House of R - 'Stranger Things' Season 5, Episodes 3-4 Deep Dive

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Mal and Jo return to the Upside Down to dive deep into episodes 3 and 4 of ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5. (0:00) Intro (8:15) Opening Snapshot (48:40) Deep Dive (2:48:04) Theory Corner Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin Producers: Chris Thomas and Mike Wargon Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Prepare for one last adventure at Target. Visit ⁠target.com/StrangerThings Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson, joining me today to let you all know that Ashley Klein is a snitch. It's Mallory Rubin. Joe, they put Dick in the washroom. And personally, for us, I like Dick. Really thriving. Mallory Rubin really thriving here in the back half of Stranger Things. Thrilling.

Season 5. Yeah. Volume 1, part 2. For us, part 2. For us, part two. We're here today to talk to you about episodes, or chapter rather, three and four of this batch of episodes from Netflix, Stranger Things. We already covered chapters one and two that's already existed in the feed. We also covered every previous season of Stranger Things. So that's existed in the feed. But that's what we're talking about today. And we'll get right to it after this. This episode of House of Ar is presented by Target. Stranger Things has returned to Target and it's time. to visit Hawkins for the final time. Step back into the 80s with righteous exclusives like a funco pop of Steve in the Squawk van, the epic Squawk satin-bomber jacket, and the stranger things you may upside-down capsule shaped like a walkie-talkie.

New items are dropping all season long, so prepare for one last adventure at Target. All right, before we get into, we have a lot to talk about with these episodes, obviously. A few consequential things happened in Hawkins and the upside-down, which we will talk. about quick programming reminders, though, before we do that. Later this week, we are doing our last sort of official, I believe, best of the century so far until we do another one that is a little bit more complicated. But this is our last one on one single topic, and we thought we'd end the year on fights. So best fights of the century so far, you guys have already sent a ton of great suggestions to us, hobbits and dragons at gmail.com. But we welcome them. We're talking one-on-one

fights, we're talking battles and we're talking verbal arguments. All of those are in the mix for this episode this week. We're going to end with some acrimony. That's the idea here. We'll see. Maybe I'll still convince you in the final couple weeks of the year that we should do an entire Best of the Century on sex scenes. Don't roll it out. Obviously, that'll be a part of our best of the rest, no matter what. But will it be a standalone? So we are going to do a best of the rest. You guys sent in a lot of topics that we didn't get to do with solitary sort of best of the Century episode on. So we're just going to do a rapid fire best of the rest episode before the year is over. We've got Fallout coming up. We've got Percy Jackson coming up. We've got Mallory has seen

Avatar Fire and Ash. I have not, but I will before the end of the year. That is a threat and a promise. So that's a lot of stuff we have coming up on the feet. Not to mention our returning to Hawkins of the upside down again and again and again before the year is over. So, Molly Rubin. That's a lot. How can folks keep track of everything we are? I'm going to keep it simple. Follow the pod. Follow House of R on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. You can watch full video episodes of House of R on Spotify. Incredible. And you can watch full video episodes of House of R on the Ringervor's YouTube channel. So follow us there as well. Follow the Ringervor on the social media platform of your choosing. We are on Instagram,

TikTok, Twitter, et cetera. And send us your emails because the inbox is always open. We have a ton of mailbag entries from the bad babies today who chimed in in abundance on stranger things. They always come through. Today is no exception. Keep the emails coming. We have more stranger things to cover, all the other things that Joe just teased for the rest of the month and beyond. Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com. Joe, back to you in the studio.

Thanks so much, Molly Rubin, out there in the field. Listen, spoiler warning. Yeah. All of Stranger Things up through season. five, episode four. So we have not seen any other episodes. We are on the same page as you. We have watched all the way up through the end of Sorcerer, episode four, and we know nothing that happens after that. No. Do we have some guesses? Yes, and we will save those for Theory Corner, which is going to come at the end of this episode. Then even after PPS, after Theory

Corner, we're doing something we're calling stage show script reader quarter. I would say we, loosely, I came up with that. We often have Book Reader Corner in some of our shows that we're we do. There is a stage show, Stranger Things First Shadow. We sort of alluded to it a little bit when we were talking in some of our previous episodes and we were trying to figure out how to cover it. There are some clear markers of things that they are definitely going to connect from the stage show into this season. We're not going to talk about that until the very end of the episode, the end, end, end. So if you don't want to know anything about First Shadow, you have an opportunity to bail out. We will warn you before that happens. So that is the current

plan. Anything else you want to say, Molly Rubin, about the plan, the spoiler plan today? No, do I have the opportunity to leave for the first shadow section? So, no, I'm kidding. No. Spoiler warning has been issued. You know, I think obviously on the theory corner front stuff will hit some of it as we go contextually, of course. But as Joe noted, anything that comes from the play that will be sectioned off in an appropriately safe space and you will be warned again on the precipice of that section beginning at the very end of the pod. So, save travels today through the rest of the episode, which will be, I think, many hours long. All right. Well, settle in or, you know, start your long drive that you're about to take or get your chores going or whatever you choose to do while you listen to us talk about.

Let me say this, by the way, on the front of many hours. I just want to shout out. I think a lot of people watch Stranger Things with their own pace. Maybe they've come back from a holiday, a holiday weekend. Now they're going to catch up on coverage at the top of this work week, et cetera. Great. But I just want to say quickly, to all of you absolute sickos out there who binged all four episodes of Stranger Things, night one, then listened to nearly three hours of our first

podcast on episodes one and two, and then dropped multiple comments to us that were like, drop the next pod right now. We see you. We love you. You're the best. It's a great note for us. It's something for us to think about when we consider how to cover the rest of the season

because we were like, oh, we'll give them a couple days. Everyone's like, where's that part two? It was just genuinely like really great to see it. It's very amusing. I also got an incredible kick out of the comment thread in the Spotify app about one other thing to keep in mind, I'm paraphrasing, one other thing to keep in mind

about Stranger Things dropping these episodes of the final season during the holidays is that, in this person's case, my mother, but it could be any family member, is just standing behind me watching this for the first time having no idea what's going on asking me what is happening every second. A lot of engagement with that comment.

So it seems to be an experience that many people are having. All of which is to say, you know, get in the comments on the Spotify episodes, get in there on YouTube, email us, the bad babies. we love to engage with you. We love to see you engaging with each other.

Sharing stranger things, rare bit of like monoculture genuinely, genuinely rare. So it is, I think that the early days of the holiday felt like maybe there was a little less shared conversation around stranger things than there would have been if it hadn't been Thanksgiving. That was how it felt to me at least. I know. I was like, oh, no, is this going to not be as big of a thing as I thought it was going to be? Yeah.

But then it's just kicked right back in. It's kicked right back in. So it's just fun to share stranger things with each other. and all of you. Digested their turkey or whatever else they were eating in other countries of the world where they don't celebrate Thanksgiving. And the memes are plentiful. The edits are plentiful. We're having a great time with the monoculture again. So speaking of emails, that's where we're going to start when we go to our opening snapshot. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods,

market peach, apricot, rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch. As is their trending mango, Yuzu chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods market. All right. So we will have emails from you all throughout. We got genuinely a metric ton of emails from you all. I read them all. They're amazing. We will not be able to get everyone, but we've got a ton in here. We're going to do a mailbag section, and then we'll sort of address a few throughout the episode as we go. We're going to start with a couple of things.

First of all, ton of you wrote in with fond memories of peanut butter boppers, and I love that for you. I said, I did not remember them, but you all do and have some great stories about it. So thank you so much for sharing. Feels like we're missing out, you know? Do they still exist? Does anyone have a box that they've had since 1987 that they want to send our way? Will we eat it? I don't know.

We've been through this before, soliciting expired food from the listening public. You were then ready to sample it. Unsurprisingly, I was a coward and backed out. But we did get a box of cereal from a cherished listener. We did. On the wig watch front. A lot of people sent me a video that was going around. at least Instagram Reels, probably TikTok as well,

from a creator called the underscore casual underscore Brian, who was addressing the Lucas wig, which is something that I flagged before the season even started from promo materials. The true story is this. The actor, Kailam Gluckland, his dad cut his hair for the first three seasons. The fourth season, they gave him that very slick fade. He was like on the basketball team, popular kid,

just like really good, nice haircut for season four. the wig this season is because Caleb did not want to change his hair. He had his hair and braids. He didn't want to change it. So they put a wig on top of it. Great. But the casual casual underscore Brian has a great video about a character reason why Lucas's hair might look like this. And it was sort of about like his worry over Max, but also the idea that they're in quarantine.

And like, you know, Karen Wheeler can't keep her perm fresh. You know, everyone's just sort of like, how did we all look in COVID lockdown? not our sharpest, not our freshest. So that is sort of, that was the idea behind the character reason why Lucas's hair might look that way. If it didn't bother you, that's great. You were blessed with not being stressed out about wigs. And I love that for you.

I listened to Mel Rode in with hitting on some time travel theories, which obviously we will get to Mallory Rubin is thriving. When Holly said time travel, Mallory got so excited. Mel wrote in about some of that. I'm not going to get into all of the time travel stuff she wrote, but I just want to let you know that in her email, she were referred to Vecna slash Henry slash one as VH1, the whole email. I had never seen that. I don't know if it's a thing on the internet and I missed it, but I was just like, at first I was confused and then I was delighted because she didn't explain

it. She just started using it. And I was like, what's happening? What is, are we, is it pop up video time? But no, it's a vector back there. Are you going to use it? Are you going to adopt it, VH1? It's entirely possible. We'll see if it feels natural in the flow of the moment. But it does feel like the kind of shorthand that the characters of stranger things would actively embrace and appreciate it, especially given their numerous conversations across multiple seasons now about how Bechna has too many names. So a handy little mashup. If VH1 existed in the latest days, which I'm not sure. I did it already.

Yeah, when did VH1 start? I want to say that's a 90s creation, but I could be wrong. Let's go to this puppy right now. Okay. When did VH1? Oh. Wait a minute. When?

1985. Ooh. But was it like local before it was syndicated or was it always just broadly? I'm going to toss that one to Mike Borgon, CT, and Arjuna to continue to look into while we carry on. Great. But in theory, in theory, the kids could have known, you know? The thing about VH1, which is a great, you know, we get another. reference to that's too many names inside of these two episodes about Vecna Henry 1.

What's interesting is that, you know, given the way that we're starting to think about these characters, it might actually be more useful to distinguish when we're talking about Henry versus when we're talking about Beckna. That is something that, like, I'm starting to think about. When are we seeing Henry and when are we seeing Bechta? Does that distinction matter? Are you going to throw in Mr. What's it? I might.

Who knows? If I'm feeling wild and wacky. All right. Justine wrote in this is this is a lightly touching on foreshadow stuff it's nothing it's nothing major but one thing that is revealed in the stage show and then we get context for inside of this episode is that Henry Creel according to the flyer of the stage show Oklahoma

that Max sees and her wanders through through Henry's memories was in high school at the same time as Joyce and Hopper timeline-wise, this is not match up with anything we have seen before, but the Duffers like to play fast and loose with this in a way that might bother Mallory more than more than you might think. So Mallory, A, how are you feeling about this timeline? B, how are you feeling about the idea that Joyce and Hopper went to school with Henry Creel and yet no one has talked about that at all since the events of last season?

Let me say, we're going to get shortly to our more general thoughts on these two episodes and the first volume dropped this season so far, which broadly I'm quite enjoying. This does not make sense and drives me crazy. Now, redcons and tweaks are a part of storytelling. They're certainly a part of ongoing long-tail genre storytelling. I actually have like a decent amount of space in my heart for that. But I think this, and I have as mentioned previously, and as we'll talk about more, you know, later today, I have not seen the stage play for shadow.

So my exposure to that is genuinely limited to what you shared with me on the last spot. We'll share with me today. That's it. But because we saw that flyer, we see, you know, Max is going through Henry's memories. We'll obviously talk about that scene more and just in general, everything that we learn from that sequence with Max and Holly. We see the flyer for Oklahoma. Joyce is in the hallway there. We know we're in a Henry memory.

We see Henry's name on the flyer. We see all the other names. Steve Harrington's dad is there, right? We see Ted's name, Karen's name, Hop's name, like you said. Joyce is directing the play. First of all, Henry is established as 12 years old in season four in the 59 memory. So maybe Henry is a very, very capable student and has skipped multiple grades and made his way to high school. I guess that's possible. Proposterous, for sure. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me, especially given some of the context we got in season four about like how things were going for Henry with his teachers, etc. The larger, I'm like willing to accept, yeah, they moved him up a couple grades. They tried to put him in a situation he might fit, whatever.

It is, it defies belief in episodes I really largely enjoyed that this would not be a thing that the characters were all talking about with each other. Exactly. I remember Henry. I talked to him. I remember that there were weird things that happened with his family. We went to high school with him, like blah, blah. That is so bizarre.

they wouldn't be talking about it. And, you know, in some cases, it makes Hopper and Joyce look, like, dumb, like, that they're not talking about, that they're not all talking about it, you know? Yeah, like, in season four, just when we learned about the Creel family massacre, the events of 59 at the mansion, we had a much smaller version of, like, huh, it kind of forces us to reassess some of the comments in earlier seasons just about, like, how rare it is for bad things to happen in Hawkins. Basically, it was, like, already a touch-off. But this direct association like Henry Creel, I went to school with him. He was in a play I put on.

Why would this not be something that people were talking about every minute of every day? And you could say maybe, okay, well, those conversations took place over the 37 spins of the QZ that we didn't get to see because of the passage of time. As we talked about last pod, more than a year and a half has passed between seasons. That's a long time. what is clearly established in the first couple episodes of this season, which again, we both loved episode one, even though it was exposition heavy, is that they're more than willing to make room for a couple

either sentences or chunky paragraphs to say, let's catch you up on a thing that happened and maybe that we talked about together and what we've been up to. So there would have been a way to account for it if they have been discussing it, which just kind of makes it seem like they haven't been. So that's odd. It's just odd.

Also, if they are changing the fact that Henry was 12 in 1959, also his family, according to the newspaper that they showed in the previous season, his family died in March, and this play is happening in November of 1959. So his family died in March. Inside foreshadowed, the timeline's different. And again, it's just like, I don't know why they felt like they needed to do all this, but this is what they decided to do. It makes no sense that the Henry that we meet in the Hawkins Lab in season four, played by Jamie

Campbell Bauer, is supposed to be roughly the same age as season one, Joy, and Hopper. Like those two people, those people do not look like they are age peers. So anyway, that's just a knit we have to pick. This episode is brought to you by Target. Heads up, Stranger Things has returned to Target. And it's time to prepare for one last trip into the upside down. Head back to the 80s with rad exclusives like the Stranger Things,

season five vinyl filled with epic tracks from the show and two awesome new Gatorade and vintage look bottles. The stranger things upside down cooler and the citrus cooler. New items are dropping all season long, so prepare for one last adventure at Target. Okay, we're going from Age Corner, Joanna, to Geography Corner. Ooh. Last pod, we talked at length about the very, like, shire has been saved,

but not for me, coded 11amite conversation. And then you asked a question that I think is important, not only for Stranger Things, but for the bad babies and for us, as we consider where we might want to retire one day. Where might we open house of reeds? You asked, is there a place with three waterfalls? I did. We've heard from the bad babies.

Here's what Kristen says. Living in Georgia, I'm always looking for locations and whatnot that I recognize from personal experience or from other shows filmed here. Pretty sure the quarry from season one was used extensively in vampire diaries. Oh. So when they mentioned three waterfalls,

I immediately thought of the triple falls in DuPont State Park, North Carolina. It's a bit of a hike from the filming locations, but it would fit the description and is gorgeous. Joanna, what do you think? This sounds delightful. So would it be, do you feel like it's everyone relocates to DuPont State Park, North Carolina, or are we going to see Mike and 11 on a hike walking by the triple waterfalls? Or should I just not take any of this as literally as I'm taking it?

Is it just sort of like emotionally three waterfalls? Are they going to open up a pub somewhere called the Three Waterfalls? Maybe. Great. What about a D&D club? Oh. Yeah. Oh.

Like, well, because I think a lot of people have... Fire and water, hellfire and three waterfalls, you know? A lot of people have suspected that the whole thing is going to end with everyone back together. Like, like all the common theory I've seen is that all four boys, if they make it out, which we don't know. But if all four boys make it out, it's the four boys and Holly. Or I would hope the four boys, Erica and Holly, playing a campaign together. in the Wheeler basement as just sort of like a throwback to how it all started. I mean, that would be absolutely wonderful.

I would love it. If they have a D&D campaign going on Lady Applejack is not there. We riot. We riot and we break out our poison pies. All right. Last one at least to round out of mailbag is what I'm calling Concerns Corner with Casey. Casey reads a great email, which was sectioned into questions and comments and concerns. And in the Concerns Corner, she and both of our parents had very specific.

specific to their life experience concerns that they wanted to address. So she said, from my mother and nurse, poor Max is going to wake up with the mother of all bed sores because it doesn't look like they've done a single position change in 20 months. I mean, someone's cutting her hair, right? It's the same-ish length in braids. Again, I do have questions about where Max's mom is, but, you know, these questions go unanswered. Well, and we have some, you know, we have some feedback. from Robin some insights into the precision care from the nurses at Hawkins General.

A lot of unlocked drug cabinets, very reminiscent of, though not exactly in that way, I have a plotline on Season 1 of the Pit, you know, took me back to the pit. And so are they keeping up with the sponge baths, with the limb adjustments in order to avoid the bed source? I don't know. Anytime I see the word bed store, it makes me think of a million-dollar baby, and I get like Oh, very upset. Very upset.

Hawkins, someone somewhere on the internet pointing out to me that Hawkins Memorial Hospital has the same logo as I believe the hospital from the Jason movies, Halloween movies. HMH is a different name of the hospital, but it's the same sort of font and layout. So a little Easter egg there. Okay. From Casey herself, a scientist. This one's for you, Mallory. Dr. Kay's appalling PPE practice. You should never take off a mask.

And then put it back on while still wearing gloves covered in nasty stuff. Gloves always come off first. Mallory, how did you feel about this goop moment from Dr. Kay? Tenticle wrangler, Dr. Kay. I thought this was appalling. And frankly, one of the great crimes from a character who is clearly a foe of consequence. Yes, yes. This is, I did gasp.

I recoiled. You know, it's the kind of thing where if we were doing one pot, on each episode. Maybe we'd spend like 10 minutes on this. So it's not the luxury that we have. But it was something that I noted and it shook me to my core. So I'd like to thank, I'd like to thank Casey for chiming in on this as well from the perspective of a professional. Here's what bothered me most of all. From Casey's data contractor, she wrote, cutting a hole that big in the floor would make the entire room collapse. She's talking, of course, about how they demolished the Turnbow House,

which doesn't seem like it was necessary, but perhaps wacky fun for everyone involved. I will say, I texted you about this and then also watching the episode again with my best friend who just wrote a wine book, we gassed when the wine seller of the Turnbow House was absolutely demolished by those medices, the children of Hawkins.

