S04.E01: Chapter One: The Hellfire Club

[rhiamon]

2 minutes ago, PurpleTentacle said:

10 was one of the kids that were killed. 11 killed them. That was pretty clear. Unless there is a twist where she has a twin sister or something.

Ah yes, just went back to check. Clearly missed more than I thought while multitasking at the beginning!

[Redrum]

9 minutes ago, PurpleTentacle said:

10 was one of the kids that were killed. 11 killed them. That was pretty clear. Unless there is a twist where she has a twin sister or something.

I wonder if they will reference Eight at all. 

[Snow Fairy]

Or El killed what killed other kids?

[Chicago Redshirt]

7 minutes ago, Snow Fairy said:

Or El killed what killed other kids?

I second the notion that El did not kill the kids, guards and scientists, but killed whatever killed them.

For one, Young El (and even grown up El) does not seem like she has the power level to take on basically a dozen of her superpowered siblings, guards and doctors simultaneously. 

But more than that is that we are genre-savvy. There is no way that a show like this would make one of its heroes someone guilty of multiple murder. El has killed, but it has always been in defense. 

I would not be surprised if Young El took out Vecna, and part of the reason he's only returning now is because El has been depowered.

[Darian]

So glad it's back. I watched all three seasons to get ready and it was so good to see everyone again! 

Hooray for Nancy getting into Emerson (my grad school), though with her luck, she'll end up in the notorious haunted Charlsgate dorm (in use at that time). Possible spin-off! 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

1 hour ago, Taryn74 said:

Ooh, I'm intrigued! Do you buy that in book form, or ???

Yes, book form at any regular book retailer (Amazon, B&N, Target, Walmart). It's the third of four official novels there have been so far.

Suspicious Minds - how Eleven's mother got involved in the project

Darkness on the Edge of Town - Hopper's past as a detective in NYC

Runaway Max - Max backstory

Rebel Robin - Robin backstory

Lucas on the Line, from Lucas's perspective after Season 3, will come out in July

Edited May 28, 2022 by Noneofyourbusiness

[PurpleTentacle]

52 minutes ago, Snow Fairy said:

Or El killed what killed other kids?

I thought about the possibility after my last post. Might be. Depending on in which direction they want to fake us out.

[overtherainbow]

4 hours ago, Redrum said:

I thought the teacher agreed with the mean girl because there was really no denying the mean girl was right about the parameters of the assignment. I didn't take it as the teacher siding with Angela, I thought it was more of a 'yeah Jane missed the premise but let's move on, lots of projects to go thru' and while El did mess up, its a not a huge mess up.... if her dad was in the papers then he kind of qualifies, its just not really what the assignment was going for.

I will say El came off a lot more mentally slow than I thought was necessary.

I don't dislike Mike but I think I'm just not romantic enough to buy that he's been that into El. He also doesn't seem all that bright.

I mean, this is the first time El's been in school. She's probably still adjusting.

I'll admit I'm not a fan of how they portrayed the bullying though. It's a common trope in so many films/shows that the bullied victim is this obviously meek, guileless weak person. And while there's some truth to it that bullies pick on people who are obviously weak and different, it doesn't make you want to root for them. Like when she was presenting her project and they were making fun of her, she was smiling along to Angela's remarks. 

[CeeBeeGee]

On 5/27/2022 at 9:14 PM, Racj82 said:

People seem to forget how many kids really don't look like kids. I went to school with a bunch of dudes that looked like grown ass men. Even before their senior year. I look basically the same as I did in high school. I already had a goatee by 16. I'm actually smaller weight wise right now than when I graduated. Yeah, the dude looks on the old side but many high schoolers have that look.

There was a kid in my 8th grade class whom I thought was a teacher, he was so tall and buff and just mature-looking. I was stunned to find out he was in my grade. And he hadn't been held back, either.

On 5/27/2022 at 9:28 PM, QuantumMechanic said:

So Eleven killed most of her “siblings” and most/all of the staff?? Does she remember any of this? Been hiding it all this time or has blanked it out? Well, I suppose it may well be a fakeout.

I would bet anything it's a fantasy sequence or some other kind of fakeout.

On 5/27/2022 at 9:28 PM, BlackberryJam said:

I feel so much more for Max than I do for El. And I think Sadie Sink is KILLING it with the complicated angst. Love Steve and Robin. The dice rolling scene and basketball shot seemed to go on for about 10 minutes longer than it needed to. That was a bad editing decision.

Sadie Sink is doing some fantastic work. Very subtle but still intense. And yes, that sequence went on FOREVER.

22 hours ago, LittleIggy said:

You don’t have to piss off bullies for them to bully you. All you have to do is breathe.

And be weaker than them. That's what makes them bullies--they like flexing their power over those who can't or won't fight back.

Random thoughts:

Did cheerleaders in the '80s do those elaborate tumbling and stunts? None of the schools I attended had cheer routines like that.

Walkmans! *sighs nostalgically* One of the first major purchases I ever made.

