‘Stranger Things’ Season 5, Episode 6 Recap – Why Does This Look So Bad?

Let me be the one to say it. Given how long it has taken to bring Stranger Things Season 5 to life, and how much money has been spent on the endeavour, there is absolutely zero justification for Episode 6 looking as bad as it does. A really significant portion of it looks like the effects used to bring Ivan Ooze to life in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie. Honestly, it’s genuinely baffling. And while some spotty VFX here and there wouldn’t ordinarily constitute a mention, there’s a tremendous amount of drama bundled up in it here, and in several key scenes, I could barely focus on the interpersonal dynamics because I was looking at the gooey walls and laughing.

The gooey walls are on account of the cliffhanger ending of the Volume 2 premiere. Nancy did indeed shoot what she thought was a dark-energy generator in the hopes it’d dissolve the flesh wall keeping the heroes from Vecna and the missing children. But as Dustin discovered in Brenner’s journals, the swirling ball of energy isn’t a generator, but exotic matter, a nexus of energy holding the entire Upside Down together. Early theories about Vecna having created the place were apparently misguided. The Upside Down is a wormhole connecting two places in space and time. Vecna didn’t build the wall and isn’t hiding behind it; the wall is the outer edge of the wormhole, and if it collapses, both of the worlds it connects will collapse in on each other. (I think. I’m not a theoretical physicist.)

Thanks to Nancy, this process of collapse is well underway. The shot sent out a giant energy wave that rattled the flesh wall, causing a massive vacuum that almost sucks Hop, El, and Kali into nothingness until they’re able to make it through a tear, and it also causes Hawkins Lab to start melting, which looks really dumb. But there are crucial scenes in all this. We finally get a reconciliation between Dustin and Steve, and it’s really nice! Dustin is lashing out at Steve because he loves Steve just like he loved Eddie, and he’s terrified of losing him in the same way. We also get some payoff in Nancy and Jonathan’s relationship, since they’re both cornered in a room melting rapidly into deadly goo, and Nancy decides that she simply can’t perish without breaking up with Jonathan first.

It’s about time, honestly. This romance was doomed from the jump, and it isn’t because Steve has better hair (although that does, admittedly, get a mention). They’re just in different places. They’re bonded by trauma and circumstance, not real romantic affection, and if they’re going to be swallowed up by building goo, it’s important they both know that. Luckily, they spend so long breaking up that the goo solidifies around them, which is kind of awkward, but at least they’re on the same page now.

These are both good scenes in isolation, but the goo honestly looks really bad. It’s such a silly, contrived circumstance that it makes the character drama much more difficult to take seriously, which is a real shame, since I like these characters a lot, especially Dustin and Steve. Luckily, there’s a better example at the end of a really great dialogue scene that encapsulates everything great about this show that isn’t undermined by wonky VFX. More on that in a minute.

Meanwhile in Stranger Things Season 5, Episode 6, Hop, El, and Kali finally make it back to the real Hawkins to link up with Will (who’s still unconscious), Joyce, Mike, Robin, and Lucas. Another plan quickly forms, since Robin figures out – very conveniently, I might add – that Max and Holly are trapped in Vecna’s mind and are trying to facilitate a jailbreak. She and Lucas head to the hospital to coax Max out with some Kate Bush, while El uses her powers to try and locate Will in the Upside Down, where his consciousness is trapped.

With help from the tank, El finds Will in pretty short order, and he reveals that Vecna used him as a spy to discover the location of Max’s physical body. Since he’s worried about her escaping with Holly and depriving him of one of the 12 vessels he needs, he has sent his Demodogs to kill her. At this point, all roads converge, and “Chapter Six: Escape From Camazotz” gets really good.

You can criticise this show for all kinds of things, but it can deliver a multilayered set-piece like nobody’s business. Things get manic at the hospital because even before the dogs show up, the MPs are looking for Robin on account of all the Benzos she stole, which makes Vickie assume she’s a drug addict (her explanation about the Upside Down doesn’t help, understandably). Luckily – or not, depending on where you’re standing – the Demodogs arrive to prove Robin correct, but also to try and kill Max, so Robin uses the hospital-wide PA system to tell Lucas to grab Max and run for the basement. He grabs Max and the boom box – still playing Kate Bush! – and makes his way there.

Nell Fisher in Stranger Things Season 5 | Image via Netflix

I’ll grant you that it’s kind of romantic that Lucas refuses to turn the boom box off even though it’s luring the Demodogs, but it would have earned him a punch in the face from me. But there doesn’t seem to be any way out. Our heroes are cornered. That is, of course, until Karen Wheeler once again arrives in the nick of time to kill all of the dogs by setting a flammable oxygen tank spinning in a nearby dryer. I have no idea why this season decided to turn Karen into Sarah Connor, but I’m here for it.

And thus we’re almost there. Max is almost back. However, for the time being, she’s still trapped in Vecna’s mind with Holly, and the two of them spend this episode trying to escape by locating the source of Vecna’s own most traumatic memory, the thing that makes him enduringly terrified of the cave system. Truth be told, I’m still none the wiser about the specifics. At some point as a kid, Henry discovered an injured, panicked man in a lab coat hiding in the caves. When Henry approached him, the man shot him, and Henry beat him to death with a rock. It’s totally unclear whether Henry was psychotic before this point, hence the rock, or if he was just defending himself. I suspect we’ll find out later. But what matters in the meantime is that Max and Holly find the way out.

Then we get that really nice scene I was alluding to earlier. Max and Holly roam through the wilderness part of Vecna’s mind and spot a portal through which Max can return to her own body, which is currently being cradled in the hospital by Lucas. But Holly doesn’t have an exit of her own, so Max gives her a pep talk about how much of a hero she is, which is really genuinely sweet. Sadie Sink and young Nell Fisher are both great in this. And it works, since Holly gets her own door to open. It does, admittedly, lead back to the Upside Down, where she’s strung up by Vecna’s tentacles, being force-fed his gunk, but it’s better than being in his mind, surely. Max tells her to find her house in the Upside Down and hide there. They’ll come and get her.

And just like that, Max and Holly run in slow-motion to their respective doors. They’re going home – I think. But I imagine Vecna won’t be happy about it.