Episode 6 of Stranger Things Season 4, "Chapter Six: The Dive',' finds the Hawkins gang one step closer to facing Vecna, the Lenora gang one step closer to locating El (Millie Bobby Brown), and El one step closer to restoring her powers. But let's catch up first with Hopper (David Harbour), who is one step closer to death as he prepares to face off against a Demogorgon. (Give Hop a break, won't you?)
Hopper and his fellow inmates are brought to a room where, to their surprise and delight, an indulgent meal is laid out for them. They all gorge themselves on the food, minus Hopper, who doesn't appear to indulge in any of it minus a small bottle of vodka. One of the prisoners says that on his first night here, six men entered this room, and then at night, they were thrown into the pit with a monster not of this world. It took a mere 30 seconds for all six of the men to die a gruesome death. The prisoner is weirdly confident, however, that they stand a chance at survival as long as they all stick together. He believes that they are providing them with a decadent meal to make them stronger and test the monster's strength.
At the end of the table, Hopper laughs humorlessly and rids them of their delusions. They aren't here to train this "monster," he says. They are here to entertain it. The food isn't to make them strong – it's to make them plump, full of "all the nutrients and proteins that a growing monster might need." So, eat up, boys! This is your last meal. (Remind us not to bring Hopper to any parties.)
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After they finish eating, Hop drunkenly picks a fight with Enzo (Tom Wlaschiha), who is angry that Hopper has dashed any hope the men might have of survival. They fight, and Hopper ends up pummeling one of the guards. After they are all dragged back to their cell, Enzo asks Hop if that fight was really worth it. Hopper surprises him and holds up a lighter. The monster, he says, is called a Demogorgon, and it has one weakness: fire. A smile starts to stretch across Enzo's face as he realizes Hop's real reason for picking a "drunken" fight: he stole the guard's lighter and pocketed the vodka as fuel. They both start laughing as Hopper groans that his ribs are broken.
Meanwhile, Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Murray (Brett Gelman) are finalizing their plan to break Hop out of prison. They have Yuri (Nikola Djuricko) tied to a tree – there is nothing around for miles. Either they leave him there to die, or, he takes them to the prison. Resigned, Yuri agrees. They make a pit stop at the church where they fill him in on the next part of their plan. They are going to stroll right into the lion's den that is the Russian prison because Yuri was supposed to bring them in as prisoners anyway. There's just one slight change of plan: Yuri will play the silent role of Murray, and Murray will pose as Yuri.
Moving over to the California crew, Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Argyle (Eduardo Franco), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), and Will (Noah Schnapp) have finally arrived in Salt Lake City at Suzi's (Gabriella Pizzolo) house. Mike and Will forewarn Argyle that Suzie's family is super religious, so he needs to be on his best behavior. They walk into the house and find utter chaos, as if we'd expect anything less from Suzie-poo. There are so many Mormon children running around that just when you think there can't be any more, two more appear. Not to mention, one of them is a teenage girl named Eden (Audrey Holcomb), an Allison Reynolds lookalike, whom Argyle is instantly dazzled by.
They find Suzie on the roof doing Suzie-like things involving a hard hat and an antenna. They sell her a crazy story about how, if she can trace the location of the Nina Project, they'll win a new video game console for Dustin. What's the name of this mysterious new console, you ask? Americantendo (courtesy of Argyle). Suzie tells them that her father took her computer away from her after she hacked into Hawkins High's computer system and changed Dustin's Spanish grade (iconic), so they come up with a plan to distract him while she works her hacker magic. She finds the location and sends them on their way to find El.
El is hard at work with "Papa," trying to un-scramble her brain signals and restore her power. The key, Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) says, is to revive her memories. Our brains have a defense mechanism to protect us from past trauma, so El needs to not just see her past, but fully experience it if she wants to get her powers back. If they move too fast, he says, she could become "lost in the darkness." If El is lost, then of course, all hope for everyone else is lost.
