Stranger Things Season 4 Episode 8

On Stranger Things Season 4 Episode 8, more answers come to light as Eleven prepares for vengeance. Read our review of the midseason...

It did have some minor issues, but it got the ball rolling on the series in a big way, and I can't wait to see where it goes next. The tension in Russia is rising, and it only reiterated my initial concerns about the storyline. And Holly. Mike. And they... It was the most vulnerable Will's been, and I'm not sure Mike understood what happened, but Jonathan sure did. And then... And the dam will burst. And this... Hopefully, Eleven makes it back in time to join in this big fight. Eleven using her powers to take down the helicopter was satisfying. They need a fall guy, and if Brenner isn't alive to be that person, then Owens may be their next best shot. And when that happens, Hawkins will fall.Brenner And eventually, it will reach a breaking point.

Owens: Can you hear us? Eleven. Can you hear us? Brenner: No, leave her. ... After the attack, you fell into a coma. Like One, you had pushed yourself beyond your ...

They know they need to get to Hawkins. Brenner and Eleven go on the run, but he is gunned down by sharpshooters. Eleven vows to get away and he injects her.

Vecna shows Nancy a glimpse aboiut what he's going to do in Hawkins and how he'll entering the city.

The entire group gets really nervous about it and is now working to stop Vecna. He tells her to tell her everything that she saw to Eleven so that she could know that Vecna is coming to wreak havoc. Steve was trying hard to bring her back and the entire group was looking for one musical hit that would save Nancy from the evil monster.

Papa is named after the cruelly ironic name by which the Hawkins Lab kids refer to their captor Dr Brenner, while Eleven's other father Hopper battles to get ...

Papa does not tell the truth, and Eleven realises that she opened the gate to the Upside Down not because she's a monster but because Brenner was trying to fix his mistake. A full-on shoot-out ensues, complete with a sniper in a Huey picking off Papa. Fortunately the pizza van crew are just in time to distract the chopper crew -- and Eleven doesn't need need thirty minutes or less to spectacularly take down the helicopter. Robin spotting her crush in a redneck gun shop called The War Zone is an extremely contrived moment, but it still kind of gets me in the feels so let's allow it. Either way, Eleven leaves him to die in the dust. This has drawn criticism from fans who criticise the tired trope of depicting tragic gay characters forever doomed to unrequited relationships (and all this right after Pride Month, too). Still, maybe there's hope for Robin in episode 9, as her Molly Ringwald-esque crush at least looks conflicted when she spots Robin. File that away for season 5, I guess, but in the meantime, as much as I've enjoyed Hopper's action-packed adventures behind the Iron Curtain (and the antics of the madcap Yuri), I'm starting to wish they'd just get out of Russia already. Vecna stalks Nancy through a nightmarish vision of the massacre at Hawkins Lab that led to young Henry Creel being sent to the Upside Down, but then spares her -- instructing her to tell Eleven everything she's seen. Sadly both the show's gay characters are crushed by their crushes in this episode, as both Will and Robin realize they're in love with characters who are shown as being straight. Eleven reluctantly allows Dr Brenner to reactivate her powers, in the process learning she inadvertently created the demon when she zapped the Hawkins lab's first psychic teen, Henry Creel, into the Upside Down. Meanwhile sheriff Jim Hopper and Joyce try to escape a demogorgon in a brutal Russian gulag. Now she knows her own backstory, she makes a choice to fight for her friends. So essentially that moment was the origin story both for Vecna and for the lost, scared Eleven we've watched grow since season 1. Stranger Things is back for the final showdown.

Stranger Things returns - and everyone's on a road trip headed toward the season finale.

“Papa”, despite its maddening construction, hums along even though a lot of it is unnecessary and nonsensical – it does so by properly setting the tone through characters like Nancy and Max, who are ready to illegally modify shotguns and stop playing “Running Up That Hill” (respectively) so we can find a goddamn resolution in all of this. As a penultimate episode, this is to be expected to some degree – but nearly everything character-centric is tamped out in service of the plot, which is really just “three cars driving to destinations” for 90% of its running time. She hates that she loves Dr. Brenner, that she still sees him as her father and the man who believed in her potential; but as her abuser and imprisoner, that dichotomy will never allow for emotional resolution between characters. Look, the Brenner/Eleven dynamic has proved a rewarding one over the years, a compelling portrayal of a psychopath with a degree given free rein by the government to enslave children. I mean, “Papa” is a road trip (well, three of them) featuring test tube babys, tons of sci-fi mumbo jumbo, enormously evil military entities, and long segments of nothing happening – could it be anymore Kojima? Cultural parallels aside, “Papa” feels like much of Volume I preceding it; full of interesting ideas and strong performances, thoroughly hindered by a lumbering plot with too many competing ingredients.