We are eagerly looking forward to the two-part finale of the fourth season of Weird stuff† Will Hawkins survive?
It was admittedly an oddly creative decision to make season four of Weird stuff in two unequal parts. While Part 1 (consisting of the first seven episodes) was a bit bloated, it nevertheless told a compelling story, set some very real stakes and left viewers mulling over multiple cliffhangers. Fortunately, we won’t have to wait long to see what happens next, and Netflix just released an exciting new trailer that previews what to expect from the final two episodes, each lasting well over an hour. And things are looking rather bleak for the Hawkins gang.
(Some spoilers for S4 Part 1 below, but we’ve tried not to reveal the biggest plot twists.)
Since the official trailer for Part 1 came out in May, we’ve known that this season’s great evil is straight out of the classic D&D lore. It’s Vecna, a once-mighty wizard who first became undead and then became a lich. Although Vecna (at least in lore) was destroyed, over time he attained divinity. His left hand and left eye survived his physical death and became powerful relics.
The series gives Vecna a very different backstory that connects the character to everything that has happened in Hawkins since the first season. He looks more like Freddy Krueger from the Nightmare in Elm Street franchise, except it preys on the negative thoughts and feelings of people (especially teenagers) rather than their dreams. The horrific fate of his victims leads to an outbreak of “satanic panic” in the healthy town of Hawkins. And that’s all I’ll say about Vecna for now.
YouTube/Netflix
Meanwhile, the entire Byers clan, including Eleven (Milly Bobbie Brown), has moved to Southern California, where Will (Noah Schnapp) and Eleven naturally disown themselves in high school. Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Max (Sadie Sink), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Steve (Joe Keery), and Robin (Maya Hawke) stayed at Hawkins, where Lucas’ newfound basketball skills wins him admission to the popular public. (It must be said that the high school dynamics in the first S4 episodes are unrelentingly cliché; this is not what Weird stuff does it well.)
Hopper (David Harbour) is held captive by the Russians, but he plots a breakout with a Russian guard nicknamed Enzo (Tom Wlaschiha). This involves sending a coded message to Joyce (Winona Ryder), who promptly jumps on a plane to Alaska with Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman) — inexplicably leaving her kids at home and in the dark about her’ true nature. business trip’. Then Eleven is grabbed and taken to a secret underground lair run by none other than her “Daddy”: Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine). The remaining Byers children set out to rescue her.
Netflix/YouTube
But does Elf really need to be rescued? There were substantial flashbacks to Eleven’s early days in Dr. Brenner, before opening a gate between our world and the Upside Down. We learned that a mysterious incident caused the deaths of almost all children’s subjects except Eleven, whose fragmented memories of that time seem to implicate Eleven as the culprit. (Previous seasons have certainly established her ability to kill, albeit almost always in self-defense.) It seems that Dr. Brenner has been recruited to help her regain her powers, otherwise Vecna’s activities would allow the Upside Down to take over our world completely.
Given the three different storylines in three different locations, there was a lot going down in the first seven episodes and things ended with three different cliffhangers. Joyce reunites with Hopper when he escaped from his Russian prison, but they have yet to find a way back to the US. Steve, Nancy and D&D dungeon master Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) – easily this season’s breakthrough character – got stuck in the Upside Down.
Dustin, Lucas and Erica (Priah Ferguson) found another gate to save them, but Vecna grabbed Nancy’s mind at the last minute, tearing Steve between trying to save Nancy at the time or looking for the younger children in the ‘real’ world . As for Eleven, she learned the truth about what really happened that tragic day in the lab — and the true nature of the threat her friends now face in Hawkins.
