Stranger Things season 2 episode 6: “The Spy”, summary and analysis

Chapter file

The original title is “The Spy”. The chapter runs 52 minutes, and the series wiki notes 52 minutes and 46 seconds. It went online on Friday, October 27, 2017, the same day as the other chapters of the year.

Andrew Stanton directs. He had already shot the fifth chapter of season 2, the one with the pumpkin patch, the drawings and the hole. Kate Trefry writes the script. The wiki makes this her first script for the series. She will later write the sauna chapter. Stanton is among the guest directors.

In the United States, on television only, in three days, the figure cited by The Hollywood Reporter on November 2, 2017 is 6.4 million viewers, of whom 4.5 million are between 18 and 49. The story takes place in early November 1984. The wiki sets it on November 3 and 4. None of these dates appears on screen, and no time is given.

The teaser of August 31, 2016 lined up nine provisional titles, out of order. “The Pollywog” was the sixth, and that name became the third chapter's. “The Spy” was not there. The chosen title was shown on October 9, 2017, along with those of the first five chapters. In the episode, the word itself waits for the last scene.

The shower, the road, the hole

Will is seized by convulsions. They take him to the lab, hooked to the machines, in the night. Hopper stands under a jet that washes him off. He comes out of the tunnels covered in dirt, and the editing intercuts that wash with Will's arrival.

Steve takes the wheel. On the radio, “Hammer to Fall”, by Queen. Dustin comes back to the cat, with a clear line: “Because his face opened up and he ate my cat.” They drive toward Dustin's house.

Steve goes down with the nail-studded bat. At the bottom, a skin left behind, and a passage. Dart has already gone: there is no beast left to hit, only the shed skin and the passage. The shed skin and the hole close the threads left open in the previous chapter. The next day, the two boys walk along, laying a trail of meat to lure the beast. That walk is told separately.

1. Opening Convulsions and shower

   Will is taken to the lab. Hopper stands under the jet.

2. The road Toward the basement

   “Hammer to Fall” on the radio, and the story of the cat.

3. The hole A shed skin

   The bat goes down. Only a skin and a passage remain.

4. The lab The drawings

   Drawings photographed at Will's house, doctors without answers.

5. The night At Murray's

   Copies, one room, two lies, the office.

6. The roof The bus

   A father in California, an angry brother, hands that find each other.

7. The tunnels The soldiers

   “Stay frosty”, then the fog.

8. The end The word

   “The spy.” Then “It's a trap!” The creature climbs.

Will at the lab

Agents photograph the drawings, at Will's house. Joyce asks the question that runs through the whole chapter: “What is wrong with my boy?” Will is hooked to the machines. What he sees passes through the shadow, and the shadow looks through him. The boys will later name this presence the Mind Flayer.

Will cannot say Bob. He cannot say Owens. He cannot say Hopper. To reach Mike, he needs time. The question of why Vecna does not kill Will also goes back to this season. In this room, it is still about silence and names that will not come out.

A burned filament draws a “Little sting.” out of him. Owens talks about a virus, then about a hive intelligence. He drops: “a virus can be cured.” Earlier, at Will's bedside, Bob brings up moving to Maine again, an idea already floated in the second chapter of season 2.

Joyce asks what happens when her son is gone: “What happens when my boy is gone?” Owens does not answer that. Later, without Joyce, doctors want to burn the tunnels. Owens: “And if it kills the boy?” A doctor: “Then quite frankly, Sam, it kills him.”

At Murray's: the copies, two lies and a night

Murray and his two guests copy the tape, then he raises a toast: “To taking down the man.” The house offers only one guest room. Jonathan asks: “Could I use the sofa?” Murray fires back: “A lovers' quarrel?” They answer that they are just friends: for Murray, that is the first lie.

You hear: “An asshole.” Then two lines, one after the other: “We like Steve.” “But we don't love Steve.” Both lines are Murray's. Nancy protests that she loves him: for Murray, that is the second lie of the evening. Murray does not come up with a second bedroom. He points out the sofa bed in his office and advises them to share the bed.

They split up. Nancy joins Jonathan later. In the morning Murray calls out: “So, Jonathan, how was the pullout?”

Nancy says she is at Ally's. Her mother thinks Mike slept at the Byers'. As they leave, they are handed something to drink: “For your travels. And to water it down.” The Byers house is empty. A Polaroid cartridge is there: “I don't shoot Polaroid.” At Murray's, you hear four of the songs of season 2: Where Django's At, There Is Frost On the Moon, You Better Go Now and Blue Bayou by Orbison.

The roof of the bus

On the roof, Max talks about her father, who stayed in California, about a divorce, and about an angry stepbrother. The violence she describes is that brother's. Around her, the conversation catches two words: “totally tubular” and “stalker”. The wiki adds that they notice, at one point, that they were holding hands.

Earlier, Erica had cut off Lucas's walkie-talkie. Dustin settles it: “I'm pretty sure he's a baby Demogorgon.” The nickname that will later stick to these young beasts is not said in this chapter. It comes in chapter 8. Until then, they aim at a place they call “the old junkyard”. The bait is set. Dart does not touch it.

The line “Human tastes better than cat” drops, then three more creatures burst out. Steve falls back into the bus, under siege, before the pack heads off again. Elsewhere in the chapter, “stay frosty”: the wiki sees a nod to Aliens, released in 1986, two years after the story told here. Paul Reiser, who plays Owens, is also in that film. And you hear: “It's that damn graveyard.” Mike has not yet shouted the word from the title. That comes right after, when Will apologizes.

The map, the word, the trap

Hopper is free. Around the gate that is widening, the lab has dug a pit. His radio is not a code tapped into nothing: he speaks, out loud. He apologizes to Eleven. He asks her to eat something other than Eggo waffles, and to finish her peas.

In front of the map, Will freezes on one area. The line is short: “he doesn't want me to see there”. Soldiers are sent there. Later, when the fog floods the tunnels, Will apologizes: “He made me do it.” Mike whispers first. Then he shouts: “The spy.” He runs to warn the soldiers: “It's a trap!” The chapter title is finally said, and it refers to Will, not the beast from the hole. The friend hooked to the machines was used to show the way.

The creature comes out and climbs toward Hopper. The seventh chapter of season 2 heads to Chicago. We end on the shout, and on the thing leaving the tunnel.

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