Inside another traumatic memory, El's new orderly friend (Jamie Campbell Bower) lets El in on a little secret: Papa doesn't always tell the truth. According to Brenner, Number One doesn't exist. But according to the orderly, One did exist, and he was a lot like Eleven. He spent years with One, who found strength in a memory from his past that made him sad, but also very angry. The orderly reminds El about that strange woman who came to see her and tells her that the woman was in fact her mother, whom Brenner previously told El was dead.
In Dr. Brenner's latest training session, he pits the kids against one another. Like One, El finds strength in a memory – her mother being dragged away – and sends Two hurtling into the wall, cracking the mirror. El is later in the Rainbow Room alone when she hears pained screaming somewhere in the lab. She tip-toes down the hallway and peeks in a window where she sees the orderly being tortured, with Dr. Brenner watching. She hurries back to the Rainbow Room before Brenner can catch her. Two and a few of the other children are there, and they begin to attack her in retribution for her beating Two and humiliating him in front of Papa. The video camera, for some stranger reason, is not on. After they leave, she looks in the mirror and sees the younger version of herself, covered in blood. She sees flashes of the mangled bodies and realization hits her. Dr. Brenner pulls her back to reality as she sobs, "I know what happened now. I killed them didn't I, Papa? I killed them all."
Finally, back in Hawkins, things are not looking so good for Eddie (Joseph Quinn). The cops have publicly declared him a person of interest, and Jason (Mason Dye), fully convinced now that Eddie is a vessel for Satan, convinces everyone during a town meeting that the Hellfire Club is a cult that has cursed the town of Hawkins. He passes around photos of the club, and uh-oh, there are Mike, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), standing next to Eddie. He sends the people of Hawkins essentially on a witch-hunt for Eddie and his Hellfire cultists.
Meanwhile, Eddie is hiding out at Skull Rock. He walkies the gang, who use Dustin's compass to track him down. As they make their way, Lucas tells Max (Sadie Sink) that Vecna seems to target people who have something in their life that is haunting them. He tells her that he is so sorry that he didn't look hard enough at what she was going through – but he sees her now. (We're not crying, you are.) Nancy (Natalia Dyer) admits to Robin (Maya Hawke) (who is hardcore shipping a Nancy/Steve reunion, and is not so subtle about it) that she has felt Jonathan pulling away from her.
They find Eddie, who confirms the time that Patrick (Myles Truitt) was attacked: 9:27, the same time the lights "went kablooey" in the attic in Victor Creel's (Robert Englund) house. Dustin, who has been obsessing over the fact that his compass kept pointing them the wrong way, realizes something: the needle will deflect towards the power of a stronger electromagnetic field, meaning that there must be a super big magnet nearby, which means: there is a gate.
They all follow the compass, which leads them back to Lover's Lake where Patrick was attacked. They realize that like the Demogorgon, whenever Vecna attacks, he leaves an opening, a "snack-sized gate." Nancy, Steve (Joe Keery), Robin, and Eddie take a rowboat and follow the compass until it starts going haywire in the middle of the lake. Steve dives right in and confirms: there surely is a gate at the bottom. He swims back up to tell them when a vine snatches his ankle and drags him down and through the gate. Nancy dives in after him without hesitation, followed by Robin, then finally, a reluctant Eddie.
In the Upside Down, Steve is attacked by newbie monsters that we've since learned are Demobats. The episode ends with Steve frantically thrashing as he tries to fight them off. We hope the Duffer Brothers hear us when we say this: if anything happens to Steve Harrington, we will boycott.
Rae Torres is a Senior TV/Movie Feature Writer and an 8th grade English Language Arts teacher. When she isn't in the classroom, you can find her hanging out with her husband, stepson, and their three cats, Raisin, Gollum, and Smeagol. Interests include reading all Cosmere-related content from fantasy author Brandon Sanderson, watching anything and everything Jon Bernthal appears in, and aggressively defending Taylor Swift.
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