Stranger Things season 4 episode 3: "The Monster and the Superhero," recap and analysis

The episode fact sheet

The third chapter of March 1986 is titled « Chapitre Trois : Le Monstre et la Super-héroïne » in the French version, "Chapter Three: The Monster and the Superhero" in the original version. It was released on May 27, 2022 with the six other chapters of the first volume; the last two followed on July 1. It runs 1 hour and 3 minutes.

It is the shortest of the season's nine chapters, whose runtimes stretch from about 63 to 139 minutes. The tight format shows: not one action sequence, no creature on screen, and yet every character changes place. It is a chapter of a turn, not of a battle.

Directing is credited to Shawn Levy, an executive producer of the show, who directs chapters 3 and 4 here. The script is by Caitlin Schneiderhan, and it is her first script for the show. The chapter sits between "Vecna's Curse" and "Dear Billy."

One detail amuses regular viewers: Shawn Levy had already directed the third episode of the first season, "Holly, Jolly," also built on a grief.

Stranger Things season 4 episode 3: the plot recap, in order

The episode opens at the edge of Lovers' Lake, in the boathouse where Eddie Munson has been hiding since Chrissy Cunningham's death. Dustin, Steve, Robin, and Max bring him enough to hold on and tell him the police are looking for him. Sirens interrupt them: Fred Benson's body has just been found on the road, his limbs broken like Chrissy's.

Nancy is already on the scene: she spent the evening with Fred, she is the last to have seen him alive, and the officers question her. The group splits the task. Nancy and Robin will search the archives; Max, Dustin, and Steve will force the office of the high school guidance counselor, Ms. Kelley, whom Chrissy had seen before she died.

At the same time, Jason Carver gathers his basketball team. Convinced that Eddie killed Chrissy and that the Hellfire club is a cult, he turns his grief into a search. Lucas Sinclair, who plays on that team, understands what is coming, warns Dustin by walkie-talkie, then leaves the group.

In California, the day before, at the Rink-O-Mania rink, Eleven hit Angela in the face with a roller skate. The police come to the Byers; Will and Jonathan try to buy time, Eleven comes down the stairs and gives herself up. She is booked, photographed, then taken away in a van.

The van never arrives. Unmarked vehicles intercept it, and it is Dr. Owens who is waiting for Eleven, in a roadside restaurant. He tells her that teenagers are dying, that her friends are in danger, and that a program can give her powers back. He does not promise her she will succeed. She accepts. Earlier, in Nevada, he received a visit from Lieutenant Colonel Sullivan, who puts the photographs of Chrissy's body on the table and states his thesis: a teenager trained by Brenner kills from a distance, and Owens is hiding her.

In Kamchatka, Hopper prepares his way out. Dmitri, the guard who has sold his escape, needs time and money; Hopper, for his part, first has to get rid of his irons. He pays a fellow prisoner so a sledgehammer blow will break his ankle, then works his foot through the ring. At the same moment, Joyce tells her sons about a work trip: she is flying to Alaska with Murray and the forty thousand dollars of the ransom.

The chapter ends at the high school. In Ms. Kelley's files, Max reads Chrissy's and Fred's symptoms: headaches, nosebleeds, nightmares, visions. They have been hers for several days. The corridor darkens, a grandfather clock fills a doorway, and a voice says her first name.

1. Opening The boathouse

   Eddie wakes in his hiding place. His four visitors bring him food, and the bad news: the police are looking for him.

2. Hawkins Fred's body on the road

   Second death in two days. Nancy, the last to have seen him alive, is questioned on site.

3. Nevada The lieutenant colonel's visit

   Sullivan spreads the photographs of Chrissy's body in front of Owens and accuses him of hiding the person responsible.

4. Lenora Eleven's arrest

   The police come to the Byers. Will and Jonathan try to cover for her; Eleven comes down and gives herself up.

5. Kamchatka Hopper's ankle

   A sledgehammer blow, paid to a fellow prisoner, breaks the joint. Hopper gets his foot out of the ring.

6. Hawkins Jason's search

   The basketball captain starts the hunt for Eddie. Lucas sends the alert by radio, then leaves the group.

7. Hawkins A news item from 1959

   In the archives, Nancy and Robin come upon Victor Creel, committed for the murder of his wife and his daughter, and upon his demon.

8. Lenora Owens's restaurant

   The van is intercepted. Owens offers Eleven a program that is supposed to give her powers back. She leaves with him.

9. Closing The clock in the doorway

   Max recognizes her symptoms in the counselor's files. The corridor darkens, a voice calls her.