Already cannot stand the head Hellfire dude. Although I like that his friends aren't afraid to call him out. He does seem sweet with Chrissy though. I like unlikely friendships.

Close. shave, Robin.

Watching Mason Dye play a high schooler is a little disorientating when the last thing I saw him in was Flowers in the Attic in 2014 (?).

I'm so stoked for Lucas!!!! 

Poor Max, having to essentially parent herself.

Oh my GOD. Poor Chrissy.

[BlackberryJam]

2 minutes ago, CeeBeeGee said:

Sadie Sink is doing some fantastic work. 

Oh my GOD. Poor Chrissy.

I wanted Max and Chrissy to become friends.

[Racj82]

8 minutes ago, CeeBeeGee said:

I would bet anything it's a fantasy sequence or some other kind of fakeout.

I don't understand how the opening scene could be seen as a fantasy sequence? For whom? Fake out? Maybe. We didn't see El do any if that. It was no one's fantasy.

We probably won't truly see what happened there if there is more too it until El comes across the bad guy.

11 minutes ago, CeeBeeGee said:

Sadie Sink is doing some fantastic work. Very subtle but still intense. And yes, that sequence went on FOREVER.

I have yet to a reactor not get sucked in by the buzzer beater sequence so it did its job.

[Emily Thrace]

57 minutes ago, Racj82 said:

I don't understand how the opening scene could be seen as a fantasy sequence? For whom? Fake out? Maybe. We didn't see El do any if that. It was no one's fantasy.

We probably won't truly see what happened there if there is more too it until El comes across the bad guy.

I was wondering if it might be one of Kali's (8) illusions and we are seeing her escape. 

Also does anyone else get a major Tom Cruise vibe from Jason the basketball captain? Something about the glib charm and grand speeches paired with a dark side.

[Kel Varnsen]

So awhile ago my daughter who is actually 11 wanted to get into the show. We watched the first two episodes of season 1 before it freaked her out too much and she wanted to stop. But recently she said she wants to try again once school is out for the summer and she doesn't have to worry about not falling asleep. But after watching this episode (especially the beginning and the end) it will probably be awhile before I let her watch season 4. 

Also that sequence with Max walking through the halls listening to Running Up that Hill, was probably the best uses of music in a scene from a tv show that I have seen in a very long time. It's also kind of an interesting choice since it is a song about someone wanting to make a deal with God to swap places with someone they care about. Does Max wish she had died and Billy had ended up stuck in the crappy trailer?

Edited May 29, 2022 by Kel Varnsen

[Chicago Redshirt]

8 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

I have to say it: That's not how D&D works.

First of all, you never know how much HP a monster has left. That would take away part of the fun. The DM will tell you when a monster is bloodied and maybe once it's close to death, but never numbers. It's even discouraged for players to share their HP, though they inevitably will. I'm also not sure when you'd ever roll a D3, D8 and D10 at the same time.

Second, you don't come with your own character of random level into a new campaign. The least you have to do is adapt your level to the other players. Otherwise it's going to get imbalanced and that's no fun. Not sure why no media gets that right. Just saw the role players from Simon the Sourcerer II a few days ago and everybody in that campaign had different levels for some reason.

AD&D used to be a lot less forgiving than current versions, but I still can't see a scenario where only two players are left standing and they don't frantically try to pour healing potions down the gullets of their unconcious friends. Just going full out against the baddy is not a good strategy here. Unless those friends are dead-dead and the cleric is amoung them, but I don't see how that would have happened to all of them with two still standing.

Also I don't think any DM would allow a huddle. Especially not as strict of a DM as this one was depicted as. It breaks the flow of the game and your characters wouldn't have time for that. A round in D&D is 6 seconds.

Dustin rolled an 11 at the end there. With Bonuses and considering that they must be pretty high level to go against Vecna, I'd expect that to hit, especially since Vecna didn't have his eye or his hand (both immensly powerfull magical artifacts). But of course I don't know his character or how this particular Vecna is stated. So maybe not. Might have just missed.

Still, nice to have D&D shown in a positive light in a mainstream show. It's a bit weird to have it compared to a sports match, because it makes it seem like it's the DM vs. the players, which it's not, or shouldn't be, but it did make for good television.

Edit: For those interested, here is Chris Perkins (senior story designer at Wizards of the Coast) talking about Vecna.

Vecna is also featured in campaign 1 of Critical Role and got a name check in the Legend of Vox Machina (under the name "the whispered one", since they don't use copyrighted names there.)

---

This episode was interesting enough. We'll see how this plays out.

I can't consider myself a D&D expert but I feel like I should point out a couple of things:

The party could have worked out approximately how many hit points Vecna had left by knowing how many points they had inflicted on him to get him to bloodied status (less than half his maximum hit points) or near death, and to know that their only/best shot at winning is a crit-hit before Vecna gets his next round of attacks in. It would be easy to draw that conclusion from seeing how hard it was to hit Vecna previously in the round, etc. If Vecna started with 100 hit points, say, and  they were told that he was bloodied after they inflicted about 50, then they inflicted 35 more, it would follow that he was at most at 15 HP. Granted, it would have made more sense for Dustin to say Vecna has "like 15 hit points" rather than sounding more definite but still...

