Stranger Things season 4 episode 5: "The Nina Project," recap and analysis

The file on chapter five

The fifth chapter of the fourth season carries, in French, the title Projet Nina; in the original version, Chapter Five: The Nina Project. It runs 74 minutes, that is one hour and fourteen minutes, and it arrived on May 27, 2022 with the six other chapters of the first volume. The last two followed on July 1.

Directing goes to Nimród Antal, a Hungarian-American filmmaker who broke through with Kontroll in 2003 and moved to action film with Predators in 2010. He signs chapters five and six, the only two given to a guest that season: the creators keep the opening and the closing for themselves, and Shawn Levy had taken chapters three and four.

Kate Trefry writes the script, her third script for the show after "The Spy" and "The Sauna Test." She is also the one who wrote the stage play drawn from the story, from a story by the creators and Jack Thorne.

The chapter sits right after "Dear Billy", the one with Max's letter and the Kate Bush track, and right before "The Dive." It takes place, like the whole season, in March 1986.

Recap of Stranger Things season 4 episode 5, in order

The chapter opens on a California road, in the back of a pizza delivery van. Agent Harmon, hit during the attack on the Byers house, has time for only one instruction: warn Dr. Owens, because Eleven is in danger. He lets out a word, "Nina," holds out a pen, and dies. The pen does not write: it contains a number, which answers with a machine tone. Mike, Will, Jonathan, and Argyle leave for Utah, toward the only person able to trace a line: Suzie, Dustin's girlfriend.

Elsewhere in the West, Owens drives Eleven to a former missile silo buried under the Nevada desert. "Nina" is not a woman: it is the code name of a sensory isolation tank installed at the bottom of the shaft. Brenner, whom the story had left for dead, is waiting for her at the end of the corridor. She refuses, runs, is caught, and put to sleep with an injection. The first bath takes her years back, into the rainbow room: a failed telekinesis exercise in front of the other numbered children, the other children's mockery, and an orderly in a white coat, the only adult to speak to her gently.

In Hawkins, Max draws what she saw during her trance at the cemetery, and Nancy recognizes a stained-glass window in her sketches: the Creel house, seen from inside. Nancy, Robin, Steve, Dustin, Max, and Lucas force the condemned building and search it flashlight in hand. They find nothing there. Then the lights start to flicker, and they understand that something is standing in the same room, on the other side.

In Kamchatka, Yuri's betrayal has cost Dmitri his rank, and he now shares the American prisoner's cell. Hopper tells him about his daughter Sara, dead of cancer, and the defoliant he was exposed to during the Vietnam War; he does not conclude that he is cursed, but that he is the curse. Farther north, Joyce and Murray free themselves in the back of Yuri's plane, overpower the smuggler, and set the aircraft down in emergency in the forest.

The next-to-last sequence plays at Lovers' Lake, where Eddie is hiding in Reefer Rick's cabin. Jason, Patrick, and their teammates flush him out; Eddie flees onto the water. Patrick hears the clock, freezes, disappears under the surface, then rises into the air, limbs twisted, in front of Jason and in front of Eddie. At the same instant, in the Creel house, the lights go wild.

1. Opening The van, the agent, and the pen

   On a California road, Agent Harmon dies in the back of a delivery van. He leaves a word, "Nina," and a pen that does not write.

2. The desert A missile silo under the sand

   Owens drives Eleven to a former decommissioned launch shaft, in Nevada. The lab is buried underneath.

3. The refusal Eleven runs, then gets an injection

   Brenner is waiting for her at the end of the corridor. She runs, is caught, and they put her to sleep to place her in the tank.

4. The bath The rainbow room comes back

   The tank sends her back to childhood: a failed exercise, the other children's mockery, an orderly who does not rush her.

5. The house Flashlights at the Creels'

   Max's drawings lead Nancy to the condemned building. The group searches it and finds nothing, until the lights flicker.

6. The cell Hopper tells Dmitri about Sara

   Stripped of his rank by Yuri's betrayal, the guard ends up locked in with the American, who tells him about his daughter's death.

7. The plane Murray takes back Yuri's aircraft

   Joyce and Murray free themselves and overpower the smuggler. Nobody knows how to fly: the plane ends up in the trees.

