Stranger Things season 4, episode 8

Papa is named after the cruelly ironic name by which the Hawkins Lab kids refer to their captor Dr Brenner, while Eleven's other father Hopper battles to get ...

Papa does not tell the truth, and Eleven realises that she opened the gate to the Upside Down not because she's a monster but because Brenner was trying to fix his mistake. A full-on shoot-out ensues, complete with a sniper in a Huey picking off Papa. Fortunately the pizza van crew are just in time to distract the chopper crew -- and Eleven doesn't need need thirty minutes or less to spectacularly take down the helicopter. Robin spotting her crush in a redneck gun shop called The War Zone is an extremely contrived moment, but it still kind of gets me in the feels so let's allow it. Either way, Eleven leaves him to die in the dust. This has drawn criticism from fans who criticise the tired trope of depicting tragic gay characters forever doomed to unrequited relationships (and all this right after Pride Month, too). Still, maybe there's hope for Robin in episode 9, as her Molly Ringwald-esque crush at least looks conflicted when she spots Robin. File that away for season 5, I guess, but in the meantime, as much as I've enjoyed Hopper's action-packed adventures behind the Iron Curtain (and the antics of the madcap Yuri), I'm starting to wish they'd just get out of Russia already. Vecna stalks Nancy through a nightmarish vision of the massacre at Hawkins Lab that led to young Henry Creel being sent to the Upside Down, but then spares her -- instructing her to tell Eleven everything she's seen. Sadly both the show's gay characters are crushed by their crushes in this episode, as both Will and Robin realize they're in love with characters who are shown as being straight. Eleven reluctantly allows Dr Brenner to reactivate her powers, in the process learning she inadvertently created the demon when she zapped the Hawkins lab's first psychic teen, Henry Creel, into the Upside Down. Meanwhile sheriff Jim Hopper and Joyce try to escape a demogorgon in a brutal Russian gulag. Now she knows her own backstory, she makes a choice to fight for her friends. So essentially that moment was the origin story both for Vecna and for the lost, scared Eleven we've watched grow since season 1. Stranger Things is back for the final showdown.

Nancy is also in the Hawkins Lab, or at least her consciousness is. Her physical form is still comatose in the Upside-Down, but Vecna is dog-walking her ...

Brenner is able to escape with Eleven, and he protects her from a sniper by taking a few rounds in the back, eventually collapsing. Between Brenner explaining things to Eleven, and Nancy recounting her experiences in the Upside-Down to the rest of the gang, we begin to get a sense of what Vecna’s plan actually is. Yuri’s transport is barely flight-worthy; the psycho religious nutjob basketball team just so happens to be at War Zone, and Brenner tries to prevent Eleven from leaving by taking Owens hostage and threatening her into continuing her work with “Papa”. Having now seen as much as she needs to, she knows that Brenner’s obsession with One and her has led to so much carnage in and around Hawkins; that he’s the monster, not her. In other words, he’ll have to leave his physical form behind, vulnerable, in the attic of the house, when he’s out on a killing spree. Her physical form is still comatose in the Upside-Down, but Vecna is dog-walking her psyche through the scene of the massacre, letting her see where he has been. “Chapter Eight: Papa” opens with a two-minute recap and then picks up for a few seconds right where we left off, with “eldrich thrumming”, according to the subtitles, and a bloody-eyed Eleven having just shoved who we now know to be Vecna through a portal to the Upside-Down. Did she create the Upside-Down behind that cracked wall in Hawkins Lab, installing Vecna as its defacto king, or was it already waiting, lurking, for someone as morally compromised and telekinetically powerful as Henry Creel to make a home there?

On Stranger Things Season 4 Episode 8, more answers come to light as Eleven prepares for vengeance. Read our review of the midseason...

It did have some minor issues, but it got the ball rolling on the series in a big way, and I can't wait to see where it goes next. The tension in Russia is rising, and it only reiterated my initial concerns about the storyline. And Holly. Mike. And they... It was the most vulnerable Will's been, and I'm not sure Mike understood what happened, but Jonathan sure did. And then... And the dam will burst. And this... Hopefully, Eleven makes it back in time to join in this big fight. Eleven using her powers to take down the helicopter was satisfying. They need a fall guy, and if Brenner isn't alive to be that person, then Owens may be their next best shot. And when that happens, Hawkins will fall.Brenner And eventually, it will reach a breaking point.

Stranger Things returns - and everyone's on a road trip headed toward the season finale.

“Papa”, despite its maddening construction, hums along even though a lot of it is unnecessary and nonsensical – it does so by properly setting the tone through characters like Nancy and Max, who are ready to illegally modify shotguns and stop playing “Running Up That Hill” (respectively) so we can find a goddamn resolution in all of this. As a penultimate episode, this is to be expected to some degree – but nearly everything character-centric is tamped out in service of the plot, which is really just “three cars driving to destinations” for 90% of its running time. She hates that she loves Dr. Brenner, that she still sees him as her father and the man who believed in her potential; but as her abuser and imprisoner, that dichotomy will never allow for emotional resolution between characters. Look, the Brenner/Eleven dynamic has proved a rewarding one over the years, a compelling portrayal of a psychopath with a degree given free rein by the government to enslave children. I mean, “Papa” is a road trip (well, three of them) featuring test tube babys, tons of sci-fi mumbo jumbo, enormously evil military entities, and long segments of nothing happening – could it be anymore Kojima? Cultural parallels aside, “Papa” feels like much of Volume I preceding it; full of interesting ideas and strong performances, thoroughly hindered by a lumbering plot with too many competing ingredients.

While Nancy catches her breath in Hawkins, let's check in on the Russia crew. The Demogorgon is still a-rippin, and our heroes (and Yuri) need to find a way out ...

“They’ve come to kill you,” Papa tells Eleven, scooping her up and taking her into the open, away from the firefight in the lab. El tells her friends that they need to get to Hawkins, stat, or “they are going to die.” In the RV, lots of Intense Faces and Determined Staring Out the Window from our heroes as the extremely on-the-nose lyrics kick in: “Sleepless nights, losing hope, I’m reaching for you, you, you.” Max gets out of the RV with Lucas and Erica, Walkman strapped to her waist. She has a sweet reunion with both Mike and Will, then with a click, her collar snaps open, falling to the ground. He tells her that everything he’s done has been for her own protection, including torturing her mother and One. She brings up One’s revelation that “Papa doesn’t always tell the truth,” and he tries to gaslight her into thinking that she’s feeling guilty for releasing him. Lucas and Max are also bonding, with Max telling him she’ll “hide in the light” and pull a real Patronus-esque happy memory, admitting that he was involved in that memory. Max’s idea is to “ditch Kate Bush” and use herself as bait, allowing the others to attack Vecna’s vulnerable body in his attic hideout while he tries to kill her. They realize that the clock in the visions has always chimed four times, and that that must be telegraphing his plan to make four kills, meaning he only needs one more. Until now.” The duo really put the “uhhhhhh” in “reassuring” when they say that her friends in Hawkins are safe “as far as we know,” but that they haven’t actually checked. But you make her feel like she’s not a mistake at all, like she’s better for being different, and that gives her the courage to fight on. The Demogorgon is still a-rippin, and our heroes (and Yuri) need to find a way out of there. “I want you to tell Eleven. I want you to tell her everything you see.” In the real world, or at least, halfway between the Upside Down and the real world, Steve is holding her entranced body.