensemble cast sitting around and talking. On top of that, the egregious attempt at a heartfelt coming out scene with Will made for an altogether cringey and predictable episode. Mr. Clarke’s character is always fun to watch on screen, but his introduction to the main crew this late into the series is a little forced and unnecessary. There are so many storylines colliding that it can be hard to follow what’s going on, but again, most of it is just set up for hopefully an exhillerating finale.
Rating: 6/10