S04.E06: Chapter Six: The Dive

[Redrum]

Well. the scenes with the lab kids bullying El were supposed to have taken place in 1979, before El escaped.

It wasn't a fresh group of lab kids in 1986. The lab scenes were all from El's memory. So she wasn't a fresh candidate with powers plunked into the group. 

Edited June 28, 2022 by Redrum

[QuantumMechanic]

1 hour ago, nodorothyparker said:

Those scenes don't really make any sense without more to go on. What have all these other lab rat kids been told about Eleven who just showed up? Anything at all? Do they know she recently came back from the outside or what that even means? Do they know she was Brenner's special star pet? Have all or most of them lived in the super secret underground lab all their lives and have a pecking order based on that? Is it just about who makes "Papa" the happiest?

Those scenes are ALL from 1979.  It's all flashbacks.  That's the point of Project Nina -- to make El flash back to overcome her memory block so she can remember how to access her powers.  Note the dates on the videotapes Brenner picks out and plays to El during the sessions.

For some reason (probably because they paid MBB lots of $ :) ) they decided to have El envision her current self (sometimes, but not always!) during the flashbacks.

[Cranberry]

I think it would have been cost prohibitive (and probably look a little "off") if they did the face-swapping/de-aging on the child actress for all of those scenes. I agree it was somewhat confusing at first, but they showed current Eleven seeing herself as younger Eleven in the mirror a few times (and made sure to show us dates on the tapes) to drive home that current El was reliving her old memories.

Also, I know they "needed" to shave Current Eleven's head for the electrodes, but they should have kept her hair long in the present, which would have made it easier for people to differentiate the timelines.

[nodorothyparker]

Wow. I completely missed that. I honestly thought from the previous episode or so that Brenner was mind fucking Eleven to the point that SHE couldn't tell if it was 1979 or 1986. If we were supposed to see everything that was happening as part of the first time line, they really needed to suck it up and let the younger actress play the character.

[Taryn74]

9 minutes ago, nodorothyparker said:

If we were supposed to see everything that was happening as part of the first time line, they really needed to suck it up and let the younger actress play the character.

Totally agree, as I've argued in these threads a few times now LOL. They really dropped the ball on those scenes. Too many people have been completely confused, thinking it was taking place in the present day and not just memories/flashbacks.

[Cranberry]

I kinda see why they didn't, though. With most shows, it's easy to cast a child actor that looks enough like the character that we can all accept it. In this case, Millie was the child actor in season one, and if whoever they pick doesn't look exactly like her, people are still going to be confused... hence the de-aged face-swapping. They probably should have shelled out for a few more mirror shots or made it more explicit in the dialogue that current El would feel like she had gone back in time while in the tank.

[Clanstarling]

2 hours ago, Cranberry said:

I kinda see why they didn't, though. With most shows, it's easy to cast a child actor that looks enough like the character that we can all accept it. In this case, Millie was the child actor in season one, and if whoever they pick doesn't look exactly like her, people are still going to be confused... hence the de-aged face-swapping. They probably should have shelled out for a few more mirror shots or made it more explicit in the dialogue that current El would feel like she had gone back in time while in the tank.

I like the making it explicit in the dialog idea. I was a little confused some of the time, but I think (at least for me) it ultimately worked well.

5 hours ago, Cranberry said:

Also, I know they "needed" to shave Current Eleven's head for the electrodes, but they should have kept her hair long in the present, which would have made it easier for people to differentiate the timelines.

Except for the tank scenes, I don't think they needed to shave her head. We see her watching herself - is the El we see projecting her own image in her mind, or is it solely for us.

If seeing El at her current age is for the audience, a little differentiation would have been nice.

If it's what El is seeing  - her internal vision of what she looks like might not be the buzz cut, hospital gowned girl. Then again, it might be exactly that. Maybe that's the conclusion they came to - she was captured and back where she started from, so her self-image is of that little prisoner.

