Stranger Things – Chapter Six: The Monster

By starrymag | August 22, 2016

By: Kathryn Trammell

 

Nancy and Jonathan

 

Nancy (Natalia Dyer) walks through the Upside Down trying to make sense of what she sees – a dusty, black wasteland version of the her native Hawkins forest. She finds the monster feeding on the deer and alerts it to her location after a twig snaps under her foot. The monster begins to give chase and Nancy runs. Unable to locate the tree from whence she came, she screams Jonathan’s name into the air hearing only a soft echo of his voice in response. This is because on the other side of the Upside Down, Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) can hear Nancy too and he is screaming for her to find him. He finds the portal that Nancy crawled through and shines his flashlight into it showing Nancy, who is hiding from the monster behind a different tree, where she needs to run next. Her hand shoots out of the tree reaching for Jonathan who stares at it at first with complete and utter shock. Realizing it’s Nancy’s, he grabs ahold and begins to pull, the two of them falling backwards onto the ground arms wrapped tight around each other as if letting go isn’t an option just yet.

 

They go back to Nancy’s house where Jonathan comforts her and offers to stay the night in her room. Not wanting to be alone and having no one else in the world who can relate to what she’s seen and been through, Nancy agrees. While the agreement is non-sexual, these two kids preferring to sleep with the lights on and speculate if whether or not the monster can get them while they sleep, it doesn’t appear that way to Steve (John Keery) who watches them from Nancy’s window.

 

The next morning, Nancy tells Jonathan she wants to go back. She was up all night studying about predators and believes the monster to be drawn to prey the way sharks are drawn to scent of blood, given that both Barb and the deer were bleeding moments before they were attacked. After seeing what the monster did to the deer, she doesn’t want to imagine the same fate fell upon Barbara (Shannon Purser) or Will. The monster needs to be stopped. So, she and Jonathan sneak out of her house and make their way to the Hunting and Camping store where the sound of Dolly Parton’s “Bargain Store” floats softly above their heads as they wander up and down the aisles selecting an array of bear traps, ammunition, lighter fluid and nails. When the cashier asks, “What are you kids doing with all this?” Nancy easily responds, “Monster hunting.” The cashier simply shrugs his shoulders as if her response makes perfect sense.

 

Outside, a car drives by as Nancy and Jonathan pack their supplies into his trunk. The guy in the passenger seat rolls down his window and says to Nancy as he passes, “Hey Nance, I can’t wait to see your movie.” At first Nancy is confused by this, but then she realizes what it means and takes off running up the street towards the Hawkins County movie theater whose marquee displays the movie title All the Right Moves. Unfortunately, the title has been altered with red spray paint to include a subheading that reads “starring Nancy the Slut Wheeler.”

 

She hears the sound of a spray paint can being shaken and follows it into an alley where Steve and Co. are using the rest of the cans contents to tag the side of a building. She confronts him and he defends his actions saying he caught Nancy and Jonathan in her room last night. Knowing she’s grossly outnumbered by four bullies and that there is no sense in trying to reason with a crushed ego the size of Steve’s, Nancy opts to just leave. Unfortunately, Steve isn’t ready to let her go. So, he targets Jonathan to slow her down, hurling the crudest of insults at his back until at last Jonathan snaps by beating Steve’s face and mouth into a bloody pulp. The cops arrive and one of them tries to pull Jonathan off of Steve, but Jonathan accidently breaks the cop’s nose in the process. He and Nancy are both taken to the police station.

 

While there, Hopper’s secretary hands Nancy a bag of ice to give to Jonathan whom she assumes to be Nancy’s boyfriend. When Nancy corrects the assumption, the secretary suggests Nancy make sure Jonathan isn’t given room to make the same kind of assumption she was able to make. “Only love makes you that crazy, sweetheart. And that damn stupid,” the stupidity of which the secretary speaks being Jonathan’s current charge of assaulting a police officer. Nancy ignores her advice, for now anyways, taking the bag of ice to Jonathan and holding it to his bruised cheek. Not a word is spoken between them.

 

Joyce and Hopper

 

The same morning Jonathan and Nancy decide to go hunting for the monster, Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Hopper (David Harbour) decide to review all of the evidence Hopper had found in his search for Will. He explains to Joyce that aside from the fake body he found in the morgue, he also found inside the Hawkins Lab a room with a small bed and a drawing attached to wall above it, the number “11” scribbled at the top. He thinks the room is where Will (Noah Schnapp) is being kept, but when Hopper tells Joyce that the picture is composed of childish stick figures, she knows it isn’t Will’s work. Will draws with elaborate detail and to prove it she shows Hopper an example of one of Will’s drawings.

