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overthinking entertainment
Stranger Things: Chapter Four: Sorcerer - Season 5, Episode 4
DOE harvests the young. The Crawl goes deep. With the power of cartography, Mike and Robin rock a Great Escape. El finds her Kryptonite.
Holly, Holly, Holly the explorer. She's a super cool exploradora.
The pipework is just straight up Goonies this time.
How many bullets does it take to merc somebody hiding in a safety closet?
It's best not to struggle against Checkov's tentacle.
How will we wait a month?
It's called visualization. Mom does it when she's out of valium.
posted by eustatic on Dec 02, 2025 at 10:32 PM
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.....Nothing about Will singlehandedly taking down 5 or so demogorgons with his brain, eh? Hmm.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:03 AM
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.....Nothing about Will singlehandedly taking down 5 or so demogorgons with his brain, eh? Hmm.
I loved that. Once again, something I wasn't expecting that makes perfect sense within the logic of the show. Also (probably because I just read through these books a few months ago) but Will's Big Moment struck me as something straight out of The Stormlight Archive. Not that the Duffers would have been trying to reference that (it's well outside of the 1980s material that gets direct or pastiche references in this show) but that, in Stormlight, the powers of the Knights Radiant are tied to them speaking "ideals" or oaths, which they have to basically discover themselves and truly internalize in order to speak, and which are personalized to their own issues and struggles. Doing so not only grants them certain "power-ups" but also unleashes a massive burst of magical potency at the moment of speaking the ideals. And it's a trick that plays just gangbusters dramatically every time: Make a psychological breakthrough - gain the power to deal with your external crisis. And it's basically exactly how it played out for Will here.
And I loved how it came from Robin clocking that Will's crush was unreciprocated, and trying to help him to move beyond that. It wasn't about him coming out (which he all but had to Robin by this point already) but rather him accepting and loving himself outside of his crush on Mike. And her story about Tammy Thompson was a great way to tie it back to S3, when Robin came out to Steve, terrified of how he would react, and he proved his friendship and acceptance by ragging on Tammy as not worth her time.
Joyce steps up to the fucking plate here, of course, facing down Henry with nothing but her own fury, and of course we swats her away like a fly, but I think maybe the best thing she does is to convince Derek that he's not a "dipshit," which is apparently all the encouragement he needs in order to pull off the plan pretty brilliantly and flawlessly from his end. Ashley Klein is a snitch, though. Never forget.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:55 AM
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I pretty much shouted when Will had his sorcerer moment at the end of the episode. For the entire length of the show, it's bothered me to no end how he has repeatedly either been treated like a victim or just put through hell. Tagging on that he's gay, made it feel a bit more worse on top of everything else (i.e., let's torment the gay character). That not only does he have this awesome bonding moment with Robin, but emerges as a super hero...that was beautiful and fantastic.
I have a strong feeling that Veckna/Henry's mouthing off about children having weak minds is going to come back hard to bite him in his viney ass. He isn't putting children in his prison, he's putting himself in a prison with them and isn't even fully aware of it.
Max and Holly is not the team up I expected, but I'm here to see how it rolls out.
Note of appreciation for providing me a flashback to another Hawking Lab experiment survivor or I would have 100% been, "I don't know who the heck this person is." Though, I'm now concerned they introduced another survivor entirely so they can do something Eleven would have done, and die in the process, so Eleven survives.
A suspicious level of lack of friendly fire victims of having freaked out soldiers encircling and firing at demogorgons in the center of said circle. I'm also really puzzled about their apparent invulnerability outside of Will's new psychic mind power attack.
posted by Atreides at 7:01 AM
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I pretty much shouted when Will had his sorcerer moment at the end of the episode.
There is an adorable interview I saw in passing where Noah Schnapp talks about how they filmed that last slow pull in to his face afterward, where he wipes away the bit of blood coming from his nose the way Eleven always does. I think he said that after each take everyone would run over to the monitors to watch the playback with the Duffers to see how each take went, because it was that bad-ass.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:14 AM
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Sorcerers weren't a distinct class from Magic User (ie Wizard) with their own innate spell power until 3rd edition in the year 2000. Grumble grumble
posted by FatherDagon at 9:13 AM
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EmpressCallipygos: There is an adorable interview I saw in passing where Noah Schnapp talks about how they filmed that last slow pull in to his face afterward, where he wipes away the bit of blood coming from his nose the way Eleven always does.
That tiny nod of the head after wiping away the blood absolutely sent me.
posted by dr_dank at 9:33 AM
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OK, this episode was bad-ass and a true return to form.
