Stranger Things Season 5, Episode 4
"Sorcerer"
Writer: Paul Dichter
Director: The Duffer Brothers
Cast: Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Brett Gelman, Priah Ferguson, Linda Hamilton, Cara Buono, Jamie Campbell Bower
The Duffers have always known how to end a season — mid or otherwise — and this Volume 1 capper is no exception. Not only is it the culmination of the miniseason arc of episodes with the most satisfying episode so far, but the episode itself arcs the same way, gradually building up its various plotlines and bringing them to their for-now endpoint, with the best and most triumphant saved for last.
Delightful Derek
With the Demogorgon bearing down on them, Joyce (Winona Ryder), Will (Noah Schanpp), Robin (Maya Hawke) and Erika (Priah Ferguson) do their best to convince Derek (Jake Connelly) that they have his best interests at heart and that they should reblindfold him and relocate his kidnapping. It goes about as well as anyone would expect — lots of talk of sucking fat ones from Derek — but the appearance of the Demogorgon buys them a lot of credibility. Joyce makes an admittedly badass stand to ward off the Demogorgon, but it's the timely arrival of Steve (Joe Keery) and his Beamer that saves the day, causing enough damage to cause the Demogorgon to "flip" into the Upside Down. It opens a gate, which gives Steve the bright idea to follow it into the Upside Down.
Back in the Rightside Up, all this interaction with the hive mind gives Will a vision of Vecna's (Jamie Campbell Bower) plan: to connect 12 kids — including the already captive Holly (Nell Fisher) — into his web for … reasons. At the same time, the military in control of Hawkins starts rounding up all the town's preteens to bring them to the Big Mac. They do this by simply knocking on people's doors and asking for their children, because it's still Reagan's America in the world of Stranger Things, so it's not like they're going to argue with the Gipper.
As news of the military kidnappings reach Will and company, Mike (Finn Wolfhard) hatches another plan (with a little help from cinephile Robin) to keep the kids away from Vecna. In a testament to just how bonkers the Turnbow Trap was, "tunneling into the militarized zone and sneaking out eight kids through a toilet" is, by comparison, sensical. It does, however, require the help of Derek, who, in the wake of the encounter with the Demogorgon and a pep talk from Joyce, undergoes an utterly delightful face turn and becomes the man on the inside of the army's prison.
Camatotz
Inside a different kind of prison, Max (Sadie Sink) quickly proves her bona fides to a frightened Holly and explains how they're currently trapped inside Vecna's mind. Max explains how, after her apparent death, she woke up in the aftermath of the 1979 massacre in Hawkins Lab that sent Vecna into the Upside Down (Max doesn't know that's what it is, but we do). From there, she proceeded to walk through more memories, including the time Vecna, then still Henry Creel, was apparently a 12-year-old freshman in high school and playing the lead in teenage Joyce's production of Oklahoma! (more on that below). Reaching the mindscape, she saw a portal back to her body held open by the power of Kate Bush, but failed to reach it before Lucas — in the real world, at Max's bedside — had to rewind the tape. By then, she'd attracted the attention of Vecna (notably in his "No. 1 / Orderly" guide) who chased her into the rocky chasm she later made her home, because Vecna is terrified of them for some reason. But now, with Holly's help, Max has a plan to get them both out of Vecna's mind and back to the real world.
Elsewhere, in the real world–adjacent Upside Down, Hopper (David Harbour) and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) steal into the military base, intent on knocking out Eleven's "kryptonite" and ending the threat of Vecna, who they still believe is being held captive inside. It actually goes surprisingly well, with Eleven timing a telekinetic leap to the every-seven-seconds-thunder of the Upside Down to open a door for Hopper from the inside. But they hit a snag when the soldier they interrogated last episode escapes and returns to the base, and Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton) slaps the anti-Eleven sonics back on just as Hopper gets wrapped up by an Upside Down tentacle monster.
