Stranger Things Season 5, Episode 5
"Shock Jock"
Writer: Curtis Gwinn
Director: Frank Darabont
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
Presumably, this season's episodes weren't written with the "4/3/1" release cadence in mind. As such, "Shock Jock" probably wasn't intended to be a soft season premiere (or mid-season premiere, if you prefer). Yet while it lacks the exposition-laden setup of the season's actual premiere episode, there is still a sense of the episode being more about preparing for the action to come than things actually happening that is both typical of a mid-season premiere and an unavoidable (?) let down from the climatic sensations of "Sorcerer."
All Roads Lead To One
In the aftermath of the Kali (Linnea Berthelson) reveal, Doctor Kay (Linda Hamilton) makes a token appearance in the episode as it appears all is well inside the locked room where she keeps the illusion-casting teenager under heavy sedation and threat of sonic disruption. Unlike her underlings, however, Kay quickly susses out the truth: Kali is casting an illusion of her own imprisonment and is, in fact, gone — racing away from the lab with Hopper (David Harbour) and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown).
The trio reaches the church near where Steve (Joe Keary) crashed his Beamer into the Meat Wall, but find it abandoned. As Hopper proceeds to track down Team Beamer by…yelling into his radio a lot, Eleven and Kali settle in for a lore dump/thematic exploration gab fest. Echoing her conversation with Mike (Finn Wolfhard) from earlier in the season, Eleven broaches the subject of life for Kali after Vecna. This leads Kali to dump a whole mess of lore on Eleven: it's established that Doctor Kay has resumed Brenner's earlier work of using superpowered blood to create superhuman children, having captured Kali and proceeded to drain her of blood like a vampire in order to inject into pregnant women — a reveal that is accompanied by one of the episode's great visual sequences as Kali runs through one room after another containing a very, very pregnant woman in distress. It's a great bit of Cronenbergian body horror in an episode that draws on several different types of horror to inform its visuals.
This reveal leads into the next: all the super-powered kids we've met thus far, including Eleven and Kali, are the result of similar transfusions in utero of Vecna's blood. And because Eleven shares Vecna's full powers (as opposed to Kali, whose abilities are a limited subset of Vecna's), Kay wants Eleven to harvest her blood for Operation: Make Superhuman Kids. Not only does this confirm something heavily implied in Season Four — Vecna as Patient Zero for superpowered kids — it suggests that Eleven won't be able to simply resume a normal life once she and her friends have defeated Vecna. The threat to her and Kali goes beyond Vecna, to the real-world and vastly more widespread might of the US military.
Dream Warriors
Not that Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) isn't still a threat in his own right. Having successfully completed his Vecna's Dozen collection of kids in the last episode, he assumes his Henry guise to greet them all inside his mind palace and reunite them with Holly (Nell Fisher). He proceeds to give orientation, giving the kids similar run of the house to Holly while also talking about how they're needed to help him defeat a "great evil" that is spreading, like the Black Thing from A Wrinkle in Time (or perhaps the Nothing from Neverending Story, if you prefer that children's sci-fi/fantasy touchstone) by drawing a better, monster-free, world to them. Holly, of course, knows this is utter BS thanks to Max, but one of the fun tensions in this scene is that Holly doesn't yet know about Derek's (Jake Connelly) faceturn, so she doesn't realize she has an ally in her midst.
That tension doesn't last long, however. In the wake of Henry's declaration that the kids' time to shine will be coming tomorrow, Holly sneaks out to find Max (Sadie Sink), insisting they need to make their escape now. Derek follows, having clocked on his own that Holly isn't buying what Henry is selling. After a delightful explanation that he's "Delightful Derek" now in which he calls Mike his best friend and refers to Robin as "Miss Robin," Derek gets recruited to distract Vecna while Holly and Max travel through Holly's memories in search of a way out. The plan involves Derek following Max's map to the caverns where Vecna won't tread (presumably to force Vecna to look for Derek in a place he's least likely to look), but Vecna catches Derek pretty quickly and susses out what's happening.
"Shock Jock" proceeds to deploy some strong visuals as Max and Holly traipse through Holly's memories, including arguably the episode's standout image as they walk through a door floating in midair over a field. Later, it traffics in some Carpenter-esque suspense/slasher horror iconography via a memory of Holly watching A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (aka the best Elm Street flick) while unknowingly being watched by Henry from outside a window. Finally reaching the memory of Holly's abduction, they see the portal to Vecna's mind palace, but just then, it slams shut as a non-memory Henry appears and transforms into Vecna, grasping Max by the throat.
"It's alive!"
Back in Hawkins, the gang reconvenes in the wake of Vecna's attack and the emergence of Will's powers. Both Mike and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) are pumped they've got a new Eleven in the party, though Will (Noah Schnapp) insists his power is simply Vecna's power on loan. Perhaps inspired by her son's newfound super abilities, Joyce has shifted her approach from defense to offense, telling Will he can use his powers to meet Vecna on an even field and kill him once and for all. The only problem is, Will needs to tap into the Hivemind to tap into his powers. Brainstorming in the Squawk, Lucas and Erica (Priah Ferguson) come up with two different plans simultaneously. Erica's (far more reasonable) plan: recruit Dustin's mentor, middle school science teacher Mr. Clarke, to help build a new tracker so they can find their friends in the Upside Down, friends who might have a bead on Vecna's location by now. Lucas' (much more insane) plan: use electricity to revive a dead Demogorgon (on the grounds that heat triggers Upside Down particulars, à la Billy in the sauna in Season 3), essentially giving Will a USB port into which he can plug in and access the Upside Down network. In a smart bit of leadership, Mike suggests they do both plans.
