Stranger Things S03E07-08 Review: The Spawn of Kyuss

Stranger Things, Season 3, Episode 7: The Bite; Episode 8: The Battle of Starcourt

And so the third season of Stranger Things ends, and it's... it's definitely a very, very interesting finale! It's not perfect, of course. Far from it. But for the most part it works out really well. After the Mind Flayer's fleshy avatar absorbs the rest of the Flayed and turned them into meat soup goo and transforms into a gigantic (or, well, 'gargantuan' by D&D standards) spider-octopus creature made entirely out of flesh and bone, some sort of flesh titan, and I really do love how episode 7 opens with the scene setting of Mayor Kline's Fourth of July fair and the fireworks and ferris wheel and everything... and only Holly notices the strangeness of chunks of the forest nearby moving around in the wake of the Avatar of the Mind Flayer moving around... but her parents just tell her to ignore it.

And the rest of the D&D party regroup in Hopper's cabin, and unlike the first two seasons when the "yeah, let's get a shotgun" moments actually feel like our heroes now have a chance against the Demogorgon or the Demodogs, this genuinely feels pretty hopeless. Sure, Nancy and her action movie shotgun will never not be cool, but at this point it's only Eleven that even has any chance of stopping the Mind Flayer's fleshy avatar, and considering all of the creepy shit that it's been saying that it's "building" this particular spider creature to combat Eleven, and the sheer horror of the scale of this giant spider-octopus flesh monster is pretty damn creepy.

The fight in the cabin is pretty badass and somewhat claustrophobic as they don't really know where the Mind Flayer's going to attack from. Frankly it's a miracle that the Flayer didn't just smash the roof and drop the entire cabin on them, but instead it attacks slowly, with one tentacle at a time... but there's a lot of tentacles and there's only so much that Eleven can do with her psychic powers. Jonathan's axe is ineffective and the poor boy gets thrown around, while Nancy's shotgun barely manages to take a single tentacle out. And that's before the mind Flayer's spooky head smashes through the roof of the cabin, and its tongue very nearly grabs Eleven and pulls her up while she is preoccupied with the other tentacles. A combination of Nancy's shotgun and Lucas throwing the axe ends up freeing Eleven... but not before a chunk of the Flayer's lamprey-like tongue embeds itself in Eleven's leg.

Eleven manages to then rip the Mind Flayer's head apart, which slows it down enough while the D&D party clamber into a car and drive into a convenience store to try and clean Eleven's wounds, and it's... it's honestly pretty dang creepy. It's a neat bit of a downtime as our heroes try and clean Eleven's wound the best they can, while Mike and Eleven finally make up. Kudos for the scriptwriters and the actors for simultaneously delivering both 'awkward' and 'adorale' together. Also, Lucas and Will, clearly experienced D&D players, quickly decide to loot the store of the super-powerful fireworks as potential weaponry. 

While all of this is going on, the Scoop Troop continue with being held by the Russians in the basement base, and... it's still not the most interesting storyline in the season. Erica and Dustin manage to free the two older teenagers with the aid of a shock prod, but the teenagers are super duper high, yo, and that's 95% of the scenes involving the Scoop Troop as they escape back into the mall and hide out in the crowd of the cinema. It's... its funny, honestly, but there are times that I kinda wished they toned it down a little. Dustin manages to essentially contact Mike and his party, while Steve and Robin have a heart-to-heart while vomiting out their drugs in the bathroom. Turns out that Robin's a lesbian, and after a quick 'oh' Steve quickly just goes and continues to pal around with her. It's actually a pretty great bait-and-switch and a neat integration of a character's sexuality in a nice, quiet scene without waving it in our faces like some other shows. Pretty cool stuff.

