In Stranger Things Season 5, episode 6, Nancy shooting at the source of energy that was holding the fleshy wall around the Upside Down together—thereby connecting Earth’s realm to some other realm—caused it to unleash a massive EMP-like blast all across the realm. It knocked Nancy and Jonathan out and began to melt the walls, floors, and everything in its vicinity in the building. For plot-related reasons, it didn’t affect Jonathan and Nancy; they just dropped into a room and were at risk of drowning because of the molten material the building was made of. They thought they were about to die, but then the energy source stabilized, and the melting stopped. The aforementioned blast had opened a rift between the Upside Down and Earth, allowing Eleven, Kali, and Hopper to go back to Hawkins and reunite with the rest. Will was still in a comatose state because Vecna was hacking into his mind to turn him into his spy again. When Eleven went to pull him out of there, she learned that Vecna had sent Demo-dogs to kill Max in the hospital in order to compel Holly to return to him and the kids at the Creel house. Meanwhile, Max and Holly had made it to the Mind Lair, and both of them were on the brink of re-entering their respective bodies. But if it weren’t for Karen, Max’s body, along with Robin, Vickie, and Lucas, would have been turned into Demo-dog chow. Also, before trying to exit the Mind Lair, Max and Holly had come across a memory from Henry’s childhood where he had killed a man and accessed something that he had in his briefcase. Did episode 7 shed some light on this? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Clarke Locates Dustin in the Upside Down
Max returns to her body while Holly returns to hers. Max is glad to see the people who put their lives on the line to save her, but Holly is horrified to wake up in Vecna’s castle with a tube rammed down her throat. She pukes out the black smoke that Vecna uses to control his minions and then exits Vecna’s castle. This is when it becomes clear that that whole setup is in the Abyss. As Dustin and Steve rescue Jonathan and Nancy out of the room they’ve been stuck in, and Dustin explains the concept of the Upside Down being some kind of a wormhole between two dimensions, Holly starts running away from Vecna’s castle. Vecna comes out of his meditative state and starts pursuing Holly. That’s when Holly finds a rift in the floor of the Abyss, which looks exactly like the rifts that form in Hawkins. Without giving it too much thought, Holly enters the rift, which causes her to fall through what I think is the Hellscape, and then she reaches the airspace of the Upside Down. Holly’s screams are heard by Nancy because, in an extremely convenient fashion, Holly is hurtling towards Hawkins Lab. While all this is going on, in Hawkins, Clarke is trying to find Dustin’s location in the Upside Down with some help from Erica and Murray so that they can get to the corresponding spot in the mortal realm, open a rift, and then extract him, Nancy, Steve, Jonathan, and hopefully Holly as well. Will is at Hopper’s shack, where he is still reeling from the fact that Vecna got to access his mind once again and has probably turned him into his spy. He tells Joyce that, back in the day, Vecna somehow used Will and the power of the hive mind to spread the vines of the Upside Down across Hawkins. Now that he has hijacked the minds of 12 kids, there’s no way of anticipating what else he can do.
Joyce tries to pacify Will, but it seems that he is too rattled to listen to reason. At the laundry room in the hospital, Max talks about her experience in the Mind Lair to Lucas, Robin, Hopper, Kali, Eleven, Mike, and Karen, and how Holly is probably headed to the Wheeler house in the Upside Down. Lucas learns from Erica that Clarke has located Dustin in the Upside Down. That’s when Vickie arrives with a wheelchair, which is for Max, and she advises the group to bail out of the hospital, because the military is arriving in droves as a result of the Demo-dog attack. Karen wants to come with them, but Mike advises her to stay put and recuperate. Mike and the rest, with the exception of Joyce and Will, then join Murray, Erica, and Clarke at Hawkins Lab, because that’s where they are in the Upside Down. Mike tells Dustin to go over to the Wheeler house in the Upside Down, as that’s where he can rendezvous with Holly before returning to Hawkins. Dustin says that he has already found Holly, which means that all they have to do is pull them out through the rift that already exists in Hawkins. That’s quite easy for Eleven as she removes one of the metal plates covering the aforementioned rift, thereby opening a door to the Upside Down. Next, with the exception of the wheelchair-bound Max, everyone dives into the Upside Down to get Dustin, Nancy, Jonathan, Holly, and Steve out. I have to point out something here: when did it become this easy to get in and out of the Upside Down? I thought that the vertical rifts allow you to enter the Upside Down without experiencing any gravitational shifts, while the ones on the ground or the walls are relatively unpredictable. I mean, the show completely skips the moments where the characters enter or exit through the horizontally placed rifts. So, I guess such details have become irrelevant to the storytelling, at least for now.
