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Stranger Things<\/a><\/p>\n Sorcerer<\/p>\n \n Season 5<\/p>\n Episode 4\n <\/p>\n \n Editor\u2019s Rating<\/p>\n 5 stars<\/p>\n *****\n <\/p>\n \n After a gruesome battle in Hawkins and the Upside Down, it looks like the tables have turned. One thing to keep in mind while watching and discussing \u201cSorcerer\u201d \u2014 this is only the midpoint of the season. This is only the midpoint. So many major revelations are made, each one bigger than the next, and we are only halfway through the final season of Stranger Things. I mean, that battle sequence in the MAC-Z alone is finale-level stuff. If this is what they\u2019re giving us now, what are we in for next? I\u2019m exhausted, both emotionally and physically speaking. (Complimentary.)<\/p>\n In any other episode, learning about what Max has been up to in Henry\u2019s mind prison would be exciting, but in this episode, it\u2019s like fifth on my list. Sadie Sink does her best with the heap of exposition she has to impart, but it\u2019s definitely the breather of a story line in this episode. Max brings Holly to the cave she\u2019s been living in inside the rock formation and recaps season four for her before catching her up on what happened once she died and then was revived only to be left in this coma. Basically, she realized that she\u2019s trapped in a maze of Henry\u2019s memories. She wakes up in the Hawkins Lab Massacre (because we haven\u2019t seen that visual enough), takes a walk through Hawkins High in 1959, and eventually winds up in the memories Henry has about her.<\/p>\n She almost escapes thanks to Lucas. Playing Kate Bush over and over again at the hospital does make a difference, it turns out. Once Max returns to the last memory Henry has of her \u2014 the night he killed her \u2014 and she hears that music, she sees the way out. She begins to run, but then the tape ends and the music stops. She has nowhere to run anymore. Lucas begins rewinding it, but it isn\u2019t fast enough \u2014 some of you have no idea what we had to put up with before music went digital, okay? \u2014 and Henry finds her again. Since then, she\u2019s been living in this cave, which seems to be the one place or memory that Henry is afraid of. He won\u2019t follow her inside. (Anyone see Stranger Things: The First Shadow<\/a>? Because there are caves there, too.) Since then, she has given up on finding a way out of the mind prison. Until Holly showed up. She has a plan for an escape, but she needs more time. She sends Holly \u2014 really embracing her Holly the Heroic character; I\u2019m very proud of her \u2014 back to the Creel house to pretend all is well.<\/p>\n This is surely all very important for what\u2019s to come, and Max has been through hell \u2014 her reunion with Lucas is going to be worth the wait, isn\u2019t it? \u2014 but we have much more pressing matters literally everywhere else in this story.<\/p>\n The Demogorgon reaches the farm where Joyce, Will, Robin, and Erica are holding the Turnbow family and runs right into Joyce and her shovel. I hope that at the next Demogorgon team meeting, they take some time to reflect on how they seriously underestimated the mothers of Hawkins. Thankfully, Joyce doesn\u2019t have to fend off the Demo on her own for too long \u2014 the tracking team (Steve, Dustin, Nancy, and Jonathan) slams the Beamer right into the monster, knocking him off his feet and sending him running into the Upside Down via a gate it rips open in a nearby silo. Steve is really batting a thousand on saving people\u2019s lives via vehicular assault in this series. But we can only be happy about this little victory for about half a second: Not surprisingly, with the Demo being so close, Will has been thrown deep into the hive mind, which means when that Demo gets slammed by a car, Will feels it, too.<\/p>\n The tracking team has no idea their friend Will is writhing in pain on the barn floor because they continue to follow the monster, still rocking the telemetry tag. When Steve gets the crazy idea to drive through the rapidly closing gate in the silo, it\u2019s Nancy who backs him up. \u201cDo it,\u201d she tells him from the back seat. I wish these two could make out right now, but it is both logistically and emotionally complicated at the moment.