Stranger Things Season 5, Episode 6
"Escape from Camazotz"
Writer: Kate Trefry
Director: Shawn Levy
Cast: Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Mataraazo, 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
Ross Duffer has called this episode the biggest of this batch of three. Certainly, after last episode's table-setting outing, "Escape from Camazotz" has a bit of everything the show does well: lore dumps, cathartic emotional moments, actors rising to the occasion when called on with strong performances, and tense (if occasionally contrived) action sequences.
"Oh my god, I was wrong/It was Earth a wormhole, all along!"
In the Upside Down, Dustin's (Gaten Mataraazo) previous-episode ending declaration that disrupting the metaphoric force field surrounding the Upside Down will kill them all proves a tad dramatic, as Nancy (Natalia Dyer) blasts the weird shimmering energy with her shotgun and everyone doesn't die. But it does nevertheless wreak a fair amount of havoc, knocking out Nancy and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) as Dustin explains to Steve (Joe Keery) the truth that he's gleaned from Brenner's notebooks: the Upside Down isn't a parallel dimension/reality, it is a wormhole held in place/stabilized by exotic matter (which is what the Meat Wall is made of, and what Nancy blasted), connecting Hawkins to another dimension. If the exotic matter is destroyed and the wormhole falls, it'll take all of humanity with it.
To underscore that point, as a result of the disturbance triggered by Nancy going all Rambo on the exotic matter, Steve's Beamer gets sucked through the Meat Wall, creating an opening to the vacuum of space that begins to wrench everything in the Upside Down through the hole. As Hopper (David Harbour), Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) — all still hanging out at the church at the edge of the wall — struggle against everything rushing to fill the vacuum on the other side of the Meat Wall hole, they spot a nearby gate revealed by the strip-mining of the Upside Down flora and fauna. Using her powers to clear them a path, Eleven leads them to the gate and out of the Upside Down.
Back at Upside Down Hawkins Lab (presumably the hole into space got plugged, cuz it's not getting blown out into space), Steve and Dustin reconcile as they try to reach Jonathan and Nancy amidst the continued meltiness of the building. Dustin breaks down to stop Steve from a foolhardy attempt to bridge a gap with a ladder, tearfully telling him he can't lose Steve like he lost Eddie. In the floors above, Jonathan and Nancy awaken to find the roof of the building on which they fell after being knocked out has melted into the room beneath it, and they're trapped — the door won't open, and any attempt to break through results in more glue-like resin pouring in, as more of the resin slowly fills the space from below. The pair find a brief refuge on the top of a table, Titanic-style.
What follows is a highlight of the season — and, honestly, the series — as Jonathan and Nancy, locked in a room and facing their imminent death, finally tackle their relationship issues. Admitting all the things that bug them about each other, from Nancy only wanting positive feedback about her articles to Jonathan getting high all the time, and the secrets they've been keeping, they agree that while they love each other, their relationship is built on a foundation of shared trauma — ie all the shit they've been through in the course of the series. Jonathan reveals the engagement ring he's been carrying around all season, "unproposing" to Nancy — which she accepts — effectively ending their relationship, just as they discover the Elmer's glue floor has hardened around them, leaving them trapped, but alive. It's a fantastic scene, the meatiest material real life couple Natalia Dyer and Charlie Heaton have been given by the show to work with in ages, and both absolutely knock it out of the park.
Snookums
After a brief interlude in which Erica (Priah Ferguson) and Murrary (Brett Gelman) recruit Mr. Clarke (Randy Havens) as step one of Erica's alternate plan proposed last episode, we return to the Squawk crew trying to figure out what's wrong with Will (Noah Schnapp), comatose since going into Vecna's (Jamie Campbell Bower) mind. Robin (Maya Hawke) catches up to the rest of the audience, realizing that Will, Holly (Nell Fisher) and Max (Sadie Sink) are all trapped in Vecna's mind. She explains this to Mike (Finn Wolfhard) & Lucas (Calbe McLaughlin) via one of the show's patented visual metaphors — removing a record representing each of them from its sleeve, the record being their mind and the sleeve their body, then placing the records inside a crate representing Vecna's mind. Realizing that Max is in a trance, not a coma, and may well know where Holly is being held if she escapes, Mike sends Robin and Lucas to retrieve Max from the hospital.
