‘Stranger Things’ Hellfire Club Catch-Up: Season 4

Its last season Stranger Things Close, and with that, our Hellfire Club catch-up session is coming to an end. Here’s what you need to remember from season four before the Duffer brothers’ series returns to Netflix on November 26.

If you are new here, you can also refresh Stranger Things season one, season twoAnd season three In previous sessions of our Hellfire Club catch-up series, we’ve broken down all the important things we thought might be useful for the show’s epic conclusion.

Season four did a great job of raising the stakes with the Hawkins crew scattered around the world. Joyce (Winona Ryder) begins in California with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Will (Noah Schnapp), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) and Mike (Finn Wolfhard), who is on a school break. Of course, before a mysterious package arrives from Russia, Joyce is warned that Hopper (David Harbor) may still be alive and skip town with Murray (Brett Gelman) to rescue his man. The kids don’t immediately notice but get into trouble when L fights the popular girl at school who picks on him, alerting the government to his whereabouts. Thankfully Doctor Owens (Paul Reiser) enters.

Meanwhile, back in Hawkins, a series of gruesome deaths are occurring in the halls of Hawkins High. Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn), the game master of the Hellfire Club that Dustin (Getten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Erica (Priya Ferguson) and Mike are a part of, becomes the prime suspect in the 80s. D&D Satanic terror. But of course, death has signs of the Upside Down all over it, so the rest of the Hawkins heroes help Eddie hide. Meanwhile, Max (Sadie Sink) begins to realize that she might be next, as her mind is plagued by dark visions that put her friends on high alert to protect her. Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Steve (Joe Carey), and Robin (Maya Hawke) lead the investigation with the kids and uncover Hawkins’ darkest secrets along the way, revealing that the entire town could be in grave danger from a major threat.

A lot happens in season four, including a lot of events in Russia, where Hopper basically gets his own movie, but we’re not going to focus too much on that, because this season reveals that the whole Soviet thing is a red herring for a danger closer to home for Vecna/Henry Creel/One (Jamie Campbell Bower).

Dungeons and Dragons and clues

Hawkins’ story is set up by two games, a basketball one where Lucas saves the team and wins the game in the last minute, and a campaign against Hellfire. D&D Vecna ​​version. In the tabletop world, Vecna ​​almost gets the gang, but Erica jumps in to save the day. Like the first season game, which hints at an early move that results in early damage, perhaps it foreshadows things to come in later seasons.

Grasshopper lives!

Joyce receives a mysterious package, which contains a Russian doll with Hopper alive and in KGB prison. Agreeing to pay a ransom to get him out, he and Murray fly to Russia to get their friend out. It’s really such a constant side mission that I still question its necessity other than being a device to take Joyce away from the kids. What is discovered here is that Joyce and Hopper are in love and the Russians fail to realize the opposite in their experiments.

Demonic terror struck Hawkins

Vecna ​​gets an all-timer intro when she’s set up as a horror villain who preys on her victims’ darkest moments to gain control over their minds. His first victim is Chrissy the cheerleader (Grace Van Dien), whom he drives mad that she goes to Eddie for drugs. Unfortunately for our friend Eddie, it’s too late, and he witnesses her being lifted off the ground, broken like a stick, and her eyes gouged out by an invisible force. When her body is found, all suspicions make Eddie the prime suspect as he runs the Hellfire Club and of course Dungeons and Dragons Must be a religion Dustin, Lucas and Erica know there’s more to it, as it features the forces of the Upside Down at work.

The story of Victor Krill

In the case of Nancy; He interviews Eddie’s uncle, who knows his nephew didn’t do it. He begins to journey towards the truth and tells her about Victor Krill, who killed his wife and children as well as Chrissy. Ever sleuth, Nancy teams up with Dustin and the rest, including Steve and Robin, to uncover who is behind the murders. Along with Robin, he meets Victor (played by Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund), who tells him that he is innocent and that his house is haunted by a ghost that killed his family. The only thing that saved her was hearing “Dream a Little Dream” on the radio and coming back to consciousness to find her children dead too. Acting on the idea that it has something to do with the Upside Down, Nancy and the gang break into the Creel House for more clues.

Kate Bush, Music MVP

At the beginning of the season we see Max listening to Chrissie’s tape “Running Up That Hill” before her death. This coincides with the therapy session offered by the school counselor that we see her attend. Max doesn’t know it at first, but Kate Bush’s power hunts the monster from within him. Another student who saw the counselor dead, it came together that music was the key to protecting potential victims from Vecna’s intrusive thoughts gripping their minds. This comes in handy when Vecna ​​nearly finds Max in the graveyard, and Nancy tells them to turn on the song for her before it’s too late—Max escaping Vecna ​​is still one of the best scenes in the entire show, all scored by Busch’s incredible song and helping Sadie Sink shine in her star-making turn.

Eleven on the run

Hawkins’ death makes Eleven a prime suspect in the eyes of the government, and they try to get him out. Luckily Owens manages to get to him after his arrest and offers to help him regain his powers to take on whatever is behind the murders. The downside? Her father, Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine), returns to continue his work and restore her to uncover not only her powers, but also some repressed memories of the Rainbow Room murders. There he learns that orderly Henry, who has been monitoring the rooms with the kids to update Brenner on their progress, tries to help him remove a restraint placed on him as Brenner’s other prisoner.

001 Henry Creel is Vecna

When Eleven remembers that Henry is 001, we see the real events of the Rainbow Room murders through her eyes. Henry is as strong as she is and once she recognizes this, she sets him free so they can both escape and she can have him by her side. Deeming the rest of the experiments inferior, he kills all the other children for exploiting their powers, as well as most of the lab staff (for their vitality), and this pisses off Little Eleven. The pain forces him to reject and fight back, eventually causing him to burst through the veil of reality and which may later be turned upside down.

end game

In the Upside Down, Henry, transformed into Vecna, planned his revenge on Eleven as he used his mind to create mind flares from his dark powers and used them to control the Demogorgons as his scouts. Every time Eleven was mentally pushed by Brenner to investigate the Upside Down, Brenner lied to him: he wasn’t using Eleven to see if the Soviets had anything to do with the mysterious reality; He was really looking for Henry.

Every time he went looking for her, the veil between the two worlds thinned, and Henry sent Demogorgons to hunt for him in order to remove their vitality and memories and help create Hawkins’ alternate dimension. Each life he claims through his minions, the Mind Flayer and Max’s brother Billy (who has helped lure countless people to Vecna), helps Henry gain the ability to project into the minds of others and hunt them himself. Starting with his victim, Chrissy, was supposed to finally open the gate to reverse the tide in the real world. His goal? Before Eleven can absorb her powers to destroy anything she chooses in front of her.

The season ends with Max and the others formulating a daring plan: Max wants to allow Vecna ​​to possess him, luring the villain with a distraction so that the rest of the gang can try to kill him in the process, fighting him physically and mentally with Eleven. Things don’t go so well for our heroes, though, as poor Eddie Weckner sacrifices himself in the Upside Down to distract a group of Demobats, and Max himself dies in the process of possession, causing Eleven to resurrect him (albeit leaving him in a coma). Now left to regroup and face their setbacks, Hawkins at the height of his powers prepares for an all-out war with Vecna ​​and her forces… with everything at stake coming into Season 5.

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