‘Stranger Things’ Season 5, Volume 1 Recap & Review: The Sorcerer Strikes Back

Stranger Things

Credit: Netflix

Stranger Things is back and – other than one incredibly jarring, cringey joke – it’s back with a vengeance. The first four episodes of Season 5 are live on Netflix, and I’ve been mostly loving the final season. I’m itching for Christmas to arrive so we can unwrap the next three.

Spoilers ahead.

What Works In ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5, Volume 1

Will the Wise

Stranger Things 5 opens with a flashback to Season 1 and Will’s first encounter with the Demogorgon. We learn something new: Will (Noah Schnapp) wasn’t just taken by the creature, he was taken to Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) who hooked him up to some kind of Upside Down tentacle and filled him full of dark magic. This created a connection between Will and Vecna and the hivemind. It’s played a role throughout the series, with Will sometimes serving as a window into the world for Vecna and his demonic creatures. What Vecna’s ultimate goals are remain shrouded in mystery. It appears he’s doing the same thing to other children he snatches up during the first four episodes of the season.

Will discovers that the visions he’s having occur whenever he’s close to the hivemind. After Holly (now played by Nell Fisher) is taken by Vecna, in a Demogorgon home invasion that leaves both Karen Wheeler (Cara Buono) and Ted Wheeler (Joe Chrest) hospitalized – three cheers for both parents fighting to protect their child, and especially Karen turning her wine habit into a deadly weapon – Will discovers that the first vision he had was of Holly. He was seeing what was happening through Holly’s eyes, but also through Vecna’s. He also saw through the Demogorgon’s eyes when it was headed to the Wheeler house. Will is tapped in directly to the hivemind.

What is unclear, even after the wild events of Episode 4, is whether this is all part of Vecna’s plan. Later, when the Demogorgon shows up at the barn to take Derek Turnbow (Jake Connelly), Joyce (Winona Ryder) fights it off to protect Will, Derek and Robin (Maya Hawke). It backs away, seemingly afraid of this diminutive woman. It’s clear – and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) echoes this later in a conversation with Will – that this is somehow tied to Will and his desire to protect his mother. Somehow, he’s not just seeing through the creature’s eyes, he’s controlling it.

All of this comes to a head when the gang forms a plan to rescue children the military has taken back to their base to use as a trap to catch Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) who they believe – quite mistakenly – are being taken by the girl. Somehow, despite having set up shop in the Upside Down, the military hasn’t encountered Vecna or his minions. It appears the Big Bad has gone to ground for the past couple of years, biding his time while coming up with his evil plan, and letting the soldiers grow complacent.

When the rescue plan goes sideways, Mike, Will, Caleb (Lucas Sinclair) and Joyce are taken captive, but before they can even really protest, the lights begin to flicker and the ground starts to shake. Demogorgons burst out of portals and begin slaughtering everyone.

As will falls to the ground in one of his hivemind seizures, Mike shepherds the handful of kids that didn’t make it into the tunnels through the firefight. The following scene is taken directly from Children of Men’s famous “oner” as the group ducks for cover and tries to make their way past soldiers and explosions and the demonic assailants. I definitely think this was an homage to Children of Men, with Mike as Theo (Clive Owen).

When one of the Demogorgon’s is burned, all of the others fall to the ground convulsing. Will begins screaming and shaking. And then Vecna appears. He strolls out into the midst of the chaos and bats away the soldiers, stabbing them with his Groot-like vines and even pulling the pins out of their grenades. The Demogorgons were already making short work of the military, but Vecna swats them away like flies.

Then he approaches Will and tells him that the reason he chose all these children was because they were weak, easily moulded and manipulated, shaped into whatever it is he’s planning for a world remade in his image. And that, he says, is why he picked Will. For his weakness. As a Guinea pig. Will showed him what was possible. He leaves Will and returns to the Upside Down. The Demogorgons drag the remaining children with them. Then more return to finish off Robin, Mike, Joyce and Caleb.

Earlier in the episode, Will and Robin had a little heart-to-heart. He had spotted her kissing her girlfriend – a shocking sight in 1987 – and since he’s been grappling with his own sexuality, and Robin is insightful enough to realize this, she tells him about her own backstory. How she was so crushed when her first crush ended up falling for Steve (Joe Keery) and how it wasn’t until she came to love herself for who she was that she finally felt free. These words come back to Will as he kneels in the wreckage of the military base. These words and Vecna’s sneering contempt. He sees the Demogorgons rushing toward his friends and then, finally, he taps into his powers.

Mike called Will a sorcerer earlier in the episode. Someone with innate magical abilities that they don’t learn from books. I’m not sure if that’s quite correct, given that Will’s powers were effectively granted to him by a demon (making him a Warlock, no?) but it’s not important. What’s important is how incredibly cool it is to see Will level up and embrace his powers. He not only stops the Demogorgons mid-rush, he snaps their limbs and destroys them utterly, much like Vecna did with the teenagers in Season 4.

