Episode 2

This episode would deal heavily with two subjects: the fallout from Mike’s death, and the party coming up with a plan to stop Vecna.

Let’s start with Mike’s death, and the huge impact this has.

Will, who had secretly been in love with Mike since they were kids, will never get to tell him how he feels. Of course, Will knows that Mike didn’t feel the same way, but the possibility of at least getting to tell Mike how he felt is gone now, forever. This will inform Will’s coming out scene, later.

But in this episode, Will winds up confiding to Robin that he loved Mike. (He’s known about Robin already, figured it out on his own, and tells her this.) Robin comforts him as best she can, becoming Will’s queer big sister (which the canon got right, so we’ll keep it).

Lucas and Dustin also have to deal with the fact that one of their best friends is dead. I don’t have as much for how this plays out for Lucas, but for Dustin—who is still deeply grieving Eddie—this is yet another dead friend to set him nearly over the edge, and to initiate his asshole arc with Steve (which we’re keeping from the canon).

Nancy has just watched her father die, her mother nearly die, and her sister get abducted. Then, arriving back at the cabin to regroup with the party, she learns that her brother is dead, too. The devastation overwhelms her, and it adds a tremendous degree of urgency to her need to find Holly: she’s the last one standing, the only one who can save her sister.

This is also why Nancy, at some point in this episode, gets into an argument with Jonathan and breaks up with him.

Yep, that still happens—but bear with me. All that matters right now is that at the beginning of the season, they’re done. Nancy, for her part, is so wracked with grief and fear, while filled with intense rage and a single-minded determination to save Holly, that she goes full Rambo Nancy, doesn’t have time for Jonathan’s pothead bullshit, or Steve’s well-meaning but unnecessary heroics.

For Jonathan, though, Mike’s death and what it does to Nancy reinforces his love and protectiveness over Will—he can’t lose his own little brother, too. Joyce, already overprotective, is affected in the same way. (We’ll be coming back to her in more detail later.)

Hopper has been trying to help the town, trying to round up any of the other children that the demogorgons are going after, but finds himself butting heads with Chief Powell over how to do it. Powell has always disapproved of how Hopper does things (this has been clear since season 1), but now that Powell is in charge, his official authority is struggling with how Hopper has already endeared himself to the townspeople: he came in and proved himself knowledgeable of this threat, and capable of dealing with it. So what if everyone thought he was dead? He’s back now, and he’s one of the few people handling the situation—so while he’s not a police officer anymore, he certainly seems to be in charge.

And El?

El spends most of this episode sitting by Mike’s body, speechless, in a state of shock. Nobody can reach her, can comfort her. But despite their grief, the party has to keep going, keep fighting.

So, they try coming up with a plan, based on what they know right now.

The demos are still in town, the range of their attacks spreading out. From what El had already told the party (from episode 1, when she was in Vecna’s mind) they know which children Vecna is after. (One of them is Derek.) The party decides that they have to get to him and the other children before Vecna does.

But they also need to figure out how to close the gate in downtown Hawkins. As best anyone can tell (Dustin, in particular) El should be able to—she did it before (in season 2) and she can do it again. But she can’t do anything right now, and it’s decided that they’ll focus on the children first, until they can get El to come back to them. Joyce would be the one to defend giving El her space, but once she realizes how badly they need El, she radios Hopper and tells him what’s happened. He needs to get back to the cabin right now… because El needs him.

Right after that, a radio call comes in at the cabin—from Vickie, who found a handheld of her own at the hospital. She asks for Robin, and Joyce hands the radio over. Robin goes off alone to talk to Vickie, who asks why Robin fought through an army of monsters just to save her. Robin, affected by her conversation with Will, is about to tell her (and is stumbling over her words too much, Robin-style, to get the truth out) before Vickie is pulled back to work—but not before getting Robin to promise that they’ll talk again.

Meanwhile, Holly’s arc inside of Henry’s mind (the Creel house and the desert) begins here. We can keep a lot of this from the canon, just with some later alterations. But for episode 2, we’ll end with when Holly finds Max, which would be the second-to-last scene of that episode, the big reveal.

In the last scene, though, Hopper finally makes it back to the cabin. He ignores all the others, immediately going to El. She finally breaks down, crying in his arms. He comforts her, tells her that they’ll stop this—they close the gate, save the town, all of it. But El, in full psycho-scary mode, tells Hopper, coldly, that she doesn’t care about the gate. She doesn’t care about the town. She cared about Mike. And now he’s gone.

El says that all she wants is Henry. No matter what, she’s going to find him. She’s going to kill him. Nothing else matters.

Click here for episode 3

Image credit:

• Poster: mikeshouts.com