8. The lake Patrick rises above the water

   Hunted by the basketball players, Eddie flees onto the water. Patrick hears the clock, sinks, then rises into the air, broken.

9. The way out The powers come back in a corridor

   After the session, Eleven tries to run again. Her powers reappear for a few seconds: she turns back toward the tank.

The four threads, untangled one by one

Hawkins. The town's thread is an investigation. Max has survived her trance, and her drawings become evidence. Nancy makes the link with the stained glass of the Creel house, and the group moves from the question "who is killing" to the question "where the killer stands." The town's second thread is a manhunt: Jason Carver tracks Eddie with his basketball teammates, and the chapter films that chase like a high school thriller, with no creature in the image.

California and the road. This thread hangs on one object. A pen replaces the house, the car, and the police as the only link to Eleven. Four boys without powers, without a weapon, and without a badge become the only team able to find her, and the pizzeria van serves as their mobile base.

Nevada. This is the heart of the chapter, and the most closed of the four threads: a corridor, a tank, a control room. Owens plays frankness there, Brenner patience. The device consists of dropping Eleven back into her memories, in order, up to the one she buried. Brenner explains that the name comes from an opera whose heroine, after her lover's death, had buried that memory deep inside herself.

Russia. This thread moves no plot forward: it moves a character forward. Hopper and Dmitri, now in the same cell, have nothing left to negotiate, the plan has fallen and so has the rank. That void leaves room for the chapter's only monologue. The counterpoint arrives right after, in Yuri's plane: the season alternates confession and action comedy, and will do so to the end.

The key moment: the powers coming back in a corridor

The moment this chapter builds from beginning to end is neither a death nor a revelation: it is a failure that becomes proof. After the first session, Eleven tries again to escape the silo. Guards catch her. And, for a few seconds, her powers come back.

This return is incomplete, and it does not hold. But it is enough: it proves the device works, and that the path goes through the memories. Eleven has no argument left for refusing. She comes back to Brenner and agrees to go back into the tank.

What that changes fits in one image: the child turns back of her own accord toward the man who made her. It is the cruelest mechanism of the season. To become again what she is, Eleven has to accept becoming again what he had made of her, and the eighth chapter, titled "Papa", will only present the bill.

The other strong moment falls at the same point in the edit, thousands of miles away: Patrick's death. It is more spectacular, but it is not a character turn, it is a map turn. It opens the third gate, and that gate is underwater. After the trailer and the road, the lake. Only one is left.

What the chapter sets up for what follows

The lake is the most direct legacy. The third gate opens at the bottom of the water, at the exact place where Patrick died, and the next chapter is called "The Dive": Steve, Nancy, Robin, and Eddie will go down there to look for what the camera has just shown.

The Creel house is the second legacy. Seeing the lights go wild, the group gets an address, and that address is what the last chapter's plan will aim at. The stained glass Max drew is worth a map: the story has just turned a teenage girl's nightmare into a working document.

The rainbow room orderly is the third. He has no name in this chapter, and the editing deliberately leaves him in the background. His real identity drops only in the seventh, "The Massacre at Hawkins Lab", and it turns the whole season around.

Two roads remain. The pen leads to Nevada, where California and the desert will end up meeting. The Russian cell leads to the prison arena, where they keep a beast that is a Demogorgon. It is not Vecna, and it is not the Mind Flayer either, even if the seventh chapter will reveal that these creatures all obey Henry Creel. Hopper and Dmitri will not leave Russia before the second volume.

Details and references to notice

The silo. The project occupies a former decommissioned intercontinental missile shaft. The set says everything about the program: a Cold War weapon converted into a laboratory for a teenage girl.

The name. "Nina" comes from an opera, and Brenner says so himself: the heroine, after her lover's death, had buried that memory. The code name therefore announces the method.

The lights. The flickering of the Creel house takes up the device of the first season, when a missing child spoke through strings of lights hung on a wall. The story quotes itself at the moment it changes scale.

The credits. During the first six chapters, the actor who plays the orderly is credited only by his function, not by a character name. The secret holds until the seventh.

The runtime. Seventy-four minutes. In this season, no chapter drops under an hour, and this one stays in the low average, very far from the one hundred thirty-nine minutes of the last.

Frequently asked questions

Read next