Will didn’t choose between a protection spell and a fireball, he did both at the same time. The question I have is this: Is Will tapping into these powers on his own, or was this all part of Vecna’s plan? Did Vecna leave him there with those scornful words ringing in his ears and then send the Demogorgons to kill his friends (but not him) in order to force him to embrace his powers? Or is Will doing this in spite of Vecna? Was Vecna merely underestimating Will? We’ll find out more on Christmas!

The Hellfire Club, Rockin’ Robin and the Rest of the Gang

To me, this season of Stranger Things is all about Will, at least so far. And I’m glad about this. Will has been shortchanged for far too long and he’s always struck me as the natural central character (alongside Eleven) in this story. The fact that he looks so much like Harry Potter, and Vecna so much like Voldemort, certainly adds to this, but really Will has been at the center of everything this entire time, but also narratively sidelined. He was the only kid not interested in kissing in Season 3. The poor guy had been through so much, and all he wanted was to play D&D – then the moment he moves to California, the other kids join the Hellfire Club.

In any case, while Will is clearly in a much more important role in Season 5, it’s not like everyone else has been just sitting on their thumbs.

Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) is still bitter and angry and grieving over the death of Eddie (Joseph Quinn). The fact that so many people still believe Eddie was guilty of murder doesn’t help. Dustin wants to revive the Hellfire Club but this puts him in direct conflict with the jocks. This leads to him getting jumped by several of them at Eddie’s grave and he misses joining the others for their Upside Down recon mission. When he does meet back up with Steve and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), it’s clear that Dustin and Steve have had a falling out. They bicker like a married couple.

Steve and Jonathan have their own conflict, each seeming intent on one-upping the other whenever Nancy (Natalia Dyer) is around, clamoring for her attention. Nancy is now the station manager of the local radio station where Robin has found her groove as Rockin’ Robin, a chatty DJ. They use this station to communicate with Hopper (David Harbour) and the others, and use Murray (Brett Gelman) to smuggle in supplies. They’ve been systematically mapping out the Upside Down for the last two years, sending Hopper on recon missions sector-to-sector in an attempt to track down Vecna, who they suspect is still alive (though they’re starting to believe he might not be before things heat up).

Hopper uses delivery caravans sent to the Upside Down base to sneak into the alternate dimension and search for Vecna while topside, the others track him using a tracking device and communicate with him via radio. They’ve made no progress so far, after over 3o dives. Naturally, our story begins at the moment when things go topsy turvy. When Hopper is sent this last time, the caravan is attacked by Demogorgons. Hopper is wounded but escapes.

This happens just before the Wheeler house is attacked and Holly is taken. Nancy and Eleven show up too late, but Eleven follows the Demogorgon through a portal into the Upside Down. She’s been training hard and begging Hopper to take her with her on one of these missions, and now she finally gets her chance. When she finds Hopper, the two join up, though Hopper remains frustratingly stubborn about her being in danger.

They eventually come to a living wall made up of massive vines and eyeball-like spheres and ooze and other nasty, necromantic stuff. As they try to find a way through, the military shows up. One of the armored vehicles has a pulsing antenna-like speaker sending out some kind of psychic blast and this freezes and then completely incapacitates Eleven. Harbor manages to fight off the soldiers and take one prisoner and he and Eleven interrogate the officer. Eleven discovers the identity of the season’s new human threat: Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton) a military scientist and leader of this entire operation with a hairdo borrowed directly from Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine).

Eleven also sees a locked door in the base. This is where the psychic signal that functions as her kryptonite is coming from, and she suspects that somehow the military has captured Vecna and is tapping into his powers. This seemed unlikely to me, and I actually guessed that perhaps Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) was behind the door, with Dr. Kay using her to get to Eleven.

Kali was patient #8. There’s a theory called the d20 theory that has to do with the three main patients from the Hawkins lab: 001 (Vecna), 008 (Kali) and 011 (Eleven) added up equals 20 (1 + 8 + 11 = 20) which is the number of sides on a d20, used for most rolls in Dungeons & Dragons.

They head to the military base in the Upside Down to find out what’s going on at the same time as the barn is attacked. Steve, Dustin, Nancy and Jonathan drive after the Demogorgon fleeing Will/Joyce and crash into the same wall that Hopper and Eleven ran into, and Dustin – using that big brain of his – determines that the wall is actually encircling the Upside Down, with the Hawkins lab at its center. They go to investigate.

After a near-deadly run-in with Dr. Kay, Hopper goes into the locked area with explosives strapped to his chest, fully prepared to go suicide bomber on Vecna. He’s spared this fate, and Eleven finds Kali there instead. (Kali is awfully similar to Kal-El, aka Superman, which ties right back to kryptonite).

By the end of Season 4, we have Steve, Dustin, Nancy and Jonathan searching the Upside Down for answers about the wall and the location of Holly. Hopper and Eleven are at the Upside Down military base, reunited with Kali. Topside, Will has just saved his mom and friends from the Demogorgons, but all the children Vecna needs for his twelve pillars have been abducted.