[TexasGal]

Why the low rent no vocals remake of Girls on Film at the beginning of the episode (in the car) when we have so many other 80’s songs?  Duran Duran license too high and now they are kicking themselves?

[Nashville]

On 6/28/2022 at 5:35 PM, Clanstarling said:

Except for the tank scenes, I don't think they needed to shave her head. We see her watching herself - is the El we see projecting her own image in her mind, or is it solely for us.

If seeing El at her current age is for the audience, a little differentiation would have been nice.

If it's what El is seeing  - her internal vision of what she looks like might not be the buzz cut, hospital gowned girl. Then again, it might be exactly that. Maybe that's the conclusion they came to - she was captured and back where she started from, so her self-image is of that little prisoner.

It wasn’t simply a self-image projection; El’s hair was definitely buzzed.  IMHO this was a mindfuck perpetrated on El by Brenner when El had been rendered unconscious by the guards - a control gambit for Brenner to demonstrate  dominance over El while simultaneously trying to reestablish in El the mental state of childlike submission which had been (from Brenner’s POV) the defining characteristic of their relationship in El’s earlier, more malleable years.

[LilJen]

On 5/28/2022 at 11:31 PM, peridot said:

Having the gate be underwater is pretty cool.  

On 5/29/2022 at 1:22 AM, PurpleTentacle said:

If the theory is that vecna leaves portals where he attacks, it probably would have been a better idea to get back to the trailer park and see if the compass freaks out there, too. I mean who wants to go through such a portal in the water? That's just begging for trouble and it negates the fire-weakness of the monsters.

Underwater gate was purely a reason for shirtless Steve.

On 5/29/2022 at 7:12 PM, DoctorAtomic said:

Ozzy was on that list too for sure. 

I remember hearing how he bit the heads off bats and was a Satanist.

On 6/28/2022 at 9:21 AM, Redrum said:

Well. the scenes with the lab kids bullying El were supposed to have taken place in 1979, before El escaped.

It wasn't a fresh group of lab kids in 1986. The lab scenes were all from El's memory. So she wasn't a fresh candidate with powers plunked into the group. 

“Papa” is a sadomasochist. He encouraged the kids to hurt each other. What the hell did he think he was going to accomplish?

[PurpleTentacle]

37 minutes ago, LilJen said:

Underwater gate was purely a reason for shirtless Steve.

And I very much appreciate shirtless Steve, but still...

[CCTC]

Since I am so far behind, will not do a long rambling comment after every episode, but do have to comment about Susie's computer.

It would not have been that uncommon to have something like an Apple2E which would basically be used as a Word Processor and calculator, possibly Oregon Trail.  Hardly anyone would have had a network connection at home, and certainly not one that worked that quickly.  I suppose it would have cut the drama to have them wait five minutes for things to connect etc...  Although the early internet that was more DOS like was faster than the early browsers such as Netscape.  I think the graphics used to slow things down, so maybe it could have been that fast.

I might be a little heartless, but I am tired of seeing El bullied and looking teary eyed with flashes of building anger.  At some point it does not make you care for the character, but just want to fast forward the scenes.

[Clanstarling]

29 minutes ago, CCTC said:

Since I am so far behind, will not do a long rambling comment after every episode, but do have to comment about Susie's computer.

It would not have been that uncommon to have something like an Apple2E which would basically be used as a Word Processor and calculator, possibly Oregon Trail.  Hardly anyone would have had a network connection at home, and certainly not one that worked that quickly.  I suppose it would have cut the drama to have them wait five minutes for things to connect etc...  Although the early internet that was more DOS like was faster than the early browsers such as Netscape.  I think the graphics used to slow things down, so maybe it could have been that fast.

I might be a little heartless, but I am tired of seeing El bullied and looking teary eyed with flashes of building anger.  At some point it does not make you care for the character, but just want to fast forward the scenes.

