"Stranger Things" Season 5 launched with a staggering 59.6 million views in its first five days, setting a record for an English-language Netflix series.
Spoiler alert! The following contains details from Season 5, Episode 7 of "Stranger Things," "The Bridge."
So that's all we're going to get, huh.
With one (albeit very long) episode left to go in the world of "Stranger Things," fans are left simply with an image of all of our heroes driving a box truck into the Upside Down while Vecna and his pint-sized minions start his evil seance of doom.
It is a shockingly underwhelming conclusion to part two of three of the final season of a series as bombastic, twisty and relentless as "Stranger," which started breaking our hearts back in 2016 when the writers first killed Barb (Shannon Purser). But seven-eighths of the way through the last hurrah, everybody is alive, the battles have only really harmed the big bad military, and our villain Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) is in exactly the same place he was three episodes ago: With all his kidnapped child "vessels" in his weird mind palace on the verge of ending the world.
While there have been some memorable moments in the final season of "Stranger," overall the episodes have been good instead of great, bumpy instead of thrilling and bland instead of emotional. Here's to hoping all the good stuff is saved for the New Year's Eve finale episode. Because we all deserve more than this after nine years of sticking around for this show.
Welcome back, Max Mayfield
It's a big old Hawkins family reunion at the hospital as Max (Sadie Sink) wakes up from her coma to tears and declarations of love. Hopper (David Harbour), El (Millie Bobbie Brown), Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) show up after all the action. Karen Wheeler takes credit for killing all the demodogs (but of course Robin's reference to her "doing the laundry" to remind everyone she's just a silly mom, not really one of the team).
But unfortunately, it's not such a nice wakeup for Holly (Nell Fisher) who is in a horrible flesh cocoon with one of those vines down her throat in Vecna's lair. And hey, that place where Holly is being held isn't all dark and spore-y like the Upside Down, that's weird. It's bright and yellow and has weird red webs underneath the ground.
There's a reunion in the Upside Down, too, as Steve (Joe Keery) and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) rescue Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) from their melty prison, and fill them in on the whole "exotic matter" situation and that Holly is definitely not in the Upside Down.
To escape from Vecna, Holly goes diving through that weird red web stuff, and starts falling through the void ... straight toward Hawkins Lab in the Upside Down, where big sis Nancy is currently camped out. Convenient!
Up, up and away
Oh remember the whole Mr. Clarke (Randy Havens) plan? He's back with a telemetry tracker that locates Dustin with some whimsical helium balloons, because these episodes have been kind of heavy.
Meanwhile, Will (Noah Schnapp) is awake but back to brooding and thinking he's weak and easily controlled -- no matter what his mom Joyce (Winona Ryder) say -- and taking responsibility for all the awful things Vecna has done. I guess all that character development he had in the big battle with the demogorgons in part one was for nothing!
Speaking of convenient developments, Mike and Vickie (Amybeth McNulty) convince Karen to go back to her sick bed; as a candystriper, Vickie has become a medical authority for the group which, sure, why not? The rest head to open up a rift and get to Dustin, Steve, Nancy and Jonathan who say on the radio they’ve found Holly. The team, including a shell-shocked Mr. Clarke, head into the Upside Down to get their lost comrades except there’s no Holly with them. It turns out she fell down to the top of the Hawkins Lab roof but then got sucked back into oblivion before she could get to Nancy. Yup, it was Vecna and he’s airlifting her back to his yellow planet to get cocooned in horrible flesh with an umbilical cord of death. Glad we’re right back where we started!
The military mindset
Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton) is suddenly wise to the existence of Vecna after the big battle in the MAC-Z. But for some reason, she’s still obsessed with finding El and making little monsters to “hunt Soviets.” She’s so charming! Also, as our gang is getting sloppier, and the military finds the remnants of their breach into the Upside Down right away.
Everybody regroups at the radio station, and Max is wracked with guilt over Holly. Dustin, however, has a plan. He explains that the upside down is a wormhole - much to the enjoyment of Erica (Priah Ferguson) and Mr. Clarke. Dustin thinks Vecna’s special world, coined “The Abyss,” is where the demogorgons and mind flayer really come from, and that’s where he’s hiding with Holly and the kids (Dustin is correct). Max offers the final connect-the-dots moment: Vecna’s evil plan is to merge the Abyss with the real world. That doesn’t sound very fun.
They have to come up with a plan, and after some initial bickering, they develop something that sort of makes sense: Wait until Vecna almost merges the two worlds, use the radio tower to climb up into the Abyss from the Upside Down, get Eleven to fight Vecna inside his own mind, rescue the kids, drop a bomb by the exotic matter to close this wild wormhole for good. Easy peasy, right?
One last crawl
Back in Fantasyland, Vecna is gaslighting all the kids into turning on Holly. The whole gaggle of them greets poor, awoken Holly like they’re an elementary school class from “The Shining.” She won’t be convinced, though, and even nails her best friend with a boombox before the kids and Vecna literally beat her into submission (and she loses her little “Holly the Hero” necklace in the process).
In the real world, everyone is getting ready for “one last crawl,” but there’s anxiety all around. Hopper is worried about what Kali might say to El. Max reminds everyone about that traumatic memory of Henry/Vecna’s. Will and Robin (Maya Hawke) are building a bomb with pop music (literally). Steve, Nancy and Dustin are gearing up and hugging and vowing if “you die, I die” (what’s the fan over/under on Steve not making it through this?).
Kali and El have a psychic conference in their minds, in which Kali tries to convince El that they must sacrifice themselves to stop the cycle of people like Dr. Kay using them for evil science. “When the Upside Down vanishes, so will we.” Don’t worry, though; there’s almost no way Netflix will let our favorite Eggo-loving weirdo die.
Will Byers speaks his mind
Will hasn’t been able to settle down since Eleven rescued him from Vecna’s mind. He is worried about being further used and abused by Vecna if he keeps his “secrets” to himself. He’s about to tell Joyce the “truth,” when Mike walks in. Will then decides he needs a bigger audience for this revelation and proceeds to gather everyone ... including Vickie and Murray (Bret Gelman), who aren’t exactly his close friends or family but OK.
Will gives a speech about being different but also the same as all his friends. They’re the same - except Will doesn’t like girls. With Robin crying and nodding along, he comes out fully to the whole group, intimating to Mike that he used to have a crush on him. Will says Vecna showed him a future where, after he comes out, his friends and family abandon and drift from him because he is gay. But what happens in reality is his mom, his brother and all his friends declare their support and hug him while his acquaintances look on awkwardly.
But now that he’s done with keeping secrets, Will is finally ready to get in the mix and fight Vecna. Let’s hope we have seen Will Byers the victim for the last time.
Operation beanstalk commences
Now that all those pesky emotions and feelings are out of the way, it’s time to party. And by party, I mean attack a military-controlled gate to a wormhole with just a box truck, one teen girl with a machine gun and vibes.
It’s a barely-there battle between the heroes and the military as they drive into the Upside Down to start their final plan, with one nice stare-down between Eleven and Kay.
And then, in the last moments of the episode, we see Henry execute his plan too, with his cult of 10-year-olds joining hands around the dinner table for an apocalyptic circle-time, including Holly Wheeler in a stupor.
And, well, that’s all she wrote. We have to wait until New Year’s Eve for the two-hour long finale episode, and based on everything that happened in this underwhelming penultimate installment, I don’t think all of our heroes will make it out alive.