My wife and I did keep wondering what happened to Derek's family, though. Did they just leave them tied up and passed out in the barn? It was like they ceased to exist once Derek woke up and eventually left with our heroes.
I could nitpick a few things (it's a little silly that the guards wouldn't search Derek's stuff, considering how dickish they were to him when he showed up (seriously, why is that guy shoving the little kid—just to highlight that he's a dick and we shouldn't feel bad if he dies in the demogorgon attack later on?)) but overall it was pretty great.
posted by asnider at 10:04 AM
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asnider: "My wife and I did keep wondering what happened to Derek's family, though. Did they just leave them tied up and passed out in the barn? It was like they ceased to exist once Derek woke up and eventually left with our heroes.
"
I want to believe they were transported back to their house, none the wiser, and only slightly curious as to why they all smelled of barn.
posted by Atreides at 10:17 AM
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The men-in-black that covered up stuff in Hawkins in the first four seasons must have given up by now. They're totally walking home from the abandoned barn to a profoundly trashed house.
posted by dr_dank at 10:37 AM
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Navelgazer, I went from sceptical to a Mike and Will forever with that episode because to me it felt like they were revealing that Mike and El are the teenage crush, and for El - she lost her dad for a heart wrenching moment and then he came back and gave her even more, her sister. El's journey isn't a teenage crush, it's getting to have a loving family and freedom. While Mike's starry eyed gaze at Will who had found his own power through acceptance (Robin watching her old film reel and then Will's little flashback film of the people who love him) and through Mike's belief in him - that felt way more true to both of them.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 4:42 PM
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I have assorted thoughts.
What does Dr/General Kay actually do? I'm not sure I remember her doing anything other than hanging out and belittling lower ranked soldiers, and maybe looking through a microscope. Did they get into details about the military's plan other than a general "use El as a weapon"?
I couldn't quite tell if Kali was imprisoned by the kryptonite speakers, driving the speakers, or some combination of the two. Based on what they're accomplishing so far with Kali, I'm not sure I think they have any great ideas for how to use El even if they catch her.
Could they use the kryptonite speakers on Henry/Vecna? They didn't have any of those in the military base outside the Upside Down, the location where they're primarily searching for El? Hm.
So, the military has helicopters in the Upside Down. But...have they checked what's on the other side of the wall?
If everyone in Hawkins was beyond the location of the wall in the Upside Down, would the demogorgons be able to get them?
Glad to see Will get some big time agency because he's had a shit time the whole series. With the bloody nose, the show seems to be signaling that being pumped full of Upside Down Juice converts people, perhaps especially children, based on what Vecna says, into MK-Ultra cadets like El and Henry. Since we're only halfway through the season, I'm not sure if it's a headfake - like, this is how we're going to defeat Vecna! But with so much time left it's doomed to fail. But on the other hand, we've already spent half the season trying on basically one kind of heist scheme that already failed, just because the pace of the show plot is kind of glacial with all the personnel boxes it has to tick off, so with that pace maybe that is the final plan. So, maybe Henry/Vecna has unwittingly created an army of MK-Ultra kids that will take him down, and the next 4 episodes are freeing them and getting them to understand their powers and then Vecna go boom at the end.
But... what if Henry's not lying when he tells the kids he's going to save them from monsters? What if he put the wall up for a reason? What if Max is hiding out in the fantasy mindscape version of the wall and Henry won't go in to catch her there because he knows something worse is out there, and he's creating his MK-Ultra army to stop it? What if Henry's ultimate plan is to make reality like the fantasy mindscape nostalgia memory world... but ultimately the population of the fantasy 80s bad haircut and clothing nostalgia world we've been watching ironically say "nah".
posted by LionIndex at 6:09 PM
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I HATED the way they filmed the military action scene, like one long video-gamey take. Felt very CGI with human faces pasted on, and not at all like the 80s or like this show. Like a big superhero movie, which maybe is what they think people want these days.
The 80s property it drew the most inspiration from was Return of the Jedi. Splitting the characters into many smaller groups and creating a lot of confusion about who was where when and what was going on, I think we totally lost track of Nancy, Jonathan, Steve, and Dustin; dropped whatever was going on with Max and Holly; abandoned Erica somewhere along the way; but at least came back around to Kali, who was dropped like a hot rock after one episode in season 2? 3? when it looked like a backdoor spinoff and all the fans hated it.
The scenes where characters get to interact with each other or show off their talents are still sweet, but I'm so tired of the team bickering just as a way of keeping them from getting their shit done quicker. Like, Steve, if you can't get along with either Jonathan OR Dustin, what are you even doing here anymore?