As Team Frankenstein goes about their work, Will and Robin (Maya Hawke) share another heart-to-heart, making it pretty clear we're heading towards some kind of public coming out for Will before the series is over. Using the voltage of the radio tower, they proceed to shock the Demogorgon back to life, with Mike doing his best Colin Clive in James Whale's Frankenstein. Will quickly gets the pricklies, and before he knows it, he's inside the mind palace, watching events through Derek's eyes, relaying to an overwhelmed Lucas that Derek has talked to Max.
Will sets about searching for Vecna, and he finds him just in time to prevent Max from getting her throat crushed by Vecna (and by "throat crushed", I of course mean, "the throat of a mental construct of Max that exists inside Vecna's mind being crushed by a mental construct of Vecna inside his own mind, the effect of which we see being reflected on the physical throat of the comatose Max back in the real world, because Stranger Things). Will gets a second fist-pumping hero moment in as many episodes as he takes control of Vecna and releases Max, telling her through Vecna to run while he proceeds to use Vecna's power to snap Vecna's limbs. He can only hold the villain for so long, but it's long enough to allow Max and Holly to escape. Yet when Vecna ultimately forces Will out of his mind (and Team Frankenstein cranks up the juice to burn all the particles out of the Demogorgon, just like they did to Will in Season 2), Will collapses, and doesn't wake up.
"It's a trap!"
Meanwhile, back in the Upside Down, Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Steve and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) reach Hawkins Lab. Dustin, in one of those classic "Dustin explains something complex through the lens of a pop culture reference" sequences, lays out his theory that the Meat Wall is a protective shield and the generator of that shield is inside the lab, likening it to the shield generator on the Forest Moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi (Steve's favorite Star Wars movie). They split up to search the lab into the pairs with the most potential for dramatic showdowns, with Jonathan and Nancy going up while Steve and Dustin go down.
In the Upside Down Rainbow Room — the place where, in 1979, Eleven pushed Henry into the Upside Down after he massacred nearly everyone in the lab — the simmering season-long tensions between Steve and Dustin finally boil over. Steve reveals what's really been eating at him: not only is Dustin consistently pushing away everyone that cares about him, he's doing it to honor the false memory of Eddie. Dustin insists Eddie never cared what other people thought of him, but Steve counters Eddie did — because he died in the act of unnecessary heroism, desperate to prove himself a hero. This is enough to send Dustin into a rage, and while Steve refuses to fight back, their scuffle ultimately leads to the pair splitting up to search on their own, and an ominously-damaged radio.
Upstairs, Jonathan and Nancy discover the upper floors growing increasingly more melty and creepy, including the decomposing forms of soldiers trapped in walls and floors mid-scream. It's all deeply unsettling and visually evocative, a sort of creepypasta-like tableau with an appreciated tactile air about it. Of course, this is when Jonathan decides it's a good time to talk about his and Nancy's relationship issues, and the combination of my fervent belief that these two are terrible together and the fact that nothing gets resolved or really even advanced as a result of the conversation creates a tension in which the episode's least effective "characters hash out their issues" sequence is embedded in one of its better sequences of visual horror.
It all culminates in the climax of "Shock Jock" as Jonathan and Nancy reach the roof and discover what appears to be some kind of energy rippling through the sky, creating a dome around the lab — the shield of Dustin's earlier Return of the Jedi analogy. Or perhaps not, because at the same time, Dustin, having discovered Brenner's Upside Down office and his notes in the basement of the lab, has sussed out what that energy field means. He desperately tries to radio Jonathan and Nancy not to destroy anything, telling them he was wrong, that the consequences of doing so could kill them all. Yet with his radio damaged in the fight with Steve, they don't get the message as Nancy unslings her shotgun, takes aim, and fires.
Other Thoughts
- Apparently, the whole "we're going to make you think we're going to kill Hopper again" fakeout in the last episode was just a vehicle to drive further tension between him and Eleven now that they've (mostly) resolved his overprotectiveness and unwillingness to let her fight.
- It may also be setting up a scenario in which Eleven, in order to prevent the military from using her blood to infect more pregnant women, may have to pull a Hopper and sacrifice herself.
- The pace of Vecna's kidnappings seems odd — he started with Holly, was going to go after Derek next, and then just said "screw it" and grabbed the rest of the kids in one fell swoop? Presumably, he accelerated his timetable because the military started gathering them all up in one place, but also, if whatever he needs them for is going to happen tomorrow (ie November 6th), he was always going to have to gather them more quickly than one at a time in the first place.
- Is it odd that ALL the kids Vecna took are just a-okay with his explanation and being away from their families? Like, even discounting Holly and Derek who know he's full of BS, NONE of the other kids feel inclined to push back at all, question things, not be comfortable chilling in his 1950s house?
- This season's episode have been especially "obstacle — plan — execute plan" constructed in a way that earlier season episodes were but did better at disguising, to the point where "Shock Jock", with not one but TWO plans put forth to overcome the obstacle du jour, almost feels like parody.
- Presumably the next episode will follow-up on the "get Mr. Clarke's help" plan.
- Dustin casually drops that he missed the crawl because he got assaulted; Steve doesn't react, but I don't think Dustin had previously admitted that. Even though Steve clocked it as BS, his cover story had been "bike accident."
- Despite knowing full well what a monster Vecna is, Derek's answer when Vecna asks who gave him the map is "your mom." Delightful Derek indeed.
- Bugles are delicious — especially the nacho cheese ones.
Who Won The Episode
In a testament to the fact that this episode is more about setting up than paying off, nobody really emerges as a clear victor. The closest we get is Lucas, whose plan mostly works and, assuming Will isn't dead, does so with little cost, and with the added bonus that he indirectly helps save Max again.
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