Stranger Things, Season 2, Episode 6: The Spy
Man, poor Will really has gone through some shit, huh? Between being kidnapped into an alternate dimension of death and decay in the first season, having to vomit out slugs, nearly being killed, having PTSD flashbacks, being bullied by little filthy fucks, being possessed by some strange smoke-octopus-plant monster, being turned into a vine creature... the poor kid just can't catch a break. Will spends a good chunk of this episode tied to a bed as everyone in the Hawkins Lab tries to figure out what the fuck they're going to do with him. This episode finally picks up the momentum for the plot, and we finally get people trying to do something. It's nice that the Hawkins Lab people actually stopped burning the vines momentarily so as not to kill Will, but at the same time it's not like they're going to risk Yog-Sothoth entering the mortal realm and causing an apocalypse just because of one person. Owen, the doctor that we've seen throughout the season seems to be the only one among the Hawkins people who even gives two shits about little Will's well-being. (Will's apparently terminal anyway according to what the Hawkins scientists can tell, so it's honestly the pragmatic thing to do)
We also see that the gateway Eleven created in season one has apparently expanded in size, and has been creating the huge tunnels that the vines are spreading through. Curiously, though, Hopper doesn't go the whole "YOU KNEW THIS AND DIDN'T TELL ME!" deal, but I suppose he's just a bit too pre-occupied with the whole 'nearly-dying' thing.
We also get the pretty harrowing scene of them trying to burn a detached vine-tentacle just to test out whether Will is connected to the hive-mind... and as everyone's deliberating what to do, Will offers to tell them where the 'hub' that the
But clearly, the best part of the episode is Dustin recruiting Steve, his spiky bat and his fancy hair to whack Dart. Steve has been inconsistently used this season, mostly the butt of poorly-conceived love triangle bullshit or taking grief from the one-dimensional character that is Billy, but he plays off Dustin well, and as they are about to whack Dart, they find that Dart has molted once more... and dug his way out of the cellar.
Along the way, Max and Lucas gets roped into the whole mess. There's some sub-plot of Billy being a racist fuck in addition to being an all-time douchebag and abusive fucknut of a brother, but thankfully Max and Lucas manage to make their way to where Dustin and Steve are trying to lure Dart to the junkyard -- a setting I particularly liked from the first season. Max's still incredulous about it, and I did love her answer to Lucas. It's a nice story, but "highly derivative" and somewhat un-original, which is honestly a criticism that Stranger Things has often received, and rightfully so. Yeah, it's highly derivative and all... but it's still, at the end of the day, a nice enough story.
And here, after a brief make-up session between Lucas and Dustin for Dustin's fuckup, they manage to lure Dart into the pile of meat chunks. I did find it rather odd that a fucking layer of fog happens to show up just to be atmospheric as what appears to be Dart walks up to the pile of meat, while Steve and his bat goes to whack the giant frog-wolf creature to death... only for the big revelation that Dart isn't actually the only Demogorgon-dog-creature to be around. It's an amazingly set-up scene, the interactions between the four characters trapped in the train (bus?) are well handled. And considering the implications that Dart grew from one of the slug-creatures that Will vomits out at the end of the first season (reaaaaaally should've been more careful there. It's all on Will this time around -- he vomited all those slugs before the Thessalhydra creature got ahold of him) it actually kind of makes sense that there would be more than one. And just as we're about to have the big 'how will they survive' moment, the Demodogs are called away to kill the Hawkins Lab soldiers.
I think Eleven doesn't get to do much this episode beyond more of the same with the previous one, but it's okay. As much as I love Eleven, the episode's actually already pretty busy.
Nancy and Jonathan, helped by Mr. Murray, who in addition to being a conspiracy theorist is also an avid shipper, fuck. That's all sweet and all, but that's about what their character ends up boiling to in this episode. It's like... their characterizations are at least being somewhat maintained, but what they do is just so uninteresting and so removed that it honestly doesn't quite match the amount of screentime they're recceiving this season, compared to the far more thrilling survival-mystery that they had in the first season. Thankfully, that bit of shipping nod is done, and they return to the Byers residence to find that some crazy thing has kind of happened while they were frolicking in some conspiracy dude's guest room.
So yeah, definitely a great course correction episode, as we merge the disparate plotlines into one big horror mush-up.
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