Meanwhile, Team Adults (in the least interesting story of the three) are driving towards the Fun Fair while Alexei and Murray are basically playing GM exposition NPC in here, telling Joyce and Hopper about how they have to close the gate and whatnot, and Murray very unsubtly tells Joyce and Hopper to shut the fuck up and kiss already for the sake of his peace of mind. And honestly, mine, too. Both actors are doing a pretty good job all things considered, but unlike Eleven and Mike's adorable kiddy spat, Joyce and Hopper's UST is really stretched out for all it's worth. And as they investigate the Fun Fair, some carelessness on the part of Murray and Alexei end up with Grigori shooting Alexei in the chest... and I honestly don't care all that much? Alexei's likable, the scene where he enjoys the fair are nice and all, but he's honestly been more of a plot device than an actual character. Murray's acting in the scene and his genuine sorrow and guilt at leaving Alexei for five minutes is heartbreaking, though. We get our requisite action scene as Hopper fights Grigori in a funhouse with a couple of neat visuals with the house of mirrors and whatnot, but after realizing that the Russians have "located the kids" at the mall, Team Adult finally gets off their meandering side-quest and goes to regroup with the main story.


Again, I really kinda wished that the Russian stuff was done a bit better. Throwing Alexei as a sympathetic character and Grigori the Russian Terminator as an adversary is a nice move, but between the Scoop Troop and Team Adult, I am surprised at how much I really don't care about the Russian plot other than the ridiculousness of the Red Dawn conspiracy. I hope the next season does better with it.

Back to the mall! The Scoop Troop are slowed down enough by virtue of half of them being hopped up on drugs and, y'know, trying to outrun actual secret agent killers... but then in a pretty badass cavalry bit, Eleven shows up and takes out the entire squad of Russian agents with a telekinetic car... and then we get the entire teenager party reunited! And... they have to deal with the fact that they didn't clean Eleven's wound properly, because a bit of the Mind Flayer's flesh was still embedded in Eleven's wound, and as the final episode starts off, we get a pretty unnecessarily gory bit where Jonathan ends up cutting into her wound with improvised heated knives and shit and sticks his gloved fingers in. Ew. Eleven herself ends up taking over halfway through the operation, ripping out the fleshy chunk with her telekinetic powers and throws it away...

Right where Hopper stomps on it. The Adults have arrived, and they're not happy. Y'know, this scene would be more badass if it didn't come right after Eleven throwing a car with her mind to take out Russian secret agents. That's kinda underwhelming. And then we get this whole huge party discussion, and it's... it's all right, I guess, although I do love the bits where some characters are just utterly baffled at the weirdness of what's going on. The adults are unwilling to let the kids back into the Russian base, to the Scoop Troop will drive up to Dustin's lovebird radio antenna to basically guide them through the base since they've been in the base. Hopper insists that Eleven needs to be safe, so after a hug, the rest of the kids go off to get Eleven away from the mall.

And while Team Adult and the Scoop Troop go off on their mission, the D&D party find themselves... unable to drive. Billy has sabotaged their car and is just lurking ominously on a car in the street, blocking their way. Even worse, Eleven finds out that her powers are no longer working, unable to move the car she threw aroud effortlessly in the previous episode. I have been saying throughout the third season that everything is just Eleven being overpowered and solving every single problem they have, and turns out that all of Mike's worries about Eleven overtaxing herself ends up coming true... in the worst possible moment, because, y'know, they have to fight an eldritch titan.

It's a pretty awesomely creepy bit as the Mind Flayer's giant meat spider body finally shows up on the mall's roof and just crashes down into the mall's center, with the kids scattered and hiding in shops and whatnot. I do really like this scene, with the kids making use of causing distractions to distract the Mind Flayer as they move into the denser shops and eventually climb up to upper floors. Between Lucas's slingshot and the hilarious bit where the Mind Flayer accidentally attacks a mannequin with the same shirt Eleven wears (thank god Max took her shopping), they manage to survive long enough.

There's a pretty awesome bit where Nancy's group is about to be ran down by Billy (who spends half the episode just glowering in that car), before Steve the Hair swoops in to rescue the day and ram Billy's car straight off the road. Of course, things continue to descend into chaos as Billy chases down Eleven, Mike and Max, while the Mind Flayer's main body just rampages around the mall.

