Volume 3

This is it. The finale, in two parts.

Strap in.

Episode 8

El sits by Hopper’s body, in shock. More demos are approaching, but Kali can’t get her to snap out of it and fight. However, before the monsters can attack, they’re snapped up into the air—along with El. They rise up into the sky with the children, and with Vecna, seemingly being taken away by him… except, by the time they all cross into the Abyss, it becomes clear that the Mind Flayer has used its immense powers to reach through the gate in the sky and pull them all through it: El, the children, the demos and Vecna.

Through the gate, which is widening.

The surviving party members regroup around Brenner’s house: Will, Joyce, Jonathan, Nancy and Kali. Joyce collapses by Hopper’s body, mourning him while the others watch on in horror and grief.

Back in Hawkins Lab, Dr. Kay’s scientists have set up their equipment at the gate, and are getting strange readings from the Upside Down. They don’t know what’s happening on the other side, but successive energy spikes are growing more frequent and severe. Kay tries to question Erica and Argyle, but neither of them know what it could be, and they’ve already told Kay everything they know. Kay says that there’s no use for them, then, and orders Lt. Akers to kill them.

Before he can, though, he and Kay receive an alert from the soldiers guarding the building: hostiles have shown up and completely surrounded the facility. Kay and Akers go out and find their unit surrounded by other soldiers—from a different faction of the government. From behind this faction’s frontlines, we see a group huddled together, watching everything unfold: Robin, Lucas, Max, Karen and Vickie. One of the leaders of this faction steps up to the entrance to the Lab, making himself known:

Doctor goddamn Owens.

Remember him? Well, the canon sure didn’t. Last time we saw him, he’d been handcuffed in Brenner’s desert facility by Colonel Sullivan in season 4, and that was it.

In my LSV, he’s still alive, having escaped captivity. He was the ally Hopper had been calling on for backup, and although it took him a little while to get the rest of his faction’s forces together, they’re here now.

Owens walks into the no man’s land between the factions with another person, an OC character known only as Carr. We see pretty quickly that Carr is another governmental, man-in-black type: cold, efficient and enigmatic, clearly Owens’ boss, and held by Kay if not to a level of respect, then at least as her equal.

Carr and the rest of his faction are portrayed here not as good, but as a necessary evil: one that aligns with the interests of the party, the town of Hawkins and the entire planet as a whole. Carr represents this, and Owens is their conscience.

Owens and Carr speak to Kay and Akers in no man’s land, discussing how their factions now have the same goals. It’s implied that Carr is part of this second faction’s elite leadership, which no longer aligns itself with the project that created El and Vecna. Carr states that since the gates can’t be controlled, and it threatens the security of not just the United States but that of the entire world, they now share the same objective as Kay’s faction: to stop the extra-dimensional threat.

Carr states that their goal is not just to shut the gates, but to go into the Upside Down and kill Vecna and the Mind Flayer—the latter entity Kay hasn’t known about, but Owens gives her a brief rundown. Carr then tells her that for now, their factions have to hold to a truce, and work together. Kay reluctantly agrees, and a working relationship is established as the soldiers intermingle and set up a joint effort to invade the Upside Down.

Most of the party in the Upside Down—Will, Joyce, Jonathan, Nancy and Kali—are still at Brenner’s house with the bodies of Hopper and Murray, trying to figure out what to do next. Dustin radios them, telling them that there’s been some… developments.

We see that Dustin and Steve are surrounded by soldiers, with Owens at their head. He takes the radio from Dustin and tells the party that it’s time to come back to base—they have a lot to discuss, so that they can end this nightmare once and for all. The others are stunned—but Joyce recovers first, and tells Owens that they’re going to have to send someone to pick them up. There are bodies to recover.

El wakes up in the Creel house, where she finds Holly, Derek and the other children in trance states. She’s greeted by an injured and shaken Henry. When she tries to attack him, the Mind Flayer intervenes, showcasing an immense, unfathomable amount of psychic strength that none of them—not El or Henry—can fight against. Henry invites El to sit with him, because they have much to discuss. Even though she wants nothing other than to kill him, El doesn’t have a choice. She sits with him.

