Stranger Things season 4, episode 8

2022 - 7 - 1

stranger things season 4 episode 9

Post cover — Image courtesy of "Vulture"

Stranger Things Midseason-Premiere Recap: Father-Daughter Dance (Vulture)

After the big Vecna/Henry/One reveal, the crew puts their various plans into motion. A recap of “Papa,” episode eight of season four of Netflix's 'Stranger ...

She kneels at his side, and in the greatest power move, when he begs her to tell him that she understands he did everything he did because he loved her, she refuses to give him that last win. They escape the prison through sewage pipes and arrive at Yuri’s stash house only to learn that he only has a helicopter to get them home. Their beeping distracts the military guys in the helicopter long enough for Eleven to get her bearings, and I know I’ve already said it, but it deserves to be repeated: She summons all of her strength and she brings that helicopter down in one giant, flaming crash. She realizes that Brenner was pushing her to her breaking point and forcing her to explore that dark void under false pretenses of tracking the Soviets because he was obsessed with finding One in the Upside Down. His anger led to Eleven opening that first gate in 1983. Dampening the power of his best weapon like a real idiot, Brenner is left to carry Eleven out of the bunker to safety. And when Owens and Brenner give her the full rundown of what has been happening — and is about to happen — in Hawkins at the (creepy, long) hands of Vecna, she uses her other power to check in on her friends in that dark void of hers. It’s quite the opposite: If Eleven’s journey this season is all about her finally believing that she is not a monster, then of course it would always come down to her realizing who the actual monster is and confronting him. Dr. Owens reminds his colleague that this isn’t a prison and Eleven is free to come and go as she pleases, but then Brenner turns around and has Owens handcuffed to a pipe and locks Eleven in a room with him. When she wakes up, she finds that she’s been collared in that device Brenner used to torture the other kids in her program. Aside from once again trying to make Eleven believe in his twisted family fantasy, he also knows where to hit her so it hurts — he tells her that she is only acting out because of the guilt she feels for freeing One and for causing all of this death and destruction. Did you use it wisely, or did you spend the whole time listening to Kate Bush and thinking about how you will slowly walk out into the sea if the body count at the end of this season — you know there is going to be a body count — includes Hopper or Steve? And then they realize that if Vecna is looking to make four separate gates, he must make four kills.

Stranger Things season 4, episode 8 recap - "Chapter Eight: Papa" (Ready Steady Cut)

Nancy is also in the Hawkins Lab, or at least her consciousness is. Her physical form is still comatose in the Upside-Down, but Vecna is dog-walking her ...

Brenner is able to escape with Eleven, and he protects her from a sniper by taking a few rounds in the back, eventually collapsing. Between Brenner explaining things to Eleven, and Nancy recounting her experiences in the Upside-Down to the rest of the gang, we begin to get a sense of what Vecna’s plan actually is. Yuri’s transport is barely flight-worthy; the psycho religious nutjob basketball team just so happens to be at War Zone, and Brenner tries to prevent Eleven from leaving by taking Owens hostage and threatening her into continuing her work with “Papa”. Having now seen as much as she needs to, she knows that Brenner’s obsession with One and her has led to so much carnage in and around Hawkins; that he’s the monster, not her. In other words, he’ll have to leave his physical form behind, vulnerable, in the attic of the house, when he’s out on a killing spree. Her physical form is still comatose in the Upside-Down, but Vecna is dog-walking her psyche through the scene of the massacre, letting her see where he has been. “Chapter Eight: Papa” opens with a two-minute recap and then picks up for a few seconds right where we left off, with “eldrich thrumming”, according to the subtitles, and a bloody-eyed Eleven having just shoved who we now know to be Vecna through a portal to the Upside-Down. Did she create the Upside-Down behind that cracked wall in Hawkins Lab, installing Vecna as its defacto king, or was it already waiting, lurking, for someone as morally compromised and telekinetically powerful as Henry Creel to make a home there?

Stranger Things Season 4 Episode 8 Review: Papa (TV Fanatic)

On Stranger Things Season 4 Episode 8, more answers come to light as Eleven prepares for vengeance. Read our review of the midseason...

It did have some minor issues, but it got the ball rolling on the series in a big way, and I can't wait to see where it goes next. The tension in Russia is rising, and it only reiterated my initial concerns about the storyline. And Holly. Mike. And they... It was the most vulnerable Will's been, and I'm not sure Mike understood what happened, but Jonathan sure did. And then... And the dam will burst. And this... Hopefully, Eleven makes it back in time to join in this big fight. Eleven using her powers to take down the helicopter was satisfying. They need a fall guy, and if Brenner isn't alive to be that person, then Owens may be their next best shot. And when that happens, Hawkins will fall.Brenner And eventually, it will reach a breaking point.

Stranger Things (Slowly) Prepares for the End in “Chapter 8: Papa” (Tilt Magazine)

Stranger Things returns - and everyone's on a road trip headed toward the season finale.