That was thousands upon thousands of dollars. wine just like carelessly crashed to the ground. And not even when the demigorgon fell, but like because they dropped an entire floor on top of it. That's the thing. You know, do we have time, as we've discussed already, we're very much on a clock inside of season five and Stranger Things? Do we have time to relocate many bottles of wine or very heavy shelving units housing

the wine? Maybe not. But this was a tragedy. Was it as tragic as when the demigorgon entered Derek's room and crushed the mountain Dukin on the rug. I don't know. I mean, like, one A, one A, one B. But yeah, I did mourn the loss of all of the wine as well. I am not a contractor added to the list. So I don't know if that insight on integrity is correct. It seems like sound insight and right. I will say that house is quite large. Obviously, they're going for the home alone comps in many respects, right?

And, you know, the term boast real estate tycoons as we learn. So I guess it's good news that they'll be able to replace their dwelling. Sure. But I was wondering when the wine shattered if it was distracting for everybody who was engaging in the booby trapping of the Turnbow home to smell all of that. Like, I would have a hard time focusing on our demigorgian plot. Yeah. Must be smelled amazing in there, but like not necessarily in a way that helps you lock in.

These are questions we have for that entire episode, which I would say, I think episode three is my least favorite episode of the batch of the four, personally. But let's get to our season five stage setting. So just to a reminder that these four episodes was dropped on Thanksgiving, we're again another three at Christmas time, and then the final, the finale is coming New Year's Eve. We love to work on the holidays. Episode three and four are set entirely, correct if I'm wrong,

November 4th, 1987. This is all one day and tonight. is what we're getting. And then also Friday, November 6th, 1959 in the flashback is something that is also on the timeline here. Do you think that the next three episodes,

episodes 5, 6, and 7 will take place on November 5th and then the finale is on November 6th? That we go back to where we started with the finale? What do you think? Yeah, I think there are two possibilities. Clearly the bulk of the season is going to take place inside of these few days

and November 6th further amplified inside of these two episodes, episodes 3 and 4 as like the key date, right? It's on the flyer for Oklahoma was the night of the play as well. I think it's possible that the finale is set on November 6th. I think it's possible that the penultimate, basically the finale of the second volume, is set then. And then whatever time travel loop in sends us into another point in time for stretches of the finale. A different November 6th. We'll just be on all November 6th throughout history. Sounds fun to me.

Yeah. To be in November 6, 1959, to be in November 6th, when we'll vanish. Yep. And then to be in November 6, 1987 is sort of a good idea. Okay. How do we feel? I mean, I already said that season 3 is my least favorite, but like, how do we feel about season 5 so far and do the final moments of you and I were exchanging

some texts. I was a little behind you on my watch. We were exchanging some texts with some feelings about what we was going on and how were you feeling about the season? And then we both agreed that the end of the final moments of Sorcerer was just absolutely cathartic, all-timer, incredible. So like, do any of the qualms we had leading up to it, which we will talk about, are they just sort of like burned all away out of our hearts and minds and we're just like begging for the next installments of what's to come next? Like, how do you feel about the way this all rolled out?

Yeah, I'm really enjoying season five overall. I'm high. on the first volume. I think that we, like you said, like you alluded to, we had a similar reaction. I said to you when I had finished, like, because I didn't want to give anything away. I think the way I put it to you is like it's like one degree, just one degree, but it is one degree to action movie propulsive pace for me compared to like what I really love about Stranger Things, which is those quieter character-driven moments. I think the fact that we are operating inside of this very tight time frame, and as discussed last pod, that all of our characters, who've always been entwined in the same plot,

but are literally like, we're working on this plan together, we're tracking each other's telemetry tags, like we're in the same places. It heightens that sense of like, we are moving toward our mission, the end game is here. That was my one kind of like pacing note

that I think I felt a lot on the first binge. The other note, which we will talk about in more detail later, is like I really bumped heavily, genuinely heavily on the hopper death fake out. Like, you and I both. Yeah, we'll come back to that and we'll talk about it in detail. But I was like, I actually kind of can't believe they did that again.

Just the audacity, honestly. Yeah. That said, the pacing stuff, I did not feel it nearly as much on a second watch through. Like, nearly as much. And in fact, because I think, like, I knew where the story was going, but also just like I had that, you're identifying as like unbelievably intense and rewarding emotional response to not just the conclusion of the episode and, you know, Will's Sorcerer a moment going into those Spy Shack memories. Like we've talked about those memories and what they mean to us. I suspect we'll both

talk about that scene more in a couple seconds here and as we go through the deep dive. But like then all the moments that build up to that, the Will and Mike conversation, all of the Will and Robin conversations. Like I found, okay, we do have a few more of these conversations and quiet moments and character-driven, arc-centric beats. It's just that they're inside of a 90-minute action movie. Right. I also think that Derek is, to me, an instant icon. I think it seems like that's not everybody's opinion.

I chatted with Chris yesterday, and that was not his opinion, but I loved Derek and got such a kick out of him and found that, like, levity to be much needed. So all of which is to say, overall, quite high on the season, like, longed for a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny bit of a settling in to, like, I'm just, like, let me see Dustin and Steve. hug each other and talk about their feelings together, you know, or make lightsaber sounds together. I suspect we'll be getting more of that in the back half. But on a second watcher, I was like,

yeah, this is just really good and really fun. And I think, like, the internet seems to think that Sorcerer is the best episode of the show ever, which is fascinating. Which is, I don't think is true, but I think that final stretch is some of the most invigorating storytelling that they've ever done. I don't think that sort of makes the entire episode as a whole, because that's like episode also contains the hopper fakeout death, which I just think is really aggravating. But I also, I like these first four episodes. I think the word I used in response to your sort of action movie comment was like,

this is feeling relentless. That's how it felt to me just sort of like we were banging forward constantly, which is what the Duffers have said. Like we're not going to do a slow ramp up. We're just going to go, go, go. You know, something that you and I having lived through the end of Game of Thrones is this wariness of the idea of we need big set pieces to impress people in the final,

you know, we need everything to be bigger, bigger, bigger. But like stuff like the Turnbow trap, like I don't need them to demolish an entire house in order to like have something like that work for me. So I think they're not going to change anything based on what we said now. It doesn't matter. It's all happened. I think the Will moment is so incredible.

I was bumping a bit on Noah Schnapp's performance leading up to that. Yeah. I felt like, you know, we had been asking for more Will. And then his, some of his earlier episode stuff in this chunk was, like, not working as well for me. But the conversation with Robin, pairing him with Robin, which we talked about in the last two episodes, was really, really smart. The conversation with Robin, her part of it was so strong. Like, even though I found their, like, laugh at the end of it, like, oddly weird and, like, staging and stuff like that, her part of it was so. strong. And then everything that he does as he's processing in the final moments of Sorcerer is so strong that I'm now excited to see what happens with Will going forward.

Same. Right up until then, I was like, maybe I was wrong to ask for more Will. And then I was, I was completely rewarded. So yeah, the next question we wanted to ask ourselves when we've been doing it as part of our rewatch is what in the stretch of season five is the most representative of what stranger things is slash does. You and I had the same moment. in the first two episodes, which is Mike talking to Holly, and I feel like we're going to have the same moment here, which is, as you alluded to, it's kind of hard to separate. Robin talking to Will in the tunnels from Will having a spy shack memories to Will becoming a superhero. All of those things are connected,

the way that emotionality or vulnerability or all these other things become a strength and a power that you can use to protect and defend. people around you, which is a huge theme of these two episodes. An older character, imparting wisdom onto a younger character, very Mike and

Holly, very Robin and Will. And just making, as we've been talking about throughout our strangers things you watch, as we've been talking about with Buffy, making these like real world's emotional journeys that people go through as they grow up

into something fantastical and supernatural is something that I just I know that we've responded to so much inside of this show. So like what what else do you want to say that you haven't already said about this stretch? No, I think I'm with you completely. That's also the most emblematic to me. I think that I would add in the Mike and Will conversation as they're all walking toward the tunnel at the squawk that Robin kind of witnesses, which then not only is that

when Mike invokes the idea of the sorcerer and Will's powers being innate, but of course, also then Robin witnessing this broaches the conversation with Will that she that she shares with him about her memory of her childhood and the video and all of that, which we'll talk about all in more detail as we go through the deep dive. But I just thought like the stitching together and building of those moments, the Will and Mike conversation, the Robin and Will conversation, which I thought was just so lovely. And Maya Hawk is like, God, tear. I mean, always has been, but just incredible. Like the fact that Maya Hawke can give us something that Robin can give us something like Jesus what in response to Derek's suck of that one, like the genuine hilarious comedy. And then

the most deeply rooted heartfelt, vulnerable insights into questions of identity and discovery and embrace like really a gift to the show and I think to all of the people watching it. then the way that that built into the spy shack. And I just really, I mean, it's like you're leaning forward on your couch, you're cheering, you're whooping. It's such a cool, fun moment as longtime fans of stranger things to get, like, Will, to see Will, wiping the blood away from his nose. The way that it connects to this, like, long-running through line of the show, this idea

of, like, believing that the superhero is there inside of you. And I love what I think what I loved most of all about this, because as we'll talk about more. Robbins, counsel to will is so rooted in the idea of like, you already have what you need, right? It's inside of you. And embrace all of yourself. All of yourself. The totality of who you are. That is like so core to what the show, what the show's mission is, not as like a mystery story or a multi-dimensional time travel story, but as a coming of age story. Right. And to be able to pair that with another long, running central tenet of the show, which is your friends and your family and the people who love you, it's not about finding validation from them and needing that. It's about them helping them

helping you believe in what is already there and helping you embrace what is already there. And so to give us this crucial moment for Will, re-centering him so fully in the story in such a thrilling electric way, having him tap into the idea. not only of his worth and his beauty, but his power in so many respects. And to do that by tapping back into the SpyShack, Joyce, Mike, Jonathan, all of these crucial relationships in his life, I thought was like really rewarding as people have been watching those characters in the show for years. Like, I'm getting emotional.

I thought it was really lovely. You and I were both. We were both crying through this when like watching. watching young Will and Mike meet each other, watching Will and Jonathan build Castle Byers. Amazing. I got really emotional seeing like a younger Jonathan for some reason. Just like real, and like the way in which he had to like step up because his dad Lonnie sucks and all this or stuff like that. Just like made me really emotional.

The sign for Will the wise. I was like, I was crying over the Spyshack memories. And then we get this like badass reveal. And I think I figured. it out only a split second before it happened. So it's just one of those moments that is like surprising yet feels inevitable. And you say inevitable, even though my concern coming into the season, and I talked to you about this a little bit already, but my concern is that Will would be a sacrifice, a victim. Will has to die. Will has to do this and all sorts of stuff like that.

And I didn't like that as an idea. Or will become seduced to the dark side. Will becomes Zephtna's right hand. I didn't like that either. Will becomes a powerful sorcerer. who can stand with 11 and 8 as a trio of superhero teens to defend against, you know, the evil powers that would invade their town? Incredible. I just thought it was so good. I love this for Noah Schnop. I love this for the show.

I love this for us. And I'm really excited. I'm like, do this for the rest of the season. Just like white eyes, snapping bones. I'm thrilled. Really exciting. So. And then we got, I mean.

I'm not going to get into all of them, but I will say on the emotional front. Yeah. The emails we got for the bad babies who really identify with Will's journey and talked about how much it meant to them personally, how much they wish they had had something like this when they were growing up, maybe queer in the 80s or something like that, or even in the 90s, et cetera, et cetera, really affected me a lot. So thank you so much for sharing your stories with us. And thank you so much to the show for presenting this story that matters so much to so many people. And, you know, you don't have to be queer to identify with it. But if you are queer, like, what an extra level of feeling seen and powerful. You know, your queerness as a superpower is like something that is incredibly exciting.

So, okay. On the sort of we ran through this last time, but now we can do it with some context. These are the movies that the deafers have cited as season five references. Children of Men. My question before was like protecting children, but now I think it has to do with the oner of like Mike leading the kids through the battlefield that happens at the end. That's a very children of men sort of coded action sequence.

So I think that that's what that is there for. The Great Escape, that's just the text. They talk about it overtly. No surprise there. Genuinely wonderful stuff. The Lost Boys in Home Alone, this is Booby Traff. stuff in episode three, if you've seen Lost Boys, they do a similar sort of like booby-trapping the house. It also happens on a nightmare on Elm Street is also booby-trap for Freddie.

So we love to booby-trap vampires and housebreakers and monsters from other realms. Okay. The cell and eternal sentient of the spotless mind, this is very exciting to me because this is Bechna's Mind Palace slash traveling through memories, which I can only hope we will do much, much more of in future episodes. How excited are you for that? Like, how much of that do you want? Like, my desire for that is sort of endless. As much as it'll give us.

Yeah. And, like, again, I have not seen the first shadow play. I am still a little bit baffled by, like, just based on what we understand about, like, that being a very Henry-centric story, a little bit baffled by, you know, especially given that that came out. It's not like that's been out for a decade. You know, it came out between seasons four and five and seems to center on information that will be very present

in the final four episodes of a 10-year-running show. I just find that, like, and is not something... Now, we're, like, source text people. But I think it's different to say, like, you could watch this other thing easily or, like, you could go, like, get this book at the library very easily versus, like, you must go to Broadway to... the West End.

Or like, read this on Wikipedia. I know, which is how I absorbed it, like, through Reddit threads, which is not my ideal way of absorbing any story. For an end game of a story, you've been invested in for this long, yeah. It's bizarre. We had one of our listeners wrote in with a bath of, like, if every show had been sold out on the West End and Broadway, it is how many people could have seen it? It is still this fraction of the larger, stranger things viewing audience.

Like, even if everyone could have teleported themselves to the theater. So, yeah, very bizarre. I will also say Eternal Sunshine, obviously a movie I've seen a million gajillion times. The Cell. Dynamite movie. Dynamite. Perfect. Honestly, perfect movie.

The Cell is much more about understanding the psychology of a monster. So I wonder if this is like getting into like the how and the why and the creation of Vecna. I hope so. There are very few things I enjoy genuinely. Very few things I enjoy more than like real villain origin. story stuff. Always. I knew I was special. Always. I knew there was something. Tomridel. Tomaridel. So I, yeah, I, you know, I want obviously like a lot of time, given though we only have four episodes left, I know they're really long, but like that's not a lot of lot of sheer

space. So I want obviously a lot of time with the people we've been with since the very beginning. But yeah, I'm really interested in as much Mind Palace, Kavazat's stuff as we as we can get. and just in understanding Henry Creel and how we got to this place and the connections, the parallels, but also the distinctions across the character set, I'm very invested in all of that. And something to think about specifically with the cell and eternal sunshine of the spotless mind is that how creative those directors who are just absolutely visionary directors got with sort of depicting the idea of like a crumbling memory or, you know, a fantastical depiction of a memory, stuff like that.

So we can have like, we have Mac sort of, you know, pulling paper off of a wall and climbing through like that. We get a taste of it, but I wonder how much more exciting than they can get

in terms of the visuals when it comes to that. So I'm looking forward to that a lot. Back to the future. We're living, dude. We're fucking living. Flux capacitor, Grace got mentioned,

the bemer tearing into the upside down very, of course, Deloria encoded. Yep. Worth noting that the back to the future travel date is November 5th, 1989, 1995, but, you know, we are right in that

time zone. And then our listener, I think it's Cassie, but spelled with only one S, so perhaps Casey, but says, she thinks the billboard and the upside down, the turbo development billboard might be a back-to-future reference because obviously

Loan Pine, Twin Pines, all sorts of development stuff in Back to the Future. And also, no question. Also, the Mr. Sandman Needle Drop, which, you know, Marty McFly also hears when he goes back to the 50s. So, yeah, the styling of the term, the fact that it is a real estate billboard, but also the kind of, like, painted illustration of a very lion estate's back to the future. No question. Yeah, I am absolutely delighted by how present Back to the Future references are in this season.

It's a thrill. Just more mounting evidence that Mallory will get all of her time travel dreams coming true. Terminator 2. Mm-hmm. Per the deafers, Vecna is based on the T2 Terminator, relentless violence searching for children. Also, the Vader sequence in Rogue 1,

they referenced as like, when Vecna comes in at the end of episode 4, just sort of tears through people, pulling pins out of grenades and all the other things, that they wanted to make that feel like Vader slashing through the hallway in Rogue 1 or the Terminator just sort of plowing through people on his pursuit.

The Vader, not only the Vader, like charge down the corridor, but just that initial shot of Vecna, like, through the film of the gate and the initial kind of like Vader, the lightsaber activating and the red glow through the fog. Very, very Vatery. In a way, I quite enjoyed. And, you know, it's just a beat after that that we start really focusing on Grout instead of Vader. Very grudy. That's a real tonal shift, got to say.

Very grudy. Absolutely. Very grudtastic. Will you be talking? It's wigwatch always, but it's also fit watch. Like, will you be sharing any commentary on the, like, spiky twig shoulder pads that Swole Vecna debuted in this stretch? I love it. They call on Swole Vecna.

Oh, yeah. It's bulking season for Vecna. He's been. No, no. Instagram Reel. I saw a great Instagram reel where someone was like, Beckna dropped the waste trading routine because, like, he has, like, a little bit of, like, a pot belly in his previous guys. And now he's just, like, CGIed, like, down to twigs in his middle.

So it's like bulking out but slimming cutting also at the same time. All right, Nightmare on Elm Street, three Dream Warriors. We talked about this before, but this is more Mind Palace stuff. There's a character played by Patricia Arquette in that movie who could pull people into her dreams. There's a character called Will who becomes a wizard master and can fight Freddie in the dream space. So this idea of like the kids uniting in the sort of the Henry Mind Palace that they're stuck in, Holly transforming yourself into Holly the heroic. Anyway, just like something in that sort of dreamscape, ordinary children becoming superheroes.

We've already seen a taste of it with Will. Like, is it something we feel undoubtedly we're going to see with Holly. Will this be able to happen to all the children who got taken at the end of episode where we see a child army of superhero children? That would be exciting, you know, to me. Anyway. And I'm with you, by the way, on Derek. Derek in episode three. Your fucking rules.

Episode three aggravated me. Episode four, one of my favorite characters of all time. Like, Joyce coaching him to become delightful Derek, really, really good stuff. I mean, we've got dipshit Derek. Yes, exactly. We've got dipshit Derek. We've got Delightful Derek. But we've got dogma, Derek.

That's my favorite Derek. Just the absolute fast. Feel the sand. Really good. Under your butt. Incredible. Accompany with the like the whacking. on the for it. Just really good stuff. Okay. Fantastic. Last and at least, Poltergeist. So we've already

talked about how Holly comp with the Carolyn character from Poltergeist, a girl being taken, et cetera, et cetera. But Will literally gives us a there here in episode four, which I thought was like a really excellent little poltergeist nugget. So yeah. Some movie references that all make sense now. Thanks so much. They sure do. Interestingly not listed, anything to do with Harry Potter, which could not be more core to the interpretation of these episodes. We'll obviously be talking about the Harry Voldemort Will Vecna Comps, which we have been doing since season two. We have.

And that was, I think, as central as an influence and reference as maybe any other pop culture touchstone to date. I think they're not going to say it. Yeah. It's just so clear. Yeah, something they're drawing. The parallel is undeniable. That's plenty of preamble. I think we should now get.

Is it? An hour into the podcast? We said it was going to be a long one. I suggest we begin our deep dive. All right. So we're not, I made the notes, so it's my rules. And we're not going to go exactly in chronological order. I've done some like character groupings.