I had a home computer at that point, and was learning to program. I did not have a network connection, but I'll hand wave the computer because Susie's supposed to be a genius, and went to science camp or whatever that was with Dustin. The connection speed, valid. But as we say often in our house "eez fantasy show"

[Nashville]

7 hours ago, CCTC said:

Since I am so far behind, will not do a long rambling comment after every episode, but do have to comment about Susie's computer.

It would not have been that uncommon to have something like an Apple2E which would basically be used as a Word Processor and calculator, possibly Oregon Trail.  Hardly anyone would have had a network connection at home, and certainly not one that worked that quickly.  I suppose it would have cut the drama to have them wait five minutes for things to connect etc...  Although the early internet that was more DOS like was faster than the early browsers such as Netscape.  I think the graphics used to slow things down, so maybe it could have been that fast.

As early as 1983…

1. I had at home an Apple //e with a dialup modem - state-of-the-art Hayes Micromodem II, 300 baud.  😄
2. Home computing at the time was pretty much just Apples, Commodores, and TRS-80s - and the occasional Osborne or Kaypro, which (along with the Apple //c) were the progenitors of laptops.
3. I had dialup access to the university I was attending, my employer at the time ( I rigged up that access at the employer myself), and Compuserve - one of the few online service providers at the time, and kind of a precursor to the dialup ISPs of the Internet Age.  You weren’t dialing into a global network, though; just the provider’s own servers.
4. Hypertext Transmission Protocol (HTTP) and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) didn’t exist yet, and wouldn’t until the early 1990s - so there was no “surfing the internet” as we think of it today.
5. Online graphics content was deliberately minimized in most cases, as bitmapped graphic images took FOREVER to transfer over dialup.

Edited July 14, 2022 by Nashville
Typo

[truthaboutluv]

Quote

 I agree but....

I actually wouldn't mind if they broke the trope of the jock getting his comeuppance. First, I don't like his bullying the Hellfire nerds but he's not entirely wrong here. His girlfriend was savagely murdered and he thinks the kids in the Hellfire Club are helping the guy who he believes killed her and you know what? SOME OF THEM ARE! He's NOT WRONG that some of the Hellfire kids are hiding Eddie from the police. Frankly a whole lot of this mess would be less convoluted if Eddie had been locked up during the harvesting of Fred and Black Jock Kid Who's Name I Don't Remember. 

Second, he's not wrong that Lucas betrayed him and the team by lying about being in the Hellfire Club and protecting and warning Dustin and the others. I know, I know, Lucas is one of the good guys and so is Dustin but again, motivational jock doesn't know all the Upside Down nonsense involved, what he knows is someone he trusted lied to his face. 

Okay, full disclosure, I found the scene of the Jason riling the town up with his Satanic Panic crap so annoying, that it halted my viewing of the season for like a month. Seriously, no kidding. I was happily bingeing the season, even if I didn't care for the Russia plotline and the Jocks from jump.

However that scene irritated me so much that it killed my entire enjoyment of the season and had me not interested in finishing the season for weeks. Thankfully I'm back to complete it and so I no longer have to keep avoiding spoilers like the plague on social media. 

I say all this only to acknowledge that I may not have the most unbiased view of Chief Jock in Charge - aka Jason. But biased or not, I call bullshit on understanding where the little shit stain is coming from. The fact of the matter is even if one can say, "well obviously he doesn't know a crazy, inhuman monster is killing people and so yeah, understandable he thinks Eddie murdered his girlfriend," the immediate shift to vigilante justice on his and his cronies' part was problematic to begin with. It showed an immediate propensity for rage and violent behavior.

And then he immediately became single-minded and vicious in this desire for vengeance, to the point of being out of line, IMO, with a barely 12 year old girl or however old Lucas' sister is. Just the suspicion of Dustin maybe being friends with Eddie, no proof of this, was enough to have him and his idiot friends ready to inflict violence on Dustin too. Like the violence they inflicted on Eddie's friends who were just minding their business playing their instruments. 

