Stranger Things season 2, episode 9: The Gate, recap: what will happen to the gang next year?
Warning: this recap contains spoilers!
So this is it: the final curtain, the last swerve on the roller-coaster, a farewell peek inside the magician’s box of tricks. After a frequently beguiling, occasionally frustrating season, could the second series of Stranger Things depart with a flourish? Or would it – as critics frequently assert – amount to a triumph of nostalgia over authentic storytelling?
The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. That Eleven was going to sweep in, seal the gate and restore normality to Hawkins is a twist – if you can even call it that – everyone will have seen coming. On the other hand, you have to at least credit show runners the Duffer Brothers for not insulting our intelligence by pretending to kill her off again.
Also predicable is Will making it out alive. All Joyce has to do is tie him to the bed, crank up the heater and – presto – the unconquerable demon from another dimension is whooshing it out the window.
A harsher show might have meted out a nasty end to one or more main character (and for real this time). But that isn’t the series Stranger Things wants to be and, on its own terms, it has brought things to an end in reasonably satisfying fashion. The evil stalking Hawkins is vanquished (for the moment). The kids – now becoming hormonal teenagers – have their first, excruciating, experience of a school dance. Joyce and Hopper might potentially be an item (everyone else has forgotten you Bob – but we won’t).
The sting in the tail is the final shot of the shadow monster still looming over the town – suggesting Stranger Things 3 is in the works. Fans will lap up further helpings – but having now milked ET/ Stephen King etc etc retro-mania for two seasons, there are surely concerns that, third time out, the formula will start to accumulate mildew. As anyone who remembers the Eighties will tell you, volume three in a trilogy is always the worst. Here is the rest of what we learned.
1. With justice for Barb, now we all have closure
Nancy and Jonathan's leak to the media sees the nefarious Laboratory exposed as responsible for Barbara's demise – official cause of death a lethal quantity of “experimental chemical asphyxiant". With assistance from Doctor Owens – who for some reason is not in prison – Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) has meanwhile been adopted by Hopper (David Harbour). Good for them. But let's be honest – it’s Barb we were all fretting over. After two years and a million Gifs, she can finally rest peacefully.
2. At least they didn't pretend to kill off Eleven this time
Deep beneath the lab, Eleven channels the metaphysical wound Brenner – or at least the ghost of Brenner – had identified in her during her exile in Chicago. This gives her the strength to seal the portal to the Upside Down – sealed portals being the most cliched an ending to a supernatural thriller imaginable. The saving grace is that the Duffers haven’t tried to convince us that Eleven died again. Instead she gets a conventionally happy ending, culminating with her dance with Mike (Finn Wolfhard) at the Christmas Ball. All a tad dull, honestly – but after faking her demise last year, they couldn’t pretend to have bumped the character off a second time.
3. It's been worth bingeing the entire series just to see Steve putting the Demodog in a fridge.
There's a brief outbreak of comic relief as Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Steve (Joe Keery) stuff a Demodog in the icebox – so that the rubbery monstrosity can be preserved for scientific posterity. Alas, the chuckles are interrupted when Billy (Dacre Montgomery) – fresh from flirting with Nancy and Mike's mother – shows up looking for Max (and for trouble).
Stranger Things | Season 2 recaps
4. Ouch! The Steve v Billy smackdown was actually hard to watch
Forget Demodogs chewing their victims’s faces off. The most violent scene of the season was the punch-up between Steve and bad-boy Billy. It culminates – bonus euughs! – with Max (Sadie Sink) plunging a tranquilliser needle into Billy’s neck. That’s the last we see of him – a cursory sign-off for a character who never truly amounted to much and whose hostility to Max’s boyfriend Lucas was never sufficiently explained.
5. Why did it take so long for the crew to figure out how to drive out the shadow monster from Will?
Ever since the being mind-melded with him, Will (Noah Schnapp) has banged on about his / its love for the cold. Yet only now, at the very death, has the super-natural coin dropped as Joyce (Winona Ryder) straps him to a bed and fire the heaters up to maximum. A hot shower four episodes back would have saved everyone a world of bother (especially poor, dead Bob – gone and very much forgotten)
6. Demon Will is Stranger Things’s best monster
The Exorcist is clearly a big influence on Stranger Things 2 – never more so than in the finale as Will's possessor manifests in the child via throbbing black veins and a soul-curdling shriek. Not that he gets to do much, as an onslaught of extreme heat – the coup de grace being Nancy (Natalia Dyer) wielding a poker – drives the wicked entity out. Good for Will – but more of the demon schoolboy would have been appreciated.
7. Dustin and d'Artagnan’s bromance was rekindled
How sweet Dustin's friendship with the face-eating demon – a dromance? – from another dimension had a happy resolution. All it took was a nibble of nougat and "Dart" was cooing like a (abominable, slime-dripping) puppy.
8. Is there going to be another season? (yes there is)
To think the Duffers had almost cajoled us into thinking they were signing off with a happy ending. Then, right at the end, the screen flicks red and we’re in the Upside Down watching the shadow monster loom over the dance-hall. See you next year Stranger Things – and please try to come up with a new set of references. We’ve had all the ET / Alien / Stand By Me hat-tips we can bear.