Inside Vecna's mind, the villain confronts a captive Will, revealing that Will has been his vessel ever since he returned from the Upside Down, channeling Vecna's power to create the tunnels under the city while he slept and feeding info back to Vecna — something he needs Will to do one more time.
Arriving at the hospital, Lucas goes to Max while Robin is quickly accosted by Vickie (Amybeth McNulty), who tells Robin she's wanted by the military police for stealing the drugs she used to knock out the Turnbows in episode 3. With no other option, Robin finally comes clean and tells Vickie the truth about all the strange happenings in Hawkins and why she's always cancelling dates with her. Despite, as Robin points out, the military occupation of Hawkins and the big metal plates covering massive rifts in the ground, Vickie doesn't believe her, thinking she's merely a druggie experiencing severe withdrawal.
Meanwhile, back at the Squawk, Hopper, Eleven and Kali reunite with Mike, Joyce (Winona Ryder) and the comatose Will. Amidst the ongoing conversation surrounding Kali's insistence that she and Eleven need to die in order to end the possibility of the military using their blood to create more super-powered kids, Eleven uses her makeshift sensory deprivation tank in Hopper's hidden cabin to pull Will out of Vecna's mind. But he comes bearing ominous information: despite his best efforts, Vecna knows where Max is, and he's coming to kill her.
Holly the Brave
Elsewhere in Vecna's mind, Max and Holly flee back to the caves in the wake of their failed escape attempt, with Vecna in hot pursuit. He still won't enter the caves after them, but does taunt them with the fact that he can now hurt Max in the real world — thanks to Will, he now knows where Max' physical body is. A resigned Max just wants to wait in the cave for rescue, but Holly, channeling her older brother (much to Max's annoyance) wants to remain active. Refusing to give up, she charges off into the desert surrounding the cave on the theory that, if their own memories of personal trauma — Holly being captured, Max being "killed" — is the door back to the real world, then this painful memory of Vecna's may also contain such a door. All they need to do is find it.
Ultimately, Holly realizes that the crack in the lenscap of Vecna's old telescope matches the landscape of the cave mouth — lining it up, she discovers the entrance to a mineshaft. Inside, Max and Holly watch the memory of a young Vecna, wearing his Boy Scout uniform, coming across an injured man in the cave carrying a locked metal case. Though Henry only wants to help, the frightened man is suspicious, and shoots Henry in the hand. Henry attacks, grabbing a rock and bludgeoning the man to death in some combination of confusion, rage, and self-defense. Unsure what it all means, Max and Holly continue on, eventually finding a doorway out of the memory and back into the Mindscape as they had hoped.
Back at the hospital, Robin is captured by the military police just as a pack of demo-dogs arrive, seeking Max. Helpfully mauling the soldiers (and proving to Vickie that Robin is telling the truth by, you know, existing), Robin is able to use the PA to warn Lucas at Max's bedside — a warning overheard by a conscious Karen Wheeler (Cara Buono) as well. Following a tense escape, Lucas, Robin, Vickie and the still-unconscious Max escape to the hospital basement, hiding amongst the industrial laundry equipment as the demo-dogs close in. In a sequence homaging the "raptors in the kitchen" scene in Jurassic Park, the demo-dogs very slowly draw closer to the heroes as they watch in a series of mirrors and reflective surfaces, until a loud clattering draws the dog's attention. The noise is coming from an oxygen tank inside a dryer, which promptly explodes, taking out the demo dogs. Through the smoke emerges Karen, having channeled her inner '80s action hero to save the day.
Inside the Mindscape, Max sees a portal to her body open, choosing this moment to reveal to Holly that, uh, she can't come with Max because that's Max's body, not Holly's. She does at least help a tearful, justifiably-scared Holly accept that she doesn't need a song or a boyfriend to lead her home — that, like Max, Holly just needs to focus on something positive. Inspired by the Holly the Brave figurine around her neck, Max helps Holly accept that, even though she couldn't help her mom or intervene when Vecna attacked Max in their memories, defying Vecna to help Max was an act of extreme bravery. Just then, a portal opens for Holly as well, and Max tells Holly she'll find her when she wakes up. Max turns, seeing herself with Lucas in the real world, and runs walks dramatically to the portal.
Other Thoughts
- Naming an episode "Escape from Camazotz" and then not actually showing anyone escape is either an epic bit of trolling or a delightful expression of chutzpah.