 

This leads Hopper to remember a news article he came across back in Chapter Three about a woman named Terry Ives who claimed Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) stole her daughter with the intent of using her as a test subject at the Hawkins Lab. “What if this whole time I’ve been looking for Will, I’ve been chasing after some other kid,” he says to Joyce. Regardless of what kid they are chasing, both believe that talking to Terry will help them find Will, so they track her down. They soon realize, however, that Terry (Aimee Mullins) is about as helpful as Ray Finkle’s mom when it comes to providing information about lost kids. But what Terry can’t provide, her sister/caretaker can by explaining to Hopper and Joyce that Terry has been under her care since she became the “willing” participant of the MKUltra experiments that left her nearly comatose. Terry’s sister also explains to Joyce and Hopper that while she was participating in the experiments, Terry was unknowingly pregnant with her daughter, Jane. Terry claimed that as a result of the experiments, Jane had been born with certain powers that lead to the Hawkins Lab’s desire to steal her from Terry. But her sister thinks the claims are bogus. Joyce and Hopper, not so much.

 

When they get into Hopper’s squad car, Joyce laments over how sad it must be to go twelve years without having closure on the belief that your child was taken from you the way Jane was taken from Terry. Hopper tries to be optimistic saying he believes Jane to be the kid who showed up at Benny’s, and that they will find both Jane and Will in due time. That time, however, will not be now, because a call comes in from the station saying Jonathan Byers has just been arrested on assault charges.

 

Dustin, Lucas, Mike, and Eleven

 

With Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) yet to return and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) still isolating himself from his friends, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) reminds Mike that the only way they can all be back together again is if Mike (Finn Wolfhard) admits his own faults and apologizes to Lucas since he “drew first blood” by starting the fight. Dustin is also quick to point out they are all in some way to blame for what happened yesterday except for him – “I was the only reasonable one,” he says, while everyone else was being a bunch of “little assholes.”

 

Unfortunately, Lucas doesn’t see it this way. He is satisfied instead with keeping the blame for their fight planted firmly on Eleven. She’s the Yoko to their Beatles and he says the only way he will forgive Mike is if Mike forgets about Eleven. So, Lucas goes his own separate way in search for Will after Mike refuses Lucas’ conditions. Following a compass he attaches to his bike, Lucas is guided to the perimeter fence that surrounds the Hawkins Lab. He climbs the fence only to see a group of Hawkins Power and Light vans parked outside the lab.

 

Dustin and Mike, on the other hand, get on their bikes and begin to search for Eleven who has spent the night alone and hungry in the forest. She sets off, sans blonde wig, to obtain food the only way she knows how: robbing a grocery store of nearly its entire supply of Eggo Waffles using a mix of intimidation and telekinesis to escape without detainment.

 

When Dustin and Mike ride past the store, its lot filled with cop cars and the entranceway blown out by what could only be Eleven’s mind. They realize she must be close. They go into the forest beside the store and begin to call her name and although she hears them, she does not immediately go to them. Instead, Troy the Bully and his other bully friend come stomping out from behind the trees brandishing a switchblade and ill-intent. Both Dustin and Mike drop their bikes and run until they become trapped against the edge of the same quarry where Will’s body was found floating hundreds of feet below. Dustin tries taking a swing at Troy, but Troy (Peyton Wich) grabs him and holds the knife to his throat. He threatens that he will cut Dustin if Mike doesn’t jump into the water “wetting himself” the way Mike made Troy wet himself during their school’s assembly. To save Dustin, Mike agrees and jumps off the cliff. But when the three boys run to the edge to watch him fall in, they find Mike floating in the air, his body being lifted back up to the edge of the cliff and dropped safely back on the ground.

 

There is only one explanation for this and she comes walking up the road towards them. Dustin smiles, knowing exactly what Eleven has in store for the boys and he isn’t let down when she knocks one of them to the ground and breaks the other’s arm without so much as lifting one finger. “Go!” she says to them both and they run away as Dustin shouts out behind them, “Yeah, that’s right! Go! She’s our friend and she’s crazy!” – a quote that could easily brandish hundreds of shirts at Comicon next year.

 

The celebration doesn’t last long though because Eleven falls to the ground exhausted from using so much of her power. Fading in and out of consciousness, Eleven’s mind becomes consumed with the memories of being put inside the sensory-deprivation tank. In a flashback, we see Eleven, who has been asked by Dr. Brenner to make contact with “it,” watch the monster inside the black room of her mind. She approaches it, cautiously, slowly, her hands trembling as she reaches out to touch the beast. When she does, when it turns, Eleven screams with the power of her fear ripping the walls of the Hawkins Lab apart.

 

Awakened from the nightmare, nose bloody and faced marred with regret, Eleven looks at Mike and apologizes. Mike doesn’t understand her need to apologize, but then Eleven says, “The gate – I opened it. I’m the monster.” Mike smiles and tells her that she can’t be a monster because monsters don’t save peoples’ lives the ways she saved his. He pulls her into a hug and then Dustin collapses onto them both joining in on their hug.

 

They go home, paying no mind to the Hawkins Power and Light van parked on the road in their neighborhood. Inside the van, the driver picks up a radio and says into it, “I have eyes on them now. There heading home.”

 

In a cut scene, we watch hands grabbing guns from various armory lockers and Dr. Brenner leading the Men in Suits up a breezeway towards the vans that Lucas has been scouting. From the tree, Lucas watches as the vans pull out of the lab, there destination quite possibly Mike’s house.