Stranger Things Season 5, Episode 7
"The Bridge"
Writers: The Duffer Brothers
Directors: The Duffer Brothers & 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
The penultimate episodes of series are rarely the most memorable — they are usually fairly workmanlike, moving characters into position for the finale. The best parts tend to be the quieter, "calm before the storm" moments, as characters take stock as they prepare for the imminent climax of the story. That's certainly the case with "The Bridge," an episode which sandwiches a lot of narrative business around one memorable and heartfelt character-centric scene, otherwise coasting on the momentum created by the knowledge that the end is near.
Getting The Gang Back Together
We didn't actually get to see Max (Sadie Sink) jump through the portal from Vecna's mind back into her own in the deceptively-titled "Escape from Camazotz," but thankfully, that was more for the sake of drama than to pull a switcheroo and further torment Max and Lucas/Max shippers. Instead, this episode opens with Max regaining consciousness in the basement of Hawkins hospital. Her and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) have some cute banter, and Vickie (Amybeth McNulty) helpfully points out, due to their lack of use in the preceding 18 months, it'll be awhile before Max has full motor control of her body again. Hopper (David Harbour), Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Kali (linnea Berthelsen) show up and Robin (Maya Hawke) delivers the dry, cool, action hero line describing Karen's (Cara Buono) actions to save everyone last episode, saying she [Arnold Schwarzenegger voice] "did the laundry."
But Max quickly realizes that if she is here, then Holly (Nell Fisher) is also awake, and Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) is probably not happy about that. Sure enough, Holly wakes up glued to the wall inside what is officially described as Vecna's "Pain Tree." She manages to free herself from the gunk, rip out the tube feeding her Mind Flayer particles, and make a break for it. But Vecna awakens as well and pursues her. Holly races out into an otherworldly, desert landscape and trips over a rift in the ground. Realizing it's been formed by a gap not unlike a gate into the Upside down, she pushes through it and does that cool camera flip thing where suddenly she's upside down, falling (and screaming) through the sky of the Upside Down.
Below her, Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) and Nancy (Natalia Dyer) are rescued from the locked room of glue-like resin by Steve (Joe Keery) and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), just as they hear Holly's screams from above. Racing to the roof, they watch as she falls, then slows, then gets pulled back up like a yo-yo as Vecna telekinetically pulls her back through the gate and out of the Upside Down. Back in Hawkins, Erica (Priah Ferguson) and Murray (Brett Gelman) assist Mr. Clarke (Randy Havens) in triangulating Dustin's position in the Upside Down, which gets relayed to the crew at the hospital. As they rush off to figure out how to get into the Upside Down, Mike tries to explain everything to his mother while convincing her to stay in the hospital, backed up by Vickie — who, it should be noted, is a volunteer candy striper, not a nurse, but still offers up good medical advice.
Everyone convenes at Hawkins Lab, where Eleven uses her powers to disable the security camera watching the nearby rift, then rips off the metal plate so everyone — including Mr. Clarke, becoming the second long-term character to learn what's really going on in Hawkins in this episode — can go through the rift into the Upside Down. They quickly reunite with Steve, Dustin, Nancy and Jonathan, and learn about Holly's recapture, but their journey to and from the Upside Down doesn't go unnoticed by Lt. Akers (Alex Breauz), who is growing increasingly frustrated by Doctor Kay's (Linda Hamilton) micro-mangement.
The Calm Before The Storm
With everyone (except Holly 🥲) on the right side of the Upside Down for the first time since the first episode, it's time for one final patented Stranger Things Visual Metaphor-aided Infodump & Planning Session. Drawing on a radio station window like a Silicon Valley programmer, Dustin explains to everyone what he's pieced together from Brenner's Upside Down journals: it's not a parallel dimension, it's a wormhole, a bridge connecting Hawkins (and by extension, Earth) to another realm he dubs "the Abyss" (Mr. Clarke and Erica immediately clock the Dungeons & Dragons reference in the name. Cue Hopper's eye roll and hilarious muttering exclamation of "Jesus Christ"). The Abyss is where Eleven sent Henry during the massacre at Hawkins Lab (as seen in Season Four), and it's where he went to hide after being defeated last season (which is why Hopper never found him on any of the crawls and Eleven couldn't find him in the Void), and where Holly and the other kids physically are now. The Abyss is the home of the Mind Flayer and the demogrogons and all the other monsters they've been attributing to the Upside Down, and when Eleven was searching for Henry on Brenner's orders way back in the start of the series and pulled the demogorgon out of the Abyss that eventually kidnapped Will, she inadvertently created the Upside Down, creating the permanent bridge Vecna and all the monsters have since used to move from the Abyss into Hawkins and back (this is why the Upside Down is frozen in time at the point Will was kidnapped — that's the same day Eleven made contact with the Abyss and created it).
Will (Noah Schnapp) with help from what Max learned from Holly while chilling in Vecna's head (the whole "two worlds coming together stuff), puts together the rest of Vecna's plan: after creating the rifts in Hawkins last season, he's created additional rifts in the Abyss, and will use the collective power of the kids to telekinetically draw the two worlds together, remaking the end result in his own image. How to stop him? Well, it's Steve of all people who comes up with the winning plan (after Hopper's "force a soldier to fly them into a rift via helicopter" plan is rightly shouted down): let Vecna bring the two worlds a little closer, close enough that they can use the Upside Down's Squawk tower as a beanstalk to simply climb through a rift into the Abyss and rescue the kids — meanwhile, Eleven (and Kali, much to Hopper's dismay) will enter Vecna's mind, with Max as their guide, and shut him down. Then, on their way out the door back to Hawkins, they'll trigger a bomb that'll further destabilize the unstable exotic matter holding the Upside Down together, destroying it and disconnecting the Abyss for good.