Like I think we can do all of the Holly and Mac stuff together because it doesn't really touch the other storylines that much. So we're just kind of go character groupings in roughish chronological order is the plan. We are going to end. Don't worry with Will the wise. I apologize in advance if I talk about something in the wrong spot. Oh, no, it's, I mean, to do my best. No rules. I just, this is how I decided to organize things.

I love it. We can go off the roadmap anytime we want. Into cave systems in Nevada, through hospitals, into high school hallways, do whatever you want in the dream scape that is our online today. Because you abhor a crevice. Oh, my God. You abhor a crevice, Jonah. Henry and I both hate a crevice. Henry and I, strong anti-crevice energy from Henry.

and me. Okay. So we're doing Holly. This is a redux of our earlier section, which was Holly in Wonderland, Holly and Max in Wonderland. I guess before we go through all the things that happen here, let's just jump ahead and start with. How did you feel about the Max reveal? What I remember from our texting, again, I was behind you, was we both saw this coming

and we're still incredibly thrilled by the reveal nonetheless. Oh, yeah. I mean, we've been talking about this for some time going back through the prior seasons, just briefly discussing their trailers. It's like I'm loosely quoting something you said a couple of pots ago, but like they weren't just going to keep Sadie sink in a hospital bed. I mean, she's one of the strongest performers in the show. And Max is a beloved character and a crucial one. And then the fact that Max was the character who penetrated the mind palace in season four. And we got all of the like, wait, Max is dead, but okay, 11 went into like the void and something happened and we unwept. Okay, like this was obviously going to be crucial. Frankly, the only surprise I think is that we had to wait until the very end of episode three and then really it's episode four, chapter four, that we're spending with Max. So that was maybe a bit longer than I would have anticipated for Max to come back into the story. But Max was always going to be here. I think this is really, really smart as a way to do it. I think that the

connection between Max and Holly is like a pleasant surprise, I think, pairing those characters that would, you know, other than our like, I've been borrowing

Holly's crayons at the breakfast table to do a really good drawing of the Grill Mansion. That, to me, stuck out as like one of those things that I felt sure they went back and like put Holly in that scene so that Holly and Max could have like met on screen.

So that when Max is like, do you remember me, Holly, who is now five years older, even though only a year and a half has passed, is like, yeah, I remember you. Yeah, though she does say, yeah, you, like, skateboard and you're always wearing a walkman. She doesn't say, yeah, you, like, had a really loud conversation in my kitchen about all of this supernatural stuff and something about, like, another dimension. We all remember the details. You know, this is, of course, what the showtime classic The Affair taught us is, like, we all remember different details about chemo. Holly was busy light writing, light writing the, like,

Proto iPad. She was just sucked into her iPad moment with her light bright, not really paying attention to what was going on around her. Okay. So, yeah, and I want to say, like, Max in this, you know, Holly the Heroic on a Hero's Journey. Yes. Max being the sort of Obi-One-Kenobie-esque figure that she meets is just like an

excellent use. Something that we're going to talk about throughout is the pure pleasure of seeing these kids who we met as small children, become the sort of protectors of the smaller children around them, watching like Mike and Lucas throw their arms in front of small children, just said like something, like did something to my heart. So watching Max here become like the guardian, right, is a really good use of her.

I will say I was, I got an answer to something that I was confused about, which is the wigwork on Sadie Sink this season, and they explained it thusly. She cut her hair a bit, so it was shorter than it had been before. Basically, she's wearing a wig with the braids and a wig with the curly hair, and I was wondering why with the braids. And it's because they were flipping back and forth between filming her and the braids and her

and the wild curly hair. And so they had to wig it up in order to be able to do those transitions in a day. And so I was like, okay, my heart is at rest and I understand. Okay, let's go back to the beginning. You're the best. It was bothering me. Let's go back to the beginning of Holly and Wonderland here. My Persephone in Hades, like, spidey senses were tingling when Holly was eating the Blackberry.

You can't eat the food. You can't eat fruit especially. Don't eat fruit in the underworld of any kind. I get it, though. Like, the cream, the heavy bowl of cream, the fresh pancakes. Now, if Mr. What's it said, yeah, Blackberries are your favorite, right? And then I was like, I never told you that. How'd you know?

And he said, just a hunch. I would be like, are you reading my mind? You were like, absolutely not. Are you reading my mind? But Holly's like, time to have a dance party and makes some cakes. Hustling, they are delicious. Yeah, they are delicious. I like taking the idea of like a childhood, easy bake oven, you know, this play space

for creation and literalizing that with an oven and an actual like fresh baked good in the grill home. Wonderful stuff. Wonderful stuff. Something that I found really interesting is that the writers confirmed that Henry's brown suit that he wears as Mr. Wusset is based on Brenner's brown suit that what we see him wear the day of the massacre in the hospital. Henry is, of course, stealing children, just like Brenner did. Will 11 have to be the one to point that out to him? I don't know. Well, is this something he will

figure out on his own? We'll see. But that seems to that has to come back. It's like, hey, you realize you're doing exactly what was done to you, right? Yes. Is this something you really want to do? What do you make, speaking of dance parties, what do you make of the significance of Henry giving Holly music when music has been used as a defense against him? We got a Tiffany cassette at play. Yeah, I was fascinated by this, like had a real, huh, moment in real time. And I don't know. I just think it's clearly something we're supposed to be asking and wondering about. Like, he, Max and Bechno were having like a decisive showdown when he, he.

Kate Bush when the Kate Bush Patronus allowed Max to escape the Mind Palace in season four. We see in these episodes and this season that the music nearly pulled Max to safety again. Why was she not running? The tape loop is not long enough. Why was she not running? She just stands there. Rubbing the hand. Feeling like almost feeling like.

It's like so sweet that I forgave the stillness. for a second. But yeah, Vecna has this knowledge. So to, like, in theory, arm your prisoner with a means of combating your power is very notable. And I think something that we should be noodling on. This is, like, a less overt version of it.

But even just, obviously, we get the whole, like, don't go into the woods. The monsters are there. Max is there. Vecna does not want Max and Holly teaming up. But like everything which is mine is yours, this really active encouragement to explore, like to go find the, not only Alice's harrowing to see Holly put on little dead Alice Creel's dresses, by the way. Like what a, I thought, really effective reminder of what Henry Creel did to his family and then to many others after. But to also find the Boy Scout chest in his room, you know, where the, the, the, the, the, the,

spy glasses, the little pack, the scarf that Holly will put on. Also a like map slash drawing that I was zooming in on as much as I possibly could try to decipher. And I think I saw large opening, but couldn't parse much more than that. But like, yeah, why give Holly the music that could be a shield? Why encourage Holly to explore, albeit with parameters when exploring could lead to discoveries that ultimately make Holly a threat or allow Holly to escape? Like, I, What do you make of this? This is where I am tempted to delineate between Vecna and Henry. And this is where I am tempted to say that every time we see him in the Mr. What's-It suit, that that is Henry, whatever is left of Henry inside of Vecna.

I don't, it's not clean to me because whoever he is, he's still, like, part and parcel of taking children, which doesn't seem like a great thing to do. But there's, like, what humanity is left inside of him? Is he actually arming these children to combat negative influences in some way? This is something I brought up last week, or the last batch of episodes when I was like, this idea of, is he saving them in his own mind? Is this something that he is saving them from? And is the Tiffany cassette a weapon that he is arming Holly with in some way, you know? Yeah, I don't know.

I think that feels right to me. And I think this idea of the many selves also feels very. very like in keeping with something the show is interested in many different respects and ways in exploring to that like a warped nobility of intention point. Like one of, I think the speech that Henry made to 11 in season four in the 79 massacre flashback will come up probably more than any other thing today other than all of the season two ties. One of the things that we talked about this briefly before like last week, but one of the

things that he said is I can make my own rules. We'll come back to that, this idea of, like, creating your own world, your reality. I could restore balance to a broken world. A predator, but for good. This is the self-mythologizing, right? Like, a predator but for good, I identify with the spider, the gods of this realm, but I know how to do it. And is the path grim and bleak? Am I making these same mistakes that other people made that ultimately harmed me?

But for the greater good? But for the greater good. Yeah. Other greater good. For the greater good. So I think there's that. Also, to this point, I was very struck. I think this supports what you're identifying here by Derek and all the other kids also

knowing Henry is Mr. What's it. Because that means even though Holly is the one holding a wrinkle in time, it's not her name for him. It's his name for himself. Well, I think all of those kids are reading that book in school together. So do you think that grade is all reading? We're like, I'll call you Mr. What's. It felt to me like maybe he's like, that's, call me Mr. Watson or think of me as Mr. What's it. And then is he identifying with basically like a guide?

Interesting. Potentially. That was like, that had not occurred to me before until rewatching the episodes on Derek and Debbie, little Debbie Miller. I like Debbie Miller a lot. There's something really evocative about her. I like Debbie Miller a lot too. I've got notes for the Miller parents and all the other parents of Hopkins, which is don't. Just the strange military men.

You're walking at your door. Just take your kid away. What the fuck was that? Don't worry. Don't worry. They're teachers with them. It'll be fine. Oh, man.

To go back to this idea of like Henry versus Vecna. Yes. We already talked about the Spy Shack sequence in season two, one of our favorite sequences. And when we talked about that on our season to rewatch, we talked so much about the way in which Jonathan and Mike and Joyce were trying to remind Will who he was. Yes. Who is? Access the will you are inside. of you.

And we are the anchors to hold you here in this world. And if Henry didn't have that, the Henry that he is just winds up boxed into this little prison inside of the mind and is not sort of rooted in the reality the way that Will was because he was surrounded by a more supportive family than Henry was or something like that. So, okay. Yes. As we trip to sort of enhance this idea, as we trip the late fantastic through Henry's memory,

and it becomes clear that both Holly and Max are tracking. in his mind. We have to remember also, and we brought this up before, but Vecna mentioned a couple times to Nancy 2.11, this idea of the people that he kills, he says, they're not gone 11, they're still with me in here and like taps his head. Right. So like, that's something they set up in season four, this idea of like, I store people up here in my, in my mind palace. Great stuff. Really cool. And let's never forget that the part of the reason we got that clearly very crucial bit of canon is because Vecnova's basically like taunting Nancy for not remembering about Barb.

Barb, crucial here at the end of all things. Oh, God. Okay. That's my one reservation, you know, and all the memory stuff. Oh, is how important Barb is or whether or not Barb will show up. You're so worried about Barb showing up. Okay. We've already covered a lot of this other Mac stuff.

I do have like a song corner I want to get to in a second, but anything else do you want to say about the use of Max? Oh, boy. Here. Geez, let's see. I liked when the map, what's the technical term for when you put the map on top of the moving pictures? Like an overlay sort of things.

My brain. That gave me a very kind of like rings of, power and Lord of the Rings, like style ping in a way that I found enjoyable, given how many Lord of the Rings references we've had across the show. Here's a question I would like to ask you about this location. We'll obviously talk about it more elsewhere in the pod later today. But just in terms of a visual choice, or maybe I'll just, I don't know if this is a question. It's just an observation. We're going to talk elsewhere today about the upside-down wall that many of our characters have now

run into, driven into, stabbed or pissed on. The meat wall, correct. That wall, as Dustin, who is good at math, will tell us, is a circle. And Hawkins Lab is at its center. We'll talk about that more later. We talked last pot about how very thronesian the first glimpse of the meat wall was in the first stretch of episodes that we covered.

when Holly makes it up to this rock wall, which is obviously a different thing, I was once again like, this just looks like the wall in Game of Thrones, except it's not made of ice. And given, I'm like that, I don't know, that fact that we have two walls, one is a circle, one does not appear to be a circle,

but still makes me wonder, given that one of the things we learn in this stretch from Max taking Holly and us through the memories, and there is like the pursuit, right? Henry's pursuit of Max. Henry in his bloodied, orderly outfit from the 79 massacre. So that visual roots us in the like Henry who killed all those kids. Henry who did this terrible thing in 79, right? The Henry who L discovered.

There's an evil kind of glare and sneer during the pursuit. And then we get to this rock face. We learn from Max that Henry will not go in. place that Max has been able to make like a, like a cave layer, a home, basically. And just scrounging and foraging, junk from around the world. Decent book collection, given the circumstances, honestly. It's like, it seems like an all right place to hang out. Yeah. You know, Max is forced to wear hiking boots instead of her preferred van skate shoes. Like, it's not perfect. But it's must you make do?

But for the costume department to be like, what would a tomboy dress like in the 50s? I think they did a great job with that. Very, very, very good. And so, like, you know, we see this moment where Henry does not follow Max in. And we see Matt, and we hear Max describe the look on his face, right? And that it was like he was just terrified, is what Max says, terrified. And we can see that that terror is supreme. And we know that in the time that has passed, that terror has held.

And that has proven to be a more dominant factor than whatever desire there is. to pursue Max in full. So then it's like, okay, this wall-like structure of the cave inside, obviously crucial. That's where he won't go. But the wall, and then you think about this wall that's a crucial thing around the key setting of the upside down. And I'm like, are those things related? Is the wall that sprung up in the upside? And I asked this question, genuinely not knowing the answer, like, is the wall that sprung up and the upside down a shape that mirrors this clearly key location from Henry's past? I hear you. and I'm open to it, always, open to all theories.

To me, because we're going to talk about the structure of what I'm calling impenetrable meat ring, Vecna's impenetable meat ring, TM. Indeed, yeah, indeed. That seems more connected to a lot of other structural ideas. Yes, also, yes. It doesn't really match to me, but it could be all things. It could be we see if somebody brings. reaches the meat wall in a way.

It's just an incredible series of sentences from you. Thank you. Brazing TM. In a way that feels similar to watching Holly go, you know, wander through that horrifying crevice into the cave. Your nightmare. Somebody think about. On the needle drop front.

Yeah, tell me. So Mr. Sandman, we got sort of. of in the reveal that Holly's in this dream space. We get Shaboon Life Could Be a Dream was what was playing in the hallway of Hawkins High to let us know that it's 1959. I've collected a few other songs that we might maybe hear in future episodes. A pre-playlist? You're pre-greaving, but you're pre-play listing? We've got all I have to do is Dream.

It's the Everly Brothers. Dream lover. tears on my pillow, in dreams, wherever some great stuff. Twilight Time, oh, Twilight Time, great haunted song. Because the thing that,

Rob and I talked about this when we covered Silo, they love to make 50s music sound haunted. If you want to do that in general, just use the ink spots anytime. You know what I mean? But like, you can make, there's an episode of my so-called life

where they do this. There's an episode about the Vampire Slayer where they do this, like make 50 songs sound haunted. Really great way to set the scene. So, twilight time, year 16, you stepped out of a dream, life is but a dream. You could do, I only advise for you, which is the Buffy track if you wanted to. But like there's all of these options and I'm just wondering, because they hit two really on the nose ones back to back.

And I'm wondering how on the nose the rest of these sort of dream-esque, sleep-esque, 1950s needle drops are going to be. I'll be curious to see. I love that. I also on the music front, like not needle drop corner, but score corner. I was struck when they went into the cave at the scoring in that stretch first of all it subtitled Ethereal and that was certainly how it felt

it wasn't like scary which was very interesting to me I want to hit the even though we've already talked about it just very briefly hit that Oklahoma flyer again in a second but I'm curious like what you make

just more broadly about okay so we hear from Max to Holly when Holly asked where are we in a memory, which exists inside a world of a thousand memories. I know it might look nice, but it's not. This place, this world, it's a prison. Henry's prison.

First of all, I'd love you to do a little eat shoots and leaves with us on the Henry's prison phrasing there and what we might. Right. A prison where Henry is being held captive. Absolutely. Absolutely. I wrote that at my notes. Yeah.

Yeah. And relatedly, like, what do we make? We're obviously focused, very focused on the Max and Holly part of this. How are they going to get out? what have they seen? What have we gleaned from that? But like, why is Henry, why is Vecna? You know, I keep them here, keeping people in his own memories? Yeah, it's a great question. I don't have a good answer for it. Other than like it will be a good storytelling device, which maybe is the answer. Or the idea is like, If he lived in the Creel house as Henry, and, you know, as he said in his monologue to 11 in season four, he talked about, like, how false his parents were and all this.

So, like, hated his family and felt hated by his family. And so what if I can remake that memory? Only this time, like, I'm the adult and I'm nice to all the children, and it's just a nice, beautiful place and everything is the paint is brighter. And the sun is always shining. So, like, to take the worst part of his life as a human and make it this utopia. One, I need to look it up. One of the books that's in Max's Cave is about creating a new utopia. This is a piece that was on a vulture by Keith Phipps.

And he did sort of like a, these are what the references are. Walden 2 by B.F. Skinner. Yeah. Max's cave refuge contains a variety of knickknacks assembled seemingly at random and a copy of Walden 2, a science fiction novel in which psychologist B.F. Skinner depicted his idea of utopian community. This is a great sentence from Keith. He says this seems to be there mostly confirms as she insists to Holly that Max is living in a prison, nobody reads Walden 2 by choice. But this idea of like... Sheesh. I know. Great stuff from Keith. But like this idea of he's created a utopia. You can have whatever delicious, creamy, fruity breakfast that you want to have. The cassette of your dreams is here.

You can bake cakes all day and dress yourself as a princess in the clothes of my dead sister. And life will be a dream, you know? Shibu. Yeah. And I think to that point, it is notable then the distinction between where Henry starts people and where Max started, which was not by Henry's design. because Henry puts Holly in that utopia, right, in that alternate version of what his childhood could have been. So you're simultaneously gleaning this understanding, but also let me be, you know, a predator, but for good, build the world that these other people have completely destroyed and failed to realize what 11, as we assume and have been led to believe did with Max, opened Max, not in a utopic Creel mansion, but in

the truth of the 79 massacre. That's where Max woke up in the kind of thing that Henry would not want Holly or anyone else to see. What he is buried. And I think what's really interesting is like... Under those harsh blinking lights.

We'll talk a bit more later. Or perhaps we won't because we'll talk about it now. But this idea that like Vecna... We say this all the time. We're like, we'll talk about this later than we get there. We're like, we already did it. Anyway, this idea that Vecna's favorite thing to do, Vekna not Henry, Vekna's favorite thing

to do is to unearth your buried trauma, your guilt, your fears, your shames. Yes. Right? And so, like, the way in which he talks to Will in episode four, which has the opposite effect of what he meant, but, you know, the way that happens, the way he tormented Chrissy, the way he terminated Max, the way he tormented Nancy. And so, like, what have we learned about our other characters? You know, Will is the obvious, like, target on his back, walking around as a vulnerable,

clashing the back of his neck and crying sort of character, but Hopper talking about Sarah a lot and the war a lot, like really giving us a blueprint of what Vecna might show him, or Joyce talking about her guilt about not being a good enough mother to Will and not noticing that he was gone for eight hours. So these are characters telling us in these episodes what Vecna might exploit in Lanner's episodes, but this idea of unearthing trauma.

So is that something that, like, This Henry, Mr. Whatzett, in his brown suit, who has created this utopia, is it going to be someone's job, be that Holly, be that Max, be that 11, be that someone else, to be like, this is who you really are. You're really, the blood spattered orderly. You're really, you know, you've really done this. This is what the Creole Mansion looks like, not this beautiful, brightly painted thing, but this crumbling red hellscape where you put Chrissy and Max and 11 on a wall, etc. So I don't know, something I think about. It tracks quite well with, you know, the very thing that Henry identified with the most, those Black Widow spiders, right?

