Stranger Things season 4 episode 2: "Vecna's Curse," recap and analysis

Stranger Things season 4 episode 2: the episode file

The second chapter of season 4 is titled « Chapitre Deux : La Malédiction de Vecna », that is « Chapter Two: Vecna's Curse » in the original version. Matt and Ross Duffer wrote and directed it, like the first. It runs seventy-five minutes, a length that would have made a finale in seasons 1 and 2.

It was released on May 27, 2022, with the six other chapters of volume 1. The season has nine of them, split into two volumes: seven on May 27, two on July 1. The Duffers directed five, Shawn Levy two, Nimród Antal two. Chapter two therefore belongs to the opening block, the one the creators kept for themselves.

The action takes place in March 1986, the day after Chrissy Cunningham's death in Eddie Munson's trailer. It covers one day and one night. Added to that is a prologue dated July 4, 1985, under the Starcourt mall: that is what answers the question left open at the end of season 3.

The title is an anomaly in itself: it announces a name that, in the fiction, still exists only on the Dungeons & Dragons table from chapter one. That name, two teenagers will stick it on the monster in the middle of the episode.

The episode recap, in order

The chapter opens with a flashback. On July 4, 1985, under Starcourt, Hopper jumps from a catwalk toward a lower platform at the instant the explosion takes the machine room. He wakes up stunned, climbs back up, and runs into Soviet soldiers who put him on the ground. He is not dead: he is a prisoner, and he is leaving for a camp in Kamchatka.

The next morning, the town already has its culprit. Max tells Dustin that she saw Eddie leave his trailer at a run, the night Chrissy died: she lives in the same park. With Steve and Robin, they decide to find him before the police.

At the school paper, Nancy refuses the rumor and takes Fred Benson to investigate on site, at the Forest Hills trailer park. Eddie's uncle, Wayne Munson, gives them a name: Victor Creel, a man committed for killing his family in 1959 and taking their eyes. Chrissy died the same way.

In California, Mike arrives for spring break. Eleven, who has written him letters full of a life she does not have, takes him and Will to the Rink-O-Mania rink. Angela is there too, with her group.

That evening, everything falls at once: a ransom is set for Hopper, Eddie is found, a roller skate goes into Angela's face, and Fred walks off alone on a dark road and does not come back.

1. Prologue How Hopper survived Starcourt

   July 4, 1985. The police chief jumps toward a lower platform at the moment of the explosion. Soviet soldiers pick him up and ship him to Kamchatka.

2. Morning Max saw Eddie run

   Max tells Dustin what she saw from the trailer park. It is the first solid piece of information the group has, and in their eyes it already clears Eddie.

3. Noon Nancy, Fred, and Uncle Wayne

   The two high school reporters go back to the trailer. Wayne Munson tells them about Victor Creel and the eyes torn out in 1959.

4. Lenora Mike arrives for the break

   Eleven sees Mike again after months of embellished letters. Will, who knows the truth, says nothing. Direction: the rink.

5. Kamchatka Forty thousand dollars for a prisoner

   Joyce and Murray dial the number slipped into the package. On the line, a guard, Dmitri Antonov, sets Hopper's price and names a contact in Alaska.

6. The boathouse Eddie tells what he saw

   Dustin, Max, Steve, and Robin find Eddie hidden in Reefer Rick's cabin. He attacks Steve, then talks. Dustin opens the Upside Down file for him.

7. Rink-O-Mania The milkshake, then the skate

   Angela corners Eleven on the rink and dumps a milkshake on her head, in front of Mike and Will. Eleven comes out of her hiding place and hits her in the face with a skate.

8. The night Fred walks off and does not come back

   Drawn by visions of the accident he fled, Fred leaves the road and goes in under the trees. Vecna lifts him and breaks him. Nancy arrives too late.

The three threads: Hawkins, Lenora, Kamchatka

Hawkins. Two investigations cross without meeting. On one side, Max, Dustin, Steve, and Robin look for Eddie; they find him in a dealer's boathouse. Eddie attacks Steve with a broken bottle before he agrees to talk. On the other, Nancy and Fred follow the rumor and come upon the name Victor Creel. Jason Carver, for his part, has already decided: Eddie killed his girlfriend, and the hunt begins.

