Summary
Stranger Things Season 5 feels enjoyably on-brand in “Chapter Three: The Turnbow Trap”, and while the runtimes are still a little baggy, it’s all coming together rather nicely.
Stranger Things Season 5 hasn’t quite felt like Stranger Things of old yet, something remedied by Episode 3, “The Turnbow Trap”. This is like playing franchise bingo, seeing how many quintessential things that most people associate with the show a single episode can include. The kids are laying traps for demons with improvised weaponry, the era’s pop media is being referenced, and Eleven is doing things that make her nose bleed. But all these classic hallmarks aside, there’s still a feeling of newness about the whole thing, including a sense of bagginess from a too-long runtime that we also saw in the premiere.
All things considered, though, “The Turnbow Trap” is closer to that much-improved second episode, and not just because it includes another Demogorgon stand-off. Things are well into gear now. Stuff’s happening. Twists are piling up. New – hello, Will and Robin – and old pairings are coming together. We’re approaching the end, both of this volume and the series overall.
But there’s a wall in the way. I mean that literally, too, since as Hop and Eleven discovered in the previous episode, wherever the Demogorgon they’re tracking took Holly Weaver, it’s probably behind an impassable wall of writhing tentacles and pus-filled sacs. The wall turns out to be indestructible, at least for now, but Hop and his surrogate daughter have other issues, since the soldiers tracking her after her brief foray into town show up for a gunfight.
With their Eleven-paralysing satellite dish taken out by Hop, El’s powers are enough to dispense with the goons, but they keep one behind to physically and psychically interrogate. He’s reluctant to give much away, but with Eleven in his mind, he doesn’t have much choice. His thoughts betray that Dr. Kay’s research lab in the Upside-Down doesn’t just contain that Demo she’s experimenting on – it also contains a big, heavily guarded vault inside which, El theorises, there’s something – or someone – commensurately powerful to her. Vecna?
I’m not sure how this all fits together with the fact that Vecna is currently hosting Holly in an idyllic simulacrum of his childhood home. Whether this is some kind of psychic projection or parallel dimension or whatever is a little unclear for now, but suffice it to say that Holly is being well taken care of. Vecna-as-Henry is playing an avuncular type, letting her live a ten-year-old’s idea of luxury while he nips out to acquire his next target, elementary school bully Derek Turnbow. All she has to do is avoid venturing out into the woods, and everything will be fine.
Because Will now understands that his visions are glimpses through Vecna’s own eyes, he’s able to figure out that Derek will be next, so after having a stern word with his mother about being counter-productively overprotective, he devises a plan with the other kids to essentially kidnap Derek for his own safety. This is the “Turnbow Trap” of the title, and the point where Stranger Things Season 5, Episode 3 feels fully on-brand.
The plan’s hilarious. Lucas and Mike recruit the former’s younger sister, Erica, whose former best friend Tina is Derek’s older sister, to gain access to the house and drug the entire family over dinner. The drugs are acquired from the hospital by Robin and Will, since Robin has a fake grandmother she visits there in order to see Vickie, and her nurse is lax enough to leave a family supply of Benzos in the medical cabinet (as if It: Welcome to Derry didn’t take enough cues from this show already, the kids popping stolen valium was a plot point in the latest episode.) While on-mission, Will gets to ask Robin some pointed questions about her and Vickie’s relationship, since it’s very heavily implied he’s grappling with his own sexuality and feelings for Mike.
With the help of some supplies from Murray, the gang plans to turn the Turnbow house into a Home Alone-style nightmare for the arriving Demogorgon so they can implant it with a tracker fired from a shotgun. This whole sequence is a riot, a neat inversion of the Demogorgon home invasion from the previous episode, and for the most part, it works. The Demo is tagged, and the team follows it as it barrels through town. At least until it turns back and seems to be heading straight towards them, going after the newly awakened – and very confused – Derek.
But the latest big cliffhanger has nothing to do with any of this. Instead, we return to Holly acting like a character in a children’s fairytale, until she’s distracted by the doorbell being repeatedly pressed and the mailbox being suspiciously full. A note inside, supposedly from Henry, instructs her to venture into the woods and find the “X” marking the rendezvous spot where he apparently needs her help.
When Holly gets there, though, Henry is nowhere to be seen. Instead, she’s greeted by “Mad” Max Mayfield, who in this dimension isn’t comatose. We can imagine she’s not exactly on Vecna’s side, either.
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