Kay Still Wants to Capture Eleven
Mike and the rest learn from Nancy and the rest that they did find Holly, but they lost her right after as well. Holly fell from the sky, and just when she was about to touch down on the roof of Hawkins Lab, an invisible force sucked her back into the skies. Nancy assumes that it’s Vecna who pulled her back, and well, she’s right. Vecna has taken Holly back to the Abyss, put her in his castle, and rammed that tube down her throat again. So, why did Vecna allow Holly to enter the Hellscape and the airspace of the Upside Down if he could have used telekinesis to drag her back at any time? I suppose he did it to give her some sense of hope so that it could be snatched away, because when you lose after putting a significant amount of effort into achieving your goal, your morale plummets so harshly that you refuse to even dream of having another swing at it. Also, I must point out that Vecna prevented Holly from dying. Unless some kind of gravitational shift slowed down Holly’s fall, she would have died after landing on Hawkins Lab’s roof. Therefore, by pulling her back into the Abyss, he kind of saved her. In addition to that, Vecna promises that this whole affair will be over very soon. Well, hopefully he means that Holly’s death will be less painful than going “splat” on the roof of Upside Down’s Hawkins Lab. Amidst the pushing and pulling between Vecna and the Squawkers (that’s the name I’m going to use for the protagonists, because there are just too many characters to name individually), we get a glimpse of what the military is up to. Kay and Akers are seen meeting with Lt. Colonel Sullivan, who is horribly burnt but still alive enough to tell them about Vecna’s attack in MAC-Z.
After exiting the infirmary, Akers tells Kay that they don’t have the manpower to wage war against Vecna. Kay clarifies that that’s not their purpose; their focus should be on Eleven, and the military should be prepared to kill anyone that comes between them and her. Akers critiques Kay’s obsession with Eleven, which causes Kay to go into a fit of rage and give a rough explanation of her true mission: killing Soviets. In case you had forgotten, the Cold War is still on in the universe where Stranger Things Season 5 exists. So, the Americans are trying to defeat the Russians by any means necessary, and one of their methods involves setting “monsters” on the Soviets. When Kay says “monsters,” I don’t know if she’s talking about the superpowered kids that she wants to create using Eleven and Kali’s blood or the creatures coming out of the Upside Down. She says that the “monsters” are currently killing Americans, which can be a reference to either Eleven or Vecna and his Demogorgons because, technically, both of them have taken American lives. By the way, I don’t think we are ever going to learn about what the Russians are doing when it comes to Upside Down-related activities. Have their interdimensional operations been shut down, or are they still trying to access all the other realms that exist out there? Are we going to get a Russian spin-off of the show next? I don’t know, but I won’t be surprised if Netflix continues to milk the hell out of this IP via some Russian artists. Going back to the plot, Akers gets word that there’s been a rift breach. Before he can act on it, the Squawkers return to the radio shack to take a breather, mourn the fact that Holly and the kids are still in Vecna’s grip, and plan what they should do next. Once Akers gets to Hawkins Lab and sees the opening of the rift, he decides to go inside because he supposedly thinks that Eleven is in the Upside Down. Well, she’s not; she’s at the radio shack, with everyone else, listening to Dustin give them a run-down of what they are dealing with.