The other thing it reminds me of is Alien Resurrection, a movie that has a great cast and a great franchise and just kind of fritters it away without feeling like the stakes really matter or anyone really cares anymore except to milk a little more cash out of that particular cow.
I certainly hope the next four episodes don't spend a bunch of time (a la Buffy season 7) introducing us to a bunch of new kids (at least played by actual youngsters) who will just take more screen time away from the characters we actually want to see. I've already seen way more of Derek (the stereotypical fat-kid jerk, groan) than I ever wanted to.
posted by rikschell at 8:26 PM
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The 80s property it drew the most inspiration from was Return of the Jedi.
That's interesting you bring it up, because I was thinking before about how they made a weird choice to build up to a moment of menace where so many of our heroes are about to be chomped by demogorgons, only to immediately reveal Will's capabilities and have him save them all. There's a part in the original Clerks movie where they talk about how Empire was the best star wars film because it ended on a down note, which is a sentiment I kind of agree with and has stuck with me. I expected they were going to come at the season's month-long pause on a down note only for them to chuck it all and include a reversal moments later. We'll have to see how that plays out at Christmas.
posted by axiom at 9:08 PM
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I had told myself that I wasn't going watch this season, that I was done with the show, they had waited too long, the actors were clearly no longer teenagers, what was even the point anymore?! Then I saw the Duffer's recommendation to rewatch close to six hours of previous episodes and leaned into the "fuck no, I got other things to watch!"
But I wound up trying S5E1 and liked it. It felt good to be back in that universe, to see a lot of the characters again and be reminded of the good stories that had been created around them. No, it wasn't perfect, but the Duffers nailed the important part of making me fall in love with the characters again. Or at least like them
Yeah, I still think the show probably could and should have been done in 4 seasons. But with the realization that they cast their high school drama teacher in a role this season, I was reminded that they're theatre kids. They're pretty much just doing the "and then..." exercise, spinning off more stories and characters, just cause it sounds cool or interesting and I'm willing to give them a little rope on that front because overall it's been a good ride (with a some bumps), so what the hell, you know? Let's sit back and see where they're going with this.
Favorite part of this round of episodes? They fact that at this late stage they introduced Delightful Derek, who seemed like a nobody to the plot, but quickly became integral and just wildly fun and funny! Who the hell puts another character into an already large cast and somehow makes it work? Theater kids, that's who.
Least favorite part for this round of episodes: Erica and Vecna. Erica was a delight before, but just seems to be stereo typed to the role at this point. I mean, she's administering knockout chemicals via syringe? That seems wildly unbelievable, even in the midst of all the fantasy and horror tropes. Sue me, everyone has weird things they get hung up on in a story.
Honestly, I don't care about Vecna /Heny or his story at all. The character falls flat to me, coming off as creation as opposed to a character.
But again, whatever, I'm down to check out the next batch of episodes, fingers crossed they'll be just as good as the first four!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:33 PM
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So when I ran through the Upside Down filming location back in Feb 2024, I took a picture of a large fallen tree all done up Upside Down-style that looked really cool. And it turns out that El and Hop are literally making their whole plan while leaning up against the tree in my picture. It's pretty wacky, really. Although it is now really hard for me to unsee the "slime" on the tree in the show as the white plastic mesh it obviously is in my picture.
And Max and Holly are still hanging out at my favorite waterfall in the park, down in the Group Campground.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:06 AM
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And for my actual, substantive comment, I loved Max and Holly using Wrinkle in Time to explain what's going on. The show has of course always had a heavy male focus, with the male characters making references to other fictional male characters, but Wrinkle in Time is one of the great classic works of YA science fiction, and it's about fucking time. Also just nice that Max isn't going to spend the season in a hospital bed being the victim we're fighting for and Holly doesn't need her big brother to rescue her.
I loved loved loved Will's sorcerer turn. I am definitely a person who felt terrible for Will throughout the first season especially where he was mostly just a victim who terrible things happened to. It's time for him to be a hero! A super gay hero!
posted by hydropsyche at 4:10 AM
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Brandon Blatcher: Honestly, I don't care about Vecna /Heny or his story at all. The character falls flat to me, coming off as creation as opposed to a character.