We don't know what level the other characters were in Eddie's campaign. But there's no reason to think that Erica's 14-level half-elf rogue was so off a level from the rest of the party or that Eddie didn't/couldn't adjust things to accommodate Lady Applejack being new/different. 

Eddie was willing to basically bring aboard anybody from their high school who was willing to replace Lucas. Presumably if they had gotten someone to agree, they would have generated a character for him or her of the appropriate level. 

IIRC, they started with a party of 6 (Erica, Dustin, Mike, plus three unnamed guys.) The fact that the party was down to two suggests to me that they have already run out of all the healing potions the party has on them. Assuming the main characters are still the D&D types that they were when we first met them, Dustin is a bard, so has little to no innate healing ability. Erica's rogue would also presumably have little to no ability to heal others. Will the cleric is already down. 

The general rules for D&D in the 80s were not necessarily the same as they are now in at least some respects. They very well may have been different such that D&D as depicted in the show was more in keeping with what was portrayed (subject to the typical Hollywoodization, such as literally huddling up seems unlikely to happen).

Finally, assuming the rules were constant for our intents and purposes, the fact that most people do not play D&D  in a given way doesn't mean that no one would ever play it that way, Different people are going to dungeonmaster in different ways, based on whose in their campaign, their own personalities, their own knowledge of the rules, etc. I'm sure that the campaign or two I ran as a teen in the 80s I screwed all sorts of things up. 

So I wouldn't be surprised if someone who failed to graduate a small town Indiana high school and a drug dealer was not running his D&D campaign 100 percent in keeping with the rules/standard way to play. 

Edited May 29, 2022 by Chicago Redshirt

[Sarah 103]

On 5/27/2022 at 1:21 PM, tennisgurl said:

"Know who pauses Fast Times at 53 minutes, 5 seconds? People who like boobies." 

Oh Steve, I missed you the most. Steve and Robin continue to be friendship goals, at Family Video or at Scoops Ahoy. 

Last season, I thought Steve was so accepting of Robin because the drugs weren't fully out of his system and was still dealing with some residual effects. This episode made it clear that he is surprising cool for that time and place with Robin being a lesbian and is encouraging her to go for it. He means well, even though as Robin pointed out if she guesses wrong, there are dire consequences. Steve and Robin are fantastic as friends. 

12 hours ago, janie jones said:

Same. But I thought they were supposed to be in the same grade. When she was telling him last season that they had Mrs. Click's class together sophomore year, I had thought they were both sophomores at the time. So I was confused as to why she was going to a pep rally in their first scene.

If I have this right, Robin is a year behind Steve at school. I thought Mrs. Click's class was homeroom, which might have people from different grades in it. My high school didn't have homeroom, so I don't actually know how it works in the real world. 

[PurpleTentacle]

42 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

The party could have worked out approximately how many hit points Vecna had left by knowing how many points they had inflicted on him to get him to bloodied status (less than half his maximum hit points) or near death, and to know that their only/best shot at winning is a crit-hit before Vecna gets his next round of attacks in. It would be easy to draw that conclusion from seeing how hard it was to hit Vecna previously in the round, etc. If Vecna started with 100 hit points, say, and  they were told that he was bloodied after they inflicted about 50, then they inflicted 35 more, it would follow that he was at most at 15 HP. Granted, it would have made more sense for Dustin to say Vecna has "like 15 hit points" rather than sounding more definite but still...

Sure they can get close, but they can't know the absolute number and even getting close requires an amount of metagaming that I wouldn't expect from these character (as in the characters in the show, not in the game within the show).

44 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

We don't know what level the other characters were in Eddie's campaign. But there's no reason to think that Erica's 14-level half-elf rogue was so off a level from the rest of the party or that Eddie didn't/couldn't adjust things to accommodate Lady Applejack being new/different. 

Vecna is usually an enemy you'd give to a party close to level 20. Of course you could homebrew him for lower level, but they were also at the end of a campaign, so level 20 is not unreasonable. But that's not the point here anyway. The point is that the level, somebody has in another campaign, is irrelevant so nobody would ask or brag about it. Why would Eddie ask "what's your class and level?"? That's such a TV-trope. What you'd really ask is something like "How long have you been playing? How many sessions/campaigns, etc.?" and yes, also "what race and class do you play", but not level.

51 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Eddie was willing to basically bring aboard anybody from their high school who was willing to replace Lucas. Presumably if they had gotten someone to agree, they would have generated a character for him or her of the appropriate level. 

Exactly my point.

51 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

IIRC, they started with a party of 6 (Erica, Dustin, Mike, plus three unnamed guys.) The fact that the party was down to two suggests to me that they have already run out of all the healing potions the party has on them. Assuming the main characters are still the D&D types that they were when we first met them, Dustin is a bard, so has little to no innate healing ability. Erica's rogue would also presumably have little to no ability to heal others. Will the cleric is already down. 