He sees, like, a creature who has been actualized and can achieve what others cannot. This perfect being misunderstood, as he says. And other people see a death threat and a monster. So there's that superhero monster idea yet again. And this is what I think we're constantly barreling towards. is the reflection of what Robin says, right? Which is like when I looked at that, those homeschool movies of myself, and I just like embraced, had to embrace all of me.

I was so free. I was so free. I could fly, right? You could fly aspect coming back. Like embrace all of me and how that is reflected in that Branner quote that you and I highlighted from season four, which is like monsters and superheroes. It's not that simple. We don't live in that binary.

you have to embrace all of it. And so for a Mr. What's It, Henry, living in his fantasy of like, I'm the good guy, you have to reckon with the fact that you're also the guy who did this. And you can be all of those things. And that, you know, this is all leading towards what I believe is like a Henry redemption arc. But, you know, I love a redemption arc. So I don't think he gets to live happily ever after. But I think he gets to sacrifice himself for the greater good.

That's what I think happens with Henry. It would certainly be one more reason to give Vecna a Vader entrance. Well, yes, but also I was going to say, which is something Voldemort never got around to doing. And we'll come back to the moldy stuff at the end when we talk about the Will Sorcerer moment. But, you know, not only did he not do it, but in the final confrontation, that is the opportunity, Harry, gives him one more time. Like, try, try for some remorse. And he can't.

And he's like, nah. And he won't. It's like, nah. All right. Two more things before we leave this sort of dream space. One is, I'm curious if Max is dressed as someone real from Henry's memory or just a random tomboy shot, a 1950s outfit. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. Given that Holly is dressed and Alice's dress, you know, we will get to the cave stuff that we know some of him. It will be in our stage shows section. We'll talk a little bit more about the Oklahoma Flyer in the stage show show section, though I can't say that very easily. But I do want to give you a chance to talk about the Oklahoma thing. But the max is someone from Henry's past could be interesting. What do you want to say about the Oklahoma Flyer?

I like your wardrobe corner, theory corner thing there. That feels like that feels like that feels. It's such a specific outfit, you know what I mean? I think just, too, to think about, this is ultimately, like, whatever. But, like, I think this was on both of our minds, actually, in a different stretch of the story when 11 is able to, like, walk through, in theory, Aker's mind after he has, like, left the room. So this question of just how these-level up, baby? Yeah, these questions of how, this question of how these, like, physical spaces are navigable and what is inside of them? Obviously, those examples are a little bit different, but like, is every single thing in one of these Henry memories something that he actually remembers that was a part, like that he has a reason to remember? Right. Or is the space just kind of like, does it like auto complete, you know?

Right. Because, yeah, does AI fill in the background? Because we don't see him necessarily in that hallway scene. His name is on the flyer, but we don't see young Henry Creel there. Maybe he's there and we don't know. They're still trying to figure out how to make him look older. before they show and tossing the back half of this season. They're like, wait a minute. This guy's supposed to be 12 and look nine. So this isn't going to work. What did we do? And then I just want to say, since we can't not do the Harry Potter comps, I just want to say, like, suck it to the Penseeve.

Like, you can't go around the corner of someone's memory of the Pensive, can you? That is a good example of like, okay, yeah, there's like memory stuff with the Petsive and Harry Tee, but we're going to do it. Totally differently, so it won't just be Potter comp. Yeah, it's different. Yeah, no, I think on the, you know, we've talked about the flyer mostly, I think, just like Oklahoma, Friday, November 6th, 1959, we obviously already talked about the date and the very obvious significance of that. But relatedly, like, one night only being right next to the date on the flyer, it says one night only. And that just feels like it further puts a spotlight on the significance of that date, not only in the history for these characters. but that date and the story of our show

and this idea of returning to that moment. And then, yeah, so Joyce is the director and this, we get Steve's dad passing through and tossing the flyer that Max picks up. Great stuff for Papa Harrington. Starring Hopper, Karen, Patty Newby. More Patty stuff coming at the end of the pod in a safer space, but obviously, like,

Newby, that's Bob's last name. We know that name. We know Bob Newby. Bob the Brain. Bob the Brain. Like, we love Bob. We miss Bob. Talk about a character that everyone talked about

how they went to high school. with it. Exactly. Alan Munson, so there's an Eddie family tie here and then Ted. So, and then it says, and introducing Henry Creel as, goes curly. You mentioned Karen, right? Karen. Karen and Ted both being here because famously they've always, in the entire history of the show, always been the same age. Absolutely. Canaanically. Definitely not a recon. So, like, I think we just obviously like have to note that a lot of the next generation of children

and who are directly tied to these events with one Henry Vecna with VH1. There you go. I said it. It's good. It's really good. Satisfy. Connect to this prior generation that shared this one-night-only experience. Production of Oklahoma.

Definitely appropriately aged Henry Creel. That all just feels really notable and significant. Doesn't the flyer say in introducing Henry Creel? In introducing called up today. Okay, wait a minute. As Judd, right? Is that what it says? Or did I make that up?

Curly? No, not Curly. He wouldn't be curly. I thought I said Curly, but I was assuming it was a lot. Well, we could check. What if they had to, like, do like an Erica Lady Applejack? Tap into the middle school population for Hellfire, you know. Really promising youngster over in Hawkins Middle. One night only.

Wait, he is playing Curly. That is absolutely insane. Just in general. I don't know what that means because I'm not a theater expert like you, but. High School Theater Corner. Let's say at best. At best, he's a freshman. Even that defies belief.

If he's like a senior, I mean, what? A freshman playing curly and the lead in Oklahoma? I don't think so. I don't think so. Okay, interesting. This is Joyce, I have some questions for casting skills. Joyce, not a very good high school theater director. That's what we're learning here.

I don't think so. Let's just say that I thought this was really effective, like however I feel about all of this shit, really effective casting for the young actress that they got to like double Winona Ryder. And then they used Winona Ryder's voice. But like it's just like, I thought that was a good use of like,

that's definitely young Joyce inside of this, you know. Great stuff. This is of course the stretch where we hear Tommy, Tommy Holly, see the words, time travel, out loud, which was thrilling. Somehow I was in another time hawk in 30 years ago. Time travel. Now, we don't think that's going to be the only version of time travel we get, but it is

an interesting way to give us a kind of time travel. So that's really fun. And then we get the like Camazots just set out loud and we know because it's been released that that is the title of episode six. Seven, six. And that is a. crucial location and a wrinkle in time, which has been very present in these episodes of television. So if you're watching episode five and you're like, they're surely going to get on

this episode, I would hold my breath. I would not hold my breath. Because I'm guessing it's probably going to happen in episode six. Escape from Camisots. All right. Want to support your gut health? Take Activia's gut health challenge by enjoying two Activio yogurt today for two weeks and see if you feel a difference. With billions of probiotics and 20 years of scientific expertise, Activia is one of the easiest and tastiest ways to start your gut health ritual. Try Activia today. Enjoying Activia twice a day for two weeks as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort, which includes gas, bloating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. Einstein Rosenbridge. Speaking of time travel, raise your hand if you were thrilled to see

Mr. Clark again. I am always thrilled to see Mr. Clark. I love a science corner with Mr. Clark and when a lesson he is teaching the kids, now Erica, her favorite class, she was enraged that they interrupted it. And I support her as always. I do miss and long for the days where Dustin was calling Mr. Clark interrupting one of his dates. Oh, yeah. She's having a movie night. Or when Joyce would just like knock on his garage. And he was listening to Weird Al.

Mr. Clark, what a legend. The gift that always kept on giving. I love seeing him here. Again, this is like, you know, this is a much smaller version of this. of the Cali reveal, but like this is a real, like, we're using every piece that we can as we, as we wrap things up here. Yes. Mr. Clark is here.

Raise your hand. If you think the wormholes he was talking about will come into play going forward. Like, my hands up if you're not watching on video. He says, another galaxy, another time even Mallory perked up. And how much of that hunch is based on the episode. seven title, The Bridge. So episode six,

Escape from Kamazots, episode seven, The Bridge. Here is Mr. Clark giving us a little download on the Einstein Rosen Bridge, a concept we know that Erica understands

and could maybe explain to other people later if she so cares to. Raise your hand. If you think his diagram of said Einstein Rosenbridge bears more than a passing resemblance to the structure

Will was painting in the McCorical barn. I'm raising my hand on that one. Yes, I definitely think so. We'll talk about the number 12, you know, 12 hands on the clock time. That's, I think for sure. It also relatedly looked like kind of like a Phoenix to me. There was something which I think also fits, this idea of like time travel, traveling, you know, through a wormhole to it in the, in the,

pursuit of some sort of rebirth. I think it looked a bit more Phoenix-e before he started painting little children. Yeah, when it was just like flaming wings with like a center. But yes, definitely looked wormhole as well. And, you know, Will is a talented trans artist. Artist. Season two, season two trans artist Will making a comeback. Also, the look oracle farm. Yes, yes. Different medium. You know, we've gone from crayons. to paint. True. So that's nice. He's a multimedia artist. Well, he was painting in season four, you know, just

like completely low stakes. You're the heart, Mike. rolled up canvas that he just carried around with him everywhere. It's totally fine. Okay. You're the heart, Mike. I do want to say I saw an Instagram reel if someone had timed, when Erica's like, you have one minute and starts her watch. This was incredible.

Someone timed it, and it is exactly literally 60 seconds inside of that scene. Never had Erica. No. Ever. The fact that her watch like beeped and went off. So whether it's like time up. 60 seconds or not that the character was like, I'm serious about this. I have set the clock to hold you to account.

It was just absolutely wonderful and like truly delightful. I thought that was great. On the chalkboard in Mr. Clark's classroom, we see closed timeline curve. I, I am not a physicist. Add it to the list. Added to the list.

So I had to Google that. But then when I did, I saw a lot of stuff about going back in time and grandfather paradoxes. So that's exciting. I think whatever happened happened, which is the lost explanation of time travel, I think is what I always prefer to cling to. The time travel season of lost is a shared favorite. It's less messy than the end game version of time travel.

travel, which I dare not try to understand. Though gave us a very amusing conversation about time travel and pop culture references about time travel. But whatever happened on Lost is my preferred idea of time travel. Okay. Last or at least before we leave the halls of Hawkins Middle, hopefully not for the last time. I want to shout out the 1980s. I don't need to pull out every single piece of pop culture that we get, but I didn't perk up

when I saw the 1980s David Bowie-Reed poster in the Hawkins Middle. school hallway. The read posters were in like every single elementary school library. Ours was the Yoda one, which I, a couple years ago, tracked down and now have on my wall in my, like, library hallway in my house. I have my Yoda read poster. My library hallway, you are the best. Well, it's just a hallway with some bookcases in it.

I almost have my library, but I'm like, it's not a room. It's just a hallway with some books in it. But the Yoda read poster was like, I remembered it from being a really young kid. And I was like, you know what? I want to find that poster. Incredible. But those celebrity read posters were like so iconic. And David Bowie and Yoda equally important icons of the 1980s.

So, yeah. No question. This has been one of my favorite things about my Buffy experience so far is all of the Sunnydale High posters that I'm like, yep. Remember that one. Great stuff. Love to look at hallway posters in schools, high school or middle school. Love to look at chalkboard scrawls. And the other thing that I noticed other than close timeline curve is test, colon, space and galaxies, Monday, November 6th.

It's a Monday. Good to know. And there is a time travel wormhole test on November 6th. I wonder if that will be relevant. I believe Erica will probably be studying for it on the 5th. you know, should she need to give anyone a download from her note cards, her Nancy-esque note cards that she might have. Oh, yeah. When we get some note cards coming back, that would be fun. I would be really fun. I love that. So there's, you know, all these, the night Oklahoma was. Freeze frame, Rubin.

Stage, you know, everything with Will. Yeah, free frame, Ruben, all. The freeze frame, bohoney. What an honor? There's a test. We're marching toward the state. It's all, it's all very key. What happened? Here's my question. What happened November 6th? 1969 are we going to go there 1959, 1979, 1989, 1980, you know, whatever. Okay, anyway, the upside down, frozen, so we can't find out there, but we can find out elsewhere. Maybe, you know, another spinoff about... Speaking of the...

Yeah, Bob the Brain. Sure. What was Bob up to in 69? You know, nerd stuff. Okay. Speaking of Frozen Upside Down, we're going to talk about Dr. K, 11, the hedge, hug and the tentacle. It should have been the name of an episode, I think, but here we are.

That's a great, that would be a great and very stranger thingsy. The hedgehog and the tentacle, I think, would be a good one. The hedgehog and the tentacle. Very lovely in the acrobat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Valerie, you love beef jerky. This is one thing I know about you, you love beef jerky. Are you jealous of a Levin and Hopper's endorsement deal for beef jerky?

Listen, I We've had a lot of notes over the years for Jim Hopper. His behavior, his choices, how he's conducted himself. But I've never once had a note on his snacks. Before stealing the Todd Fathers vehicle in season three, we got to witness what would Jim Hopper in a moment of need grab from a convenience store? And that guy got a slim gym. Yeah, snap into a slim gym.

told me all I needed to know. And so, of course, I'm not surprised that a meat stick or a beef jerky is in the pack. You know, as you know, one of the snacks that I bring on any flight when I'm traveling is jerky. Often turkey jerky, sometimes beef jerky. I do know this. But there's like, you know, you need, if you're out in the road, you're out in the world, you're on a mission. Protein. Or you're just getting on a plane and you might be hungry.

You need jerky of some sort. You need trail mix. I don't know a lot, but I know that. So I thought this was great. And I thought that of the like, sometimes we have a really heartfelt beautiful moment. Sometimes like the advice in the parenting here, we've got some feedback. I thought, you know, pair some protein with your ego extravaganza, whipped cream, Reese's pieces.

Sowers was important. I have some questions about the sodium intake here, but it's definitely better than the ego monstrosities they were eating before. Oh, man. We have a lot of questions about what 11 knows. She still doesn't know how to talk in complete sentences. That's fine. Where are you on that at this point in the show? How are you feeling about the state of things on that front?

Fewer obstacle course runs more. This is how a contraction works runs for 11 is what I would say. But here's my main question. Why does 11 think peeing on a thing means you know what it is? this is her Detective 11 bad guesses across the board that's definitely

Beckina they got in the hallway clearly not Acres peed on the wall maybe he knows what it is what? This was extremely strange He peed on it You don't he peed on it

I guess it's like a way of reminding us that these people are very young and like maybe fixate on odd details But I guess this was supposed to be comedy I did not tell you I guess you wouldn't pee on a thing, like, if you knew. If you knew. It was dangerous, maybe.

Right, right. Like, if you knew that it was a thing that, like, like, arms could reach out and grab you by the throat and pull you through or something like that, maybe you wouldn't, like, you know, take your dick out in front of it or something like that. I don't know. But I was just like, this is such a weird conclusion. He peed on it. Maybe he knows what it is.

Very odd. Very odd. Jane still has some learning to do. Better or worse than when Lucas is like, if it's hard, we'll make it. soft. Like, that's a good thing to do. I just, I got such I got such a kick out of that whole everyone, all the kids are making dick joke sequence

that I, yeah, I didn't, I didn't pause the way you rightly did on the implications of that. Lucas is like, if it's hard, I'm making soft. I guess it's like, because I'll be, yeah. That was real, that was real, like, I will take the power away from dick. Boobes feel like, boobs feel like heavy bags of sand moments. From a 40-year-old version?

Like, Lucas doesn't know how erections work? I don't know. Oh, my God. Great stuff. Should have some questions. Okay. On the 11 front. Please.

Pissing on the wall stuff. It's an important question. It's a good note. I got to say, we talked a little bit about this last pod that, like, just one of the notes on the season is when we're really far ahead of the characters, it's like a little bit inert. Yes. I was feeling that with the 11 hopper stretch of these episodes.

Because it's not in this case just that we are further ahead. It's like at this point the other characters are also further ahead. She's like it's definitely a Vecna in that hallway. And everyone else, meanwhile, is like Vecna's fopping around stealing children. And it's not like it's inherently uninteresting to watch characters like reach the wrong conclusions or air a little bit on their path to eventually some greater clarity. That could be very interesting, but in this case where we have such a propulsive high tension, we are on the clock, it's like we had a lot of time and a lot of scenes with Hop and L and K down in the upside down with the infiltration of the base and the vine and that poor fucking scientist who was like, I mean, granted everyone down there is doing bad shit,

but like kind of just going about his day and then got taken and planted in the closet. In the closet. Tough. Bullet fodder. That was rough. But yeah, it's like we just know the things. the thing that 11 thinks is true is not. It also is like a little bit of a demerit, I think, because we, it's satisfying when Hop,

which he does in other aspects of these episodes, has to kind of own that he's been wrong, right? And obviously this is a parallel with Joyce and Hop, as we've discussed with, like, their very overprotective tendencies. I thought that we'll talk about this elsewhere, maybe. But, like, Will and Joyce discussing this and Will really saying, like, On the one hand, I'm really sorry that I talk to you that way, but on the other hand, like, you have to let me be a part of... Look how tall I am. Fight, yeah.

It's not a very popular haircut anymore, but look how I am. Someone feathered out my bowl cut a little bit, so it looks a little cooler, Mom. You have to take me seriously. It definitely does look cooler. But like, you know, so we sort of, and it's not like the kids can't make mistakes, but like we want that moment of kind of like reckoning when Hop has to say. Well, it's beautiful when he says, I'm so proud of you. I'm always going to be proud of you. but like we want him to have to be like, also you're right and I have to stop doubting you

or gaslighting you into thinking you're wrong. But she is wrong and we know it the whole time. Constantly. So it saps those scenes of some of that tension. Odd choice, I think. Let's talk about Kay. So our listener just- Where are you on K?

Not like blowing my socks off as an antagonist yet, but a huge improvement from Sullivan, who got burned alive, tough stuff. for a guy we didn't really like. Our list of Justine wrote in, in regards to Kay, said, 11 cutting her off, cutting Kay off before she can say her actual name, feels like she was about to reveal who she really is, right? So she's like, 11, I've been looking for you.

I'm, and then 11 goes, I know who you are, right? So that is a classic, like, maybe she was about to say, I'm actually something else. I've seen a lot of theories, and none of them really tickle my fancy, so I don't have any strong theories. here because like some people are like oh she's actually Henry's mother. I'm like that lady's dead. We saw all of her bone snaps. I think she's definitely dead. But like, and like, Virginia

and like, raised Virginia Creel. Then go to like science and military school. Like, what are we talking about here? So I don't think it's her. I couldn't tell you exactly who I think it is. But I'm intrigued by this idea. But what I feel for certain, whether or not her name is something different, what I feel for certain is that there was something like oddly tend to. And I feel for certain is that there was something like, oddly tender in her approach to 11 that could just be scientific curiosity because she has strapped up another child to machinery and appears to be tormenting her.