<\/p>\n Steve\u2019s crazy plan works \u2014 they make it into the Upside Down. And then they crash right into that giant wall. The crash (and loss of the Demo\u2019s whereabouts) don\u2019t ease any of the tension already boiling in this group \u2014 every one of them is angry with at least one other person in the car. Still, they can pull themselves together enough to walkie Hopper and Eleven and ask El for an assist with car dislodging. Those two are a little busy at the moment, but Hopper still manages to provide some immensely useful info: Yes, the tracking team has run into the same wall as Hopper and El, but at completely different locations. It\u2019s enough info for Dustin to do some math that is very much above my and Steve\u2019s pay grades, but leads him to conclude that this wall is a giant circle, and in the middle of it? Hawkins Lab. It\u2019s not exactly surprising, but it is exciting: It was obvious that at some point this ride would bring us back to where it all started and this is the way. No one yet knows how to get through, over, or under the wall just yet, but that is a problem for another episode.<\/p>\n So why can\u2019t Hopper and Eleven drop everything to reconnect with their friends who are having car trouble? They\u2019ve decided to infiltrate the military base in the Upside Down \u2014 the one Eleven is convinced is holding Vecna. Even Hopper is like, that makes zero sense given everything we know Vecna is up to, but get it, girl. Okay, he actually says, \u201cLet\u2019s go see if the training has paid off,\u201d which is the same general vibe.<\/p>\n The first obstacle getting into the base is the guards around the perimeter. El makes her big jump over the fence and onto the roof. Does she have to snap the neck of one of the guards? Sure, but they make it inside. If only they had trashed Akers as easily as that guard. You know that little psycho wakes up, runs to the base with backup, and alerts Dr. Kay that her white whale is literally in her office. El is rendered powerless when the kryptonite noise comes blasting through devices set up in the room, and it\u2019s stronger than before. But Hopper is still a one-man army and he makes short work of Akers and his men. That is, until that one Upside Down vine we\u2019ve seen in the glass container snatches him, and Kay gets to interrogate him while he\u2019s being strangled to death. Like all creatures of the Upside Down, heat is its kryptonite, and Kay toys with Hopper by toying with the temperature in the room. She\u2019s a straight-up villain with Hop, but when she first runs into Eleven, she doesn\u2019t seem all that evil, does she? She comes off curious more than anything. Will there be some kind of twist with Kay?<\/p>\n Regardless, El drags herself out into the room and distracts Kay long enough for Very Tall Hopper to kick the temperature controls to high heat and get out of the vines (was he having flashbacks to season two?). He ties Kay up and grabs her access card \u2014 the one that will open the hallway to the vault where Eleven believes they are leeching all of Vecna\u2019s power out of the guy to use for this kryptonite. But Hopper isn\u2019t letting El anywhere near Vecna. He breaks open a window and tells her to go and connect with Nancy \u2014 he is going into the vault to face Vecna or whatever is in there alone. And finally we get to see what Hop has been hiding from everyone \u2014 in that bag hidden in his room, in his jacket that he\u2019s been fiddling with, he\u2019s strapped a bunch of dynamite to his chest as a fail-safe. \u201cI will not risk losing you,\u201d he tells her. Once again, Hopper gets this big, emotional moment in which he tells Eleven how proud he is of her. How he loves her. He calls her Jane. This is a man prepared to die!<\/p>\n Eleven calls out for him as he walks to the hallway, but she is powerless to stop him while the kryptonite is blasting from all over the room. Hand on the explosives trigger, Hopper makes his way down the hallway to the vault and again has flashes of Sarah. Is this it? Is Hopper about to sacrifice himself?<\/p>\n Uh, no. They faked us out again. How many times, Stranger Things? I\u2019m very fragile! It\u2019s hard to stay annoyed for too long, though, because the reason Hopper doesn\u2019t make the big sacrifice for his daughter is a good one. It\u2019s not Vecna back in that room strapped to a machine to harness the power to make the kryptonite. The noise stops. El, who never left the lab, who refused to leave Hopper \u2014 a realization that, yes, did make me tear up \u2014 follows Hop down the hallway and into the vault to find someone else strapped to the kryptonite machine. It\u2019s Eight. Sister.<\/p>\n
\n Photo: COURTESY OF NETFLIX\n <\/p>\n