I also am bored with Henry/Vecna. But weirdly, I'm okay with that? It's like, having the evil, hyper-narcissistic bully of a villain running around and my reaction being "Why the hell are you still here? We already defeated you, didn't we? Get off the damn stage already!" speaks to me right now for some reason.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:46 AM
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The whole "Will can see into Vecna's mind" very much reminded me of the dynamic between Harry Potter and Tom Riddle, complete with the "ooh, my neck feels weird" thing.
LOVE the Great Escape references! It's been a favorite of mine for decades.
posted by luckynerd at 9:47 AM
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I want to believe they were transported back to their house, none the wiser, and only slightly curious as to why they all smelled of barn.
Considering everything our gang of heroes did to their house even before a demogorgon tore it up and was set on fire inside of it, I imagine they're going to be curious about a lot more than that. And of course there's the question of whether Tina remembers Erica's one-liner to her before getting knocked out.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:43 AM
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And of course there's the question of whether Tina remembers Erica's one-liner to her before getting knocked out.
Well, Mike did sell the plan to Erica by saying "if you do this, Tina is never going to want to speak to you ever again". If Tina does remember it then Erica would probably think "good."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:52 AM
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Oh gosh, I just heard another absolutely adorable story - there's a scene where Will tackles Derek in the barn and knocks him down, and during one take, Noah Schnapp was a little too aggressive and saw that Jake "Derek" Connelly had a scraped-up leg. He apologized profusely, but Jake said "That's okay, I feel like Tom Cruise doing my own stunts!"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:25 PM
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I enjoyed Season 2 considerably less than Season 1, and Season 3 even less than 2, so I skipped Season 4.
I'm reading the comments here with great enjoyment. Thanks to everyone who's shared their thoughts.
posted by johnofjack at 1:46 PM
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luckynerd: "LOVE the Great Escape references! It's been a favorite of mine for decades."
Just the little jaunty tune was a fun touch.
axiom: "The 80s property it drew the most inspiration from was Return of the Jedi."
Return of the Jedi really became a road map on how to separate the heroes and tell multiple aspects of the finale all at once for films that followed. It permeated the genre of action/adventure and so on as a case study on how to have close out a final act. A great non-Star Wars example would be the finale of Independence Day, which cut between the aerial dogfight underneath the attacking ship, the virus implantation in the mother ship, and those left in the underground complex during the attack. Lucas went straight back to it for The Phantom Menace and so on it goes.
posted by Atreides at 6:53 AM
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I think the multiple point of view thing can get out of hand when you split up the gang into too many subgroups. It gets hard to follow and needlessly complex. But I guess if you have a lot of characters and you don't do it, a lot of beloved characters just end up standing around in the background without much to do.
Like anything over Ocean's Six seems awkward and overstuffed to me, but what do I know (shrug emoji)?
posted by rikschell at 7:51 AM
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rikschell: I think the multiple point of view thing can get out of hand when you split up the gang into too many subgroups. It gets hard to follow and needlessly complex. But I guess if you have a lot of characters and you don't do it, a lot of beloved characters just end up standing around in the background without much to do.
I think that, so far, this season has done a better job with that than S4 did. S4 splitting the party between, at times, Hawkins, California, Nevada, Alaska and Russia (and I'm pretty sure there's at least one point where they are actually that divided at once) led to a big feeling of bloat, where each character or small group of characters was off on their own mission and needing screen-time and unaware of what the others were up to and so needed a bunch of complications unrelated to one another's stories. (And even then, you have bits like in the crazy-long Chapter 7, which like this episode was the pseudo-finale of the first set of episodes dropped, where Team Pizza Van didn't appear even once!)
In this season (again, so far!) we've got a Continuity of Place - everything's confined to Hawkins and the Upside-Down, which the characters have learned to communicate between and maintain a sort of location-continuity between. We've got a Continuity of Purpose - Basically everyone is on the same page of the mission being "Save Holly," with the only possible exception being Hopper, but he's got El there to keep him on track, at least. Holly herself and Max are the only ones "elsewhere" in terms of location, but that's the central mystery, and they're also on the same mission, even if they're working from a different set of information about it. And we've got Continuity of Consequences. i.e. when something goes sideways, it's generally causing problems for more than one disparate group. (This is most obviously seen in the climax of this episode with the hive-mind Demogorgons/Will, but for a more subtle example, Dustin is keeping his struggles with the bullies as close to the vest as he can, but when he gets jumped at the cemetery, that screws up the crawl for everyone.)