The irony is that the evil, cultist leader that Jason is declaring Eddie to be is actually exactly who HE is. That the dude can rile up an entire town with some speech, the way his basketball buddies just blindly follow his every destructive idea - yeah those are the traits of a cult leader. Not to mention the curious obsession with quoting scripture in his little speeches. Yeah we know how cult leaders loved using religion as their way to control followers. 

But again, even after all this we still say, "well even the police believe Eddie murdered Christy, since he was last seen with her and took off and left her dead body in his trailer home..." the bottom line is Jason did not see Eddie do a damn thing to his basketball player friend. Eddie was swimming and furiously paddling away trying to get away from Jason's crazy, violent ass when Jason's friend flew up in the air and died. So the notion that it's understandable he'd still think Eddie could be doing this through some type of magical, evil powers is bullshit. Because it's not like Eddie stood there waving a wand, started chanting some weird shit, or looking possessed.

No, he was a terrified guy trying to get away from Jason and his cronies. Which is another thing that makes no sense to this defense of Jason's stupid vigilante nonsense that's just sucking the air out of the season, IMO. If Eddie is OH SO POWERFUL with his merry band of fellow cultists, why in the hell would he have been running away from Jason and his friends. No, he'd have just stood there and apparently murdered them with his evil eyes as Jason seems to think he's capable of doing. 

And I agree with those who say that Eddie turning himself would not have mattered because as we see, Jason's convinced and convincing the equally idiotic townspeople that Eddie is some big, bad powerful, evil devil that has a whole cult of followers to do his bidding. He'd have just said Eddie controlled things from the jail cell. 

So yeah, I can't be reasonable and "see things from the character's perspective." And look, it's not necessarily that I want him dead. I just want him and his nameless, pointless band of cronies to go the fuck away and stop sucking up unnecessary screen time. That's all. 

Quote

Ummm, Nancy and Jonathan are the ones who have no chemistry? At least not anymore? LOL. That's all I've got right now.

Unpopular opinion but I never thought Jonathan and Nancy had chemistry. As someone noted in another of the episode threads, Jonathan was actually creepy asf in the first season with the stalking around, creepily taking pictures of people without their knowing. He was giving classic "nice guy" where supposedly he should "get the girl" because he's not the popular jock but in actuality, he was a big 'ol weirdo himself. And I absolutely HATED the scene when they slept together, especially with the Murray propping that led to it. So yeah, Team No One here.

I don't want another rehash of that tired triangle, since frankly I don't think Nancy's that special and so that's why I don't want a Nancy/Steve redux because it'll just be reviving the triangle. Since obviously she and Jonathan are still technically together. But I can't say I care one lick about Nancy and Jonathan together, not together, on a break, whatever... It's all a giant meh. 

Quote

Then that's all taken away. I can't remember why Joyce decided to move the family but I thought it was a mistake even back then. 

I may be wrong, but based on Dr. Owens' comment to Eleven after tracking her down when they were bringing her to juvie, I assumed it was in part for Eleven's in particular and the family's overall safety. 

Quote

Totally agree, as I've argued in these threads a few times now LOL. They really dropped the ball on those scenes. Too many people have been completely confused, thinking it was taking place in the present day and not just memories/flashbacks.

Huh, it never occurred to me that some viewers were finding those scenes confusing. The tell to me, so why I didn't think it needed to be verbalized all the time, is Eleven going in the water with the electrodes on her head. That to me is the indication that they are essentially accessing her memories.

Because more than once, while she's in those simulated scenes, the focus does shift back to her in the water, where you see her physically reacting to something intense happening in the memory. 