All that's left now is executing the plan. Everyone sets out to prepping and gearing up. Eleven and Kali continue their interminable "we have to die to end this" conversation, and Eleven seems to come around to Kali's point of view, agreeing to stay behind in the Upside Down once they've defeated their "brother" as it explodes so as to prevent Kay from creating anymore Vecnas. Meanwhile, Will comes to an important realization: Vecna's whole schtick is using people's weaknesses against them, and he knows Will's weakness better than anyone, having spent so much time inside his head. In order for Will to be anything other than a liability in the coming battle, he needs to face that weakness.
And so he assembles everyone (sans Hopper, who is already in position outside the MAC-Z) and in another of the season's well-acted, standout, gut-punch of a scene, comes out to his friends and family (and Murray). Explaining how afraid he's been that admitting the truth would mean he'd eventually lose everyone he cares about and leave him all alone, he says that while he likes nearly everything his friends do — playing D&D, trading comics, arguing over what video to rent — he doesn't like girls, at least not romantically. One by one, first Joyce, and then Jonathan, and then all his friends, embrace him and promise him he'll never lose any of them. It's absolutely touching, and now Will is ready to join the fight, ready to show Vecna he's not afraid any more.
The Beginning of the End
Having successfully retrieved Holly, Vecna returns to his mind to brainwash the other eleven kids into helping her "come around" to his side. While Derek (Jake Connelly) — the one kid besides Holly to know the truth about Vecna — is sufficiently cowed by Vecna's earlier threats, the rest are gaslit into insisting they can bring Holly "back to the light", complete with a creepy chant. When Holly later "wakes up" inside Vecna's house, she's surrounded by the other kids. She desperately tries to convince them of the truth, and when they don't believe her, she feigns acceptance long enough to grab the tape player Vecna gave her and smash her best friend Mary (Calista Craig) in the face with it. Running downstairs, Holly is mobbed by the kids, with Mary choking her out from behind via her Holly the Brave necklace. Seriously, eff these kids.
Back in Hawkins, it's go-time for Operation: Beanstalk. As Mr. Clarke uses the magic of RF to open the gates to the MAC-K, Murray plows his truck towards the library gate, with Hopper providing cover from the Radio Shack. Nancy pops out of top of the truck and does her best Rambo/Lea Thompson in Red Dawn impression, mercilessly mowing down the soldiers trying to shoot out the truck (is this the first time Nancy has killed people rather than monsters? Should we maybe stop and deal with that? No time!). Nancy's opening allows Hopper to climb into the back of the truck, and Kay watches, helpless, as Eleven and her friends speed into the Upside Down.
Back inside Vecna's mind, the kids have all gathered around the dining room table, with Vecna at its head. Across from him, a barely conscious, bleeding-from-her-head Holly is tied to a chair. All the kids and Vecna hold hands as he tells them it's time to begin their work. They all slip into a trance, their eyes rolled back, as the clock chimes…
Other Thoughts
- The song playing when Max wakes up is Moby's "When It's Cold I'd Like to Die", which previously played when Hopper revived Will in the Upside Down in Season 1 and when Max died/was revived by Eleven in Season 4.
- The recurring bit with Robin assuring the "new to the Upside Down" people that when they say "beneath the plates" they don't mean they're pancaked underneath them cracked me up.
- Dustin's extra zealous hug with Nancy after rescuing her is a nice callback to their Season 2 Snowball dance, when Nancy told Dustin he was her favorite of Mike's friends.
- I'm pretty sure this is the first time Mike has actually been in the Upside Down, which feels like something it might have been worth noting in-story.
- Turns out Jonathan and Steve racing up the radio tower in "The Crawl" wasn't just a macho contest for Nancy's attention but also served to plant the seed of the beanstalk in our minds.
- Nancy points out that since the Upside Down is frozen in time at November 6 1983, then the tank Eleven was using in Hawkins Lab when she inadvertently created the Upside Down will still be there for her to use now. Except the Upside Down is famously devoid of water (Steve's pool in Season 1 is empty; the lake last season was dry after Steve swam through the gate), so I'm not sure that'll work like that think it will.
- The spears Dustin gives to Steve are the ones he and Eddie crafted last season, and the "you die, I die" exchange is a callback to Season 3's "The Sauna Test," when they first said that to each other.
- Of all the various reactions to Will's coming out, it was Jonathan's which broke me.
- All else aside regarding that scene, I appreciate that deploying it at that moment served a purpose for the plot — Will realizing he needed to shore up a weakness Vecna could potentially exploit in the imminent final battle — and didn't just stall the action for the sake of a dramatic scene.
- When Mr. Clarke triggers the gates to let in Murray's truck, he says, "Mellon," the Elvish word for "friend" spoken by Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring as the answer to the riddle on the Doors of Moria, allowing the Fellowship to enter. Never change, Mr. Clarke.
- It's pretty clear by now that Doctor Kay and the military's purpose in this season is just to serve as an additional obstacle for the heroes and a way to drive the whole "will Eleven have to kill herself?" question, which is kind of a shame, just given how much of afterthought they feel like at this point relative to their screentime. Neither we nor the characters are taking them very seriously because we all know there's bigger fish to fry.
Who Won The Episode
Will, of course, as he comes into his own power by opening up about his truth to the people he cares about the most, thereby denying Vecna an avenue of attack, the logical follow-up to his more literal power-up earlier in the season.
But honorable mentions as well to Vickie, Karen, and Mister Clarke, who finally get to learn the truth about all the shenanigans going on in Hawkins for the last four years. Welcome to the party!
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