Stranger Things, Season 4, Episode 9: The Piggyback
The three climaxes that happen in this episode basically all happen at the same time in what's essentially a season finale movie. And... and I guess I'll get rid of the plotline that I felt was the most detached both emotionally and physically. No disrespect to any of the actors, but man, the Hopper/Joyce stuff just really ends up feeling so boring. Like they cut up a regular episode's worth of story and then stretched it out across the season. We did get action scenes out of it, but I really felt like characters like Yuri and Enzo don't bring anything too interesting to the table that justifies the sheer amount of screentime they got. Especially since Yuri literally stalls for time with taking part of the helicopter parts and whatnot... it really does rub me the wrong way, and at the end of it I really don't care about the tacked-on backstory about Yuri.
And there are some nice moments about Joyce and Hopper discussing Hopper's scars, but ultimately they decide to run back to the prison and murder the weird floating Mind-Flayer smoke-thing and hurt the hive-mind in order to assist Eleven. It's kind of... I really do feel it's somewhat forced to make these guys relevant to the big climax. It makes sense, yes, but... again, does it really justify the amount of stalling we had? We could just cut them and jump straight to the good part, after all, and the good part in this case being the horror show of Joyce, Hopper and their motley crew going back to the prison and discovering the dead scientists, a callback to the Demodog death from season 2, Murray with a fucking flamethrower, and ultimately Hopper 1v1-ing the Demogorgon. It's cool! But compared to everything else that's going on in the episode, it definitely feels like the weak link.
Team Hawkins, meanwhile, is a bit more interesting because what they're doing is a bit less obvious. There are, of course, still a bit too many characters running around and I really feel like the show bit off more than it could chew (especially since Erica decides to tag along later on in the back-end of this episode). The team hang out in the Creel house and try to lure Vecna's 'astral body' out, noting how his real body would be vulnerable just like Eleven's is when she does her telepathy. Unfortunately, they also lure out Jason and the jocks in the real world. I guess we need multiple antagonists!
Team Eleven also has some setup, with Eleven knowing what the Hawkins gang are trying to do but is helpless to help from afar... until she decides to do the episode title and piggiback off of Vecna's mind into Max's mind and pull off a long-range telekinetic battle. Argyle, after being the source of unfunny jokes, finally gets his one moment of relevance by bringing everyone to the pizza place that he works in and using the freezer and the salt to do a version of the sensory-deprivation tank that Eleven had used in the past. In the midst of all this, we get a nice talk between Jonathan and Will, with Jonathan telling Will how whatever the hell happens, he's always going to be a nice big brother to Will. Considering how little Jonathan is relevant to this season, it's nice to have at least a nice little moment since we're seemingly going to save the Jonathan/Nancy/Steve love triangle for next season.
Anyway, in Hawkins, Max sets herself up as bait, switches off her Walkman, and after a nice talk with Lucas, ends up confronting Vecna. There's a very well-delivered bit of characterization as she admits that she's not as perfect as she should be -- that she acknowledges her anger and how that, yes, like anyone with healthy emotions, there were times that she wished Billy would be gone from her life. There is a very cool sequence where the scene is shot as if it's just Max talking to Lucas... and then Lucas starts judging Max, and turns out that it's Vecna. Very cool sequence as Max gets chased into different memories, and this simultaneously gives Eleven the telepathic gateway to enter.
Nancy, Robin and Steve, in the Upside-Down, break into Vecna's house to enact their plan to kill Vecna's core body when his mind is busy hunting down Max... but end up getting attacked by creepy shadow-tentacles.
Meanwhile, in easily the most badass scene in the show, Dustin and Eddie decide to set up the mother of all distractions for Vecna's Demobat swarm, by playing Metallica's Master of Puppets. You know what? I really didn't give two shits about Eddie, but him playing this, and his emphasis that he's not going to run this time, unlike the previous couple of times? Yeah, you're the S4 addition that I like. It also helps that Eddie doesn't really overstay his welcome or escape unrealistically. Jumping ahead by quite a fair bit, Eddie and Dustin ends up being trapped in the Upside-Down version of the trailer chased by the bats, and it's all harrowing and shit until Eddie decides to cut off the way back through the portal to save Dustin, and sacrifices himself. Badass!
Of course, all this plan kind of goes sideways when the basketball dicks show up and attack the kids in the real world. Erica gets waylaid by one of the secondary bullies, while Jason gets into the central room to find Lucas watching Max all possessed and floating in the air. Waving around that shotgun, the poor deluded kid is convinced that Lucas is doing some kind of satanic ritual and demands that Lucas wake her up or he'll shoot. There's a neat little nod to Lucas's earlier arc in the show and he growls about how he doesn't want to be like Jason, before they fight. Also in this confrontation, the dude crushes the walkman with the Kate Bush cassette.