Speaking of the memories, as awful as the scene of Eleven being bullied was, it also made me eyeroll the chief bully guy. Dude was going on about Eleven being weak and pathetic because he's so mad that the little kid beat his ass. And to prove how much of a fluke it was and he's really the baddest of them all, he attacks her...with FOUR other cronies helping him. Oooh, such a badass. 

Edited July 29, 2022 by truthaboutluv

[bijoux]

Jason riling the town up was one of the scarier scenes of the season. It also made me go, 'Oh, that's their future mayor. Or a circuit preacher.'

[Clanstarling]

On 7/28/2022 at 11:40 PM, truthaboutluv said:

Okay, full disclosure, I found the scene of the Jason riling the town up with his Satanic Panic crap so annoying, that it halted my viewing of the season for like a month. Seriously, no kidding. I was happily bingeing the season, even if I didn't care for the Russia plotline and the Jocks from jump.

However that scene irritated me so much that it killed my entire enjoyment of the season and had me not interested in finishing the season for weeks. Thankfully I'm back to complete it and so I no longer have to keep avoiding spoilers like the plague on social media. 

I say all this only to acknowledge that I may not have the most unbiased view of Chief Jock in Charge - aka Jason. But biased or not, I call bullshit on understanding where the little shit stain is coming from. The fact of the matter is even if one can say, "well obviously he doesn't know a crazy, inhuman monster is killing people and so yeah, understandable he thinks Eddie murdered his girlfriend," the immediate shift to vigilante justice on his and his cronies' part was problematic to begin with. It showed an immediate propensity for rage and violent behavior.

And then he immediately became single-minded and vicious in this desire for vengeance, to the point of being out of line, IMO, with a barely 12 year old girl or however old Lucas' sister is. Just the suspicion of Dustin maybe being friends with Eddie, no proof of this, was enough to have him and his idiot friends ready to inflict violence on Dustin too. Like the violence they inflicted on Eddie's friends who were just minding their business playing their instruments. 

The irony is that the evil, cultist leader that Jason is declaring Eddie to be is actually exactly who HE is. That the dude can rile up an entire town with some speech, the way his basketball buddies just blindly follow his every destructive idea - yeah those are the traits of a cult leader. Not to mention the curious obsession with quoting scripture in his little speeches. Yeah we know how cult leaders loved using religion as their way to control followers. 

But again, even after all this we still say, "well even the police believe Eddie murdered Christy, since he was last seen with her and took off and left her dead body in his trailer home..." the bottom line is Jason did not see Eddie do a damn thing to his basketball player friend. Eddie was swimming and furiously paddling away trying to get away from Jason's crazy, violent ass when Jason's friend flew up in the air and died. So the notion that it's understandable he'd still think Eddie could be doing this through some type of magical, evil powers is bullshit. Because it's not like Eddie stood there waving a wand, started chanting some weird shit, or looking possessed.

No, he was a terrified guy trying to get away from Jason and his cronies. Which is another thing that makes no sense to this defense of Jason's stupid vigilante nonsense that's just sucking the air out of the season, IMO. If Eddie is OH SO POWERFUL with his merry band of fellow cultists, why in the hell would he have been running away from Jason and his friends. No, he'd have just stood there and apparently murdered them with his evil eyes as Jason seems to think he's capable of doing. 

And I agree with those who say that Eddie turning himself would not have mattered because as we see, Jason's convinced and convincing the equally idiotic townspeople that Eddie is some big, bad powerful, evil devil that has a whole cult of followers to do his bidding. He'd have just said Eddie controlled things from the jail cell. 

So yeah, I can't be reasonable and "see things from the character's perspective." And look, it's not necessarily that I want him dead. I just want him and his nameless, pointless band of cronies to go the fuck away and stop sucking up unnecessary screen time. That's all. 

Unpopular opinion but I never thought Jonathan and Nancy had chemistry. As someone noted in another of the episode threads, Jonathan was actually creepy asf in the first season with the stalking around, creepily taking pictures of people without their knowing. He was giving classic "nice guy" where supposedly he should "get the girl" because he's not the popular jock but in actuality, he was a big 'ol weirdo himself. And I absolutely HATED the scene when they slept together, especially with the Murray propping that led to it. So yeah, Team No One here.