So it could just be like, what is scientific curiosity? I've been looking for you, you're a scientific curiosity. But it's definitely not the same antagonism that Sullivan was like, burn her, sort of about 11. So there's something different here. And I wouldn't be surprised. I don't think Kay is going to turn out to be a good guy, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's like another twist of the knife in terms of like what her true intentions are that we have yet to see. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. And I think like the thing that she said to hop during their confrontation, we obviously got some crucial temperature reminders in terms of the, and we do later as well when the flamethrower comes out and birds a demo and Will. in the rest of the hive mind. Yeah, right, exactly. He likes it cold. But one of the things that Kay said to hop was, you know, it's like, okay, so you're the reason she's been so hard to track, the thorn of my side. After all that effort to hide her, you bring her here of all places, Hop, Kitelli just wanted to interject and said, I really did not want to bring her here. Actually, I had a lot of feedback on her being here. Kay says why? Why risk her life for the other? What do you know that I don't? That's when I knew it was eight. That's when I knew it was eight. That's when I knew it was eight. When she said the other, I was like, oh, it's like, it's Cal, it's definitely, I mean, we know it's on Vecna. She said. We knew, on like 11, we knew it was not Vecna. So when she says the other, I was like, oh, man, they're doing eight. That's great.

Yeah. Interesting question. Yeah. So I get, you know, we'll talk a little bit more about what we see when 11 walks in and sees eight, sees Callie and the setup and what that might imply and what might be happening there. But just, yeah, what are Kay's motivations exactly? Exactly. Like, I, I, this is actually, I will say, where I start to get just a touch nervous about how few episodes are left.

And the kind of like third arm of the story. We've got all our heroes. We've got all of the Vecta Henry VH1 stuff. And then we've got this like, but obviously this has always been, this has been as central as anything with Papa and Brenner and Hawkins Lab. So like, you know. And we want three hours of Mind Palace and five hours of time travel. And six hours of Dustin and Steve hugging. Please, please, God.

Something for Jonathan and Nancy to do. Well, yeah. We'll get that. I guess. Yeah. But yeah, so I just, is there enough time for all of that? But I am interested, do I have no investment in Kay as a character, literally none. Right.

But I am interested in better understanding still, like, the role of Hawkins Lab and the science and the pursuit of Brenner's program and what other people might be trying to do with that as well. Yeah, yeah. So that's, yeah, I have a lot of space for that, I guess, at the end, but I am worried about literal space and how to. Duffers, it's not too late to supersize those episodes. I'm just saying. All right, it is. They're going to be long. Those puppies are going to be a long.

But I think not as long as we might hope they would be. Okay. Delightful Derek, digging up Dick, and the other kids. These episodes weren't absolute gift for note-taking. Like I had, it's just like, Dick is leaking, you know, all sorts of great little subheads throughout my notes. Wonderful stuff. I'm really going to get out of your way for a lot of this section because I would like to clear the decks for you to talk about Derek Turnbow. You've already talked about him.

But what more do you want to say about your Lord, God, and Savior, your new favorite character, the Riz God himself, Derek Turnbow. He's just the absolute best. I thought that like in terms of just the kind of plot mechanic and structure of the story, I thought that it was, you know, fun to see the gang kind of like puzzling out and strategizing together down in the squawk base and, you know, Mike coming in and once again really playing. Like I liked how you called the Wheeler Kids, you know, the Generals last episode and like Mike coming in and really like, you know, everybody's got holes and notes and questions. And then Mike's like, well, what if we did this?

And any holes there? And like even Dustin is like, I don't have any, actually. You know, that was just kind of like a fun and interesting sequence. On the Turnbow trap planning front, we love a home alone. Nah, that was all very fun. I would like to just spend a moment on Derek's room. Uh-huh. I believe you texted me something like, this is my ideal setup.

Yeah, like, okay. I've been to your home. Your home doesn't look like this, but I think if you took all of the most potent elements from every room in your house and jammed it into one room, You could get kind of close to what Derek has set up here. We certainly have, like, enough video game stuff in various Adam gaming caves and corners of the house to approximate this, I think. But, okay, Tina walks in. We're taking into Derek's room, and she walks in and smells like ass in your dip shit.

And Derek says probably from all my parts. Mom wants me down for dinner. Mom can suck up that one. Everyone needs a cash race. We hear Derek say various people can suck a fat one so many times across these episodes, but this just absolutely killed me. The Turnbos, everybody talks about them, like, their pieces of shit. We have like the Erica, Tina, besties into enemies insight that's a key part of this plot.

But in general, when the turnbows come up, everyone else is like, these guys are monsters, they're pieces of shit. So, like, they're rich assholes who have, like, had a hand in events of, like, Hawkins Management. I mean, in general, I'm very like, eat the rich, smash their wine collection, whatever. The termos, the parents don't seem that bad. They're very nice to Erica at the dining room table. They aren't, like, they aren't, like, shitty, right? The mom more so, she's like, we really missed you.

And the dad's like, we missed your pie. Yeah, there. But, yes, we both have the same feeling on the dinner scene, which were, like, calling back to Heather and Tom in the Holloway sequence in season three. And, like, we love one. Nobody took a wine bottle to the head. No wine bottles to the head. Yeah. Just some, you know, you're poisoned by pie and or syringe and then you topple over.

Yeah. But that incursion into such a highly domestic setting and a family setting of this like really heightened violence is, I think, always an effective thing when the show does. Derek's room, it took me back to being a kid and watching Richie Rich. Oh, yeah. And thinking, like, is this what it is like to be? like to be alive. He has in this room. So he's got an NNES.

He has Nintendo, which, like, just came out. As we talked about in season four, when they do the, like, Ameritendo gambit with Susie Poo. Right. He's got a beanbag that he's playing, that he's sitting on to play. Adam immediately, I was like,

what game is that? He immediately was, like, Ghosts and Goblins, identified it, and it took about half a second. Great. There is also an arcade cabinet. There's a Sega hang-on,

arcade cabinet in Derek's bedroom. He's got Domino's a box on the floor. We'll see the Demigorg and crush the Mountain Dew. He's got some Pepsi on the wall shelves. He has a fucking gumball machine in his room. This was the one where I was like, I would have killed for this. You know, now that you lay this all out. I don't care how they are at the dining table. The fact that they have done this to a child's room is really bad parenting. He's got a computer because he's got floppy disks all over the floor. He's got the Masters of the Universe Besper, the NASCAR flag. NASCAR flag less, you know, it's a, I'd prefer an F1 flag obviously.

painful time for me to talk about F1, given one McLaren is going through right now. That's for another pod. He's got board games. He's got battleship. He's got my personal favorite mastermind. That was when I knew, even though we're in a very like suck a fat one, Derek's a bully stretch. At this point before he becomes Derek the delightful, delightful Derek. When I saw Mastermind, I was like, this kid's got something. This kid's got something because that is a game for champions. And he also had a rock and sock them and those rules. So I just thought this room was fucking sick. and I wanted it. And I still want it.

How do you feel about the Garbage Pail Kids poster? I feel fine about it. I feel fine about it. I feel pretty good about it. Yeah, I feel good about it. He had a G.I. Joe poster, the lunchbox too. Can I tell you, take you on a quick detour through my podcasting history? Please.

During the pandemic, before I started working the ringer, I had a show that I did with my friend called Feels Like the First time where she would watch like movies that everyone has seen. But for the first time. And I would always play games with her. And so we did a Mad Max one. She had never seen any of the Mad Max movies. And so before she watched the movies, I played a game with her where I was like, are these names of characters from the Mad Max franchise or are these garbage pale kids? And the thing I didn't know about my pal, Chris and Russo is that she had an encyclopedic knowledge of the garbage pale kids. And she,

crushed that entire quiz. It was one of the funny. It was like one of the funniest reveals that's ever happened on a podcast. I was like, what do you mean you have a PhD in garbage pale kids? Anyway.

Not like when you did the, is this a vampire, a fictional vampire or like a political officials or something with the, with me? I didn't do very well. It didn't go the same. No, no.

Okay. Eric had the pie. I just want to mention. Yes. A couple things. I love this as a thing for Erica. do. Love her stabbing Tina in the back with a syringe. A lot of people pointed out the description for Lady Applejack, which is I'm a chaotic good half elf rogue level 14. I will sneak behind any

monster. You throw my way and stab them in the back with my poison soak. Kukri. I didn't pronounce that perfectly, but I got there. So her stabbing Tina in the back with a syringe is very like Lady Applejack. Coden. I loved all of that. Yet another prophecy inside of street. things. That was all really great. Erica was very ready to poison that and die her family. Did not... Erica... Whipping the, like, whipping the, like, part of her clothing off that was, like, meant to be, like, preppy-coded and she's just, like, ready for action was really funny to me. This is great stuff.

Speaking of the other children, yes. We get this Sword and the Stone moment. One of my favorite Disney movies, right? Great one. Where they're watching Sword in the Stone before. They let the military just take their child away. Do you feel like this is just a precursor for our guy, Will, becoming a sorcerer, or something else going on with, like, the little snippet of Merlin? I mean, it's not cheap to put a Disney movie in your show. So, like, what is this doing here?

Do you think. Yeah. I think there's, like, the, okay, you know, Will, kind of, the equivalent of Will, pulling the sword with everything that happens in the sorcerer ending. I think the sorcerer wizard Merlin of it all. I guess there's literally a character named Kay. There is, they're Kay. Yeah, so there's that.

But yeah, I took it as like, you know, putting us a little bit in that pre-will pulling the sword headspace. But there are a couple other things as well. And it was a very like central transition and focus as the Millers are watching that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Merlin Matamim wizard battle. that happens inside of that movie, an all-timer, the shape-shifting, all that sort of stuff. So it's just something to think about it.

What did you think of the actual, like, Home Alone, Demogorgon? I've got a comment that I think you're going to find weird. Here it is. Tell me what you think of this. It's a safe space, right? I felt bad for the Demogorgon. I didn't think they needed to do all that. I felt bad for the Demogorgon.

This was too rich. I didn't think they need to do all that. Barbed wireness? I think Nancy could have just shot him, honestly. She's a good shot. She's a quick shot. I think she didn't need to like... I'm sorry, I don't feel bad for the turbos.

They seem like bad rich people. But like, I don't think they need to carve open the floor and do all of that. I think they just wanted a wacky fun set piece for us. But like, I mean, I will say, Luke is hopping over the carpet. That was great. Incredible stuff. And then when the debaigrant comes back up and he's like, Mike, get him, get him, get him.

Like, that was really fun. But what was, like, she already shot him. What was the point of Jonathan, like, burning him? And then, like, shoot him again. Like, why did we have to shoot him again? We already got the tracker in him. Is a backup tracker? Like, what are we?

I didn't understand the full plan, honestly. I, so I took the, so they light him on fire, I think, because, like, that felt to be, like, a season one finale callback where they catch him in the bear trap and the buyer's home. And then when he's lit on fire, he goes back. He flips. Oh, so they're like encouraging him to. I think so. Yeah. Like we laid on fire. He's going to flip. And then the tag will be where they need to be, I think. And I guess the second shot would just be to not let him jump back up to where the kids are and could be mauled. Okay. I guess. I mean, I mean, here's what I will say. Like, never pull your punches with a demigorgon.

Unless you're Mallory and you're like, I feel bad for him. It just was so much of our violence. I just need to remind myself of what we saw our beloved Ted Wheeler go through. And then I'm back in the headspace I need to be in. Let's just say it's the same guy, the same demigorgon, who clawed Karen Wheeler's chest cavity open when she was just trying to have a relaxing bath and a wine night at home. And send some wine. Yeah. Nobody's asking about Ted.

Not a single person cares. I mean, you know, when... When everybody's back together, Jonathan gives Nancy a hug and it's like, are you okay? I'm so sorry. But like, obviously a lot of Karen-centric focus because they needed to ask her in the last stretch of episodes we talked about Mr. What's-it. Has anybody... Nobody wanted to just look at Ted?

I know the doctors wouldn't let them, but like, guys... I'm going to hop ahead. This is just a little skip I'm taking a theory corner to say, to read one of our favorite emails from Sarah. who says people who are in comas can end up in this Henry's prison, however you want to punctuate that. You know who is in a coma? Mother fucking Ted Wheeler. 100% I think he's going to bust in at some point save Max Holly, maybe more from danger in Vecna's dream slash COPA slash My Palace. I don't think that they're going to have these

young girls saved by Ted Wheeler. I think sisters are doing it for themselves. But I love if we ever like flash to Ted Wheeler and he's in some whatever Ted Wheeler's golfing you. Utopia is like Neo-Con Utopia. That would be really funny. Oh, man. I just hope, like, we get one more moment with Ted, and he's like a fresh plate of bacon. Someone brought him some new Reagan merch. Something to make Ted happy at the end.

All right. Joyce Pat talking Derek into being delightful Derek, and I genuinely think he is so delightful in the escape sequence, gave me solid season one Joyce and, 11 flashbacks when Joyce is like sort of pep talking 11. I mean, Joyce is very motivated by, you need to find my son, so get in that take kid. But it was just like very much like when she's not gallivanting around the world and she needs to mother, Joyce is capable of mothering quite well. And her like encouraging Derek to be his best self, I thought was a really sweet Joyce role for her. Listen, sometimes you have.

fake Britannica conferences to attend, and that's just how it goes, okay? The Britannica is Brian. It's good stuff. Great stuff. Still an incredible choice in season before. You know, the idea of, like, covering the turnbos with the pillow cases so they can't see again, calling back to, like, Will being used as the spy in season two, which will prove very pivotal at the end here.

Derek, being like, I'm awake, and they're like, you know, didn't have two pies in the that he came into the story. All very good. I loved everything with Joyce and Derek. You know, calls her an evil child kidnapper. Wonderful stuff. On the Joyce as a mother front and how Joyce thinks about her kind of like guidance of these kids, it's not, you know, certainly not quite as overt as the like Harry Horcrox stuff with Will and Vecna.

But the really like central role so far, we had everything with Karen, which we talked about last episode, you know, we made the Molly Weasley in like Joyce Summers' comps, but like I will stop you from killing my kid, even if it means my life, is of course also very Lily Potter coded, as is I think Joyce's stand against the demo here. So that feels like a little bit more of the motherly protection element being present here too. I know you alluded to this earlier, but maybe just because we're talking about Joyce and the kiddos, like I will say that conversation where Joyce and Will were talking. I really liked when he stood up for himself in the car. When he went out at the barn and, you know, great, like, you know, put a cold on, put a coat on.

You don't want to, like, not be able to save the world because you get a cold. Love to that. I was sort of expecting him to kind of once again be like, let me be out on the front line and stop, like, feeling like you need to protect me so much. I was surprised kind of by the apology that he issued there and then what it gave us. I think that the, like, the way that Joyce talked about her regret from that night and not noticing he was gone, I don't know, I guess it gave me some real, like, child of divorce, like, empathy for a single parent. I felt it really, like, broke my heart that Joyce was carrying that guilt around.

I really hit me hard. Who doesn't check in an 11-year-old kid? Like, Joyce, as we meet her, you know, you and I just did this full rewatch, but, like, thinking about how, like, hairy Joyce is in the morning and, like, trying to get herself out the door and the kids out the door. and then everyone thinking she's crazy in her in her pursuit of Will. Joyce being so much more than the main character of season one because Winona Ryder was the star of this show is something I think about a lot.

But I think that I love that scene between them. What I think is weird. Tell me. Given that it's been 20 months that this team has been like running, you know, missions into the upside down and stuff like that out of the radio. station, et cetera. Let's say it's not been 20 months. Let's say they've been doing that for like the last 18 months or something like that. Um, acting like she doesn't know who Robin is. She's like, I like your friend. I'm like, have you not been interacting with Robin and all? Like,

have Will and Robin not interacting this whole time? Like, has Joyce just been hanging out with Hopper and 11 at the obstacle course? Like what? Just eating Ted Wheeler's bacon. I'm like, what? What? Before it makes the same with the breakfast table. Yeah, that's what is This is super weird to me. So, you know. Yeah, because obviously they're all working together on the crawls. Yeah. That's, like, clear.

Yeah. So, like, would they not have interacted at some point? Robin is a crucial member of the team. She's the voice on the radio. So, like, that was really bizarre to me. Great note. On the other hand, later, because Will has his many trances across these episodes. And, you know, when he wakes and he's shaking and he's crying and she cradles him,

we get a little bit of the Joel, a little last of us, I got you. Oh, I got you, sweetie. Well, I love that the idea now is like, you'll survive this. Like, when Will was doing this in season two, they're like, oh, my God, it's Will about to die. And now when, like, Demogorgans are burning and Will is screaming on the ground, they're all like, this is just a seizure and it will pass. Like, hang tough and it'll be okay. Do you know what I mean?

That felt like more the approach to it. Yeah, that's a, I think, really good observation. And I guess, like, the conversations that they have across a couple of of these different, like, what's our plan, what's our plot, what has happened, and what can we glean from it. Conversations is, like, you know, Will says at one point, you know, I had this feeling he didn't want me there. I wasn't supposed to see it.

Like, the way they're puzzling out, basically, his connection to the hive mind. So we have the really, like, emotionally and thematically rich aspect of this arc. But then we have the kind of, like, literally what is happening with this connection and not the hive mind and the mythology. And I like that all that stuff is being puzzled out now because it's a lot. It's like Vecna's been in retreat. Yeah. And so it's like they haven't had an opportunity to explore Will's connection

to the high might. Like that makes sense to me as like an urgent now discovery. Yeah. And I will say, Detective 11 versus Detective Will. It's not close. Detective Will way in the lead here. Yeah. And like, you know, the, so Robin has the insight about this, like the idea of the overload, right?

And the control center. So they're gleaning something about how they can navigate this connection and circumstance from that. And then, of course, later in the mic conversation, there's the idea of, like, well, like, are you sure? I think this is what we're about to talk about, actually, right, with, like, what happens with choice. Are you sure you sure? Actually, like, your mom probably didn't push the demigorgian back. Like, so this idea of will being able to gain some sort of control to act, not just as puppet, but as puppeteer, helps to contribute to why maybe that fear shifts into confidence because they're better understanding how to use, how to spin it so it's less the connection is, vulnerability and more as a source of your power. I don't feel like they had sort of earned that confidence yet at the point when dress is just like, just hold on, baby. But, um, no, that's it because the might, the puppet stuff comes, yeah, in a different part and they're building toward it.

But, um, yeah, let's let's go to, uh, any, unless you want to, I mean, I was going to, we're veering around in time. Do you want to talk about, uh, all the dick jokes before we get to, uh, Joyce finding the demogian, etc. You know that happens. Just some rapid fire stuff. You know, hit me.

Just the way that we get into the great escape comp in the first place, Rob is just saying Dick out loud. And there's be like, did I say that out loud? Iconic. They put Dick in the washroom, but personally for us, I like Dick. Everybody's faces. We love a stranger thing's reaction shot often. It's like when we're on the clock and everybody's waiting, you know,

they need Susie to share this number, but they've got to wait for a song and dance number. The look on their faces here, just incredible stuff. The various dick jokes across this sequence, just really wonderful. I thought that the lack of precision with the, you know, look, you're shoving, they're using a shovel to pierce the top of the tunnel so that they can access. Derek did a great job, by the way. He was fucking there like, do we need bond? Do we need Magnum? No, we need someone who would never expect.

We need dipsick Derek. No, it's delightful Derek. He had the exact pace count. He had a lot of gum ready to stick that out-of-order sign on the stall. Mike and Lucas. Mike and Lucas fucked this up. Exactly. They're like hammering with no precision.