Okay, I can accept that it is a possibility, that they ran out of healing potions. I don't think it's super likely from what I've seen in D&D play, but I can't totally exclude the possibility that they are just really bad planners. Point to you.

In 5e Bards have quite a bit of healing magic (healing word, cure wounds, mass cure wounds and even the bard exclusive: power word heal [restores all HP of a single creature]), but in AD&D they were considerably more shitty. Not sure if they had any healing.

56 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

The general rules for D&D in the 80s were not necessarily the same as they are now in at least some respects. They very well may have been different such that D&D as depicted in the show was more in keeping with what was portrayed (subject to the typical Hollywoodization, such as literally huddling up seems unlikely to happen).

They were different but not in a way that would make it consistent. For example you don't just throw a bunch of different dice at the same time. Certainly not exactly three different ones.

At the level they have to be to face Vecna and being at the end of a campaign, they also should have rolled way more damage dice. I didn't feel like being that nitpicky before, but I feel I need to point it out now, since you are trying so hard to explain all the errors away.

57 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

So I wouldn't be surprised if someone who failed to graduate a small town Indiana high school and a drug dealer was not running his D&D campaign 100 percent in keeping with the rules/standard way to play. 

Without all these Nerds, who had been playing D&D for years, losing all respect for him and revolting? Not likely.

And how would he have changed it exactly? There is no way to make this make sense. Or can you tell me how this changed version is supposed to work?

[Chicago Redshirt]

1 hour ago, PurpleTentacle said:

Sure they can get close, but they can't know the absolute number and even getting close requires an amount of metagaming that I wouldn't expect from these character (as in the characters in the show, not in the game within the show).

Vecna is usually an enemy you'd give to a party close to level 20. Of course you could homebrew him for lower level, but they were also at the end of a campaign, so level 20 is not unreasonable. But that's not the point here anyway. The point is that the level, somebody has in another campaign, is irrelevant so nobody would ask or brag about it. Why would Eddie ask "what's your class and level?"? That's such a TV-trope. What you'd really ask is something like "How long have you been playing? How many sessions/campaigns, etc.?" and yes, also "what race and class do you play", but not level.

Exactly my point.

Okay, I can accept that it is a possibility, that they ran out of healing potions. I don't think it's super likely from what I've seen in D&D play, but I can't totally exclude the possibility that they are just really bad planners. Point to you.

In 5e Bards have quite a bit of healing magic (healing word, cure wounds, mass cure wounds and even the bard exclusive: power word heal [restores all HP of a single creature]), but in AD&D they were considerably more shitty. Not sure if they had any healing.

They were different but not in a way that would make it consistent. For example you don't just throw a bunch of different dice at the same time. Certainly not exactly three different ones.

At the level they have to be to face Vecna and being at the end of a campaign, they also should have rolled way more damage dice. I didn't feel like being that nitpicky before, but I feel I need to point it out now, since you are trying so hard to explain all the errors away.

Without all these Nerds, who had been playing D&D for years, losing all respect for him and revolting? Not likely.

And how would he have changed it exactly? There is no way to make this make sense. Or can you tell me how this changed version is supposed to work?

Most of what you raise doesn't really have to do with rules but with custom or your assumptions.

A DM customarily wouldn't tell people exactly how many hit points a monster has. That may be the custom, but there's no rule against it. So Eddie may have chosen to do it. Also, as I said, an approximate estimate of the monster's hit points can be derived. That isn't "metagaming." That is just standard, and Dustin has been established in the series as a pretty smart guy, so estimating that Vecna has 15 points left is within his character.

Eddie asked Erica's level because he prejudged her as an annoying brat who didn't know what she was doing and didn't want to waste his time with someone who was immature and would detract from the game. He had apparently heard some about her from Lucas and the boys since he called her "infamous" so he probably was less inclined to include her over an actual high schooler. That, of course, is assuming that he was seriously interested in finding out her level rather than just insulting her as a level-1 dwarf. 

I don't think the level of a character is irrelevant. It shows the both the player's experience and the how well the character might be able to withstand what they might face. I don't see why it matters that they got to level 14 in another campaign or through this one.

Even assuming 1E bards had the full array of what they have now in 5e, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the scenario was so nasty that Dustin's bard exhausted his healing abilities as well as potions.  And I don't think it's necessarily an issue of them being bad planners. The final battle could have just been that much of a meatgrinder, or Eddie could have just had excellent rolls for the bad guys.

Generally speaking, most dice rolls would be one die at a time. Is it probable that there might be a situation where a player would roll a 20-sider, a 4-sider and a 8-sider at the same time? Probably not, but I can't rule out the possibility that there was such a situation, or that a player decided to shortcut by rolling multiple dice at the same time. (say, the 20-sider is to see if there's a hit, the 8 sider is to see base damage and the 4 sider is to see if a bonus applies.) Yes, the technical way to do that would be to roll the 20 sider alone to see if it hits, then each of the other dice. But could a player decide to shortcut it? Sure. Also, could something that a character do call for rolling a 20-sider, an 8 sider and 4 sider to determine damage? It seems odd to me, but there's nothing that would rule it out. 