What Dustin does in this boathouse is without precedent in the show. He breaks the silence the group has kept since 1983 and tells an outsider everything: the Upside Down, the gates, the creature from the first year. But what killed Chrissy is neither the Demogorgon of 1983 nor the Mind Flayer of 1984: it is a third thing, which kills from a distance, inside the head, and which nobody has seen yet.

Lenora Hills. The California thread contains no monster, and it is the cruelest. Eleven has lived there since the fall of 1985, without powers, bullied by a girl from her high school, and she has hidden all of that from Mike in her letters. When he arrives, she plays the part she wrote, up to the Rink-O-Mania rink, where Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus" announces Angela and her group before the Surfaris' "Wipeout" accompanies the circle of skaters. The show films this bullying exactly as it films a supernatural attack: through the staging of powerlessness.

Kamchatka. The third thread is the shortest and the most decisive. Joyce and Murray call the number that came with the package from Russia. On the line, a camp guard: Dmitri Antonov, whom Hopper has bribed and who signs his messages with a nickname borrowed from a restaurant. He demands forty thousand dollars, to be handed to a contact in Alaska. Hopper, for his part, gets only a few shots: a shaved head, a uniform, and the cold.

The key moment: the monster gets a name

The boathouse scene is the episode's center of gravity. Eddie describes what he saw in his trailer: Chrissy frozen, white eyes, lifted into the air, her limbs broken one after another. He expects to be taken for a madman. Dustin answers by telling him about the last three years.

Then comes the label. Eddie describes, and it is Dustin who decides: Vecna, an undead spellcaster from Dungeons & Dragons, a lich, "a wizard of darkness." The name fits. It will hold until the end of the season, and it gives the episode its title.

This naming says something about the whole show. The kids had already borrowed "Demogorgon" from the same game in 1983, but Vecna is not that Demogorgon, and he is not the Mind Flayer of 1984 either: three quite distinct entities. Each time, for lack of knowing what they are facing, they take a word from their manual and stick it on the void.

The second moment is a death. Fred Benson hears a grandfather clock nobody else hears, bleeds from the nose, and sees again the car accident he fled the previous year. He walks off, drawn by visions, and dies away from the trailer park, lifted and broken like Chrissy. For the audience, the demonstration is done: Eddie had nothing to do with it, and the killer strikes when he wants.

What the episode sets up for what comes next

The name Victor Creel, dropped by Wayne Munson in front of Nancy, is the seed of the whole investigation. It will lead Nancy and Robin to Pennhurst asylum, in Indiana, two chapters further on, and to the only known defense against the curse: a loved song, able to open a gate in the trance. Victor Creel does not appear here yet; only his name is circulating.

The ransom set by the guard launches Joyce and Murray's trip toward Alaska. The roller skate, for its part, leads straight to Eleven's arrest in the next chapter, then to Dr. Owens, then to the program meant to give her powers back. Without that evening at the rink, the season does not have the same ending.

Fred's death opens a second gate, at the exact point where he fell. The mechanism is in place: each death pierces the ground, and it will take four of them for the town to split. Nancy, who does not know it yet, has just lost a colleague and gained an investigation.

There remains Max. Chapter two puts her back at the center without touching her yet: she is the one who gives the first lead, the one who knows the trailer park, the one who follows the group without letting go of her headphones. Her headaches and her visions arrive only at the end of chapter three, and "Running Up That Hill," her song, becomes a shield only in chapter four. Here, she is only a teenager whom the death of Billy, her stepbrother, has left on the outside.

The details and references to notice

The prologue answers a wait three years old. The platform had already hinted, in a short video from February 2020, that the police chief was alive; the episode finally explains how, from its prologue.

The Russian guard's nickname is not a middle name: it is the name of a restaurant, the one where Hopper was supposed to take Joyce to dinner in the summer of 1985. He uses it because it is the only word that would make Joyce open a letter. The detail seems trivial; it is the pivot of the whole Russian thread.

One episode, three territories: Indiana, California, and the Russian Far East. It is the first season of the show to leave the United States for its shoot, with sets in Georgia, in New Mexico, and in Lithuania, where a former prison served as the camp.

Two details, finally. Robert Englund, the original Freddy Krueger, will play Victor Creel two chapters later: citing that character in an episode of mental curse is no accident. And the grandfather clock, heard by Chrissy and then by Fred, announces every attack until the last chapter, along with the nosebleeds and the visions.

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