All the ways out seem to be blocked, but that's okay because Eleven shows up in Max's memories, helping to defend her against Vecna in a mental recreation of the school dance from one of the earlier seasons. It's at this point that the episode begins to cut back and forth between the different action scenes, including the ones in Russia and the Eddie/bat ones. Pretty neat!
Ultimately, on the Vecna side, we get a bit more explanation of what the audience could probably already guess from episode seven. He monologues about how 'Papa' didn't make him into this monster, but rather it was Eleven -- who shoved Vecna into the Upside-Down, finding the realm un-spoiled by humans that he desired. And, of course, the very cool revelation that he isn't a minion of the Mind Flayer or that he is the Mind Flayer, no. He found the Mind Flayer, and corrupted the poor thing, shaping it in the image of the spiders he loved so much.
In this darkest moment (and we get to see characters like Lucas, Eddie/Dustin, Hopper, Team Nancy etc struggling) Mike finally gets his one single cool moment in the season, by talking to Eleven and giving great encouragement about how she's a goddamn superhero. Much more earned than the stupid Suzie song from last season, wouldn't you agree?
And in a rather surprisingly ballsy twist for a season that has been so keen on pussyfooting out of killing any of its characters, Eleven actually arrives just a moment too late to rescue Max, whose body starts contorting as Vecna's murder-ritual happens. It honestly is genuinely surprising that they went ahead and (almost) went through with it, especially after the Running Up That Hill moment earlier in the season. But with her seemingly resolving a lot of her character moments with facing her demons and admitting to it, and then facing down Vecna like a boss, I felt like the show would've probably had a much stronger reaction from me if they actually let her die.
Eleven attacking Vecna coincides with Hopper and Joyce burning through the hive-mind monsters in Alaska (including Hopper's aforementioned 1v1 against the Demogorgon). This ends up causing the bat-swarm and the tentacles to drop off, allowing Team Nancy to reach Vecna's physical body, and several well-placed Molotov cocktails from Steve and Nancy burn the fucker alive.
But Max is blinded and crippled by the assault even though she wakes up momentarily in Lucas's arms... and as she straight-up dies, the four chimes of the clock happens, the four portals create a huge X that carve up Hawkins with otherworldly chasms. Oh, and Jason, that dipshit, gets sliced in two by the portals appearing. Haha! Just as all this is going on, Eleven uses her telepathic powers to try and bring Max back to life, but as we see in the subsequent timeskip, the best she can do is unconsciousness. Which... that has been one of my bigger problems with this season of Stranger Things, where the kids have such strong plot armour that it does take me out of the stakes of the season's events a bit. But to see them finally killing off minor characters and even putting one of the 'legacy' characters in a coma? That's something, at least.
The final scene is a two-day-later timeskip that finally reunites the characters from the other parts of the world and re-establishes Max's coma. People are leaving Hawkins after the devastation, and I'm genuinely confused why fucking Argyle decides to tag along to Hawkins. There are a couple of great scenes, like the very quiet Hopper and Eleven reunion, as well as Dustin meeting Eddie's uncle and telling him that his nephew died a hero despite the news vilifying the Hellfire Club as the cause of the high school murders. Also, another plot thread that's kinda built up for next season is Jonathan and Nancy hugging each other... but Steve just looks from the side, with the season being pretty heavy on the Steve-x-Nancy shipping. I mean, okay? I don't care about this all that much but it's something for the older kids to do next season. I care even less about Robin's new girlfriend, though I guess that's the neat resolution of her season-long running gag. Of course, though, this isn't over. Will, who had been possessed by the Mind Flayer before, tells Mike that it's not over... just as the fucking sky splits apart with red lightning and black smoke starts coming out of the Upside-Down giant X chasm.
So yeah. I still really do think that as an action sequence, this episode is pretty fun! It's kind of a shame that the show is basically overloaded and oversaturated with characters both older and ones introduced this season. And to have Max being in a coma and Eddie's death being the only casualties, it does feel a bit... tame? At the very least, I am genuinely surprised not to see Enzo or Yuri bite the dust. I get that the main 'party' are safe in the earlier seasons, but surely we could have had higher stakes now?
All things considered and with two less-interesting sub-plots that we cut to (the Alaskan cast and the lunatic basketball jocks), the movie finale still gives us a pretty great season finale, which is going to lead up very nicely to the final season. Not my favourite season, but an enjoyable watch all around!
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