Dustin Explains What the Abyss Is
At the cost of sounding repetitive, the Upside Down is like a bridge between Hawkins and the Abyss. This bridge is being held together by the “exotic matter” which is atop the Hawkins Lab in the Upside Down. All the creatures that Vecna has unleashed so far come from the Abyss. Vecna was lost in the Abyss for a long time, and he would have stayed that way if Brenner hadn’t forced Eleven to access that realm. When Eleven touched that Demogorgon, the bridge was formed, and Hawkins has been tethered to the Abyss ever since. Now, the Squawkers jump straight to the events of Seasons 4 and 5 after that, thereby not really explaining how that exotic matter came to be, how the Upside Down was formed, or what the hell is the vacuum that exists beyond that fleshy wall. That frame of the bridge between Hawkins and the Abyss just confused the hell out of me. They made it seem like the entire Milky Way is connected to the Abyss, which would explain the vacuum-like space beyond the fleshy wall. I know that they want to convey that Hawkins is on Earth and then the Upside Down and the Abyss are just somewhere out in the cosmos; however, the visual representation of it all is truly wack. And it’s made all the more confusing by Mike saying that the Abyss is 2000 feet into the Upside Down’s airspace, because it didn’t look like Holly fell a mere 2000 feet. Anyway, coming to the topic of Vecna’s true purpose, as mentioned before, Will was a trial run for Vecna to see if he could “amplify” his powers. Since that was a success, Vecna has taken 12 kids to reach the height of his abilities, and he’s going to use them to bring the Abyss into Earth.
I was under the impression that Vecna choosing 12 kids was a homage to Brenner having the same number of child subjects with Vecna’s blood coursing through their veins. But Brenner conducted tests on around 20 kids, maybe more. So, yeah, the number 12 continues to be a mystery. The Squawkers think it’s pointless to focus on that because, right now, they have to come up with a plan to prevent Vecna from merging the two worlds while also rescuing Holly and the kids. Hopper’s proposal is absolutely cowboy nonsense, and is shot down almost immediately. Steve’s is relatively better: he wants to wait for Vecna to begin the great merging of the worlds, and once the Abyss is close enough to the Squawk radio tower in the Upside Down, Eleven is going to hack into Vecna’s mind and force him to undo every horrible thing he has done so far. Nancy offers a slightly alternative approach: she wants to take Eleven into the sensory deprivation tank in the Upside Down’s Hawkins Lab and hack into Vecna’s mind from there. Kali says that she’ll go in there too because her superpowers can come in handy in the fight against Vecna. One last suggestion comes from Dustin, who wants to set off a time bomb near the exotic matter so that it destroys the Upside Down and frees Hawkins from the clutches of Vecna and the Abyss. There’s a slight problem with that idea: if the exotic matter is destroyed, the flesh wall is going to go, and it’s going to suck everything into the space-time vacuum that exists beyond it. There is a massive rift between Hawkins and the Upside Down, which has been closed with giant sheets of metal, which is the equivalent of closing a 9-inch-deep wound with spit and glue. So, yeah, that explosion part doesn’t seem like a really good suggestion, but if all the Squawkers are up for it, who am I to critique it?
The Squawkers Prepare for One Last Crawl
Eleven straightens Murray’s truck, because that’s what they are going to use to get into the rift in MAC-Z. Hopper and Joyce have a little chat about how important it is for him to save Eleven. Max is obviously going to sit this one out, but she does motivate Will to go for this mission even though he doesn’t want to, as he is afraid of what another encounter with Vecna will do to him. That said, when Max says that Vecna is as human as all of them, and that he’s filled with fear and vulnerabilities, Will thinks he can exploit that and beat him. Mike makes a DIY time bomb, which I am sure isn’t going to work, which will force one of the Squawkers to sacrifice themselves; my money is on Hopper. Steve and Dustin have a little heart-to-heart where they apologize for being so rude in the Upside Down, and they promise to stand beside each other from now on no matter what happens. Kali and Eleven have a bit of an argument about their role in this plan because Eleven thinks that blowing up Kay’s lab and killing Kay will bring an end to this cycle of creating superpowered babies with superpowers, while Kali is of the opinion that as long as she herself and Eleven are alive, humans will find ways to conduct messed-up experiments.
