Who cares what they’ve established? The Duffers made this up — it can be whatever they want or need it to be. With Brenner’s ominous remarks about El becoming even more powerful than before, I half expected them to unleash some new abilities for her anyway. Why can’t these beings alter the weather, generate fire or lightning, create psychic duplicates of themselves, telepathically attack each other or something else that’s actually new or different?
But it looked cool and that’s important here!
Not anymore.
If that’s how you feel, you might want to stay away from the 1970s “Incredible Hulk” TV show.
And miss the closing theme song?!
I may steal this for its metaphorical applicability.
I figured they had run a drop cord from Eddie’s trailer.
Seriously, Steve has shown the most character growth of any of them.
It looked like the hive mind already existed, but Vecna dominated it. That would mean the Mind Flayer is an extension of Vecna.
Definitely defected. In the cold war, pretty much all you had to do, after you’d managed to escape (good luck!) is show up at a police or fire station and say, “I’m defecting.” The State Department would take it from there, because In Your Face, Russia! The FBI would then keep a close eye on you, just in case. At least that’s what watching TV in the eighties taught me. My education could be lacking in this department, having never defected myself.
I finished up last night. I enjoyed it, except for Mike. That character is such a wet fish.
Well, it looks like a Hellmouth has opened in Hawkins. I think the DoE is going to have to come up with something better than “earthquake.”
But how does the trailer have power? Is someone running the power plant in the Upside Down?
Through the portal in the trailer.
I guess what Maus means is they maybe ran a cord through the portal? But that was not visible during the stupid-ass I cut the escape route and run into the open to lure the devil-bats away.
Seriously, I understood from the beginning that Eddie was their “New sympathetic character we kill so it feels serious”, but the way they did it was idiotic.
And, after having read an interesting article on it, also sends a REALLY bad message. Eddie was one of the few champions for outsiders like Dustin and the rest of hellfire, he suffered from bullying and open hostility throughout the series, and in the end nobody learns the truth? So in the eyes of the ultra-conservative Hawkins community, Eddie really was a serial killer leading a demonic cult, and he died basically for nothing. And that is somehow painted as a heroic and good ending for him? AKA “I finally didn’t run, did I” Honestly, when was Eddie EVER cowardly. To lead a group of outsiders like the Hellfire Club in the open in a school like this needs enormous bravery. And running from a trigger happy mob is NOT cowardice, this is common sense. So, the whole storyline feels really iffy, the more I think about it.
He was quite wasted this season and the efforts to keep him as a central character just didn’t work.
Still, this was the best Stranger Things since S1 and I’d suggest Sadie Sink might be up for an Emmy. She was sensational.
Well, the story’s not over yet, but that said, Eddie died heroically. The fact most people in Hawkins don’t know that is tragic, but doesn’t detract from his heroism; WE, the audience, know it. The fact that the general population is easily frightened and prone to mass panic was a pretty clear thing in the show.
Stranger Things retains as a central conceit a common 1980s central conceit; “The adults don’t know WTF is going on.” This massive world-threatening force has to be fought by a bunch of children; only a few adults, a shocking number of them government spooks, are as aware of what’s going on as the kids. The Wheeler parents are two or three years into this and still don’t know what their kids are up to. The fact the town doesn’t really know the truth about Eddie is par for the course shit.
Did he, though? That is the annoying part for me. His death was completely senseless, as their was no way in hell for them to know that anybody needed more time for anything, and then he went and guaranteed his death. If they want to give him a heroic death, at least make it a good one.
I do hope they redeem him in the eyes of the public in S5, but the point stays that his heroism was really not his stupid sacrifice at the end. His heroism was standing up against the norm and leading Hellfire, giving outsiders a safe space to be different. That is now totally overshadowed by a stupid “manly-mans sacrifice”, and that is sad.
Incidentally, this was the first season I really started noticing the “adults playing children” thing. Some of the actors can still pull it off; Sadie Sink is 20 and looks 12, and most of the central Losers Club looks plausible enough as 14-15 year olds, I suppose. But the guy who plays Jonathan, Charlie Heaton, is is 28 years old and looks 35. Natalia Dyer is 27 and looks it. Maya Hawke is 23 and looks it. Joe Keery is 30 and looks it. They gotta film Season 5 quick if they haven’t already.
In looking those things up I found David Harbour is younger than Winona Ryder. Huh. Wouldn’t have guessed that.
I’m really hoping the final scene of the show is after the kids have saved the world once and for all in a gigantic showdown - cut to Mr. Wheeler sitting in his recliner watching TV.
So what I took from the finale:
There was a giant cloud of “particles”, not clear what it is. Vecna took that cloud and turned it into the Mind Flayer. From what we saw in Russia, the cloud went into the Demigorgon and Demidogs. So the creatures of the Upside Down are independent (or where), but Vecna can control them.
I don’t think there was any possible way Eddie would have been cleared. I guess Vecna could have showed up in person in the middle of Hawkins and started twisting people (and even then they may say Eddie called him!)… but then you’d have the question of how did they shut this up - because a conceit of these sort of 1980s movies/shows is that all of the crazy shit gets brushed aside or explained away by the government in some way and the kids are the only ones who know the truth. Calling the opening of the gate and earthquake helps achieve that, but Vecna showing up in the middle of town would be a bit more difficult.
Certainly not in Hawkins. The most consistent element of the whole series is that 99.99% of that town’s residents are completely clueless and wrong about all the odd stuff happening around them.
Yeah, I think the only ‘happy ending’ for Eddie would have been if he was put in a form of “witness protection” and got a new life somewhere else.
Eddie was the leader of the Hellfire Club, presumably in reference to X-Men, so being the hero to a town that hates him fits with that theme.
I do agree they needed to do a little bit more to make his sacrifice worth it. Simple solution: Have the bats start to follow Dustin through the portal. So then Eddie has to lead them away to keep Dustin and the town safe.
I doubt that. Their group didn’t have or reference basically any of the characteristics of the Marvel Hellfire club.