One of the main (although, at times, highly contested) rules of Dungeons & Dragons is to never split your party. Never mind that someone heard tell of a side quest. Never mind that all your friends thought splitting up to take on the campaign’s big bad sounded like a really good idea at the time: it’s messy, it’s foolhardy, and the party’s chances of taking down opposing forces have just been cleaved in half. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens in the second episode of Stranger Things’ final season.
Things immediately go wrong at the start of the episode. Without giving any major plot points away (although may I refer you to the episode’s title), an important member of the party has been kidnapped in a gory, bloody, chardonnay-infused home invasion. Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and El (Millie Bobby Brown) are the first to arrive on the scene, but it’s too late: we’re down one player, and the rest of the episode is spent on playing detective to figure out where said player’s been taken.
The Party, both its main circle of children and outer group of older kids and adults, has always shone its brightest when it works together. They’ve bested Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) before, as well as the Mindflayer and an army of Demogorgons, so we know what they’re capable of when they put their bickering aside. However, it’s almost bickering galore as we see three different side quests unfold across Hawkins.
Steve (Joe Keery) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) are arguably the main source of this squabbling. Their side quest, which involves roving the streets of the Rightside Up with a satellite stuck to their van, has them spending too much quality time together for their liking. Steve and Jonathan can’t stop going “full Neanderthal,” as Robin (Maya Hawke) puts it, when it comes to fighting for Nancy’s attention. While this may be one of the final season’s many, many callbacks to the show’s earlier moments, it does feel like a joke gone stale. Didn’t we resolve this love triangle already? I know things were rocky between Nancy and Jonathan last season when they went long-distance, but haven’t we moved past this?
Rehashing Old Arcs
Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) makes a surprise appearance with Team Satellite Van, face bloodied after allegedly crashing his bike into a lamppost (no one is buying this). In what is perhaps the most significant departure from fan favorite duos (where is the nostalgia baiting now?), Steve and Dustin get into an intense shouting match over nothing and everything. While in-Party quarreling isn’t new in the world of Stranger Things, I felt that this was out of character for the two. Was Steve not the one who introduced Dustin to the wonders of Farah Fawcett hairspray?
El and Hopper (David Harbour) have also broken off from the main group, for what I suppose is some much-needed father-daughter bonding time. But even here, we see Season 1 narrative conflicts rise to the surface. Hopper tells El, for the nth time, about how his daughter died, and how she was the bravest little girl he knew, and how he worries that El’s “stubborn, punk-ass” tendencies are going to get her into some serious danger. The problem here is that we’ve seen this same storyline play out between the two of them a lot. Especially in Season 2, when Hopper was still hiding El in a cabin in the woods for her safety, and it feels like we should have moved past this already by Season 5. Also, El’s taken down helicopters. She’s killed dozens of people. I think she can handle herself.
Another duo to come out of this episode is Robin and Will (Noah Schnapp), and they seem to be the only ones capable of progressing the main storyline, even by just an inch. While everyone’s bickering in the background, the two of them have managed to figure out the kidnapper’s next target, and they’ve learned something new about Will’s time in the Upside Down (again, this show loves a callback). Although we’re only two episodes in, it’s clear that little gets done when the Party’s divided, so they’re going to need to shape up if they have any chance of taking down Vecna. Again, never split the party.
Stranger Things Season 5, Volume 1 is now streaming on Netflix.