I should note that the gang recruited Erica (Priah Ferguson) to help them kidnap the Turnbows and she’s also served as lookout during the base raid. This was a smart move. Erica is a certified badass. Our heroes have won some and lost some, discovering and presumably freeing Kali and ending the military’s key advantage over Eleven, and stopping the Demogorgons while Will unlocked his superpowers. But Vecna has the kids and his plan is still going forward, and they still don’t know what the wall is all about or where Vecna’s lair is.

This leaves us with just one more key character, a character who has been in a coma this entire time. Only, it’s not your ordinary coma.

Max Mayfield In Vecna-Land

Early on in the season, Holly is shown speaking with her imaginary friend, Mr. Whatsit. She’s been reading the wonderful book, A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle (you should read the entire series) and one of the characters in that book is Mrs. Whatsit. Unlike Mrs. Whatsit, however, Mr. Whatsit is not a beneficent witch. He’s Vecna in disguise.

When Holly is taken, Vecna places her in a psychic prison. It’s his memory of his childhood home, and there he tells her he’s keeping her safe from the monsters. She’s given the princess treatment. Pancakes with blackberries for breakfast. Free rein of the house. Pretty dresses to wear. A new stereo with a cassette tape of the self-titled Tiffany album to play. She bakes and dances while listening to “I Think We’re Alone Now” – which takes on a new, rather eerie meaning in this context. She thinks she’s safe, but Mr. Whatsit (now going by Henry) tells her she is not to enter the woods. That’s where the monsters are, he tells her, before leaving to take care of important business.

Someone rings the doorbell and knocks loudly while Holly plays dressup and when she answers it, whoever it was is gone. But there’s something in the mailbox. It’s a map through the woods with a note signed “Henry” claiming to need her help. Holly isn’t sure what to do, but when she looks at the miniature of Holly the Heroic that Mike gave her, she makes up her mind and sets off – like Little Red Riding Hood – to follow the map.

The map leads her to some red rocks and a cave entrance where she runs into a rather bedraggled, long-haired Max (Sadie Sink). At first she doesn’t trust her, but Max knows too much about Mike for her to be a monster, so she follows her to Max’s hideout. Here, we finally learn what Max has been up to all this time.

After she was killed and brought back to life, she entered Vecna’s memories. These include his horrific memories of the lab massacre as well as a brief trip to 1959 and Hawkins High School. She almost makes it out of the Upside Down when Lucas plays Kate Bush’s “Runnin’ Up That Hill” but when the music stops, she’s thwarted.

Vecna chases her and she makes her way to the cave – a place Vecna is, for reasons unknown, too afraid to enter. It’s her sanctuary, and here she’s remained, giving up on ever escaping until Holly shows up.

It’s unclear what Max’s plan to escape Vecna’s mind is at the moment, but it involves Holly returning to the Creel residence and pretending like everything’s okay. It’s fun to see Max as a kind of lone rebel. It’s also cool to see how the show is incorporating A Wrinkle In Time here, with Vecna’s mind described as Camazotz, the planet from that novel where Meg’s father is held captive by the evil entity, IT (not to be confused with Stephen King’s IT). Indeed, Chapter 6 is titled “Escape from Camazotz.”

Hopper Should Have Died At the End of Season 3

By and large, I found most of Stranger Things 5, Volume 1 quite engaging and I have few complaints (though, as always, nothing compares to Season 1). There’s one scene where Robin brings up The Great Escape and the tunnels named Tom, Dick and Harry and this leads to a kind of funny, awkward dick joke bit. That’s all well and good until, later, after Robin and Will’s heart-to-heart, this joke is brought back between Mike and Caleb. It’s poorly timed, after this important dialogue between Robin and Will (which is later echoed when Will gets his powers) and it’s poorly executed. I won’t repeat it here, but you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. This was so jarring that the friend I was watching the episode with said out loud, “What is happening here?”

The one other thing that bugged me over the course of these four episodes was Hopper. I feel like he hasn’t really done much since Season 3. The Russia plot was largely a bust in Season 4 and here he’s just doing the whole “No, you can’t come, it’s not safe, you’re not ready,” thing with Eleven over and over again. Honestly, I think his “death” at the end of Season 3 was such a powerful sacrifice and led to such an emotional moment at the end of that season, that they never, ever should have pulled that fake death cop-out. Hopper was meant to die then and there, leaving Eleven to grow and fend for herself.

Hopper just feels superfluous at this point. Bringing him back was a mistake. It’s not even that big of a deal, honestly, but I think it would have made for a better, tighter story over these last two seasons. And removing the “big strong leader guy” from the equation is a smart move. It worked in Deliverance and Game of Thrones. It would have worked here, too.

All told, I’m happy with Stranger Things 5, Volume 1 and I’m excited to see what happens in Volume 2 and, of course, the big series finale. Then again, Season 4 was great right up until the second volume, which went promptly off the rails. I won’t get my hopes up too high, in other words, but I’m glad we’re off to a solid start.

See what else is streaming this weekend right here. Also, here are some TV show recommendations to watch while you wait for Volume 2.

ForbesWhat To Watch This Weekend: New Shows And Movies To Stream On Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Apple TV And MoreBy Erik Kain

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