But Eleven fights through the disruption and Hopper is freed, giving the show just enough time to do another ill-advised Hopper death fake-out before Eleven cracks open the secret door and discovers … Eight (Linnea Berthelsen), her superpowered "sister" and fellow escapee from Hawkins Lab. That it's not Vecna isn't at all surprising — especially given crosscutting events elsewhere in the episode — but bringing back Eight is legitimately surprising, given much the Season 2 "Eleven side quest episode" when they meet is generally looked down on by Stranger Things fans (personally, I've never minded it).
Will the Wise
Getting the kids out, Demogorgon attack, oner, Vecna's arrival, taunting Will, Will's awakening
There's another impressive delivery from Murray (Brett Gelman) — seriously, the last episode and this one are both happening within the same roughly 24 hours, and he's back again with another batch of unique items and he had time to trick out his truck for passengers. We see another a great scene between Robin and Will, in which Robin, after clocking that Will is crushing on Mike, tells him about her own experience with a straight crush and how she came into her own when she accepted herself and stopped looking to others for validation. Both will pay dividends in the climax.
Now it's Great Escape time. Derek begins funneling the kids who've met Mr. Whatsit out of their barracks through a hole in the floor of the bathroom that leads to the tunnels that lead back to Murray and his waiting truck. Everything is going great, until the damage wrought on the pipes by all the hole-digging starts drawing unwanted attention.
While they manage to get some of the kids out, the jig is up and the military isn't too happy. But they quickly have bigger fish to fry, as Will does his best Poltergeist and declares "They're here ..." moments before a pack of Demogorgons descend on the base. A furious fight breaks out, and it's a great action set piece, enervated by the schadenfruede that comes from seeing two different groups of antagonists — soldiers and extradimensional demons — tear into each other. Mike leading the kids in, around and through the chaos via an extended oner is a particularly impressive sequence within the sequence. The tide turns briefly when the army deploys flamethrowers on the Demogorgons, but flips back just as quickly when Vecna, in all his swoll, Groot-like glory, makes his season debut and makes short work of the remaining soldiers (a particular highlight: He telekinetically pulls the pins from some grenades, then throws the soldiers wearing the grenades, turning them into bigger grenades themselves). He proceeds to draw up on Will, and does a bit of monologuing, explaining that he's kidnapping kids because they're "perfect vessels" he can reshape, and that it was Will who showed him it was possible back when he first was taken to the Upside Down.
Vecna returns to the Upside Down, taking all his targets with him while leaving the Demogorgons to finish Mike, Lucas, and Robin. But Will, remembering his earlier conversation with Robin and reflecting on happy memories from his childhood, embraces himself. Tapping into heretofore unknown power, he telekinetically freezes the Demogorgons in place before snapping their limbs, Vecna-style, blood trickling from his nose, as he becomes the titular sorcerer.
Other Thoughts
- So … what happened to Derek's parents and Tina?
- In Will's brief flash of Vecna's plans for the kids, we see where Holly physically is — mounted on a goop wall with, an Upside Down red vine in her throat, a la Will in the season's cold open.
- Also, the object at the center of the painting Will does of Vecna's web looks an awful lot like Mr. Clarke's chalkboard illustration of an Einstein-Rosen bridge in the previous episode.
- It's established here that Vecna's plan involves kidnapping 12 kids total, and he already has three (including Holly). Who are the other two kids, and is there a reason they were taken first, off camera?
- Dustin using math to figure out the Meat Wall is a circle, and that Hawkins Lab is at the center, is the latest entry in the collection of those great "Dustin does science and explains how something works" moments.
- That said, my theory of the "phantom signal" Dustin picked up in Episode 2 was that it was going to involve time travel in some way (as though Dustin is detecting himself from the future or something). Turns out it was the Meat Wall.