It is an action scene, so while the fight against the Flayer rises to a crescendo, Murray, Joyce and Hopper essentially manage to infiltrate the Russian base. It's fun and all, but not as interesting, y'know? I did like how Murray's suggested idea of just "smile and nod" works out, and the weird bit of bonding that Murray does with the Russian guard is actually hilarious. But the huge bit that ends up stopping them in their tracks is the fact that Murray mis-remembers the password, which is Planck's Constant...

Which apparently none of the super-geeks present in the cast knows, either, causing Dustin to reach out to his totally-real girlfriend Suzie in Utah in order to ask her for Planck's Constant... and ends up having to sing a song from The Neverending Story. Which... honestly, is probably a scene that I really do dislike. Suzie being real or not hasn't been a particularly funny or interesting storyline, and the long song number really just ended up killing the tension and pacing of both the Russian and the Flayer scenes. I'm not a big fan, even if admittedly it does fit with Stranger Things's strange sense of humour.

There's also the slight unfortunate implication that if Suzie hadn't forced Dustin to sing (she had no idea, though) Hopper and Joyce would've been there in time to shut down the gate before Grigori arrives. But then we wouldn't have the requisite action scene of the finale for Hopper. It basically leads to the darkest hour and whatnot. Grigori separates Hopper from the two-man switch and clearly outclasses him. The Mind Flayer is unstoppable, while Billy is clearly too far gone even for Max to reach him, and he ends up beating Max and Mike to unconsciousness and kidnap the depowered Eleven, presenting her to the Mind Flayer.

And as the Mind Flayer is about to eat Eleven... Lucas unleashes a fuck ton of explosives onto the Mind Flayer, helped by the rest of the teenagers as they station themselves on different parts of the mall. It's cheesy, it's awesome, and everyone got to say a one-liner or two. This buys enough time for Eleven to recall Billy's happy childhood memories, tell those to Billy, and ends up breaking Billy's mind control long enough for him to basically rise up against his abuser. The Mind Flayer might not be the same asshole father that's been beating Billy all his life, but I guess that's the point of this scene, that Billy manages to rise up against an abuser, and redeem himself by distracting the Flayer long enough? He does get stabbed like six times with gigantic fleshy tentacles, though.

Meanwhile, Hopper manages to throw Grigori into the spinning turbine machine, leading to a gruesome death, and Hopper, trapped there after the fight, basically tells Joyce to do it, shut down the machine if it will save his daughter. And Joyce does -- causing an explosion that shuts off the Gate and seemingly vaporizes Hopper... and cuts off the Mind Flayer's access to the fleshy avatar, killing him shortly after he kills Billy. We get a brief epilogue. Max and Billy share a moment before Billy dies, Joyce and Murray escape, and Dr. Owens arrives with the American military only to find that the Russians have evacuated. Eleven also learns of Hopper's death, before we cut away.

And... and I dunno. Hopper's death was definitely sad and pretty moving, as he gave his life to protect his dsughter. It's a heroic sacrifice and a badass death, but I really kinda wished that the season in general focused a wee bit more on Hopper and Eleven's parent child relationship? Hell, even the supposed romance-not-romance with Joyce was very lukewarm, mostly just being either comedy or arguments other than the brief heart to heart waaaay back in episode 2 or 3 or something. I dunno. They could've punched us in the feels a lot harder, I think.

And we get a three months later epilogue, where Hawkins has apparently became ground zero for conspiracy theories thanks to the whole cover-up at the mall and, presumably, the large amount of random people that died and disappeared due to the Mind Flayer. The Byers family are moving out of Hawkins and are packing up, and Eleven's apparently going with them. We get the Jonathan/Nancy and Eleven/Mike "we'll see each other later" scenes. Eleven gets to find out a note that Hopper had left for her during the whole 'boundaries' story from earlier in the season and it's all heartbreaking and all as Hopper's monologue narrates over the farewells that the cast make towards the Byers family. Also, Eleven's powers are still unable to be activated.

