Stranger Things season 1 episode 8: "The Upside Down", the end of season 1

The deal struck at the lab

The episode picks up where the previous one stopped: inside the lab, doors shut. Joyce faces the program director and throws in his face the only thing that matters to her — they made her cry over a body that was not her son's. In the next room, the police chief is shocked with a Taser by an agent who threatens him with a death dressed up as an overdose.

He is the one who finds the way out, and it costs him: he offers to forget everything he has seen in exchange for a passage into the other dimension. The director accepts on one condition, knowing where Eleven is hiding. The police chief gives the place, demanding that the three boys not be touched. The finale therefore starts on a betrayal, and the story does not hide it for a second.

Will's sweatshirt, for anyone who stays loyal to the wooden fort.

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The crossing: suits, vines, and a blink for yes

Suits, masks, flashlights: the two adults go through the gate opened in the lab wall. Others went through before them — Will in the first chapter, Nancy's friend in the third, Nancy herself trapped on the other side at the opening of the sixth — but it is the first time equipped adults go in, and that the camera stays with them. The shot that follows the titles shows the building upside down before turning one hundred and eighty degrees to find the characters' gaze again.

What they cross is a tracing of the town: the same streets, minus the light and plus the vines. They come upon the ruins of the wooden fort built behind the family house, and a plush toy that sends the police chief back to a hospital room. Farther on, in the black version of the Byers living room, Joyce hears her older son's voice. The bulbs answer, one blink for yes.

The trap at the Byers house and Steve's U-turn

At the Byers house, two teenagers finish their preparations. Jonathan drives nails into a baseball bat, a bear trap waits in the hallway, and what they need to start a fire is ready. They cut their palms with a knife to call the creature with the smell of blood, and end up hand in hand.

This is the moment Steve chooses to knock on the door: he has come to apologize for the fight in chapter 6, the one he left with his face bloody. He sees the open palm, the traps, the weapon Nancy points at him to make him leave. He goes out, gets back in the car, sees the lights go wild — and comes back. The creature pins Jonathan to the floor, Steve hits it with the nailed bat until the bear trap, Jonathan sets it on fire. It goes back to the other side, badly hurt.

1. The cut palms

   two cuts are enough to open the hunt

2. The nail bat

   Jonathan builds it at home during the preparations, nails driven into a baseball bat

3. The bear trap

   Steve drives the creature back with bat blows, Jonathan sets it on fire

4. Steve's U-turn

   once out of the house, he sees the lights go wild and comes back to fight

At middle school: a kiss, then a hallway

The group has fallen back into a room at the back. Mike offers to have Eleven come live with him once Will is found; she asks whether he would then be like a brother, he says no, invites her to the middle-school snow ball, then gets tangled trying to explain what a crush is, and ends up kissing her. She stays still, without a word.

Outside, a car parks: the lab agents. They surround the children in the hallway; Eleven kills them with her mind, and the effort puts her on the ground. When she opens her eyes again, the program director is leaning over her and her friends are held by the arms: she asks to leave with them, not with him. The answer comes from somewhere else. The blood spilled in the hallway has crossed over, and the creature comes out of the wall to feed.

• The kissplaced just before the agents' car parks in front of the middle school
• The hallwaythe agents drop all at once, and Eleven faints from the effort
• The refusalshe chooses her friends over the man who raised her
• The wallthe blood calls the creature, exactly like in the trap next door

The library: the tendril, and breath coming back

On the other side, the two adults follow a trail of blood to the double of the town library. Bodies are caught in the vines, and among them Nancy's friend, gone from the edge of a pool as early as chapter two. Will is there, unconscious, a growth pushed into his throat.

Joyce pulls the thing out of his mouth, the police chief shoots it because it is still moving. The child is not breathing. The police chief sets Joyce above the face for the breaths and takes the compressions himself, while the edit cuts back to doctors unable to revive his daughter. He pushes harder, longer, until Will catches his breath.

The creature of season one, shelf version.

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The classroom: what Eleven's last gesture costs

The edit then alternates between two rooms set in two worlds. In the classroom, the creature comes in through the door; Eleven, emptied out, gets up, pins it to the wall, and tears it apart. The gesture forgives nothing, neither the creature nor her: she says goodbye to Mike and disappears in the same breath. Mike's mother arrives with the police, and her son throws himself into her arms.

This editing choice is the episode's signature. At the same moment, in another dimension, a child starts breathing again. The season gives Will back and takes Eleven in the same minute, without a line of dialogue to underline the exchange.

The hospital, then Christmas: the epilogue in four shots

Will wakes up in the hospital, his mother and his brother at the bedside, with a mixtape made for him. Nancy, for her part, leaves the room in tears: in another family in town, nobody will wake up. Outside, a car parks and the police chief gets in without a word — the deal from the first act is still running.

Six weeks later, on Christmas Eve, the party closes a role-playing campaign in the basement: they finish off a thessalhydra thanks to a fireball thrown by Will. Mike looks at the blanket fort still standing in a corner. Nancy gives Jonathan a new camera, actually bought by Steve. The police chief, for his part, takes the road the boys call Mirkwood and leaves in a wooden box a tray of food and a pack of frozen waffles.

Last shot: in the middle of the meal, Will goes to the bathroom and throws up a slug in the sink. For the length of a blink, the room tips to the dark side. He rinses his mouth, comes back to the table, and says nothing to anyone.

1. The tape

   Jonathan brings his brother a mixtape made for him

2. The black car

   in front of the hospital, a car parks and the police chief gets in without a word

3. The waffles at Mirkwood

   a tray of food and frozen waffles, left in a wooden box

4. The slug

   the thread the next season will only have to pull

Details, references, and the episode sheet

The title announces a dimension nobody names on screen. The references, though, are laid in the open. The house trapped then set on fire to receive a monster comes from a horror classic of 1984; the walk in suits, lamp in hand, points to a science-fiction film of 1979; the kids cite Lando and compare Eleven to Yoda.

On the music side, the resuscitation plays over a Moby track and the epilogue runs "Carol of the Bells" then "White Christmas": season one closes on Christmas songs. The runtime, finally, states the pace: 55 min 42 s against 43 min 01 s for the previous chapter, nearly thirteen minutes apart. The Duffer brothers told the American press, a week after it went online, that this finale had been by far the hardest episode to get in the can.

Eighth and final episode of season one, put online in a block with the other seven on July 15, 2016.

The waffles from the last scene, to wear rather than to eat.

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