Summary
Boy, the surprises keep coming, and Stranger Things has finally regained a consistent groove of laughs, thrills, and down-right chills.
This recap of Netflix’s Stranger Things season 4, episode 5, “The Nina Project,” contains spoilers.
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Stranger Things season 4, episode 5 recap
It’s a Stranger Things road trip as Will, Mike, Jonathan, and Argyle try to stop the bleeding of the government agent who saved their lives. In the act of remarkable heroism, the man tells them not to go to the hospital. They need to warn Owen that Eleven is in danger. And if you believe Dr. Owen couldn’t get any sweeter, he greets El warmly, telling her that he is glad she got some rest because she will need it, as she wakes from her car ride slumber. They arrive at a hidden silo and enter the underground lab. That’s when we realize there are no more heroes anymore. Because Owens introduces Eleven to the head of the lab – Martin Brenner. Yes, he is alive. El tries to escape, but she is held by an armed guard and sedated.
Hopper is now back in the Russian prison. He has a new cellmate, Dmitri. Initially, Hopper hits him square in the jaw but doesn’t blame him. We then get to hear some of Hop’s backstory. He was eighteen when he worked in a chemical depot and worked with vats of Agent Orange over in Vietnam. His friends who made it back had families and produced children with physical deformities. He had a beautiful blonde girl who died of cancer at seven years old. So, our guy has given up. The more he tries to escape, the more people he loves suffer from his curse. He tells Dmitri that he is no longer going to run. Hopper isn’t cursed. He is the curse.
Max draws out the secret Vecna world that looks like Mordor. The pictures, separate, look like nothing. However, Nancy sees them and begins to put them together like puzzle pieces. It is Victor Creel’s home. This is where the demon is, in the attic, performing his magic spells, in the upside-down place. They enter illegally when they visit the old mansion, and Max locates the same clock she saw in her trance.
Back in Team Lenora, the boys bury the unknown agent’s body but find a number in the pen he gave mike before he died, 202-564-9087. (By the way, go ahead and dial the number — you will get a prerecorded message from Environmental Protective Agency). However, it sounds like a fax machine line when the boys dial it. The guys think the number calls a computer. That means they need a hacker and are five hours from the most excellent hacker the world has ever known, Dustin’s girlfriend, Suzie-poo. Remember, she helped save the world with her soul-stirring rendition of Never Ending Story last season.
When it comes to El, she finds herself in a Groundhog Day-like situation where she keeps repeating the same problem. She walks into a playroom, and an orderly informs her it is almost time for class. Every time she tries to escape, she finds a door and enters the same room. It turns out that El has been put in another chamber and is floating in a sensory deprivation tank with a couple of dozen monitors attached to the ceiling. These may be videos of El years prior.
This could be some exposure therapy to bring El back to that day in the first eight minutes of Season Four when Brenner asked her, “What have you done?” If what we are looking at is accurate, Eleven was behind everyone in developing her powers. These are, in fact, flashbacks she is now reliving. I guess that she found her powers through anger and rage, killing everyone in the facility. Kind of like the Hulk, but smaller and much deadlier. El relives a memory of trying to activate lights with only her brain in front of Brenner and her classmates. Suddenly they are gone, and both her hands are soaked in blood. Could she now be remembering when she killed all those people?
The ending
The end of the episode has Joyce and Murray taking over the plane by Murray’s stealthy tablet brute force. However, he knocks out Yuri, and they crash land the plane, we assume in Russia.
Team Hawkins finds Vecna’s lair in the attic, but all the light bulbs in their flashlights blow out. Do not worry. Max is wearing headphones and listening to her favorite song. But Vecna has other plans. The demon focuses on Patrick, who chasing Eddie in the lake. (He was hiding in the boathouse and escaped in a boat, but they athletically caught up to him by swimming). Vecna now focuses on Patrick, lifts him out of the lake, and kills him like Chrissy and Freddy.
Finally, during her deep meditation in the saltwater bath, El’s become tachycardic, and Dr. Owens ends the experiment. She hits Brenner when she is unhooked and runs for the exit. Three guards grab her and hold her close to the ground. El screams, finds that inner rage, and with pure will, sends all three guards flying in the air as if they had been touching an electric fence and it just went off.
Brenner approaches her, but El tries to use her powers to move him away, but nothing happens. Brenner says, “You didn’t think it would be that easy?” El calls him papa. Brenner calls her daughter. He then offers his hand, and El takes it. She heads back down the tunnel with him.
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