There's definitely a huge, huge trope about 'growing up' throughout this season. Of kids becoming adults, of parents still being protective and being afraid of their kids growing up, of older teenagers taking care of their younger siblings. Of not being afraid of moving on, of the bittersweetness of accepting that sometimes you can't just stay in basements and play D&D all the time, of friends drifting apart due to circumstance. Hell, even moving on after a parent's death. I just kinda wished that the topic was a bit more in the forefront, because thematically, I feel like Stranger Things's third season was definitely not as solid as the first one. Still, it's an amazing finale, all things considered.

And... besides, it's not the last we've seen of our villains. The post credits scene shows a Russian base where the Russians are feeding random prisoners to a captive, gaunt Demogorgon, and implies that they have an American (Hopper, maybe? We didn't see a body) captive. So it seems that the Red Dawn conspiracy is going to really come together with the whole monsters-from-another-dimension stuff, which is going to be interesting. Overall, it's been a pretty great, fun ride. The side-plots are a bit iffy, but the performances and the script have all been great throughout the ride and I'm not complaining. 

Random Notes:

• Fun 80's things: Back to the Future and giant Woody Woodpecker plushies. Absolutely love how Steve and Robin were druggedly discussing about how the main character in Back to the Future tried to bang his own mom. That's funny. 
• The speed that these characters get into vehicles when pursued by a giant flesh abomination is impressive. 
• I am so happy that no matter how much the kids have the intel and know-how to navigate the subterranean Russian base, none of the adults ever entertain the idea of them going back in. 
• "Scoop Troop" is such a better name than the name I've been using in my reviews, Team Mall Rats.
• I forgot to note, but Mayor Kline calls the Russians in to arrest Hopper, and inadvertently caused Alexei's death. Joyce kicks him in the nuts for it, and he gets arrested in the epilogue, but I'm surprised the show didn't 'punish' him more, so to speak. 
• Terrifying: Dustin yelling over and over into the walkie-talkie, begging for his friends to respond, only to be met by the inhuman screeches of the Mind Flayer. Hilarious: the Mind Flayer being enough of a dick to pick up the walkie-talkie with a tentacle, and scream straight into it. 
• Will and Lucas are particularly un-utilized in this season, yeah? Will at least got that amazingly heartstrings-tugging scene in the middle of the season where he got all sad about his friends growing up and smashing up Fort Byers. But for the back end of the season he's just touching the back of his neck and acts as a radar. Lucas gets a couple of cool action scenes, but is honestly unmemorable from a character standpoint. Jonathan is even less so, he's genuinely just there as Nancy's sidekick.
• Speaking of character development, I really also wish that we got a bit more of Max/Billy. Like, their sibling relationship wasn't exactly not mentioned, but I kinda wished that in Billy's redemption sacrifice we get a bit more than that sidelong glance. Actually, I kinda just wished we got more of Billy's mindset in general as he's being mind controlled. I kinda want to say we could've gotten a bit more out of Max, but her bonding with Eleven was very well-done, as is the scenes she shared with Mike in trying to get her and Eleven to be nice. 
• Joyce is also slightly underused particularly in the latter half, although not to the extent of Lucas and Will. 
• Max knows a lot about first aid because she's a skateboarder and gets hurt a lot, but since she lives with Billy and a known abusive stepfather, I wonder how much of it stems from something darker. 
• Seriously, though, considering what a paranoid nutjob Murray is, I am genuinely baffled why he was so happy and intent on dragging Alexei into the fair. That genuinely felt like an out of character moment to me, and just a silly way to get Alexei to have some fun and be all "how do I become America" before he gets killed. 
• It did lead to the heartwarming scene when Dustin and Lucas gave Will's D&D stuff to Erica, but man, just chucking the entire D&D set into the donation box? Will, those things are expensive, your family's not the most well off, and even if you're not playing with them, it's not like you can't read the fun fantasy stuff in D&D manuals. I know I did as a kid. 
• That shot of the dusty remains of Hopper's cabin is pretty sad. Apparently Eleven never had the heart to return to the cabin after her father's death.