The whole thing is like exact paces timing, the beat through the hole in the G.I. Joe lunchbox so that you don't want to whack a disciple on the head and send them through. Too preoccupied with their dick jokes to. Yeah. Well, it takes one to no one. Isn't this very teenage boy? It is imprecise, over-eager sort of gesturing from them. Too preoccupied with the dick jokes and then Dick started to leak ahead of schedule.

Very tough. Some great shoe stuff, I will say, across these episodes. You know, they've released a lot of custom kicks. We got a high-top field general on 11, a very focused in, like Elle puts her foot up on a tree to unlace her shoes so that she could have a silent jump. And I was like, they're selling that shoe. And they are. It is policing, yeah. Derek had the converse on.

We've got some great samba's in the stretch. Just wonderful shoe stuff. And you really got to see the shoes because everybody's slipping in the water. It's like excellent. So yeah, the dick jokes, everything with Derek in the stretch. Just really fantastic, honestly. That was great. And we should say the Dufford's use their, this is the teacher, the kid's teacher in the barracks.

They're a actual drama teacher. So that was like a lovely thing to learn. I thought that was so cool. Knowing that on rewatch just made me like very emotional. It's very sweet. Okay, we're going to go back in time on our own timeline. There we go. To Steve's Beamer going full DeLorean on the farm.

So as we already mentioned, Joyce's fight against the demigorgan makes, when I was, when I was rewatching the scene with my, with Diana, she was like, she's like, no way could Joyce do this? And in my head, I'm like, yeah, it's because Will's helping, but nobody really knows that yet. not even will. But Steve coming through with a season three energy with the car to hit the demigorgan and save everyone, he doesn't miss. He doesn't miss when it comes to vehicular manslaughter. So we love that. We don't love that from Landry on Friday Night Live.

No. No. So, look, the Steve Dustin bickering, you know, I'd rather not herniated disc over a lost cause. Yeah, that's the attitude. It's more painful than it's ever been in these couple episodes. but Steve being like, wouldn't the center of the gate be soft like the center of a bopper? 10-10, no notes. Really lovely and really great.

I want to say, I was a little surprised by how inert the team, Steve, Nancy, Jonathan, Dustin felt inside of this section. But I can presume that they took a backseat, no pun intended here, because there's something great coming for the next stretch. Hop ahead, like, a few seconds if you don't want, like, any trailer spoilers. But I will just say the majority of the footage from the trailer that we haven't seen yet in the show seems to be some combination of Steve, Nancy, Jonathan, and Dustin. And also Lucas Max in the hospital stuff. So, like, they have something big coming. And I will say, again, hop ahead, if you don't want to hear anything outside of the context of the show, in interviews, a lot of the actors been asked about, like, what their favorite scene was. And a lot of people have mentioned a Jonathan and Nancy scene

that they, like, really loved. So something interesting is coming for these characters. What they may be, I don't know, but like, is it a proposal? Is it something else? I don't know. But this doesn't seem like the time, Jonathan, but... Well, Murray would say it's the perfect time, you know? You do you.

Murray, who was like, you know, you guys, you have the real shit, shared trauma way back when in season two, he's still on his favorite corner there. Here's my note for all the shippers out there. We've done shipwors throughout. I've waffled. I've oscillated. Sometimes I'm team Jonathan and Nancy.

Sometimes I'm team Nancy and Steve. I don't want Jonathan and Nancy to get married. And I actually feel like in a story, I'm not like actively rooting against them. I think I would be fine if it happened. But it feels to me like in a story where there's so much in a way that we love. And it's beautiful young love, these like formative, relationships. You've got a number of them across the character sense. Max has that great moment when she's telling Holly about her, you know, Max's Tale.

And it's like, after all this time, he was still there. Max's Tale, Lucas, right? Wonderful. Not my mom. My mom didn't visit. But Lucas is there. Holding my hand, playing me the music that did not last long enough on the tape for me to escape. I feel like some of these people who coupled up as kids, like not be together at the end of the show. That actually just feels kind of important. Doesn't have to be.

I really, well, but it could be. I got to say, I'm guessing that Dustin and Susie are not together right now. Joanna, you perish the thought. Long-distance relationships are hard in the best of circumstances. Okay, so on the Dustin front, yes. I will say I got a, I saw a great Insta, Insta, real edit of spliced together Max's depression, season four with Dustin's in season five.

And I really like that comp. As hard as it's been for us to watch Dustin go through this and as much as we're missing that light atmosphere that he would bring to these dire circumstances, I've always loved the way in which, not you barb, the way in which like Billy's death, Bob's death, Eddie's death are treated as like

there are serious ramifications in the next season, Joyce is really hung up on Bob's death, you know, like after that happens, Billy died, but like it mattered to Max that he died. And it matters that Eddie died. And so like this idea of these teenagers stalking the halls of their high school, feeling alienated and isolated and angry and alone feels very right. Again, as hard as is for us to watch it as much as we're hoping there is a Steve and Dustin reconciliation around the corner. Something that Gaten said in an interview that I thought was really special and important, talking about Dustin's attitude right now, which a lot of people are not responding well to in the fandom. He says, basically, Dustin thinks that if he's not miserable all the time, he's not doing it, meaning grief, right? So he pushes away the people that make him happy. Right. So he's like, if I'm not devastated, then I'm not honoring Eddie's sacrifice.

And so I will push away, Steve, and I presume push away Susie, so that I can stay in this. I'm grieving him space because that's how I can honor him. Now, he's definitely going to learn in this season, I hope, that that is not the way to honor someone that you've lost. They wouldn't want that for you. What is it? One of him, Eddie's final words to Dustin is never change Henderson, right? And Dustin has dramatically changed because of his devastation. And it's understandable.

But like, this is not what Eddie wants, obviously, quite obviously. I also saw some really interesting explorations of the Eddie Dustin relationship and the Dustin and Steve relationship. And as much as we like love the Dustin and Steve relationship when we do, I thought it was an interesting commentary that Eddie's emphasis for Dustin is like you're perfect. You know, Bridget Jones, you're perfect just as you are. Don't change. I love who you are. exactly who you are. And Steve's is a little bit like, here's how you can be better. Here's how you can like change your hair and, you know, do this and change yourself to be cooler. No, I don't, I don't,

I would not accuse Steve of bad intentions or anything like that, but that is a different dynamic. So Dustin flowering under Eddie's like exactly who you are is wonderful is, you know, is a powerful thing to lose. So I beautifully said. I completely agree. And I think that's part of what makes the relationships in the show so impactful for us as viewers and for the characters who are being enriched by them or struggling through them is because hopefully these characters change each other. Right. It can't just work one way.

And so I think that's one of the things ultimately that Steve has to learn. And that's part of Steve's journey is like realizing that. And I think this is why, you know, part of how like Dustin is. through his in his state of grief and his state of pain and feeling not only like he has to be sad that he has to keep grieving in this way, but like he also, as we talked about last pot, a lot, is like deeply frustrated and resentful that the other people around him are not championing Eddie's memory and hellfire and like carrying forth these totems of not just who Eddie was, but what Eddie represented in their lives the way that he is. But like when, so when Dustin is kind of lashed

out at Steve by constantly like basically calling him stupid, which is like really mean. Really mean. You know, I think that like one of the reasons he's doing that is because part of when you hurt somebody close to you, it's not, sometimes it's conscious, but sometimes it's like that subconscious tendency you have to really wound somebody in a way you know only you can. Like doesn't know Steve well enough to know that the way that Steve sees his worth is like you, you came to me for advice. You came to me to try to be cool. That was the gift I could give you. And it's like actually Steve has a lot of other things to offer. He has like his loyalty and his commitment to staying true to the people who need him,

which is like much more important than telling somebody what hairspray to use. And I was going to say that like watching, again, all of them, but very specifically inside of the end of episode four, Lucas and Mike protect these children, watching them all turn into Steve's is just like very emotional. Oh, very emotional. Really, really good. I love what you said. I hadn't thought about it this way, but I love what you said about, like, lashing out of people in the very specific, like, we know exactly how to hurt what the button, what the particular buttons are, whatever.

We know how to wound people. And oftentimes that can be like a test of like, how far can I push you? And will you come back? Will you stay if I push you this hard? So anyway, like the dust and stuff is making me sad. but feels like logical character work for me. So it feels wrong yet right. I will say the crash really annoyed me.

Yeah. Eddie has to be careful about where he steps in the upside down last year. And Steve is just careening through hell in a BMW with his eyes off the road. Something he already did in the van earlier in the season, which pissed me off. I'm like eyes on the road. Harrington, but like, full speed in the BMW in the upside down, Jonathan Dancy are screaming in the backseat

and he is so distracted by his fight with Dustin that he slams into the giant, impenetrable meat ring T.M. Like, I hated that. Yeah, I agree. That was a little, that was silly. You could have done it where it, like, came out of, like, the fog, like, came out of nowhere. You know, if he's, like, driving carefully

in the fog is like covering it and then all of a sudden they just like slam into it. That makes more sense to me than what I saw happen, which was just incomprehensible. Yeah. I mean, I guess you can say in terms of the like lack of care in general with traversing the upside down, I guess you could say like the distinction between not wanting to alert someone versus like the chasings and they're chasing it. But like I'm with you completely.

I think that that was a little bit incongruous with how we have been trained to navigate that terrain and then the like we're we're just not looking because we're fighting was just kind of silly yeah what what is your where are you with the the impenetrable meeting um and dust ds tm and dust and dustins um you know i thought i was hawkins lab is at the center yeah hawkins lab at the center impressive work i'm not with steve in this moment where he's like we don't need to see the work i was like teach me this is really helpful to know uh because they you know they had the other interference point. They have Hop and L's location. They have their location so he can figure out and then see what's at the center. I wish Jonathan had been like, ha ha, I knew I was right. You said I was full as shit. But guess what? I was useful. Yeah. So is the wall,

is the lab there because the wall was there and the lab needed to be at the center of this anomaly? Did the wall spring out from the lab at the center? Where are you at this? I think Vecna, I believe Vecna raised the wall. Yes. Around the lab. And the kids, wherever they are, are like in the lab or in just the other side of that meat wall. I don't know how, I mean, I guess I could, I did not look closely enough at his work to see how big the wall was in comparison to the lab. Is it like just right, it isn't just right around the lab. There's like still miles to go. Yeah, it's like around the town. Yeah.

Well, around like a part of the town. But like, but I have to imagine that they're going to find their way to penetrate the impenetrable meat wall. and go to the lab. Like, that has to be what their quest is, right? Which is exciting to contemplate. So do you think that the 12 kids that Vecna is trying to collect, and despite Murray's, I thought, frankly, despite the rude commentary, thoughtfully crafted, like, egg carton.

Precious cargo. Smuggling compartment of the- Yeah. Buckle your seatbelts. Buckle up. They're like, this is not very comfortable, actually. And he's like, fuck off. I got such a kid out of Murray when he was like the, the, the.

CPR child dummy, it's purpose and mystery to me. That's like that they're going to use for fake deck. Very funny. Marie, always a riot. Are the, because we get to see through Will's demo cam, Vecam, Vecam. We see where some of the kids are plugged in, right? We see these like spires. That did not necessarily seem to me like spread out to the extent that the kids are in the ring all the way around, like the hands of a clock.

But maybe we just zipped really quickly through those views. and they are, in fact, rather than in a concentrated position. Like, he wants 12 kids. Is this like the 12 apostles, you know, the 12 disciples of Jesus? Because Vecna is his predator but for good, God, who is trying to craft his own world and his own following? I think you know it has to be clock. I think you know it has to be clock shit. I think you know it's Vecna.

You know it's Henry. He's got, he's got like a weird kink about clocks. Like he's just, this is definitely clock stuff. Definitely. Clock stuff go. All right. Clock stuff go. Because he says about the kids with Will, you know, he calls, to describe some as weak,

he talks about the most perfect vessels. And then in season four, one of the things that he had said to Elle when talking about the spiders, like me, they are solitary creatures and deeply misunderstood. They are gods of a world. The most important of all predators, they immobilize and feed on the weak, bringing balance and order to an unstable ecosystem. So once again, he's like now using that language to explain what he is doing and that mirrors the way that he identified with these other creatures.

You know what else stood out to me, by the way, in revisiting that Vechna to L-Speach. VH-1 sort of combo monologue, yeah. Everyone is just waiting, waiting for it to all be over all while performing in a silly, terrible play. Yeah. Silly terrible play. One night only. Oklahoma's not a silly terrible play.

No. Oklahoma's great. How dare you? People love it. But maybe he doesn't feel that way about it. Well, I think he, no, I think he thinks life is a silly terrible play. It's very like train spotting choose life, choose a career, choose a like, you know, like your reality is bullshit sort of speech from him. Absolutely.

Um, rock and Robin and Will the Wise. Absolutely best. We already talked about this a bit, but I just want to highlight some language from Robin's speech here. And then again hit that Brenner speech from season four, right? Yes. When she talks about, I mean, speaking about using all pieces of the carcass, here comes Tammy Thompson back again. Surprise, surprise, right? But she talks about Tammy, that with Tammy, I would finally be able to be myself,

you know, all of myself because there was always this part of me that kind of scared me, you know. She talks about Tammy and Steve and her depression and her grades plummeting and whatever and seeing this little version of herself. And that little me, I could hardly recognize her. You know, she was so carefree and like fearless. She just loved every part of herself. And that's what hit me. It was never about tone-deaf Tammy.

It was always just about me. I was looking for answers and somebody else, but I had all the answers. I just needed to stop being so goddamn scared, scared of who I really was. Once I did that, oh, I felt so free. It's like I could fly, you know, like I could finally be Brock and Robin, right? And this is what Brenner said to 11 in season four, Brenner the best, your favorite character. Brenner says, Robin, the best. Brenner says, you speak of monsters and superheroes, that's the stuff of myth and fairy tales.

Reality, truth is rarely so simple. People are not so easily defined. Only by facing all of ourselves the good and the bad can we become whole. I want to quickly emphasize that when he says the good and the bad, and to compare this to Robin's speech, I'm not saying the queerness inside of you is accessing something bad inside of you. Obviously not. I don't feel that way. But like, Robin is speaking more of like a part of you. you that you have been made to feel ashamed of, which, you know, Mallory and I would both say,

we would hope people would not feel ashamed with that, but in the 1980s in Indiana, this is, this is how it felt. So that idea of like the good and the bad encompasses a lot of things, and in this case specifically, it's like the vulnerable parts of you, the shame parts of you, all this sort of stuff like that. And I just love that that idea, again, can come out of the mouth of someone like Brenner and out of the mouth of someone like Rob, but the concept of the same, and I think it's really, we've been talking about this for a few episodes now, really something we think we are progressing towards.

Now, I mean, we already are here with Will doing that, right? But like, what does that mean for 11? Bad at detective work, good at hopping around over walls, sometimes bad at counting. But, like, what further heights can 11 achieve with this embracing the whole aspect of her how will this help Hopper

or Joyce or anyone else who is feeling Jonathan who's feeling Dustin's who's feeling like all these people are feeling this you know sense of wrongness

inside them about something how can they just by being exactly themselves as Eddie wished Justin would be how can they access their most powerful self which is just something that, like, I am really excited about. And I even think that is important, as we've already discussed, to consider with Henry, you know?

People are not so easily defined only by facing all of ourselves, the good and the bad, can we become whole? How can VH1 become one can VH1 become, how can Vecna Henry one, three become one, to paraphrase of Spice Girls, and just become, like, one person who, like, you know, can maybe defend. against a larger threat. I don't know. But these are the themes that seem very much on the deafest mind. And I love this.

Because it's not so simplistic as your source of your power is love or your friendship. Because again, that is very, like, life is hard and messy. And there's loss and there's grief. And like, having all of that be what forms you.

It's not just when your friends are paying attention to you and supporting you, It's also when your friends ditchy for girls and when your friends don't want to play D&D with you. And like all of that stuff makes who you are. And all of you is worthy of admiration and power and flight. So I just, I think this is an incredible message for this show to send everyone, the generations of people are watching it together. That was lovely.

I'm with you on how touching. moving and I think really truly important this was and how like, you know, it's just an incredibly like rewarding thing to watch as people who've been watching the show for so long, but I think you're really right to identify how, and like you said, we've heard from many people about this, just how meaningful this has been to so many people. You know, like there are, I think, moments in the show where the idea that this, this, like, we get a version of it actually in a very different context, joy saying, you know, of Derek, like sometimes people need to believe. need someone to believe in them, and then they can do amazing things. That's like a very

literalized statement of a version of the message, but I still really liked it because Derek is a very different character, then 11, then will, then eight. But it's a way of saying even Derek is a part of this stranger thing's tradition. Right? Even Derek, the question of like, suck it Chris Ryan Exactly suck up that one Chris Now we just need to cut to

like Robin and Chris side by side like well Jesus What? You know to your your Henry

VH1 tie there I think there are a number of reasons that 8 is probably back in the story and we'll talk about some more of them in a few minutes

when we get to the Cali of it all but I think this is potentially one of them. Like, eight was one of the characters. Callie was one of the characters who, her tutelage to 11, her guidance to 11, was rooted in channeling your rage and tapping into your anger. And to go from a place where we're like really going from, okay, that's over here. And then our other lessons are over here into more of like a melded space. And also for eight,

for Callie to be a character who helps 11, remember that for everything that Henry has done, and that's a long list of horrible shit. He was also another one, just like 11, just like 8, another one of Brenner's lab rats who was poked and prodded. And yeah, a kid who was turned into a thing that they could study and weaponize. And we heard Henry say it to 11 last season, like Brenner wanted to start this program and then he had me and he could. Right. So like, I think that idea of 8 is a source of newfound empathy. or rediscovered empathy for Henry

feels like it could be really crucial at the end here. Absolutely. Something she tried in season four. Exactly. You're not the monster, Papa, you know what I mean? Yeah.

So does eight help her kind of get back to that? And is that really important to like how things conclude? The other thing, like, you know, to your point, which I've really loved that you just made about like, it's not just we're playing D&D, like all just a pure happy memory.

I think that what was so great about the Spy Shack, in real time in season two, the Spyshack sequence with Joyce, Jonathan, and Will, and Mike all trying to reach Will and how they reach him and what they call upon. And then they just gut, heart, soul, wallop of seeing that here. I think really connects to what you just identified, which is like, those are really beautiful moments about friendship and belonging and the key relationships in your life. But every single one of them connects to something sad, right? Like those two young boys sitting alone, Mike and Will found each other because they were both alone. Yeah, no friends.

I don't know anyone. Yeah. Oh, my God. So, like, of course, it takes us to a beautiful place, but it started in a place of supreme loneliness and feeling like, am I going to find a friend? Am I going to find someone who I could eventually build a happy memory with? That's, like, devastating. To your point about Lonnie from earlier, Castle Byers, and that's why it killed us so deeply when we saw Will tear up the Ghostbusters picture and shred Castle Byers. because that was a refuge in a safe space.

A sanctuary from the pain in their lives. You know, Joyce hanging, saying, like, my son drew that and hanging the rainbow ship, you know, and saying like my – and it's embarrassing to him, but she's like, I'm proud of you and all of the things that you love and all of the things that you can do. It's just great. And I really like across these four episodes the way that we built toward that Robin Will moment in a way that I – because everything Robin says is just so. so moving and wonderful.