Henry says he doesn’t want to fight her. He never did. He wishes that El had joined him, all those years ago (during the flashbacks of season 4, when Henry killed all of the other test subjects), and that despite everything that’s happened between them, they can still make up, can still work together to achieve the endgame: bringing the Mind Flayer to Earth. El refuses, but Henry says that by the end of this conversation, she will have changed her mind.

Back at the Hawkins Lab in our world, the party is brought back through the gate… along with the bodies of Hopper and Murray. They’re reunited with the others: Robin, Lucas, Max, Vickie, Karen, Erica and Argyle. Lucas and Erica are relieved to see each other, as are Robin and Steve, and Nancy and Karen; these last two have a tearful, grief-stricken reunion.

Dustin and Will are overjoyed to find Max out of her coma, and they spend a little time catching up—which involves Max processing Mike’s death, and the fact that Hopper wasn’t dead (hey, canon, remember that detail?) only to find out that he just died for real. And that El has been taken.

Owens gets the party together, and brings them up to speed. He explains the temporary alliance between the government factions. The one that Carr represents once funded Brenner’s work, which was initially supposed to produce operatives for remote viewing and assassinations. However, early test subjects accidentally came into psychic contact with the Mind Flayer, which infected them with its smoke through a smaller, lesser version of the Upside Down wormhole. We’ll see this in flashbacks, of the program run decades ago by a much-younger Brenner, as test subjects long before Henry are infected by the smoke. Brenner had them executed out of fear of their power, but one scientist escaped with a container of smoke in a briefcase, intending to sell it to the Russians. Trying to evade the military, he hid in a nearby mine—and ran into a young boy, Henry. The rest we know from there.

In essence, Brenner was responsible for starting all of this. However, Owens wonders aloud if the Mind Flayer had already set its sights on Earth, and was seeking a way to infect enough people to open the wormhole. As to why it wants to come into our world… who knows? Whatever the reason, it can’t be good… not if it involves invading Earth with monsters. With aliens, really, since it and the demos come from another planet.

The Mind Flayer is trying to kill all life on Earth, Owens says, and so it has to be stopped decisively, no chance of it surviving to try yet again. And how are they going to do that? Owens doesn’t know any other way to tell them this, other than to say: bomb. A really, really big bomb.

It takes the party a moment to get it. Dustin figures it out first. He says that Owens can’t be serious, but Owens is. Dustin says it out loud for everyone else: they’re going to take a nuclear bomb through the Upside Down, into the Abyss, and detonate it.

Owens says that’s not quite it: they’re going to bring several nuclear bombs through the wormhole, and blow up the entire planet. And if the party wants to help, they’re invited.

They sit in stunned silence for a few moments, until Will speaks up and says that they have to save El and the children first. Owens nods and agrees, stating that everyone comes home this time.

So, the party agrees—it’s time to nuke a planet.

Its power is vast, and it has turned Henry into its vessel.

Back in Henry’s mind, El listens as he explains that the Mind Flayer’s powers are vast, and that it has made him its vessel. In so doing, it’s shown him much.

The planet we call the Abyss, Henry tells her, was once made up of a vibrant ecosystem, much like Earth’s. But over the millennia a new species evolved, a hive mind, one so strong that it eventually overwhelmed all other life on the planet, killing nearly everything. Only a few species were able to evolve into symbiotic relationships with it, adapting by being pulled into the hive mind. These are the demogorgons, demodogs and demobats… among other things. This biological takeover of the Abyss was so complete that by the end, no life remained except for the hive mind species and its symbiotes… and eventually, all of the members of that species killed each other off—save one, the last of its kind to survive: the Mind Flayer. Its immense psychic powers are biological, are part of how it evolved.

And it’s starving.

It needs to move to another planet, to feed and recombine more life into its hive mind. Decades ago, it was able to locate a small wormhole, something whose chances of existing are so slim that there are no others on Earth or in the Abyss. The wormhole hasn’t been large enough for the Mind Flayer to physically move through, but it could send its smoke—another component of its evolution—all the way through, where it found human minds open enough to its influence to infect. Henry wound up being one of the first… and from him, came the others.

But there’s more.

The Mind Flayer needs a new planet because it’s starving, yes… but also because the Abyss is no longer a viable place to raise a family. It has eggs it needs to lay, and a food-rich environment in which to lay them.