So, for me at least, the multiple groups of characters is working well in this season, because they interconnect pretty thoroughly. And far better than they did in S4.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:18 AM
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Robin coulda just been like "Hey, so... you're gay too right?" but if she didn't give a long, roundabout speech about being true to yourself, do you think Will would have been able to take control of the Demagorgi?
posted by entropone at 9:01 AM
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Navelgazer, you're right. This season has made some definite improvements over S4. Maybe I'm judging this season too much for the sins of last season. Maybe I'm salty because if you're going to keep one of your dozen main cast actors on ice, it definitely shouldn't be Sadie Sink. Tying up loose ends and sticking the landing is hard, and it's the opposite of what the medium is built to do (go on and on until it looses enough popularity to get suddenly cancelled without having any sense of closure).
I'm of the age that considered Return of the Jedi to have ruined Star Wars because of the fucking ewoks anyway, so maybe all sagas come pre-ruined for me, lol.
posted by rikschell at 9:59 AM
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entropone: "Robin coulda just been like "Hey, so... you're gay too right?" but if she didn't give a long, roundabout speech about being true to yourself, do you think Will would have been able to take control of the Demagorgi?"
I think key to Robin's speech wasn't about just saying "You're gay, too eh?" in a round about way. But it was about being happy in who he is and giving him the self confidence to stand up when a bully tells him he's less than nothing and weak. It's not enough to acknowledge his sexual orientation, but to provide him the foundation to find confidence and joy in his identity in a very homophobic society. It's not for nothing, I assume, that Vecna's dismissal of children as weak kind of runs with the bigoted approach that gay men were viewed as weak by homophobes, i.e., "sissies" and so on. That's subtext, but the finale of this episode was all about Will finding his strength and proving that he is one of the most powerful people in Hawking precisely because of who he is and his place in the world.
posted by Atreides at 11:49 AM
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It also comes as a follow-up to Will and Robin's previous talk, when he asked her how she knew that Vicky liked her back. Robin then watched as Will tried out a playful little flirtatious shove on Mike, who was utterly oblivious to it, and so she wanted him to recognize that he can't look to his crush for the validation he deserves, but has to find it in himself.
posted by Navelgazer at 12:47 PM
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I do think it's super gross and 80s-coded that the villain is grooming children (and again, the imagery of putting flesh-tubes in their mouths is really really not right) in a way that equates homosexuality, pedophilia, and Satanism. Which would be bad enough if it were consigned to the dustbin of history 40 years ago, but is so much worse because people still seriously think it's a thing in this enlightened age. I appreciate what they're doing with Robin and Will, and I'm glad to see them centered, but it doesn't undo the squicky villain they've created that validates all the worst fears of the extreme Right (and papers over the complicity of the right-wing leadership in actual child sexual abuse, if not actual satan worship as far as we know).
posted by rikschell at 3:03 PM
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We already defeated you, didn't we?
Twice!
But the show tried to make the villian a 'spooky presence' with the Mind Flayer, and that kinda sucked. You need a people villain.
Kids V Cold War had a lot of potential, but then they veered into the 'Russia' subplot. We are back on track with Dr K-honestly, the whole Russia bizness should have just been more aspects of 'spooky military villians' instead.
What this season is setting up is akin to 'Now Vecna is trying to become Papa, the spooky experimenter on children.'
Will is now established as the '001' of Vecna's experiment. To what end, I'm not sure, not totally thought out.
The Key question is how will Will hand Henry his ass, how that his power of self actualization is over 9000!?!
posted by eustatic at 4:32 PM
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Did anyone else notice the similarity of the painting Will made back in the barn to the diagram of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge (AKA wormhole) that Mr Clarke (the science teacher) had on the chalk board in his classroom? Maybe this is what Vecna/Henry is looking to create, somehow using the children, and maybe this is what the military is really interested in controlling?
Bit of a stretch for the show but we did have a Back to the Future reference already this season.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 3:41 AM
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Adding more 'time travel' observations to the above: we've had several instances of visiting the past, specifically Max's experiences exploring Vecna/Henry's memories, in which she's trapped. Plus there's the still to be revealed memory of what Henry was scared of in Max's cave. Additionally, we've got both Will and Robin leaning into their own past memories (the home movies) as a source of personal strength.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 3:51 AM
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> "Sorcerers weren't a distinct class from Magic User (ie Wizard) with their own innate spell power until 3rd edition in the year 2000. Grumble grumble"
My spouse laughed at me because I pointed this out and then she immediately went here and read this comment.
posted by kyrademon at 11:08 AM
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> "Sorcerers weren't a distinct class from Magic User (ie Wizard) with their own innate spell power until 3rd edition in the year 2000. Grumble grumble"
Please don't cry, nerds
posted by eustatic at 12:41 PM
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