And the payoff with Will and the Spy Shack memories is incredible. But there could be a version of it where you're like, do these characters, like, despite the 20 months off screen, like, know each other well enough to have a moment this meaningful. But we got little bits. We marched toward that moment, you know, with the hospital scenes and everything. You're not, you're not, you wanted more, not enough. I could have taken a little bit more.

I think we could have started where they already, like, know each other. It feels like they just had their first conversation at episode one when, like, we could I would have started for, like, a place of a little bit more familiarity and then built from there. I think there was room to do it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Versus, like, I saw that. I think that was like your bowl cut, right?

Because no one else has that hair versus like, that's definitely my good friend Will, who I know very well. Who I do adventures with constantly. Yeah, 37 cross deep at this point, folks. But, like, you know, I did really like their conversation about, like, what, you know, the signals and how did you know? And, like, I thought that was, like, a great. The avalanche. Yeah. Yeah.

That was a great, a great bridge. And in that conversation that Mike and Will have, which is obviously a key Mike and Will scene and Mike and Will moment, just Robin watching it and understanding, you know, look on that little touch means. Yeah, what that means and what Will is going through. In contrast to like Will, which we get a flash of, of course, when Beckna's like your week, Will stifling, I mean, Jonathan observing him in the rear of you. mirror, but Will just like sort of stifling his crying and looking at the window, to have someone, to have Jonathan observe him in season four and reach out to him and to have Robin observe him here and reach out to him is so important. Yeah.

Yeah, really good stuff. Okay. On the mic front, I'll just say also very quickly, like, I do really like that Mike, who spent all series doing the like, your superhero thing with Elle did that with Will. Oh, yeah. That's great. Mike really important. really shown up on the Mike as the heart front inside of these episodes, as we discussed a little bit last week.

And we will get to the way that Mike looks at will when he reveals the superpowers. Let's just pause before we get there. We're going to talk about the Callie Reveal. Yeah. And I don't think we need to linger on. You and I hated the goddamn fake-out death. We thought it was so stupid. Okay.

I will say this. Especially since they already did it with Hopper in season three. That's, yeah. is just preposterous to do it again here. It is, to me, we've been talking for a couple episodes now about, like, do they need to kill off someone in the main cast? You know, one of the wheelers should die. I already said that when we have Karen or Ted should die, whatever, but like, do they need to

kill off one of the kids, one of the adults that we have been with from the start? Does that need to happen in order for it to feel like the finale was worth something? And you and I, I think both agree that, like, you don't need to do that. But if you're not going to do that, to say in every interview, it's the final season the stakes couldn't be higher, anything could happen. And then to hand us in the first four episodes three fake out deaths of Ted and Karen and hop here is, I think that sucks. Like, I think that sucks.

To play with people's expectations and emotions about it's the final season I think it happened. Now is not the time, I think, to do that. I just don't, I don't like that. So don't do it. But they already did it. So, oh, well, here we are. Yeah, I, I, I kind of can't believe we got the Hop fake out again. And I think, like, we've chronicled at length.

I was glad that Hop was not dead at the end of season three. And I think in real time, even as we mourned, there were so much fodder for theorizing his return, right to, like, the American, you know. Totally. But, yeah, I, it, frankly, like, I think that the fact that. that they did this again with him, it's like, I was saying this yesterday to Chris on the watch, but like it's the first time I thought maybe Hopped safe, actually. But I'm with you completely.

I don't, we've talked about this many times, not just with stranger things, but with other stories. I bring up like Infinity War on the snap a lot when talking about this. I got to come up with some other references. But like, I do not believe that the only stake in a story is death. And especially, you know, given the conversation we had last pod about, What might the end mean for like a character like 11, you know?

Is there a loss of powers? Is there the Shire's been saved, but not for me? Like just a separate kind of reality or existence, all of that. There are a number of really impactful, meaningful, and perhaps tragic things that can still await our characters outside of just death. Right. But spoilers taunting us with the idea of a character tying and then not doing it. It's like it's the hop thing twice. It was Max.

And again, we're thrilled Max is here. but like this is now kind of the habit. I think it's strange. Speaking of strange, not strange. Kelly's here. I actually love this. We both use the exact same word. The chutzpah.

The chutzpah. The absolute chutzpah. What's been really funny in the press around this season is the kids keep dropping, not the kids, they're adults now, the younger cast members, the grown adults. Keep dropping all these comments about how everyone hated. that season two episode. Yeah.

Finn had like a really funny bit about it. Millie Bobby Brown was talking about it. Like they've been just like everyone loved season two. It was everyone's favorite season. They loved that one episode. Like all the sort of stuff like that. So like they're joking about it in a way that's really fun and really self-aware. And so for the Duffers to do what I love, speaking of Infinity War,

what I love to talk about in the end of the MCU's tenure chunk. This is idea in Endgame of wrapping your arms around the bumpier spots in your... Mallory's going to come through with some preposterous Thor the Dark World defense. But to make Thor the Dark World... Great movie. Wild, widely recognized as a weak installment in the MCU integral and emotional part of Avengers Endgame. Yep. I loved that.

It strengthens the whole. It tightens the weave on the entire tapestry. And so to wrap your arms around Collie and make her, we don't know how she's going to be used, but she is here. And they've said in interviews, like, it's important that she's here. To then say, like, fuck you. We're not going to pretend we didn't do that thing in season two. We did it. And we're going to make it matter.

We got another go at it. And is it going to be successful? We don't know. But I'm excited to see them try. And, you know, I never had anything against that actress or anything like that. So, like, you know, I think it's really exciting. You and I had had some questions about the hedgehog being the name of the various devices they used to sonically incapacitate 11, the kryptonitis.

They're incredible old sonic cannons. Hopper termed it. Detective 11 was like, oh, that's Bechna. I know they're channeling Bechna's power to do that. So that I assumed that it was 8's power that they were using instead to channel that. But you pointed out that the beams seem to be pointed at her. So what's your sense, scientist Mallory Rubin, of like, what's powering the hedgehog? And is it or is it not related to eight's powers?

So I don't know, and I think either thing is possible. Also, perhaps both things are possible. I don't know that they have to be mutually exclusive. Actually, I think, like, the idea of turning one of these superpowered kids into a battery that you use to charge your weapons to control. that person and also others who have their powers feels plausible to me. Yeah, I think that the, so I had also assumed that whatever, I also was like whatever is behind whomever and then pretty, we're ahead of 11 that it's going to be Cali, is back there, is powering this weapon. That's what I thought too. The fact that they seem to be, because like, you can't allow

eight to just like use her powers against you if you're K. So I do think it makes sense, especially, and they did seem to be positioned in that they are dampening her powers so that she can't be a threat. That to me does not mean they're not also using her in some way, either to somehow fuel that same tech or there are blood bags everywhere. There are ivies in both arms. There are blood bags everywhere. We've been talking for every pod we've done across the rewatch. You know, Henry just uses the light, like when he's talking about his history in season four, he's like, and then he got me. And then he started to just program and like the blood, you know, we've talked about our, our.

theories over the seasons about that. They have eight's blood in many bags there. Either is it someone else's blood that they're giving her, are they taking her blood to then power up other people? Are they trying to make other superpowered people from eight's blood? Right. I think that's all possible in the theory corner front. You know, we have before these hedgehogs seen other power dampeners. You know, we had the collars, right, that Brenner used. And of course, we also had the satiria neck pellet. So then I'm kind of like... The licensing contingency.

Yeah, yes. Are these like, is that tech related? Is the Hedgehog Sonic Cannon just a more kind of robust military... Directional. Convoy. Yeah. Version of the same thing. We don't know exactly how the collars or that neck pellet worked unless we'd learn that

somewhere else. So like they have the ability to dampen the powers. Whether AIDS feeling them or not, I don't know. I was thinking back to that part of Eddie's campaign in season four in Hellfire that like the Vecta just decimated us. We can't kill him with just two players line. So we have this great moment. We've always had our like, Elle's got her superpowers, but we have the whole party. And then in season three, L doesn't have her powers, et cetera, right?

Into season four. Shout out Mr. Fibbley. The like return of eight here then and this idea that like because Will's powered up. Got three. You got to have three or more. I believe you need the whole party, as Lucas said. You got to get Max back to. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Now the time that at least some people have been waiting for it, we got to talk about Beiler. What is that? Some of you at home are maybe saying. We've been talking about the ship wars for every episode of our rewatch. We neglected to talk about this ship and we got actually several salty emails about this. and I actually think they were right to call us out for not talking about this. It is the Will Byers Mike Wheeler's ship, the Bileership. I, there have been so many, so many, like, essays and posts and edits and stuff like that

about how people think this is actually something they're going to do in the final season. I do not, mostly based on the way that, like, Finn has talked about it and some of the the Duffer brothers have talked about, like, they're very aware of it. They know it's a thing. But, like, I think they're not going to do it. It doesn't mean it's not worth talking about, though. Yeah, of course. Obviously, Will is in love with Mike. No question. Without question. Yes. Mike, I think, is tragically, entirely heterosexual. But, like, who's to say? Listen, when teenagers are figuring your shit out. And I do think it is fair for the Biler Shippers to say, the final shot, of this

of this chunk of episodes when Will reveals his superpowers and wipes the nose bleed away much the way that 11 has for years and Mike looks at him in a way that is like if you want to interpret it as heart eyes

I support you in that oh yeah of course all of the edits about like Mike really has a type or Will saw who Mike had a crush on so he turned himself into 11 or like all that sort of stuff like that I really support and in terms of like The way in which they may or may not be feeding the Biler fandom,

I will say, Mike and Will, rolling around on the bathroom floor, sopping wet together is not not them feeding that shit fandom. So, for sure. Biler people, I think this is the most, perhaps the most you're ever going to feast. And if you get more fodder, I welcome all that comes for you. but I just wanted to honor you and recognize you out there. You matter in the fandom. Go sign.

Yeah. Big time. So, yeah. Yeah. I agree. I don't think that we are actually going to get a romantic Mike and Will relationship at the end of the show. I don't think that that seems like where we're heading. But Will's feelings for Mike are a central part of his journey.

his journey of discovery and everything that we've witnessed with his character. That's obviously just been core. And I think that like their relationship and their friendship and all aspects of their relationship and what they mean to each other, really returning to the center of like not just their experience in the various dynamics in the group, but to the show is like so important. So, so, so important. So I've really loved, like I thought it was just great to see them together in such a meaningful capacity, like full stop.

but I felt so important that Mike was like, you're just sorcerer because your powers are innate. And like this is, you're this amazing person. Even if I do not count myself among the like most avid bilisher shippers, I will say that like it matters to me as someone who like wants Mike, wants people to be good friends to each other to like watch Mike like help Joyce pick whale up. Or like, you know, there's just like all these moments where Mike is like, like paying attention to Will.

Yes, exactly. And there have been several seasons where it feels like Mike completely forgot that Will it was like his best friend. Yeah, exactly. Paying attention to things that's how we should love. It matters to me. So obviously that's, you know, we've already talked about this Will moment

and what it means outside of the violorship. But I just, this is just an absolutely fucking incredible way to end a stretch of episodes. Dynamite. I thought it looked great. like the way the demos were like frozen in air and like straining against his power and stuff like that and then to watch them

snap the way that we watched Chrissy and Fred and Max all like snap was incredibly satisfying. I love the Noah has talked about how they really tried to finesse the way his gesturing work so it didn't look the same as 11 so that they did like sort of his palm up sort of a clutching gesture, the eyes whiting out.

just like all of it and the nose wipe. I mean, it was just like really great sci-fi fantasy stuff, sci-fi-fantasy television moment. I had a great time with it. So, yeah. Anything else you want to say about this ending moment? Let's see. Loved the full, you know, the Night King,

raising my, raising my, my demo army moments from, you know, we talked about Vader and we talked about the stretchy Groot and Vine arm. Boy, the branches through the, face. The branches with the face. That was disturbing, I got to say. I sent you a photo of that when I was watching, and we were watching again a couple days in front of Thanksgiving, and I was like, happy Thanksgiving, man. Like, I was just imagining, like, children at home with their families watching, like, a soldier get branches through the face. It was a lot. But, yeah. Genuinely, like, very intense and harrowing and disturbing, but certainly not the first time that we've seen violent things

on Stranger Things, but that one will stick with me as a visual. But yeah, we got the Night King, too, so that's very fun. You know, I, I think on the, we've hit a lot of the, like, the Harry Voldemort, work-wrack stuff. Obviously, we've been talking about this since season two. But, I mean, right down to, like, visual pairings of, you know, how the two characters are positioned in the scene together. But, you know, back in our season two pod and since season two first aired, I've been talking

about this, like, okay, what happens in season two with, the idea of the spy is just like basically like overtly the Order of the Phoenix Department of Mysteries. The Horrocks connection leads to this ability to like, what can you see through somebody's mind or eyes and how can that be weaponized against you, etc. So I really like how that was like how that was advanced in this stretch of episodes with again, like we talked about this idea of Will's connection to the hive mind and maybe being able to like tap into that and control it and use it, not to. just feel like that's a vulnerability of his, that's great. I think, though, like this other thing then with the idea of how Will's powers are activated, we have the really beautifully thematic idea of the powers being innate. Will can tap into the Spyshack memories, the source of all of this joy and beauty and heart in his life.

On the Vectna Tye front and the, like, Voldemort front then, there's, in a, the Horrocks, how did we get there, right? There's this, like, aspect of the prophecy, the dark Lord will mark him, is equal, but he will have power. The dark lord knows not. That was then very top of mind for me watching this sequence with Will powering up to become the sorcerer. Because, like, you have this question of, okay, why Will? Right?

And so, like, then I'm thinking, all right, well, Markamas is equal. Will being able to tap it to the hive might to power up. We've got that. But, like, Voldemort chose Harry, not Neville because of what he saw in Harry in those similarities, right? So then we think about why Will. We have all the other stuff we already talked about today with like the various characters that Henry has maybe ties to in his past, et cetera. But just like if we go back to some of those things that Henry said to 11, to Jane, it's like we can apply them to Will, right? Like you, I didn't fit in with other children,

with the other children. You know, something was wrong with me. All the teachers and the doctor said I was broken. They said like that's not a perfect comp, but this idea of like he's, identifying something in the people he's picking, right? And that feels like notable and important. So that parallel, I think, is just kind of inescapable and was literalized quite specifically here. Yeah, I think Joy's talking to Hopper in season one about Will, you know, and she's like, you know, money's gone queer.

like, you know, she's just like identifying that, like, before he was taken, there was something about Will that, like, othered him, you know, even inside of this, like, little friend group that he had. So, um, thank you for always taking us to, uh, Mallory Rubin, Harry Potter PhD Corner. It's just inescapable. I think it's really interesting that they're not talking about it, but it is inescapably something that they're doing. And so I think what's, what's maybe even, even more interesting to me is the differences that they find inside of this story. Yeah, absolutely, for sure. Yeah.

We've hit so many aspects of that Henry stretch with 11 in season four. I think maybe one of the few lines we haven't really just talked about much today. It stands out a new given Max and Holly exploring his mind palace the way that he said I became an explorer. That's another interesting, another interesting little aspect of that to circle back to now. Yeah. A cruel, oppressive world dictated by made-up rules. seconds, minutes, hours, days, week, month, years, decades. The guy loves a clock.

All right. Two more sections to go. We're doing Theory Corner and unanswered questions than we're doing some play stuff. You can choose your own adventure of what you stay for. If you're leaving, bye, we'll see you, you know, hopefully for Best Fice in the Century later this week. Yes. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terseptite. The first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea,

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Call 1-800-545-99 or visit Zepbound.lily.com. Theory corner and unanswered questions are just theories. Uninformed necessarily by play stuff. Right. And answered questions. I want to start with two unanswered questions. Yeah. Number one, what are the rest of the turnbos doing?

Did they just leave them in that barn? Our listener, Anto, sort of wrote in about this, but I was wondering this question. Just to be clear, it's the same night. It's all one night. The pie dinner feeds into Derek going into the maxi, into everything else. So, like, they could still be sleeping. off the effects of the pie. But there's no one guarding them because Erica and Joyce, everyone's out in the field. So like, did they just leave them in that barn? Do they leave them to like,

blearily wander home and find their house in a wreck? Like, what is happening with the rest of the turbos? Will we ever find out? Nobody seems concerned, much like nobody seems concerned about Ted Wheeler. So great. How long did Vicky just wait for Robin at Enzo's? And follow a question, has anyone ever had a good date at Enzo? Robin not like telling Vicky that she can't make her date, but rather just hiding for her. Not the best. I know. I get it.

She's like, you know, I can only make so many excuses without being able to tell her what's really going on in my life. But here's a thought. But like, tell her. Exactly. Why can't Vicki be in on it? I wonder if that's going to happen in the back half the season. Like if we're setting this up to for Vicki being like, you tell me what's going on. on and Robin telling or something like that.

Okay. We've already discussed this whole, I bled it into the main discussion, this idea of Henry trying to quote, save the children, which is something that I, like, talked about earlier. But I don't think there's anything else I have to say about this thing. We already talked about it. I think Yos, you want to say on this front? I guess who else is invited? You know, we've got these 12 kids.

He's obviously lying outright to Holly. He's like, you know, we'll bring the adults later. I mean, is he? I don't know. Does he think he can save everyone? Does he need the 12 to power his wormhole meatwall clock? And then after that, everyone, there's plenty of whipped cream and fresh blackberries at the party. Joe Rolling wishes she had ever come up with a wormhole meat wall clock when she did it.

So here we are. All right, speaking of time. Yeah. Here's a trio of emails we got from listeners. Corny says, Elle can warp time. She can access memories the past. Callie can warp reality, projecting images that are not really there.

Will can warp space by using his powers in multiple places at one time. Our superheroes, is her theory. Our superheroes will have to warp time, space, and reality to create a wormhole slash wrinkle in time to save Max and Holly slash find Vecta. I thoroughly hope this will mean we get a brief Erica Sinclair monologue where she has to dumb down quantum physics to everyone, and explain how they can accomplish their plan because who among them can understand quantum physics aside from Lady Applejack.

So, I love this. I love this. I do actually have, like, I guess, an open question about whether they're recconning the fact that like the kids all have different powers. Obviously the will point,

I think that's a really big, like Dustin, we now have three data points and we can plot our course. So I think that's valid. But, you know, when we met Callie in season two, it seemed like,

okay, maybe every one of these kids has a distinct thing. distinct power set. And then all of, it seemed at least, I mean, we really only saw like 10 and two. But it's seen, and we saw some of the other ones actually. It like used their powers when they were ganging up to bully Allen and end in the push your fellow out of the circle trial. It did seem like they all have the same powers, I thought. In the Hawkins laugh flashback. To like telekinesis. Yeah. So then I'm like, does Callie still have different powers? Or are they changing that? I guess if they're bringing her back, they can't like really change her powers. That would be weird. But then why is she the only one with different powers? I don't know. Not the neatest and tidiest thing they've ever done on the show, but that's okay. I'm with you ultimately that I'm glad that they're trying to make this work. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if 11 could do what we just saw Will do, but we haven't seen her quite do that. Right?