(See how my Less Shitty Version has an actual explanation for the Mind Flayer? It’s better than the practically nothing that the canon gave us, at least.)

These revelations horrify El, and she refuses even more adamantly to help. Henry tells her that she doesn’t have a choice. It’s her destiny, her sole reason for existing, for having been born in the first place. Of course, Henry says, Brenner thought he was making more of his little soldiers, but in truth he was working toward the Mind Flayer’s goal: seeding Earth with enough psychics to widen the wormhole. All thanks to Henry, and the powers within him… powers, that can’t be given to just anyone. Those initial test subjects (the ones who we saw in Owens’ flashbacks just a little while ago) died from the Mind Flayer’s smoke, because they couldn’t handle the connection. Henry was the first one who could—a genetic trait that, Brenner discovered, was too rare to let go. So he used One (Henry) not just as a test subject… but as a catalyst, to make more of—

Henry pauses, sensing something. Then he smiles, and tells El that her friends have closed the gate at Hawkins Lab… only to reopen the one downtown. El wonders aloud why they would do that, and Henry (informed by the Mind Flayer) tells her it’s simple: they plan to come here and kill him and the Mind Flayer.

Cut back to our world. We see Will closing the gate at Hawkins Lab, then reopening the one in downtown Hawkins as the military clears all of the civilians away from Hawkins, including parents and others who stayed in their houses this whole time. The town and the surrounding area is now completely emptied of civilians, so that if the fighting spills back over onto this side, no more innocent people will be hurt.

Downtown Hawkins has been chosen as the site of attack so that the military has room to stage their equipment. We see soldiers mobilizing, under the joint command of Carr and Kay, driving armored transports and tanks through the gate, flying helicopters through as well, and setting up a forward base just on the other side of the gate.

They also transport twenty nuclear warheads through.

Carr, Kay, Owens and Akers give a briefing to hundreds of soldiers consisting of Marines, Seals and Rangers—the best of the best—laying out the battle plan. They’re anticipating heavy resistance from the demos, but the objective is to push through the Upside Down to the location directly underneath the wormhole in the sky (where the Mind Flayer levitated El, the children and Vecna, near Brenner’s house) and fire the warheads up through there, into the Abyss. Before that, a special unit will go into the Abyss to try extract El and the children. This unit will have an hour, and then the warheads will be fired—-even if they’re still on the other side.

This rescue unit will consist of a half dozen of the best black ops personnel available, led by one Lt. Miller (another OC character, part of Carr’s faction). Although they’re civilians, Will and Kali will accompany them, because their psychic abilities might help against the Mind Flayer. Kay noticeably scoffs at this part of the plan, grumbling that it’s a waste of good men, all while putting the entire planet at risk. Carr and Owens ignore her.

Dustin speaks up, pointing out that when the nukes detonate in the Abyss, the explosion will launch through the Upside Down and into our world. If all of their psychics happen to be in the Abyss when that happens, then they won’t have any way to close the Hawkins-Upside Down gate before the blast reaches them. Owens agrees, and points out another piece of equipment as it’s being pulled into downtown: a newer version of the gate-opening machine that the Russians built in season 3.

Owens explains that his team improved on the design, but they could only do enough with it to make it work just one time—which is why they haven’t used it yet, because they were saving it for the worst-case scenario. Also, it can’t open a gate, but it can close one. In theory. They haven’t actually had a gate to test it on yet. The improvement, he points out, is that it won’t explode when they use it, which he considers a damn good upgrade, all things considered. Still, he only wants to use it if the rescue unit fails.

Although the party is made up of civilians, Carr states that due to their unmatched level of experience with the Upside Down and the threats within it, some of them will be going in as well: Nancy, Dustin, Lucas, Max and Steve. Owens makes it clear that he thinks bringing children into this battle is wrong, and that he wishes Hopper was still here (at some point before or after this briefing, Owens gives his condolences to Joyce, telling her that Hopper was kinda an asshole, but still a good man).

Carr overrides Owens’ protests, saying that the party will remain at the forward base in the Upside Down (where it should be safe), in order to provide strategic advice to Carr and the other commanding officers. The other members of the party (Joyce, Jonathan, Robin, Vickie, Karen, Erica and Argyle) will remain in our world, out of the way.

