Stranger Things 2: Episode 4 “Will the Wise” Review

No cats were harmed during the making of this episode

★★★

I confess, as of writing this, I’ve already watched Episode 5. No spoilers for that episode here, but I had a hunch that “Will the Wise” was mostly prelude for the payoff that would shortly follow. At least I hoped that was the case and, thankfully, it turns out to be the case with a lot of these plot strands coming to some sort of a head during “Dig Dug”. That makes Episode 4 a bit easier to swallow in retrospect, but it’s hard to deny that this episode is all about that setup and so there’s not really a great deal to talk about beyond what you get from just watching it.

We pick up where the last episode left off, with Will still under attack from Smoky (dear show: please give me a name for this thing so I don’t have to keep committing to this lame name) before he’s quickly whisked away home by Joyce. It turns out that Will is now intrinsically linked to Smoky, to the point of intermittent visions into the monster’s memories and even adopting a lower temperature environment (it turns out that Smoky hates warmth and probably happiness and daisies too). Cue Will communicating this connection to Joyce and Hopper through elaborate interlinking drawings that sprawl throughout the Byer residence.

Hopper, drawing a visual similarity between the drawings and the appearance of vines (but tenuous when you spell it out but whatever) heads on down to the pumpkin patch and finds…hang on I’ll come back to that.

Aside from a fantastic little scene at the beginning where Will finally lets his Mum in on everything that is happening to him, there’s not a lot of meat to this part of the episode aside from the obvious. At this point the drawings are mostly weird and mysterious so we’re really just left waiting for whatever will happen next. Pretty standard binge-watch methodology, though it throws into focus how little the show has relied on it so far this season.

Elsewhere, we get what I would argue to be our first weird character decision of the season as Dustin tries to keep and protect D'art in his bedroom. I’m not entirely sure I follow why Dustin is so plutzed about this animal; I mean, I get that he’s a nice guy but has the show actually laid out any behaviour of his before that might explain his actions now? That’s not rhetorical by the way; I’m a bit hazy on Season 1 so feel free to chip in, here. Anyways, the main thing we learn from Dustin’s plotline is mostly only that D'art is actually super nasty and also something of an early-stage Demogorgan. Oh my, who could have predicted this shocking development? Actually, I did not predict the show would have D'art engage in grisly cat murder, so there’s that.

The last thing I want to really touch on here is something that kind of grated with me during Season 1: the use of Dungeons and Dragons as a parallel. Throughout much of the first Season, the main guys would frequently use D&D as a way of understanding the Upside-Down, to the point that the name ‘The Upside-Down’ is derived from tipping over the game board to look on the other side (which is technically ‘The Flipside’ rather than ‘The Upside-Down’ but eh). I don’t know, this always made my eyes roll if I’m being honest; it always felt a little obvious, while the ‘grit’ of the rest of the show made it a bit weird that the guys were never wrong in their D&D predictions (as I said in the last review, if the show had gone full pulp, this probably wouldn’t have been an issue). D&D rears its head again in Episode 4, as the boys conjecture that the shadow creature and the shadow realm theoretically shouldn’t be able to harm Will. Hopper’s all-too-easy descent into the Upside-Down, if nothing else, proves them to be wildly wrong.

Episode 5 "Dig Dug" review here.

Other things:

• It’s kind of weird that, given how integral Bob’s outlook was in providing contrast to Will’s trauma during the last episode, he doesn’t actually show up in this one.

• Winona Ryder starts getting more screen time. Mercifully it looks like she has to portray more than one emotion this season and she is, predictably, nailing it.

• I know I haven’t really talked about Max much yet. But really, is there much to say at this point?

• Anyone else think Eleven and Hopper’s parent/child argument could have pretty easily become borderline comedic had they flipped some goofy music over the top? Have I been watching too many sitcoms recently?

• Eleven tries to find home by going in search of her Mother. I can’t say I saw this arc coming to be honest, but sure I’ll take it.

#strangerthings #strangerthings2 #netflix