I don't want another rehash of that tired triangle, since frankly I don't think Nancy's that special and so that's why I don't want a Nancy/Steve redux because it'll just be reviving the triangle. Since obviously she and Jonathan are still technically together. But I can't say I care one lick about Nancy and Jonathan together, not together, on a break, whatever... It's all a giant meh. 

I may be wrong, but based on Dr. Owens' comment to Eleven after tracking her down when they were bringing her to juvie, I assumed it was in part for Eleven's in particular and the family's overall safety. 

Huh, it never occurred to me that some viewers were finding those scenes confusing. The tell to me, so why I didn't think it needed to be verbalized all the time, is Eleven going in the water with the electrodes on her head. That to me is the indication that they are essentially accessing her memories.

Because more than once, while she's in those simulated scenes, the focus does shift back to her in the water, where you see her physically reacting to something intense happening in the memory. 

Speaking of the memories, as awful as the scene of Eleven being bullied was, it also made me eyeroll the chief bully guy. Dude was going on about Eleven being weak and pathetic because he's so mad that the little kid beat his ass. And to prove how much of a fluke it was and he's really the baddest of them all, he attacks her...with FOUR other cronies helping him. Oooh, such a badass. 

I hated the Jason plot line - it didn't stop my viewing, but I found it ridiculously over the top and it took me out of the show every time it happened. And it didn't really pay off, imo. I understand the reason Jason and the basketball players were part of the plot, but I think the plot needs could have been served in a different way. I disliked it for all the reasons you stated, and frankly

Spoiler

Jason's blink and you miss it death scene was fine by me.

Edited July 30, 2022 by Athena
added spoiler tag

[bijoux]

On 5/29/2022 at 5:31 AM, peridot said:

The bullies from the lab were psychotic.  Wasn't Eleven around 9 at that time?

Scarily enough, even younger, 7 or 8 going by her supposed age in season 1.

Brenner just comes off as more evil every time he shows up. Not only is he abducting and then manipulating children, creating an atmosphere aching to Lord of the Flies, his "reward" for beating their peers is an extra hour in the rainbow room? That room sucked ass. Even before the recreation of the Rink-o-mania bullying circle and mass murders.

On 5/30/2022 at 8:06 PM, Sarah 103 said:

I can see where Steve is coming from. It it is the 1980s, chest hair was a big thing in that era.  

It's working for me in 2022.

And I can definitely see Dustin and Lucas regularly checking if their chest hair is coming in after witnessing Max checking Steve out. Dustin already sees him as a big brother and Lucas is clearly the star pupil of Steve Harrington's How to be the World's Best Ex-Boyfriend class. Really he's so terrific with Max, I love the kid.

On 6/5/2022 at 7:06 PM, shrewd.buddha said:

The writers have regressed Eleven back to her season one persona.  It is as if she is a bully magnet because of her low self-confidence, sad-sack attitude and social awkwardness.  
And they are laying it on thick.  The bullying is over-the-top.
The writers have even made Eleven the odd duck amongst the other laboratory-raised children, even those younger than her.
It is a bit much...  (feels like lazy writing to me)

The younger kids are just trying not to associate with her so as not to draw the attention of the bigger bullies IMO. There were some poor frightened flinching children seated on the floor. 

On 6/17/2022 at 9:47 PM, Dev F said:

Like, how much more interesting would El's lab flashbacks have been if all the kids were shown to have unique powers, instead of every scene being some variation on a telekinesis battle? Why did the Byerses need to be presented as such friendless sadsacks in California when you could just as easily create a rift between them and their Hawkins friends/love interests by giving them a vibrant group of new friends?

Particularly since it's already been established that Eight had a completely different skill set.