(I’m adding a logic side note here, information that would be revealed by Owens and Carr during the briefing. They’ve recently developed radios that can communicate between Earth and the Upside Down, which everyone will be using to communicate shortly.)

We then get some downtime before the battle begins, in which the characters get their last moments of peace together before everything goes down.

Joyce sits with Will, telling him how scared she is for him to go back in there, especially into a full-out battle… but she trusts him. She knows he can do it, and she’s proud of him for doing what’s right.

Steve sees how Nancy and Jonathan are much more comfortable around each other now. Though unsure if they’re together again or not, he tells Robin that he’s happy for them. They see Vickie nearby, and Steve nudges Robin over there, because they’re sitting at the possible end of the world, so—screw it, right?

Robin, emboldened, takes Vickie aside (where no one can see them), but keeps stumbling over her efforts to resume their conversation from earlier (when, on the radio, they tacitly admitted to each other how they feel). Finally, Robin cuts herself off by echoing Steve (“Screw it”) and just kisses Vickie… who returns it.

Joyce sits by Hopper’s body in the field morgue, mourning him. Karen comes and sits with her, and even though it’s hard for Karen to speak, both women (who barely knew each other before this) comfort each other—both have just recently lost the men they love, and are scared for what’s left of their families. But they provide each other hope. Joyce, glancing over to where Will sits with his friends, says that they have to trust their kids, that they’re way stronger than any of them ever thought.

Steve approaches Jonathan, trying to patch up the problems between them, or to at least come to an understanding. He says that he sees Jonathan and Nancy, and he’s happy for them being back together—really, he is, and he won’t make another move on Nancy. Jonathan tells him that they most definitely aren’t together, but he appreciates the gesture. He lightheartedly reminds Steve that he has no chance with her either, which they both are able to laugh at.

Karen finds Nancy locking and loading, getting ready for the battle. Although Nancy is supposed to be an adviser only, she’s prepared for it to go sideways… because it usually does. She thinks that Karen is about to try talking her out of it, but Karen instead tells Nancy that she’s proud of her for standing up and fighting back, that Karen would go with her if she could. (Karen here having been influenced by her recent conversation with Joyce, about believing in their kids.) She tells Nancy to bring Holly home, and that if she can—to kill the son of a bitch who took Mike and Ted from them.

We also get a brief comedic scene in which Argyle, seeing Kali sitting alone, goes over to her and tries talking to her. She isn’t very receptive, but is at least disarmed when Argyle offers to split a joint with her. Still, she’s too busy watching Dr. Kay in her own operations… and finally, Kali confronts her. Kay is dismissive toward her, calling her a traitor and a disappointment, while Kali rages at Kay for killing her friends, kidnapping her and torturing her into becoming a weapon. Kay says that that’s all Kali is—a weapon. She was bred for it, like cattle, and she’s lucky that Kay doesn’t have her killed, right here and now. Kali repeats the same back to her—but states that once this is all over, there will be a reckoning between them. Kay snorts, and tells Kali not to count on it… which throws Kali into immediate suspicion, as Kay walks off.

Kay summons Akers to her, and asks if their men are in place. Akers confirms this, and that he’ll be leading them himself. Once they get the warheads into position, they’ll neutralize Carr’s men at the site and launch them—but only after the rescue unit containing Kali and Will have entered the Abyss. This way, all of the psychics will be taken out at once. Kay will then lead a unit to secure Owens’ machine, closing it once and for all.

Finally, Will visits Murray’s body. Robin finds him there, and Will tells her that even though he didn’t really like Murray—he didn’t think anybody really did, or that Murray liked them—he still died protecting Will and Joyce. Someone is dead because of him… which Robin denies, but Will’s point isn’t that it’s his fault, but that this makes his life mean even more now… and what’s the point of living that life if it’s a lie? He’s been so scared of the truth about himself for so long, but now he sees that he can’t hide who he is anymore.

So he takes Joyce and Jonathan aside and comes out to them.