As you said, Eddie could have adapted Vecna so that he was manageable at a lower level than 20. We don't know which rolls were rolling for damage dice or exactly what they were rolling for in most cases, other than the last rolls that Dustin and Erica did were to hit. 

Every group of nerds is potentially different. Some are going to be nitpicky. Some are just going to have fun. This group of nerds seemingly idolizes Eddie enough that they are too unwilling to just straight up say "We're going to the basketball game to support Lucas. Let's move Hellfire Club to another night." The fact that Eddie is at least two years older than the rest of the members probably means he has a lock on their respect as well. So I wouldn't be surprised if the other Hellfire Club members either didn't grok if/when Eddie did idiosyncratic things or would not have an issue with it when he does.

Again, it's not mostly a changed version of the rules. It's someone operating different from the conventional way of doing D&D in your mind. As I see it, here are the issues you've raised:

1. A DM isn't going to tell people the monster's hitpoints. Addressed above and in my original response.

2. Putting a new character in an existing campaign, or caring about that character's level,. Nothing stops a DM from doing this, even if it's not normally done. Just because the better way to ask about someone's experience would be to ask about how many campaigns or sessions a player has been doesn't mean that any given DM wouldn't ask the way Eddie did.

3. Having a fight come down to two characters left/not spamming healing potions. Addressed above.

4. Allowing players to huddle to make a decision. In normal sports, part of the purpose of a huddle is that you don't want the opposition to hear your planning, and part of it is a break in the action. In D&D there's no real need for a huddle, because the action isn't continuous and because the DM can't really respond to the player's planning in the same way. All that said, players deciding to huddle is an idiosyncratic thing that the rules don't prevent. You mention that a round in D&D is 6 seconds. I tend to doubt that every DM forces players to act within that amount of real time. Players, at least in my experience, can take as long as they want to talk about what they should do.  Or at least, as far as I know, there's not a D&D equivalent of a shot clock in the official rules.

5. Dustin's 11 roll should have been a hit. We have no basis for guessing what would and wouldn't be a hit against Eddie's version of Vecna by Dustin's character. We don't even know specifically what Dustin was trying to hit him with. 

6. The characters rolled too many types of dice at once. Or they rolled too few damage dice. Again, these are assumptions, and at least somewhat self-contradictory. 

The most incorrect thing about the sequence is when Eddie says that their chances of success are 20-1. Assuming that either Dustin or Erica rolling natural 20 is the only way for the team to win, that's better than 20-1 odds, 

Edited May 29, 2022 by Chicago Redshirt

[bosawks]

12 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

10 was one of the kids that were killed. 11 killed them. That was pretty clear. Unless there is a twist where she has a twin sister or something.

All I remember from season one is that if it involves Matthew Modine things are not what they seem.

Of course I could just be grasping at straws because I don’t want this to be true….

[Haleth]

Watching the opening scene (ugh, the timing 😥), I didn't think that was El.  It didn't look like her to me, but it seems I'm mistaken.  Makes sense though that she seemed to be the only child at the facility in season 1.  Now we know why.

Poor Chrissy.  But the cast is getting too large and unwieldy, and everyone is too spread out.  I guess Eddie will eventually join the rest of the kids in monster hunting?  I don't want him to overshadow Steve.

I loved juxaposing the D&D game with the basketball game.  It was fun to watch both. Yay, Lucas!

5 hours ago, Sarah 103 said:

If I have this right, Robin is a year behind Steve at school. I thought Mrs. Click's class was homeroom, which might have people from different grades in it. My high school didn't have homeroom, so I don't actually know how it works in the real world. 

Homeroom is normally one grade because it's administrative, but elective classes might have kids of different ages in them.  At least that's how in worked in Ye Olden Days of the 70s.

[Taryn74]

12 hours ago, Emily Thrace said:

I was wondering if it might be one of Kali's (8) illusions and we are seeing her escape. 

Ohhh, I like that idea! Honestly I wouldn't put it past Kali at all to actually kill the other kids during her escape (she was a real piece of work) but she definitely could have given Papa the illusion that Eleven had done it, and the flashbacks we are seeing would be Eleven remembering being falsely accused.

4 hours ago, bosawks said:

All I remember from season one is that if it involves Matthew Modine things are not what they seem.

Absolutely. No way do I believe Child!Eleven killed all her peers. That does not fit with anything we've seen from her from the beginning of the show until now.

3 hours ago, Haleth said:

Watching the opening scene, I didn't think that was El.  It didn't look like her to me, but it seems I'm mistaken. 

Ha, I'm just the opposite. I thought it looked so much like El from S1 I thought they had used old footage and was shocked to see it was a different actress playing her for these scenes.

[Clanstarling]

I like the idea of Kali's being the culprit and making the illusions that blamed El. (I thought the actress looked a little different, but brushed it off to not remembering exactly what El looked like in the first season - so I split the difference when it comes to thinking it was Millie).

