HOLLYWOOD—It’s season finale time, horror fanatics, and are you all ready for a variety of emotions! Let us go explore ‘The Upside Down’ and see what the monster can do.
Joyce and Hopper have been captured by the Hawkins Laboratory people. Joyce is handcuffed to a table in an interrogation room, and when Dr. Brenner tries to get Joyce to help him understand how she can contact Will, she tells him to go to hell. Hopper, on the other hand, is getting a taser treatment by a Hawkins Laboratory women and threatening to kill him by making it look like he overdosed on pills. Hopper has the upper hand, though, and agrees to tell them where Eleven is if they let him and Joyce go look for Will in the Upside Down, and if they leave Mike, Dustin and Lucas out of it.
The boys and Eleven find out Jonathan and Nancy have left, and Dustin goes looking for chocolate pudding to help Eleven recharge. Nancy and Jonathan start booby trapping Jonathan’s house just as Hopper and Joyce enter the Upside Down. Hopper has a flashback about his daughter suddenly having trouble breathing at the park. To help lure the monster out Jonathan and Nancy cut themselves and I think a love connection is about to build when Steve suddenly arrives. He forces himself in trying to explain things to Nancy and Nancy pulls a gun on him to try to get him to leave, especially since his face is still a bloody mess. But, it is too late, the lights start to flick and the monster crawls into the room from the ceiling. The three teenagers run for Will’s room to lure the monster over a bear trap, but the monster disappears again before being caught.
Hopper and Joyce find the destroyed Castle Byers in the Upside Down, and a lonely stuffed animal takes Hopper into another flashback. His daughter had cancer, and I will admit I started tearing up. Jonathan, Nancy and Steve look around the house for the monster, and Steve decides to leave. As Steve gets to his car the lights inside the house start to flicker and the monster comes back out to attack Jonathan and Nancy. Nancy is able to save Jonathan and just as it looks like Nancy might meet her end, Steve comes back in and saves her. The monster gets caught in the bear trap and Jonathan lights him on fire, but the now injured monster soon disappears. In the Upside Down, Hopper and Joyce reach Joyce’s house and in our reality the Christmas lights in the house light up where Joyce is walking in the Upside Down.
Back at the high school, Dustin ransacks the fridge for chocolate pudding and Mike tries to explain his feelings to Eleven. He ends up asking her to a school dance and kissing her. Aw! The happy moment is short lived as the men from Hawkins Laboratory arrive at the school and corner the boys and Eleven. Eleven uses her powers to kill everyone from the lab who entered, but she collapses unconscious. Dr. Brenner arrives and the lab men capture the boys. He lifts Eleven’s head and wakes her up enough to tell her he can make her better, but Eleven wants nothing to do with her papa. The men Eleven killed are bleeding and here comes the monster into the high school. The monster attacks Dr. Brenner first, and the boys and Eleven are able to escape. Hopper and Joyce arrive in the Upside Down version of the high school where they find dead Barb and Will with some sort of living worm thing in his mouth that Hopper pulls out and kills.
The boys bring Eleven to the science lab and Mike starts comforting her with promises of a family and school dance in the future. This is the point where the tears started to flow for me and continued for almost the rest of the episode. The monster finds them, and even though the boys try to fight it with their rock slingshot, they are no match. Eleven uses the last of her strength to save the boys, says, “Goodbye, Mike,” and destroys the monster while appearing to destroy herself in the process. Hopper and Joyce are performing CPR on Will as Hopper in his mind relives the moment that CPR didn’t work on his daughter and she died in front of him and his ex-wife. Luckily for Joyce, CPR worked on Will and he begins breathing.
A little later and Will wakes up in the hospital where his mom and Jonathan are there with a gift box. So many emotions, people! The whole cast is at the hospital and the boys excitedly catch Will up on everything that has happened since he went missing. Hopper leaves the hospital with some Hawkins Laboratory people. Strange, people.
One month later and the boys are playing Dungeons and Dragons once again. Jonathan comes to pick Will up and Nancy gifts Jonathan a new camera for Christmas and after he leaves Nancy goes to cuddle up with Steve. Mike longingly looks at the empty bed in the basement where Eleven used to sleep. Hopper stops by the police station and is given some Christmas food that he takes to the woods and leaves in a wooden box. What is going on with Hopper?
At the Byers house they seem to be one happy family again. Will goes to wash his hands in the restroom and starts coughing. A strange slug thing comes out of his mouth and falls down the sink. Then he is transported into the Upside Down then back into our reality in a matter of seconds.
What the heck is wrong with Will, too, people? Well, I guess we will have to wait to find out in season 2 that has been confirmed by both Netflix and the Duffer Brothers. Until then, horror fanatics!