- The pullout to show the relationship of Hawkins/Earth, the Upside Down, and the other dimension in space (as Steve's Beamer floats away) is a rare case of the show giving the audience an objective view of things/confirmation of one of the group's theories (whereas usually the theories are either proven or disproven by later actions/dialogue — here, we are shown, without a doubt, that what Dustin is saying is correct).
- Secret heartthrob Mr. Clarke is dating (or at least sleeping with) the school librarian, a minor recurring character.
- When doing her demonstration of where everyone's minds are, Robin chooses the exact right records to represent each person: the Clash for Will, "Running Up the Hill" for Max (of course) and Tiffany for Holly. The first two Robin would know, the last is clearly meant to be a wink at the audience vs. some indication of special knowledge on Robin's part.
- I'm not sure we needed to know that it was Will using Vecna's telekinesis, that built the Season 2 tunnel system (as opposed to it just being the vines themselves, as previously thought), but it does further the Will/Vecna relationship, and I like the idea that this thing Vecna did to further his plan is now being used by the heroes to help carry out their plans against Vecna.
- In other Will/Vecna activity, it seems pretty wild that Vecna needed to go into Will's mind and see a memory of him visiting Max to realize that the girl he left in a de facto coma is probably in the one hospital in the small, military occupied town. Even if he didn't KNOW, he probably could have sent in some demo-dogs to check it out earlier.
- I do like how Max assumes Eleven is the one who took control of Vecna and told them to run, because why would she ever suspect it was Will?
- Holly realizing the lenscap was a map of sorts was a nice payoff to the recurring bit where she kept forgetting to remove it before using the telescope. It's also reminiscent of the whole "Sith Wayfinder" nonsense from The Rise of Skywalker, but, closer to home, is most likely another of this season's Goonies homages, mimicking the coin with the holes that line up with the shoreline to mark the entry point to the underground caverns.
- Where are the Turnbows at this point, by the way? Still sleeping in the barn?
- Vickie, once she's onboard with the whole "monsters are real" thing, immediately proves her value by pointing out that if the monsters don't speak English, Robin can just broadcast her warning to Lucas over the PA instead of calling the room.
- Lucas refusing to turn off Max's song even as the demo-dogs (who went from "tearing through the hospital with wild abandon" to "slowly and silkily stalking their prey" for no reason other than "because dramatic tension") bear down on them is both strategically dumb but very sweet.
- I was wrong about Episode 2 being Cara Buono's last big moment on the show, though her big moment in this episode involves several big leaps of logic (both in terms of her somehow knowing the kids were in the basement, and in her having the foresight to bring an oxygen tank with her to a lower floor just in case, to say nothing of her being healthy enough to do all that).
- Jonathan and Nancy aren't wrong to recognize their relationship existed as a reaction to their shared trauma, but it does make one wonder what that means for the rest of the romantic pairings in the show (especially the younger ones), given they too came together during what is essentially a war.
- *Spoilers for Stranger Things: First Steps stage show* I haven't seen the Stranger Things stage show, living in neither New York nor London, but I have read about it, and it offers a little additional context to the scene in the cave with young Vecna, an encounter alluded to in the stage play. Basically, there's a government project trying to make contact with the alternate dimension from which the Mind Flayer hails (discovered in World War II in part by Brenner's father), and the guy lil' Vecna encounters is presumably a Russian spy trying to escape with some of the Mind Flayer/hivemind particles that will eventually connect lil' Vecna to the Mind Flayer and give him his powers.
- Relatedly, while I am a bigger fan that most of ancillary tie-in material connecting to a story's "main" telling (I love it when, say, a Star Wars movie makes an offhand comment to something that I know gets detailed further in a novel or comic book) taking that approach with something like a stage show is a wild decision, given how little access the majority of the Stranger Things audience has to a Broadway play (like, you shouldn't have to read a book to understand, say, a movie, but if you did, it's a lot easier for the audience to read a book than fly to New York to see a play).
Who Won The Episode?
Tip of the hat to Holly, who refuses to give up even when Max is content to peace out and wait/hope for rescue, and then overcomes her own anxieties about not being brave enough to find a way out of Vecna's mind (and take it, despite knowing she'll wake up somewhere strange and all alone).
But this episode really belongs to Dyer and Heaton, who bring their characters' relationship to a close with one of the series' best moments.
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