I think El is starting to remember it and believes she's to blame.  Which is going to make her a real draw for Vecna when she gets close.

[Sarah 103]

Something about this episode that I liked and forgot to mention was the way Lucas is experimenting with his identity. Lucas, Mike, and Dustin are on different paths at the start of the episode/season. The three of them originally wanted to be popular starting high-school, but it seems that Mike and Dustin have accepted who they are, found friends with similar interests, and are okay with that. I get the sense that Mike and Dustin would be totally happy taking over Hellfire Club. They are coming to terms with the fact that they are "freaks," but also okay with that. 

Lucas likes his old friends, but he wants more. He isn't as happy being a "freak" and when he saw a chance to be part of the popular crowd, went for it. I think he also felt a twinge of regret. Yeah he was celebrating with the team at the end of the episode, but it looked like he wished he could have been celebrating with his other friends when he saw how happy they were after D&D. 

[janie jones]

19 hours ago, Emily Thrace said:

I was wondering if it might be one of Kali's (8) illusions and we are seeing her escape.

I didn't like 8 very much, so I hope they don't bring her back.

16 hours ago, Sarah 103 said:

If I have this right, Robin is a year behind Steve at school. I thought Mrs. Click's class was homeroom, which might have people from different grades in it. My high school didn't have homeroom, so I don't actually know how it works in the real world. 

Yeah, I concluded that she's a year behind him. I don't think Mrs. Click's class would have been homeroom, because she tells the girl she has a crush on that Mrs. Click's class was so hard. Unless she was just making that up to cover up her slip. But also, in season 3, she tells Steve that he was always giving stupid answers to questions. Would you have the chance to do that in homeroom? My high school didn't have homeroom, either, so I don't know. I just figure they had an elective together.

[Kel Varnsen]

Also one thing I found weird was that Joyce is living in what looks like a fairly nice house when she is a single mom with three kids and her job is selling encyclopedias over the phone. Unless Hop had a really good life insurance policy, which might not be that much of a stretch, or Paul Reiser and the government paid her off, or that part of California is super cheap it seems weird.

[Taryn74]

52 minutes ago, Kel Varnsen said:

Also one thing I found weird was that Joyce is living in what looks like a fairly nice house when she is a single mom with three kids and her job is selling encyclopedias over the phone. Unless Hop had a really good life insurance policy, which might not be that much of a stretch, or Paul Reiser and the government paid her off, or that part of California is super cheap it seems weird.

I'm pretty sure they received a large settlement from the government to help them relocate.

[Thalia]

I just started 4.1 again, and saw something that may have been thrown in as a hint about whether or not Will is gay.   The poster board he's carrying at the beginning shows that his historical hero is "Alan Turing, Father of Computer Science."  One does not have to be homosexual to respect Turing, a brilliant man whose contributions to science and the Allied effort during WWII are immeasurable.  But Will's choice of hero might have been a nudge from the writers. 

Edited May 30, 2022 by Thalia

[HelloooKitty]

On 5/28/2022 at 6:36 PM, Noneofyourbusiness said:

Yes, book form at any regular book retailer (Amazon, B&N, Target, Walmart). It's the third of four official novels there have been so far.

Suspicious Minds - how Eleven's mother got involved in the project

Darkness on the Edge of Town - Hopper's past as a detective in NYC

Runaway Max - Max backstory

Rebel Robin - Robin backstory

Lucas on the Line, from Lucas's perspective after Season 3, will come out in July

There’s also a rebel Robin podcast. 

[krankydoodle]

10 hours ago, Thalia said:

I just started 4.1 again, and saw something that may have been thrown in as a hint about whether or not Will is gay.

There's also the moment in the classroom where the girl sitting next to Will tries to play footsie and he pulls away. It could just mean that he's not interested in her specifically or that he didn't want to do that in front of other people, but I also thought it was interesting that Will is seen as a socially acceptable romantic prospect despite associating with the class's favorite bullying target.

I remember reading that Amybeth McNulty from Anne with an E was going to be on the show, but I didn't realize until I looked at the episode's cast list that she plays Robin's crush Vickie. And the actress who plays Chrissy is Casper Van Dien's daughter.

[Sarah 103]

18 hours ago, janie jones said:

I didn't like 8 very much, so I hope they don't bring her back.

Yeah, I concluded that she's a year behind him. I don't think Mrs. Click's class would have been homeroom, because she tells the girl she has a crush on that Mrs. Click's class was so hard. Unless she was just making that up to cover up her slip. But also, in season 3, she tells Steve that he was always giving stupid answers to questions. Would you have the chance to do that in homeroom? My high school didn't have homeroom, either, so I don't know. I just figure they had an elective together.

An elective would make sense. It would explain why you have people from different grades/years in a class together. 

3 hours ago, krankydoodle said:

There's also the moment in the classroom where the girl sitting next to Will tries to play footsie and he pulls away. It could just mean that he's not interested in her specifically or that he didn't want to do that in front of other people, but I also thought it was interesting that Will is seen as a socially acceptable romantic prospect despite associating with the class's favorite bullying target.