- Okay, so Max's stroll through Vecna's Grease memory represents a huge retcon in the show's timeline, one mostly driven by the Stranger Things stage show, which debuted between Seasons 4 and 5, and which is also set in that same time featuring teenage versions of the show's adult characters. Last season, it was established that Henry was 12 years old in 1959 when he killed his family. Here, we see that not only is he in teenage Joyce Byer's production of Oklahoma! in 1959, he's playing Curly, the lead — which likely squashes any idea, as improbable as it would seem, that he's some kind of prodigy and taking high school classes at the age of 12. Henry-as-a-teenager-in-1959 is consistent with the stage show, which makes him a contemporary of teenage Joyce, Hopper, and Ted and Karen Wheeler (and also offers a possible explanation for why he's afraid of the cliff crevasse memory where Max is hiding). So, presumably, we're meant to ignore the Season 4 timeline (or maybe chalk it up to Vecna being an unreliable narrator or having his own mind and memories messed up in some way).
- Also, for what it's worth, Joyce's play is being performed on November 6, the same date of Will's later abduction.
- When Eleven comes face to face with Dr. Kay for the first time, Dr. Kay begins to introduce herself and Eleven spits that she knows who she is. I've watched enough TV in my lifetime to be suspicious anytime someone tries to offer information and then gets cuts off.
- The Great Escape plan being undone by damage to underground water pipes is the latest in this season's channeling of The Goonies.
- Similarly, Hopper's fight leading him to crash into the tentacle cage and then get captured by it had big Alien: Earth energy.
- Seriously, the whole "You get out, I'm going to blow myself up with Vecna, I'll always be proud of you, here are some flashbacks to when my daughter died" Hopper death fake-out is beyond ridiculous. They've already done the full fake-out with that character once, and by that point in the episode, it was pretty clear Vecna wasn't behind that door. So I'm not sure who they were fooling or why they would even think trying was a good idea.
- Not only was that extended shot of Mike and the kids weaving through the solider-Demogorgon fight an impressive bit of cinematography (and the Children of Men homage the Duffers mentioned in the prerelease press), but it continues the season's Mike Wheeler redemption arc. Seeing Mike — a character with no special powers, unique training or, frankly, much in the way of special skills and talents (Lucas is athletic, Dustin knows science and engineering, Will has the whole connection to the Upside Down; Mike is just … Mike) — just throw himself in front of the littler kids to protect them and confidently guide them through a war zone marks a pleasantly huge departure from his role last season, where he mostly just whined a lot.
- At one point in this episode, I clocked Eleven doing the whole "I'm using my powers so hard my nose is bleeding" routine again and thought about how much it devalues that visual device as an indicator of extreme effort when it happens three or four times an episode. But then, after the "Will has powers" reveal, it became obvious it was being overused in this episode, at least, to keep in the minds of less savvy viewers so they'd make the Eleven-powers and Will connection when it happened to him.
- Will accessing his power by embracing what he loves about himself isn't just a great metaphor for the queer experience. It's also a welcome turn for the character away from the perpetual victimhood/objectification he has suffered under more or less since inception. While, to the show's credit, Will is a reasonably well-rounded / realized character, being "the one who disappeared" has put him on a trajectory where all too often he's more MacGuffin than character, playing key but passive roles in events. The turn that concludes "Sorcerer" isn't just about Will coming into his power in-universe, it's also about the character finding the agency to play a more active role in the plot — something the whole season thus far has quietly been building toward.
- That said, given Will's already established connection to the Hive Mind / Vecna, him having powers — and deploying them in a way that, visually, directly mimics Vecna — inspires big parallels between their situation and that of Harry Potter and Voldemort in the Evil Lady's wizard stories. I would not be at all surprised if Will's abilities turn out to be a further manifestation of his connection to Vecna (something he unlocked by embracing himself), and something he doesn't hang onto once Vecna is defeated/depowered/killed/whatever.
Who Won the Episode?
Will, obviously. Manifesting superpowers as an expression of self-love and realizing you don't need validation from your crush to be your true self is a surefire ticket to winning an installment of long-form storytelling.
But I also have to give a shout out to Delightful Derek, a face-turn executed with stunning speed and efficacy that turned an intentionally annoying character into one I want to see on the screen as much as possible in the space of a couple scenes. The G.I. Joe lunchbox? Describing ocean water as "blue as a Smurf"? The little whack on the head he gives to send each kid into the bathroom? The way he just wholeheartedly embraces his role as the agent of his fellow kids' salvation? Delightful indeed.
