Stranger Things, Season 2, Episode 1: Mad Max
We're back with the second season of Stranger Things! After, like, three days or some shit of absence. This one's a lot fresher in people's mind, though, debuting a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, I know Stranger Things might be a bit over-hyped, but I did personally find the first season and the cast of actors pretty entertaining enough to be eagerly anticipating this return back to this world.
And "Mad Max", the first episode of the second season of Stranger Things (or, as the show parses itself, Stranger Things 2) is concerned more with table-setting. Answering questions we have had from the first season, and setting up the new threat -- a very Lovecraftian-inspired threat, which is always a personal favourite genre for me.
So let's talk about the question-and-answers first. Barb is still considered MIA, and we get a pretty sad scene of Nancy really trying not to let her emotions show when talking to Barb's parents, who are talking about how hopeful they are that this new detective might shed some answers to Barb's disappearance. We get confirmation that 11 is alive, with hair, and is apparently hiding out in some shack with Hopper, who's taken her in like a surrogate daughter. Time will tell if this is like a psychic projection or something. How she survived, or if Hawkins Lab knows about this arrangement, is still ambiguous at the moment. Hawkins Lab is still experimenting with the Upside-Down gateway, burning things that seep through with a flamethrower, and it seems that Brenner is dead. Steve and Nancy are still dating. Will still misses 11.
What else? Oh, and Will is still connected to the Upside-Down world, and is still having flashbacks there. Thankfully he's not keeping silent about all this (thank god, considering how stupidly masochistic people in fiction tend to be about keeping secrets to themselves), telling it to both Joyce and Hopper, who in turn consults literally the only experts around -- the Hawkins Lab people, who basically have the sensible but not particularly helpful solution of 'it's PTSD, what can you do?' But, of course, Will is seeing the threat for this season. Gigantic vistas of swirling clouds that coalescence down onto the ground, while some massive octopus-esque thing moves within. Will senses that it wants to kill -- not him, but everyone else. So yeah, the Demogorgon and his slug minions aren't the only things living in the Upside Down, it seems.
Apparently arcade games have taken over for this season's periodically-accurate geeky past time, and the squad find out that their high scores have been beaten by someone called 'Mad Max'... or, well, the new transfer student called Max. Who's a girl with an attitude. She's cool, but we don't see much of her here. Obviously she's going to be a new addition to the crew, and one that most likely will go through a bit of a 'ew, girl cooties' phase... which they really should've outgrown considering they spent the entirety of season one hanging out with a pretty badass girl.
Also, as the prologue sequence shows, this lady Kali, with the tattoo 008, which is presumably a subject before Eleven, is running around creating illusions and robbing things. There are a couple of new characters as well, like Will's therapist and that conspiracy theorist dude that hounds Hopper, but I'll give it some time before deciding if they're actually important or if they're just to add flavour to the setting. It's definitely a slower setup compared to the season one premiere -- no one gets abducted or terrorized by a demonic ghoul from the shadow realm (beyond those poor, poor pumpkins), for one, even if we do see the eldritch thing -- but it does setup up the tone nicely, and the advantage with the Netflix format is that, well, it actually is a pacing that is extremely flexible due to the format of the show as long as they don't pull an Iron Fist in their premiere.
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