“Papa”, despite its maddening construction, hums along even though a lot of it is unnecessary and nonsensical – it does so by properly setting the tone through characters like Nancy and Max, who are ready to illegally modify shotguns and stop playing “Running Up That Hill” (respectively) so we can find a goddamn resolution in all of this. As a penultimate episode, this is to be expected to some degree – but nearly everything character-centric is tamped out in service of the plot, which is really just “three cars driving to destinations” for 90% of its running time. She hates that she loves Dr. Brenner, that she still sees him as her father and the man who believed in her potential; but as her abuser and imprisoner, that dichotomy will never allow for emotional resolution between characters. Look, the Brenner/Eleven dynamic has proved a rewarding one over the years, a compelling portrayal of a psychopath with a degree given free rein by the government to enslave children. I mean, “Papa” is a road trip (well, three of them) featuring test tube babys, tons of sci-fi mumbo jumbo, enormously evil military entities, and long segments of nothing happening – could it be anymore Kojima? Cultural parallels aside, “Papa” feels like much of Volume I preceding it; full of interesting ideas and strong performances, thoroughly hindered by a lumbering plot with too many competing ingredients.

'Stranger Things' Season 4 Episode 8 Recap: "Papa" (Decider)

While Nancy catches her breath in Hawkins, let's check in on the Russia crew. The Demogorgon is still a-rippin, and our heroes (and Yuri) need to find a way out ...

“They’ve come to kill you,” Papa tells Eleven, scooping her up and taking her into the open, away from the firefight in the lab. El tells her friends that they need to get to Hawkins, stat, or “they are going to die.” In the RV, lots of Intense Faces and Determined Staring Out the Window from our heroes as the extremely on-the-nose lyrics kick in: “Sleepless nights, losing hope, I’m reaching for you, you, you.” Max gets out of the RV with Lucas and Erica, Walkman strapped to her waist. She has a sweet reunion with both Mike and Will, then with a click, her collar snaps open, falling to the ground. He tells her that everything he’s done has been for her own protection, including torturing her mother and One. She brings up One’s revelation that “Papa doesn’t always tell the truth,” and he tries to gaslight her into thinking that she’s feeling guilty for releasing him. Lucas and Max are also bonding, with Max telling him she’ll “hide in the light” and pull a real Patronus-esque happy memory, admitting that he was involved in that memory. Max’s idea is to “ditch Kate Bush” and use herself as bait, allowing the others to attack Vecna’s vulnerable body in his attic hideout while he tries to kill her. They realize that the clock in the visions has always chimed four times, and that that must be telegraphing his plan to make four kills, meaning he only needs one more. Until now.” The duo really put the “uhhhhhh” in “reassuring” when they say that her friends in Hawkins are safe “as far as we know,” but that they haven’t actually checked. But you make her feel like she’s not a mistake at all, like she’s better for being different, and that gives her the courage to fight on. The Demogorgon is still a-rippin, and our heroes (and Yuri) need to find a way out of there. “I want you to tell Eleven. I want you to tell her everything you see.” In the real world, or at least, halfway between the Upside Down and the real world, Steve is holding her entranced body.

'Stranger Things' Season 4 Recap: Episode 8 Ending Explained (CNET)

Papa does not tell the truth as Eleven faces Vecna in the intense final episodes of Stranger Things 4. (Spoilers!)

Papa does not tell the truth, and Eleven realizes that she opened the gate to the Upside Down not because she's a monster but because Brenner was trying to fix his mistake. A full-on shoot-out ensues, complete with a sniper in a Huey picking off Papa. Fortunately the pizza van crew are just in time to distract the chopper crew -- and Eleven doesn't need 30 minutes or less to spectacularly take down the helicopter. Sadly both of the show's gay characters are crushed by their crushes in this episode, as both Will and Robin realize they're in love with characters who appear to be straight. Robin spotting Vickie in a redneck gun shop called The War Zone is a contrived moment, but it still kind of gets me in the feels, so let's allow it. Eleven blows the door off the hinges, but Brenner drugs her. This has drawn criticism from fans who criticise the tired trope of depicting tragic gay characters forever doomed to unrequited relationships (and all this right after Pride Month, too). Still, maybe there's hope for Robin in episode 9, as her Molly Ringwald-esque crush Vickie at least looks conflicted when she spots Robin. Hopper shows what he thinks of their scientific method with a bullet, only to discover a whole lab full of monsters from the Upside Down and some kind of portal. Vecna, also known as Henry or One, stalks Nancy through a nightmarish vision of the massacre at Hawkins Lab that led to young Henry Creel being sent to the Upside Down. But the demon spares her -- instructing her to tell Eleven everything she's seen. Eleven reluctantly allowed Dr Brenner to reactivate her powers, in the process learning that she inadvertently created the demon when she zapped the Hawkins lab's first psychic teen, Henry Creel, into the Upside Down. Meanwhile sheriff Jim Hopper and Joyce tried to escape a demogorgon in a brutal Russian gulag. But in the meantime, as much as I've enjoyed Hopper's action-packed adventures behind the Iron Curtain (and the antics of the madcap Yuri), I'm starting to wish they'd just get out of Russia already. Now she knows her own backstory, she makes a choice to fight for her friends. The Duffer Brothers definitely know how to torture these characters (and us). Vulnerable moments between Mike and Will or Lucas and Max or Dustin and Eddie make you fear for the safety of these characters we know and love.