My guess is that the students are willing to make a distinction between Will and Jane/Eleven, especially since Will hasn't been doing much to help Jane/Eleven. In thier minds, it's "Jane is a total freak and a wierdo, but her brother is okay and kind of cute." 

[Taryn74]

9 minutes ago, Sarah 103 said:

"Jane is a total freak and a wierdo, but her brother is okay and kind of cute." 

"...if only he would do something with his hair."

[methodwriter85]

On 5/27/2022 at 4:01 PM, nomodrama said:

Yeah she seemed to have anorexia or bulimia, the mom/Vecna was saying that it was going to let out her dress so it would fit and then called her a disgusting pig. Those seem like the issues associated with body dysmorphia which leads to eating disorders.  

I personally thought she was pregnant and her mother was altering her clothes because she was expecting her to carry the baby and then marry Jason as soon as they graduated. I also thought it was going to be revealed that Jason was beating the shit out of her because Mason Dye is going off serious "creep behind a pleasant facade" vibes.

Edited May 30, 2022 by methodwriter85

[Taryn74]

1 hour ago, methodwriter85 said:

I personally thought she was pregnant and her mother was altering her clothes because she was expecting her to carry the baby and then marry Jason as soon as they graduated. I also thought it was going to be revealed that Jason was beating the shit out of her because Mason Dye is going off serious "creep behind a pleasant facade" vibes.

I assumed she was pregnant, too, but the anorexia/bulimia idea would make sense for the time period as well. I had forgotten how much bigger of an issue it was back then.

[iwantcookies]

Took me 2 days to watch it. This show gives me nightmares! 
 

All the students look 30 lolz. 
 

I did enjoy the guys in short shorts!

[sadie]

16 hours ago, Taryn74 said:

I assumed she was pregnant, too, but the anorexia/bulimia idea would make sense for the time period as well. I had forgotten how much bigger of an issue it was back then.

I seem to remember a few seasons back that when the alien or whatever, evil creature, got to you that you vomited stuff up? I took it to mean she had been invaded which is why the creature was pursuing her? 

[Aryanna]

On 5/28/2022 at 8:57 PM, CeeBeeGee said:

Watching Mason Dye play a high schooler is a little disorientating when the last thing I saw him in was Flowers in the Attic in 2014 (?).

That's where I know him from. What a wierd movie that was. I remember my mom reading the book when I was little. Whoever wrote it seems to have a incest fetish.

[Capricasix]

On 5/27/2022 at 9:14 PM, Racj82 said:

Ian and Gabrielle were in the 30s. James never looked like a real teenager. Especially next to Katie Holmes and the actress that played his mom joked about finding him hot during press for the first season. None of my points are negated.

I never really care about this anyway. People seem to forget how many kids really don't look like kids. I went to school with a bunch of dudes that looked like grown ass men. Even before their senior year. I look basically the same as I did in high school. I already had a goatee by 16. I'm actually smaller weight wise right now than when I graduated. Yeah, the dude looks on the old side but many high schoolers have that look.

The actor playing Eddie may be in his late 20s, but he’s a carbon copy of dozens of boys in my highschool in the mid-1980s. The hair, the jacket, everything! Although I don’t remember D&D being popular at the time, but that may have been due to two kids being murdered in my town in 1984 and the rumour that their killer was heavily into the game.

[AheadofStraight]

I've always thought this show handled the 80s pretty well but I was in high school in 1986 and so much of the school stuff seemed ridiculous* and took me out of it. No one ever got up onto a cafeteria table and started spouting off at others. The long-haired guitar dudes were NOT the same kids playing D&D.  No way in hell was a kid making a pot leaf in shop class during the "just say no" era. They were doodling it on book covers and bathroom stalls for sure, but no teacher was allowing that. Aside from that we're excited to see where it goes next.

*at least where I grep up in western Massachusetts

[eleanorofaquitaine]

I feel like schools are a lot looser in tv shows and movies than they are in real life (at least in my experience growing up in Central Massachusetts in the 80s). Of course, 1986 was the year that Ferris Bueller's Day Off came out and it's worth noting he had to come up with an elaborate scheme to skip school. Granted, he may have gotten away with it without the elaborate scheme but still.

All of this is to say that yes, the stuff about getting up on tables and the sense of seemingly little rules in school does not reflect my experience, either.

[Ilovepie]

Ok, I've read through all of the comments, but can someone clear this up for me: Jonathan, Nancy and Steve have graduated from high school. Robin is a Junior or Senior, and the kids are freshmen, except Erika who overtly stated she is in 6th grade but I'm convinced is actually a 30 year old woman in a child's body.....

Edited May 31, 2022 by Ilovepie

[Blue Plastic]

29 minutes ago, Ilovepie said:

Ok, I've read through all of the comments, but can someone clear this up for me: Jonathan, Nancy and Steve have graduated from high school. Robin is a Junior or Senior, and the kids are freshmen, except Erika who overtly stated she is in 6th grade but I'm convinced is actually a 30 year old woman in a child's body.....