Yeah. Like, he projects all the way out to that field where Robin and Murray are. That's like so far. He's not just like Lucas down in the tunnel, but it's like all the way out to the radio station, essentially. Yeah, and his power really connecting to like his particular hive bind connection is like also, yeah, distinct or specific to him. Okay. Thomas says, or Thomas says, I love the Nat 20 theory. I've seen on Reddit. Pause. If you've never played D&D, the best role you can do is a natural 20, which is just like, oh, 20 on a 20 side of dice. And that's like, you know, in terms of your chances of surviving something, Nat 20 is like crumb to the crumb to. All right. So Thomas says, I love the net 20 theory I've seen on Reddit that season four, episode

one predicts L11 and Callie 8 and Will slash Vecna or Wechna. One need to be united to defeat whoever's in charge of the upside down 20, just like Hellfire needed to throw 20 in Eddie's campaign. So 11 plus 8 plus 1 equals 20. Anything you want to say about this other than you love it. This is great. Crit hit, as Erica would say. That's great. All right, here's something we think is less great, not that this idea just if they do it.

Ray says, the more I think about it, the more I think Callie will survive until that battle be to be the convenient death scapegoat. They do have a habit of bringing characters into the season, flushing them out, making you like them, and killing them so that the death feels like real consequences. I don't think consequences is actually what I'm looking for, but I can't find it. A la Bob and Eddie, or I guess Barb, if you cared about her, I'm with you on that one, Joanna. She sucked. Wow.

Malory Arrisha are on the bar-paid train. But anyway, Callie being the consequential death of the season, you and I hate that. I don't be a dick. But like, because we have four episodes and I think like six and a half or like seven hours left, right? We have like a lot of time left still. So could my feeling on this front change? Yeah. Right now what I am prepared to say with confidence is that it would have next to a

no impact on me if Kali died. So the idea that would be like, but I'll say even if they do, even if they like really Eddie are up

and make us like care so much about our only to kill her, I'm like, that feels shitty to me. Yeah. To like bring back the character

just to kill her because you don't feel like killing any of your main crew. Yeah. I think that sucks. That would be bad.

All right. Elena or Alana, I think Elena. This is some time travel stuff. This is right up Mallory Rubin's alley. We also get a Harry Potter reference here. Who opened the gate the night Will was nabbed?

And we talked about this a little bit last week. Young L opening it has been a popular fan theory. However, I think it may end up being older 11 who opens that door. What if she ends up traveling back to that night and then realizes she had to be the one to set those events in motion or to eventually defeat Vecna. Without Will being taken, Elle probably would have been killed, locked up in the lab again or just wandered around alone. All the times they've put a stop to Vecna slash the mind flare would have never been possible without Will's disappearance. full stop from Elena. So I will say,

she references Prisoner of Ascaband in her email, which is like, you know, Harry and Hermione were always, you know, the ones who cast the patroness, the one who made this sound, like the one who threw the stone,

et cetera, et cetera. I knew I could do it, because I'd already done it. The back, this is also, if we want to get closer to the 80s references, 80s, 90s references, the Back to the Future 3 theory,

where we see Marty McFly creeping around the enchantment under the sea dance, like, you know, doing stuff on the scenes, or Endgame, if you prefer, an MCU com. So, like, I find those stories enormously satisfying to watch your characters creep around a story we're already quite familiar with is, I think, extremely fun.

And if it always happened because they had to do it, again, this is a theory we've been sort of circling for a little while now. I sort of thought it would be Will, who would have to make that. decision and I kind of like that as like, will has to choose to be taken is a cleaner thing to me than like 11 has to choose for a will to be taken. You know what I mean? Like, Will has to make the decision that the trauma that he went through is worth the journey to become the person he has

become is interesting to me. I'm not convinced of it, but it's interesting to me. Yeah, I definitely think that something like this, exact characters, exact circumstances, TBD, but I think something like this seems very, very probable, very, very likely. I will not be at all surprised if this happens. I might be a touch surprise at this point if it doesn't. Yeah. Not like disappointed, but just I think it's like really pointing toward that outcome. We love a November 6th event.

Okay. We already read Sarah's excellent email about Ted Wheeler coming into Camazots. I love that. What berry dessert will he have? Who knows? And then Trevor wrote, this is sort of about the cleric nature of Holly, the heroic, right? Trevor writes, I think Holly will quote, resurrect Max and enable her escape from the mine prison. Lucas was pleading with Max to, quote, resurrect when he's in the hostel with her.

and resurrection is a notable cleric power in D&D. I think the dimension door Holly will open will be a portal to Max's physical side where Lucas is playing running up that hill in the real world like the one Max couldn't get to in her flashback story to Holly. Holly will help Max get through it this time. Epsom's escape from Camazots.

Seems right. I guess like not to go all like why did Sabine get in the force? Which is like as you know, actually not how I felt about it. And I think kind of a bit of a blight in the internet era. It's like a tendency, but caveat issued. And we talked last pot.

It just seems clear that the Holly the heroic scene is setting up that the the use of those powers, the dimension door, etc. I think that is likely to happen in some capacity. I would like to see that happen. I am a little bit like how many of the kids can develop some sort of magical power. in the final season of the show, cautious, though. I think that that's like a line to walk with care. Where do you draw the line?

Which kid has to get powers for you to be like, no, no. That's the thing. I'm like, but it would be pretty cool. Like, Lucas had powers. Like, it would be pretty cool. Steve is like, I can levitate things, yeah. Yeah, but I don't know. I think, I guess, like, part of the reason I feel that way, actually,

let me see if I can figure out how to articulate this. Like, I don't want the show to run. I think it's cool if the kids, get powers, that's great. That, to your beautiful point from earlier, the idea of like a story where the supernatural is at the four, literalizing the belief that you find in yourself, I think is great. I'm a little wary of if that swings into kind of too much volume. The show, maybe inadvertently running a foul of one of its other really important messages, which is like, you don't literally need superpowers to make a difference. I think that's actually a little bit of a risk. For me,

it's if Mike gets powers. That's the line I draw. Of course it's that for you. No, no, no. Which is actually not about my hatred for Mike. It's about how much I am valuing Mike as like a guy this season. Just a dude. Just a dude.

It feels like it matters. That he's there to like be an anchor for 11 or Mike or whoever else. You know what I mean? Like I like that. That's actually a praise of Mike and not a knock of Mike. All right. That's it for Theory Corner. unless there's anything else you want to say in Theory Corner.

I don't think so. Okay. Big horns sounding. Those are small horns. Big horns on it. This is something I wrote down several times without saying it out loud. Stage show script reader corner. If you're watching on video, they just put a very handy little caption down the bottom

and says, stage show script reader corner. This is spoilers. Yeah. For Stranger Things First. shadow of play. You could go see right now if you had a lot of expendable income and time. Yeah. We get some answers. So there was your warning. Bye. Okay. Yep. A lot of the questions you might have, why is VH1 so scared of that cave? We know the answers if we know the stage show. And some of us have read some summaries and some of us have seen the show.

So the cave in Nevada. Yeah. According to the stage play, this was Henry's first time being possessed by the mind player. He disappeared for 12 hours, like Will, though not as long as Will, into a place called, quote, dimension X, like a pre-upside-down hell dimension, not quite the upside-down. This is how Henry first got his powers. So this is something that we kind of talked around a little bit, and I felt bad for telling you,

but here we are. This idea that the mindflare definitely infected young Henry Creel, not that Henry Creel invented the mind flare. So the mind flare is a malevolent force that corrupted Henry Creel who was just a boy, a sweet boy, and then it came back wrong because he was a mind player infected and he started mutilating animals, which is not great and the like. But in the stage play, make it very clear that when Henry does these things, kill his family, mutilate, an animal,

etc. There is an effect on the stage play that, like, the mind flair sort of looms up behind him. So it's very clear that he is being possessed by, infected by the mind flare when he does that. He has these powers. There is this character. As you point out, Patty Newby is, like, a main character of the show is Bob's sister. Bob's adopted sister, Patty Newby. Mm-hmm.

is like young Henry Creel. How young, 12, 14, 16? Who's to say? Is high school age Henry Creel's girlfriend's like love interest? And she's like, you can use your powers for good. And so he like does a couple times use his powers for good. So there's this idea that like there before the grace.

So there's the positive force of patty newbie. And then there's wouldn't you know it fucking Brenner, right? Always. to go back to Nevada without the stage show we knew that the Nina project was in Nevada we knew that Sam and Kathy Owens

live in Nevada like we knew that there is stuff happening in Nevada without the stage show what you know if you've seen the stage show or read a summary of it is that Brenner

a young Brenner was in Nevada working on something he called imaginatively the Nevada project where he was trying to find Dimension X because of something that happened to his father

don't worry about it just don't worry about his dad I don't have time to get into it But that means that Brenner followed Henry to Hawkins, not vice versa. And this is a question you were asking. Was there something about Hawkins that both Brenner and Henry was there? Well, the reason anyone's there is that Henry took his mind flare infected self.

Actually, the Creel family was like, there's something wrong with her child. I know. Let's move to Indiana. Move to Indiana and Brenner in a hot pursuit of answers about dimensions and gates and all this sort of stuff like that follows the Creel family. to Hawkins. Any questions, comments, concerns intriguing flags on the field about this, Malia Rubin. Just again, abject bafflement to put this out in the world in this capacity,

when it would be one thing if this, like, came out after. Yeah, this came out after and it's an origin story, great. Or if, like, we had this information about Henry much earlier in the show. But for them to be setting up these reveals in the show, the final four episodes of a five-season 10-year project and some of this information to be out there already for some people, but in a limited capacity to glean, is one of the weirder, like, expanded universe things that I can remember. I don't love it. It sounds like a great story. I'm excited to see it brought to the screen. I just don't love the, like, I don't know. I just

think that's very odd. Anyway, I agree. I'm sure no shade to anybody doing the play. I'm sure the play's amazing. And I feel very bad exposing you to this. But I also feel weird, not We should just have gone to the play. That's what we should have thought. We should have. We should have just gotten on a fucking play. Maybe we still can. I will say visually, like, I'm sure they're going to show us young Henry Creel, however old he looks in that cave, having this experience.

Yeah. Yes. Or monologuing about it, I suppose. But I will just say visually, even though this took place in Moab, Utah, it reminded me so much of, like, the origin story of Indiana Jones. Like, how did Indiana Jones become Indiana Jones, River Phoenix in the, in the, in the, sort of the warm colored stones of Utah. This is what the Nevada sort of sequence of ran. I wonder if this will just be like a couple quick beats catching us up on all of this.

Once again, in the stage show, people are like, I know all about this. And people at home are like, what am I watching? Yeah. Yeah. And like kind of keeping it, because it's crucial, but condensing it a little bit. Oh, they're definitely going to have to condense it. Yeah. And then like more of the, I guess the dimension X into.

then the upside down of it all. Like, there's still a lot to explore there. But this idea that, like, Henry is just a victim the way that Will or a vulnerable person preyed upon the way that Will was and the way that 11 was, you know, is a key source and why you see so many theories out there about people being like, Henry, not so bad, actually, because, like, they have this background information from the play, knowing that, like, he was just an ordinary kid. and then got infected by the mindflare.

And so is there a way to uninfect him? Right. And that'll be an interesting, because I think there's plenty, even if you have no exposure to the details of for shadow, I think there's plenty with the appeals that 11 made to Henry in season four about what, and even what he said to her about Papa Lies and like, which we talked about this time, like, it was true, you know? And the look that we see on his face when he won't follow back into the cave,

there's plenty, in many other examples, pointing already to, like, what happened to this kid that led to this place? I'm interested to see, given what you shared about, like, the, um, effect in the production of like, okay, he's been in these moments where he's done these things, there's this other guiding hand and this force. Like, at a certain point, there's a still, there's a culpability, right, for like, I've chosen to do these things. That's why I don't think he gets to live happily ever after. Yeah. And that's the, like, you know, I think before the first shadow Intel came into our lives, we still were using the term there, but for the grace to describe the so many parallels between, you know, Henry and 11

and like, we've seen 11 do terrible things too, back in season one. We saw 11 just go like this and snap some necks and squish some eyeballs just like Henry ended up doing. We see 11 miss time of jump in this episode. And then she's like, sorry. Sorry, got to snap your neck. It's like, what if you just kind of like choked them out a little? I don't know. Um, But yeah, so I think that's all... When it was, like, broke a leg. You know what I mean? Yeah. incapacitate without fatal.

But again, you know, learning from Hopper. When Hop's like, you're just like me and then putting people in the fucking closet. And then Hopper being like, I'll kill thousands of people in order to say the one person. You know, this is not the place in the pod for this. But I was, despite the not liking the death fake out and feeling baited by it again, when he was like, I love you, Jane. I was like, I am really touched by this. I love you, Jane was... That got me.

I was waiting for her to call him dad. I was waiting for her to say dad. I think we'll get that probably. I agree. Maybe in our third death fake out, we'll get it bad. Continuous. She says, at one point she says hop. And Diana, who I was watching myself, was like, did she say pop? And I was like, no, it's hop. All right. The spyglass. Holly grabs the spyglass, uses it, takes the cap off of it, blah, blah, then drops it. Henry's spyglass is left behind when he's taken, and it's the clue that Brenner uses to track him. So that was just like a little sort of Easter egg. The idea of the drop in, the dropped spy, drop in is not a word,

drop spyglass as like a clue or something like that. That seemed, without this knowledge, it seemed clear to me that the spy glass was something specific. Right. The camera's zooming in on it. Yeah. And like we're looking through with the cap on and it's warped, all that. We're like the, are the scorpions that we linger on on the rock?

Like also an Easter egg to the play? We really panned in on them for a while. I was like, what's going on that? Okay. Having only read synopsies, I do not know. Okay. We only have 900 pods to record between now and the end of the year. Should we get on planes?

Yes. And go to New York and see this show. I think so. Oklahoma. Yeah. This is bothersome to me, but in the play's continuity, which I guess is Canada or whatever, this November 6th play happens the same night Henry allows the Mindflare to take him over and kills his family. So it's March in season four, but I guess now it's November 6.

The real family died. Stranger Things have happened. Once had to go into Netflix after a season aired and update Will's birthday, which they got wrong. Vecna obsessed with time. The Duffer's not so much. Beckna loves the clock. The Duffers never heard of her. Okay.

Also, November 6th, the night of Oklahoma. is the night. Spoilers again for this show. That Henry, who is in love with Patty, let Brenner goad him, essentially, into letting the Mind Flair take over him and tosses her off the rafters of the theater. So, and then he thinks she's dead, but then he finds out that she's not dead.

So I don't know where Patty Newby is. If they think they have time to bring Patty Newby into the mix in these final episodes, I think they need to look at their watches. But this is November 6th, the night he killed his family and crucially, the girl he loved and who believed in him. Okay. Okay. Tough.

Bleak. Clock stuff. I don't need to go too much in the clock stuff because it's kind of vaguely referenced in the play. But I will say, I think it matters that Holly is in the Creel house and has access to all of his stuff. His scout uniform and anything else he might have left around that might show clue. into his backstory or something like that. Blood stuff. It's made very clear by the play

that Brenner uses Henry's blood to basically inject it into the pregnant women to make these other children. So like it's not that Henry is 11's biological father. Blood father. Yes.

If you want to call it that, but not, you know. Yeah, I think we've speculated and theorized about versions of this over the years. I think that this always seems. even just in the universe of the show, by an order of magnitude, the most likely thing, that they were using, that Brenner was using his blood to power up the other kids

versus like, I mean, this is like a child. Like he's, what else is he taken from him? You know? So I think that the show was pointing there in a way that like, I guess the play confirming it is a degree beyond, but that's, yeah, that feels in keeping with what we were expecting. I do want to go back to something I forgot to mention

when I was talking about the cave stuff, then I'm almost done. And then we're done with this whole podcast. What a joy. What a delight we have had together. But Alyssa, yeah, was clever to cite

the hopper line to Jane to 11, which is, remember the herd, it means you're out of that cave. So that idea that, like, Henry is still forever in that cave because of this original wound that happened to him. So the cave is like a metaphor,

but a literalization for Henry. Well, We hear that language again, I don't know, but on rewatch, I'm sure it will just, like, feel very significant or something. Yeah. Love that. Last but not least, the Will piece. This email comes from our listener, Lauren, who is using some stage show knowledge to inform her, right? She says, begrudgingly accepting that Becknaz, we know him, is kind of a host for the Mind Player.

I think that Will was meant to replace Henry as a host, both were kids who vanished on the same day and came back attached to the MindFlare slash Dimension X. In Season 2, we see The MindFlare. effectively possess Will, but that connection is disrupted. Perhaps luring him into the hive mind as he does to take out the demigorgans is another way to open that gate into his mind to make him a new potential host. In the words of Nick Fury and Avengers, doors open from both sides. Further, if Vecna takes in the people he kills into his mind like Max, maybe the verse will also happen with Will killing Vecna, allowing Vecna slash the mine inflator to enter his mind.

Very Star Wars-esque. Anyway, Will is like, I kind of like this idea. There's a part of me that like this idea that Henry in season one is like, I'm tired of this shit. Here, take this fresh child. I've put it in my time. Will you unleash me, like, let me go? I'm ready for a new opportunity and a new challenge. This kid's fresh.

Take him. Look at his bull cut. You'll love him. I don't know. Anyway, all of it is very, very intriguing. And as you say, and I really agree with you, despite the fact that I read all these spoilers for myself of my own free will, baffling. Baffling that this information isn't accessible in the form in which it's intended, which is I have heard a beautifully staged, like the dazzlingly stagecrafted. Because I think there's a sequence in the play where we see the mind flare go inside Henry like the smoke monster effect that happened to Will in season two.

imagining that happening on a stage, like sounds so cool and exciting. So, yeah, you let me know when we're flying in New York and I'll meet you there. And anything else you want to say other than our ongoing distress that this is how this information is being conveyed to us. No, I don't think so. I'm sad that we only have four episodes left. I think they're going to land it. I feel pretty confident that this is going to end in a really, like, strong. way, but I'm mourning.

I'm mourning the end of the show. Like, it's just really... I had a, I had a moment where I got confused previously before I did the notes for the first installment where I mistakenly remembered it as 4-4-1. So I thought we had five more episodes left, but we only have four more episodes left. Now, again, of... Meaty ones. Chunky little meat walls waiting for us.

But, yeah. All right. I love talking about strangers things. Same. I love that we've been spending months thinking about this world. Me too. We'll be properly prepared for this. We will be back with Best Fights of the Century at the end of this week and many other goodies, including Percy Jackson, fallout.

Speaking of noseless, charismatic characters, et cetera, et cetera. And some end of year sort of looking back stuff, as we like to do. Thank you to Mallory Rubin. Thank you. to ever do it. Joe the Wise. Thank you to Mike Worgon, Worg's in Chris Thomas C.T. here helping us out. Carlos is still traveling back home from Thanksgiving. So happy for Carlos to have that break as well. So thank you to everyone. Thank you to our Jener Rukkah Powell

for his work always tireless, ceaseless work on this podcast and to Jomey a dinner on for his incredible work on the social. Jomi, I know, has been on the Stranger Things. memes. So I'm excited to see what he has to cook up here. And we'll be back soon. And we love you always. And we'll see you in Camasots. Bye.