I loved all these very different parents converging on their worry about their kids. Dustin's mom was especially effective and it makes sense that the single mom is the most worried. There's no one for her to lean on and share her troubles with. Or even just snap at as Karen does at Ted.

[Kel Varnsen]

When did Hopper fight a Demogorgon? I have been rewatching the whole series with my daughter and during the feast in the prison he says he fought one, but I can't remember when. In season 1 he was in the upside down with Joyce trying to find Will when the DG faced El at the school. In season 2 he fought Demodogs, but in Russia he specifically mentions a 9 foot Demogorgon. In season 3 there were no Demogorgons, and his plotline was more to do with the Russians than the upside down stuff. And then he was in prison. So unless he fought one off camera when he jumped through the gate when did it happen?

Edited December 7, 2022 by Kel Varnsen

[Clanstarling]

16 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

When did Hopper fight a Demogorgon? I have been rewatching the whole series with my daughter and during the feast in the prison he says he fought one, but I can't remember when. In season 1 he was in the upside down with Joyce trying to find Will when the DG faced El at the school. In season 2 he fought Demodogs, but in Russia he specifically mentions a 9 foot Demogorgon. In season 3 there were no Demogorgons, and his plotline was more to do with the Russians than the upside down stuff. And then he was in prison. So unless he fought one off camera when he jumped through the gate when did it happen?

I think it was the one he fought off in the Russian prison camp - just before he was rescued.

[Kel Varnsen]

2 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

I think it was the one he fought off in the Russian prison camp - just before he was rescued.

But in this episode (The Dive) before any rescue occurs or before they see any Russian Demogorgon, he tells the other prisoners that he fought one in the past. But I can't remember any time where he actually did.

[Clanstarling]

21 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

But in this episode (The Dive) before any rescue occurs or before they see any Russian Demogorgon, he tells the other prisoners that he fought one in the past. But I can't remember any time where he actually did.

Hmm... I could swear he did, but I really don't remember when. 

[Taryn74]

On 12/6/2022 at 6:25 PM, Kel Varnsen said:

When did Hopper fight a Demogorgon? I have been rewatching the whole series with my daughter and during the feast in the prison he says he fought one, but I can't remember when. In season 1 he was in the upside down with Joyce trying to find Will when the DG faced El at the school. In season 2 he fought Demodogs, but in Russia he specifically mentions a 9 foot Demogorgon. In season 3 there were no Demogorgons, and his plotline was more to do with the Russians than the upside down stuff. And then he was in prison. So unless he fought one off camera when he jumped through the gate when did it happen?

I think he was just speaking broadly about knowing what kind of creature the Demogorgon was and how to fight it. He may have used the terminology "I have fought one of these" but that's easier than going into how he's personally fought mini versions while his adopted daughter and her boyfriend and friends have literally fought the big one LOL.

[smartymarty]

On 7/29/2022 at 12:49 AM, bijoux said:

Jason riling the town up was one of the scarier scenes of the season. It also made me go, 'Oh, that's their future mayor. Or a circuit preacher.'

Future Brett Kavanaugh? 

I understood El was having flashbacks. When of the scenes in the water tank had her looking up at screens where videos of her prior time where showing.

[dannymoon]

Rewatched this ep last night. Why did Karen Wheeler and other parents run back to her house looking for the kids? Mike is in CA as far as she knows. Or did she assume Dustin and others would be there since it’s the usual hang out?

[Taryn74]

On 10/8/2023 at 9:39 AM, dannymoon said:

Rewatched this ep last night. Why did Karen Wheeler and other parents run back to her house looking for the kids? Mike is in CA as far as she knows. Or did she assume Dustin and others would be there since it’s the usual hang out?

This. She even commented in an earlier episode (the one where Dustin was eating up all the Wheeler's food, LOL) that she thought it was sweet that they were all sticking together and looking out for each other with everything that was going on.