I think Nancy is still in HS also unless that’s supposed to be a job at a newspaper.  But I think it’s high school.

[Dev F]

44 minutes ago, Blue Plastic said:

I think Nancy is still in HS also unless that’s supposed to be a job at a newspaper.  But I think it’s high school.

Yeah, Nancy and Jonathan are both still in high school. Their jobs at the real newspaper in season 3 was a summer internship before their senior year.

[Clanstarling]

2 hours ago, AheadofStraight said:

I've always thought this show handled the 80s pretty well but I was in high school in 1986 and so much of the school stuff seemed ridiculous* and took me out of it. No one ever got up onto a cafeteria table and started spouting off at others. The long-haired guitar dudes were NOT the same kids playing D&D.  No way in hell was a kid making a pot leaf in shop class during the "just say no" era. They were doodling it on book covers and bathroom stalls for sure, but no teacher was allowing that. Aside from that we're excited to see where it goes next.

*at least where I grep up in western Massachusetts

What teachers will allow and what kids do aren't always the same thing. I had an art teacher (in the 70's) who forbade us from using the peace sign in our art - she had her reasons, vandals had sprayed it on her house. But it charged me up. (Art should not be censored! said idealistic young me). So I led a low scale revolution in class and got everyone to put the peace symbol in our next project, even the really good girl (who drew a tiny one) The teacher punished me by making me her assistant. Trust me, that was a punishment. LOL.

[AheadofStraight]

1 hour ago, Clanstarling said:

What teachers will allow and what kids do aren't always the same thing. I had an art teacher (in the 70's) who forbade us from using the peace sign in our art - she had her reasons, vandals had sprayed it on her house. But it charged me up. (Art should not be censored! said idealistic young me). So I led a low scale revolution in class and got everyone to put the peace symbol in our next project, even the really good girl (who drew a tiny one) The teacher punished me by making me her assistant. Trust me, that was a punishment. LOL.

Fair point! LOL - I love your revolution but sorry about those consequences! 

[Sarah 103]

4 hours ago, Ilovepie said:

Ok, I've read through all of the comments, but can someone clear this up for me: Jonathan, Nancy and Steve have graduated from high school. Robin is a Junior or Senior, and the kids are freshmen, except Erika who overtly stated she is in 6th grade but I'm convinced is actually a 30 year old woman in a child's body.....

Steve has graduated from high school. Nancy and Jonathan are seniors and I'm pretty sure Robin is a senior as well, but I may be wrong about Robin. 

[Kel Varnsen]

On 5/31/2022 at 1:59 PM, AheadofStraight said:

The long-haired guitar dudes were NOT the same kids playing D&D.

I was only like 8 in 1986, but at the same time isn't Eddie like 19 or possibly 20. So he is probably almost certainly a Led Zeppelin fan. And Zeppelin had a bunch of songs that referenced Lord of the Rings so it might not be too much of stretch that he would be into a game that is kind of similar.

[Anela]

On 5/27/2022 at 11:27 PM, BlackberryJam said:

Eddie is a take on Eddie Van Halen with the hair just as Billy was Billy from St. Elmo’s Fire. Seeing someone die is traumatic, even if you hated that person. 

eddie reminded me a bit of Pauly Shore.  

On 5/28/2022 at 2:22 AM, Josh371982 said:

I actually liked Chrissy from what was shown, I was hoping she would last and I remember the actress from Greenhouse Academy another Netflix show. I was wondering if the show was doing a take on Nightmare on Elm Street with Robert Englund being in the show in this season, in the Sequence leading to the apparent death of Chrissy. Also seeing some similarities to Carrie with El being bullied by that Awful Angela 

I immediately thought of Nightmare on Elm Street. I can see Carrie in it, too,

I waited to watch this, after seeing a warning on Twitter, on Friday.  I had intended to do a re-watch of the whole series, and made the mistake of starting, during the late night, after what happened a week ago. I turned it off again, not wanting to see little children in danger.  I started it up again on Friday, and just let it run.  

[KarenX]

On 5/31/2022 at 11:50 AM, Ilovepie said:

Ok, I've read through all of the comments, but can someone clear this up for me: Jonathan, Nancy and Steve have graduated from high school. Robin is a Junior or Senior, and the kids are freshmen, except Erika who overtly stated she is in 6th grade but I'm convinced is actually a 30 year old woman in a child's body.....

And then she grows and marries…. Frozone!

[Clanstarling]

14 hours ago, Anela said:

I immediately thought of Nightmare on Elm Street. I can see Carrie in it, too,

So can Stephen King, apparently. 😉

[Ilovepie]

12 hours ago, KarenX said:

And then she grows and marries…. Frozone!

"I am the greatest good you are ever gonna get!"

[Taryn74]

23 minutes ago, Ilovepie said:

"I am the greatest good you are ever gonna get!"

"Where is my super suit?!"