The chapter's three threads, taken separately

Season 4 is the first to split the group across three territories. This chapter moves them at the same speed, without ever making them cross.

Hawkins. The town's thread is an investigation. It produces a method, a name, and a target. The method is crossing the victims: if two dead people saw the same counselor and showed the same symptoms, the killer follows a protocol. The name is Victor Creel, pulled from a newspaper's archives, a woman and a daughter killed in 1959, bones broken, eyes sunk in, a committed father who spoke of a demon. The description looks too much like Eddie's account to be a coincidence.

Lenora Hills. The California thread is a thread of identity. Eleven has had no powers since the battle at Starcourt, she has just hurt a classmate, and she is treated as what she believes she has become. Mike, who came for spring break, brings her waffles and tells her she is a superhero. She reproaches him for the formula of his letters, signed without a word of affection, then answers "not anymore."

Kamchatka. The Russian thread is a thread of the body. The other two move by speech, an interrogation on one side, a restaurant conversation on the other; this one moves by pain. Hopper no longer negotiates: he pays to have a bone broken. At the same moment, Joyce and Murray leave with the ransom, and the escape stops being a hypothesis and becomes a calendar.

The three threads ask the same question: what do you have to accept losing in order to be useful again? Eleven leaves with the state she was fleeing. Hopper gives up an ankle. Lucas loses the place he had just won on his team.

The key moment: "not anymore," then the restaurant

Two scenes carry the chapter's title, and they answer each other. In the first, Mike calls Eleven a superhero, a box of waffles in his hand. In the second, the same teenager is photographed from the front and in profile, booked, then pushed into a van.

The word "monster" is not used at random: the town has already named its own, Eddie Munson, the boy in a metal T-shirt who ran a Dungeons and Dragons club. The chapter holds the two images side by side, an innocent taken for a monster and a heroine who no longer believes she is a heroine.

What the restaurant scene changes fits in one sentence. Until then, Eleven was a teenager punished for a blow with a skate; from then on, she is the only possible answer to what is killing in her old town, and she knows it. Owens sells her nothing: he tells her he does not know if she will manage it.

The other turn is in the last shot. As long as the curse struck strangers, a cheerleader and then a high school reporter, it stayed a riddle seen from outside. By pointing at Max, the story brings it into the group, and everything the season will tell after that follows from there.

What the chapter sets up for what follows

Almost nothing is finished here, and almost everything is set. Four elements leave the chapter in working order.

The victims' grid. The counselor's files give the group its first diagnostic tool: headaches, nosebleeds, nightmares, and a hidden fault. This grid is what will make it clear that Vecna chooses his prey by the wound, and not at random.

Victor Creel. The name from the archives leads Nancy and Robin to Pennhurst asylum, in the next chapter, "Dear Billy". A blind old man there will give the only known defense: a loved song, strong enough to open a door in the trance. For Max, it will be "Running Up That Hill," by Kate Bush.

The ankle, and Owens's program. The broken bone has no immediate effect: it will only matter when it is time to run. The restaurant, for its part, sends Eleven toward a former silo in Nevada and a facility meant to drop her back into her childhood memories. Chapter 5, "The Nina Project," will give it its name and its face.

Sullivan and Jason's militia. The soldier leaves empty-handed, but he has a hypothesis and a file; it is his unit that will assault the site in chapter 8, "Papa." The hunt Jason started will not stop, and it will end by turning the whole town against a handful of teenagers.

The details and references to notice

No creature on screen. Nothing comes out of the Upside Down for sixty-three minutes: the fear is carried by a soldier, a basketball captain, and police officers. That is what gives the last shot its force.

The clock in the doorway. This last shot does not show the grandfather clock full frame: the piece of furniture fills an opening, exactly the place of a passage. It is not a set, it is a door, and the motif will return with every attack.

The van's song. "Object of My Desire," by Starpoint, accompanies Argyle and his pizza deliveries. Like almost the whole season playlist, the track predates March 1986: the show refuses to use, inside the fiction, a song its characters could not have heard.

The news item from 1959. The article Nancy and Robin dig up already contains the season's origin: a big house, a family destroyed, a father accused, and a word, "demon," that nobody took seriously. That house will return until the last act.

The title, and what it hides. "The Monster and the Superhero" points, on the surface, to Eddie and Eleven. The season will reshuffle the cards: the monster will be neither the metalhead the town is hunting nor the girl with the skate, and the superhero will have to take a long detour before she deserves the word again.

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