Eleven isn’t ready to go that far for the cause, but I think the realization will eventually set in that Kali is right. Before heading out, Will delivers a long speech to the Squawkers about the fact that he is gay, because he thinks that as long as he treats his sexual orientation as a weakness, Vecna—who is a stand-in for bigots in this context—will find a way to turn him into his puppet. If Will is proud of who he is, and he knows that the Squawkers have his back, Vecna won’t be able to hurt him. Of course, everyone assures Will that he is one of them and they love him for who he is. And this would have been an emotional moment if it wasn’t for Noah Schnapp’s poor acting skills. Since Schnapp doesn’t deliver a solid performance, even though he had every opportunity to do so, I don’t really care if his character lives or dies during the final mission. Speaking of the final mission, with some help from Erica and Clarke, Murray drives Nancy (who brings in the heat with her gun), Mike, Steve, Jonathan, Hopper, Dustin, Robin, Will, Joyce, Kali, and Lucas through MAC-Z and into the Upside Down via the rift in that military zone. Kay and the soldiers try to stop them, but they fail. So, now I guess they have no choice but to go into the Upside Down as well. By the way, Eleven nods at Kali, which probably means that she has arrived at the conclusion that both of them have to die in order to stop the production of superpowered children. Will the sisters actually follow through on that decision? I actually doubt it, but I am willing to be surprised.
Vecna Prepares to Merge Hawkins and the Abyss
Vecna knows that Holly’s act of rebellion, which she pulled off with Max, is going to create some kind of discord amongst the children. He needs them to be completely subservient, and I suppose that that feeling of servility has to come to them organically. So, he doesn’t force them to come together to undo Holly’s brainwashing, which Vecna claims has been done by Max, but he lets them rally to the cause on their own. Once they collectively decide—well, with the exception of Derek—that they’ll “bring Holly to the light” so that they can fight the darkness around Hawkins, Vecna knows that his manipulation has worked. The kids’ chanting rouses Holly from her slumber, and she immediately freaks out and tries to educate the children that they are Vecna’s victims, not his chosen children. She even urges Derek to support her, but he’s too scared to voice his opinion. Hence, Holly decides to make a run for it and escape into the woods again. The kids get extremely violent with Holly, which underscores the fact that their souls have truly been corrupted by Vecna, and if Vecna didn’t need Holly to complete his world-merging mission, I think the kids would have killed Holly. Yes, technically, they are all in the Mind Lair, and maybe deaths don’t matter here. At the same time, it’s possible that if you die in the Mind Lair, your physical body dies too. Well, more on that later, I guess.
In episode 7’s ending, Vecna sits Holly and the children down at the dinner table, lights some candles, and totally possesses their bodies. On that note, the semi-finale cuts to the credits. Which means that we know next to nothing about how Vecna intends to use the children to push the Abyss into Hawkins. Across these five seasons, we haven’t seen any character do any kind of dimension-pulling business. Hence, there’s no reference point for what Vecna intends to do. Therefore, it’s completely up to the writers to introduce all kinds of new elements to justify Vecna’s ability to merge the Abyss with Hawkins. I think that the writers didn’t bother explaining the methodology of Vecna’s plan because they aren’t going to allow him to succeed. They can’t end this highly anticipated series on a sour note. They spent a major chunk of this hour-long episode on how the Squawkers are going to defeat Vecna. Even though that plan is riddled with flaws, the writers didn’t bother to have the characters iron out the kinks before heading into the Abyss. If that doesn’t prove that they are about to use the power of the plot armor in ways that we haven’t seen before in a show’s finale, I don’t know what will. Also, by making this season such an action-oriented show, it seems like the show’s commentary on friendship, individuality, bigotry, parenthood, and nationalism has gone out the window. It’s all about saving the world from a monster. I have a feeling that the finale will give Vecna some three-dimensionality by delving into the origin of his powers and how that made him Brenner’s guinea pig, thereby compelling us to see him as a misunderstood individual rather than a straightforward villain. Will that be enough to make us empathize with Vecna? Feel free to let me know in the comments section below.
