SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.
I knew it! I freaking knew it! I had hoped, I had prayed and I had wished…but I knew it. I love Bob, but his advice to Will was terrible and ultimately harmful.
The second that Bob told Will the story about Mr. Baldo it was obvious, predictable, that the next time Will saw the Thessalhydra, he would try to stand up to it. I didn’t want it to end badly and I was hoping it wouldn’t end badly, but oh my gosh did it end badly. Will cannot catch a break. I am certain that the Thessalhydra has now possessed him. Why else do smoke monsters force their essence into your body through every imaginable orifice?
And I knew that that exact thing was what was going to happen; that it would go inside Will. It’s made of smoke – or shadow as Will described it to Mike – and smoke/shadow monsters usually end up going into people. Now Will has to suffer this on top of being the person to bring Dart over from the Upside Down.
That thing is not cute. At all. I don’t know what Dustin is even talking about with that. My first instinct would have been to kill it, just like the others. Sure, it hasn’t actually done anything harmful…yet…but it’s from the Upside Down and I don’t trust it. Especially since it’s growing so fast. For all we know, or they know, it’s a baby demogorgon. Dustin’s trust in Dart is the only reason why I’m thinking that maybe, just maybe, it’s not evil. Foolish as I think Dustin is being.
Eleven picked the worst day to disobey Hopper and run away from home. Firstly because the personnel from Hawkins Laboratory were all over the woods, following up on Hopper’s advice to check out the rotting plants. The head people they are trying to hide her from are right there, close enough to find her on her trek through the woods. And Owens is so very arrogant that he believes that they have everything under control and this rot has nothing to do with them. Ugh.
Secondly, it was the day that Dustin took Dart to school and it escaped; the one day in which, for the first time, Mike and Max got the opportunity to be alone together and bond. And Eleven saw it all! The dread that I felt as she heard his voice, as Max stopped and started to circle Mike, as Eleven started to walk toward the gym, as Mike starting smiling at Max…I really didn’t want her to see it. She looked so incredibly jealous and angry when she did. Admittedly, it was kind of funny when she tripped up Max, though.
If there was any adult I’d want Eleven to live with besides Hopper, it would be Joyce. As much as that would mean that Bob couldn’t have been in the picture and I really like Bob. Joyce knows Will so well and she knows that his visions aren’t just PTSD. She knows that there is something more going on. So of course she noticed the Thessalhydra on the video tape from Halloween night. She’d seen it before in Will’s drawing, yes, but that’s the point. Anyone else would have assumed it was just some weird noise or grain on the video if even they’d seen Will’s drawing. They would not have put the two together. But not Joyce. Joyce is sharp.
Random thoughts:
- Oh. Hopper knows that Eleven visits Mike.
- Does Jonathan not like Bob?
- The trees did lead to the epicentre…and it’s Hawkins Laboratory. Should have known.
- Why is Hopper reading her a story about a dead family?
- Billy isn’t Max’s brother confirmed.
All 9 episode of Stranger Things are currently available for streaming on Netflix.
We got to learn a bit more about Eleven’s life leading up to her living with Hopper in this episode and it looks like we’re fairly close to catching up on the present. I thought that, having seen the trailers, revealing her to have come out of the Upside Down, with hair and taking the Eggos from the box Hopper left them in for her was a bit spoilery. But it really wasn’t. No one, I think, would have expected that she’d be living with him.
Speaking of, it’s clear that Mike was upset about Max joining their group because he wished she had been Eleven. Watching him pine over her and miss her is endearing in a very sad way. Children though they may be, we all ship Mike and Eleven and want her back with him just as much as he does.
I don’t hate Nancy and Steve together, they’re perfectly fine, but we all know that she belongs with Jonathan. That’s a fact. As bad as this may sound, I wanted her and Steve to break up so that Jonathan could swoop in and sweep her off her feet. Which he did! If making sure that she got home safely, carrying her to her room and tucking her into bed doesn’t qualify as sweeping her off of her feet then I don’t know what does. They even almost had a moment too when she woke up briefly. The fan girl in me is loving this.
They’re always fighting, he doesn’t seem to like her much and he treats her poorly. Plus, we haven’t seen or heard of any parents at any point, so I think they’re on their own; two young people who ran away or something and are posing as brother and sister. Although, they would have had to do some serious forgery and lying to get a house and get into the school system. Still, there seems to be something up with them. They’re rather mysterious.
I love the promise of the opening sequence of this episode. We know, or at least hope, that at some point we’re going to meet one other child that was experimented on at Hawkins Laboratory. For me, just because of speculation leading up to the release of this season that Max would be such a child, it was obvious just from how much the camera focused on Kali, the expression on her face and that the others looked to her for guidance and that she was essentially their navigator, that she was a child from Lab. The tattoo on her wrist was just confirmation.
It’s kind of perfect that she’s staying with Hopper. She has no parents and he no longer has a daughter. They can fulfill for each other what the other is missing. Season one made it very clear that his involvement in the search for Will had a lot to do with the loss of his daughter and his coming to terms with that. Now here we come full circle and he more or less has a new daughter and Eleven has an actual father figure who isn’t twisted, evil and hurting her. I really wanted her to move in with Will, but I like this arrangement.
And poor Nancy, she knows the truth of what happened to Barb and she can’t tell her friend’s parents. The weight of that must be incredible for her to carry and her crying in the bathroom confirms that. I do want Murray to find out the truth just so that Barb’s parents can have some closure and Nancy no longer needs to hide what she knows.