A couple of notes on how my LSV handles this, compared to the canon. First, it’s a more intimate setting—he’s coming out to his family, after reaching a place in his own development where he not only won’t hide who he is anymore, but is empowered and confident in that part of himself. Further, I have mixed feelings about his motivations for coming out in the canon. I understand the deeper implications of risking death if he doesn’t become honest with himself, but I think my LSV handles it in a more complex and satisfying way. Regardless, once Will comes out, a teary Jonathan just says, “I know,” and hugs him. Joyce, laughing a little, says she guess she kinda knew, too, and also hugs him.

The Final Battle

And it begins.

The military forces push deeper into the Upside Down, armored ground vehicles with helicopters providing air support speeding through the ruins, toward their targeted launch site. Akers is one of the commanders overseeing the transport of the warheads. One helicopter, containing the elite rescue unit led by Lt. Miller, with Will and Kali, flies toward the sky gate with two escort choppers. In the forward base (just beyond the gate) Dustin, Lucas, Max, Nancy and Steve stand alongside Carr, Owens and Kay, keeping radio contact. But everyone is nervous, because nothing’s happening—no demos, no Vecna. The Upside Down is completely empty.

Cut back to the Creel house, inside of Henry’s head. He informs El that the attack has started… but it doesn’t matter, because he and the Mind Flayer are nearly finished using the children on the wormhole. It’s not quite wide enough yet, not for the Mind Flayer… but something a little smaller could fit through. Just a little smaller than the Mind Flayer, that is.

Back in the Upside Down, shapes start falling from the sky… from the Abyss. Unlike before, though, not all of them land on the ground—many of them peel off and fly after the helicopters, destroying the two rescue escorts. They’re huge, with massive wings, long necks, horns, thick tails: a swarm of dragon-shaped monsters with the same peeled-open faces as all the other Mind Flayer symbiotes.

Demodragons.

They hit the attackers, ripping apart the helicopters and dive-bombing the ground convoys. Chaos ensues, as the units struggle to keep the warheads en route. And from the forward base they watch, as the demodragons start getting a whole lot closer to them…

Carr orders a retreat. But before they can mobilize, a swarm of demogorgons and demodogs comes out of hiding, ambushing the base. More chaos ensues, as the soldiers try to clear a way back to the gate… which is made even more difficult because Max still needs a wheelchair to get around. (She, too, was allowed through due to her experience with the Upside Down—particularly with Vecna’s mind—but only if she stayed in the forward base.) Nancy goes into Rambo mode, kicking ass, while Steve’s doing his best. Kay, however, retreats through the gate—outright abandoning Owens, who takes a gruesome slash across the chest from a demogorgon.

The gate into Hawkins, everyone notices, is now getting wider… breaking through the ground and adjacent buildings, and expanding toward the sky.

Back in Henry’s mind, he gloats over the upcoming victory… then resumes the conversation they’d been having. He states, again, that their psychic abilities come from the Mind Flayer—that it had tried to infuse other humans before Henry with its powers, and thus possess them by entering a hive mind / symbiotic relationship similar to what it has with the demos. Except in this case, the humans would have more agency. They would get to choose to help… or at least, choose to resist before madness took them. But the only human who survived was Henry.

Brenner realized this by the time Henry was a young man—after every other test subject had died from the smoke. This, after years of Henry resisting Brenner’s attempts to turn him into a super-soldier. Brenner hypothesized that something in Henry’s genetics, some exceedingly rare mutation, allowed him to enter symbiosis with the Mind Flayer. So, he did what ranchers do to their cattle: he artificially inseminated women with Henry’s semen, to see if he could pass down his mutation.

And it turns out, Henry says, that he can. To seventeen others.

He killed fifteen of them years ago, back in the Hawkins Lab. One of them had already escaped, she was lucky.

Of the others, though, Henry spared just one. The only one who showed any promise.

El denies this. She can’t believe it, she won’t—but Henry tells her it’s the truth. And El can feel that it is. Her mother was artificially inseminated, and gave birth to her. Henry—Vecna—is Eleven’s biological father.

We cut back and forth between El’s expression of horror as the truth sets in, with the demo army falling upon the party and the soldiers… all hope, seemingly, lost.

Click here for episode 9

Image credits:

• Poster: mikeshouts.com
• Dr. Owens – gamerevolution.com
• Gate-opening machine – ign.com
• Demogorgon – amazon.com
• Dragon – wallpaperaccess.com