By TAYLOR
CASEY
Copy Editor
The long awaited second season of the Netflix Original Show, “Stranger Things,” finally became available to watch Oct. 27.
Kicking off about a year after the events that occurred in season one, we reenter the lives of our favorite ragtag bunch of misfits in Hawkins, Indiana. It’s right around Halloween, so of course, there is something evil and terrifying brewing in the small little town.
In the premiere episode, the show opens up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where we find a group of criminals escaping from the police after their latest heist. It’s not clear who these people are, just that they definitely will become important to the plot later on. One girl (Linnea Berthelsen), stands out from the rest. As they find that there is no escape, she tells the driver to pull through a tunnel, where she then closes her eyes and says: “boom.” Behind her, the tunnel collapses and the police are trapped; or so they think. Nothing happens to the tunnel, and the final shot of that scene shows the girl wiping blood from her nose, and a shot of the numbers 008 on her arm.
Moving onto our main characters, we see Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), and Will (Noah Schnapp) frantically talking to one another on their famous walkie-talkies to see if everyone has enough money for the arcade. Of course, the boyish antics of this group are incredibly refreshing, especially after everything that had happened in the previous season. As they go to the arcade to play their favorite game, they see that Dustin’s high score has been beaten by a mysterious “Madmax.” It’s not revealed until the next day at school that it could be the new girl Maxine (Sadie Sink), who goes by Max.
One of the biggest plot setups during the first episode, is when Will is at the arcade with his friends, and he is suddenly drawn outside. It’s unclear what is happening, but as soon as he steps outside, we know that we are not done with the Upside Down just yet.
As it turns out, Will has been having episodes frequently during this past year. Everything that happened to him while he was on the other side left its mark. Will’s mother (Winona Ryder), takes him to see the doctor in the building that originally harbored the gate to the Upside Down. Will tells him of all the terrifying things he sees when he’s both asleep and awake, and like any person in power trying to hide the truth, the doctor tells him and his mother that these episodes will pass and everything will be okay.
Meanwhile, in Chief Hopper’s (David Harbour) life, he returns to his monotonous days of answering complaints and issues with the town’s residents. The one they focus on in this episode, is that one of the local farms is suffering from dead and decaying crops. The pumpkins that grow there are purple and rotted from the inside out, and there seems to be no explanation as to why they have become like that. Hopper thinks it’s nothing, but we, the viewers, already know that this will hold some significance.
Finally, for those of you who have been waiting for months for justice to be served to our beloved Barb, know that she will definitely get the recognition she deserves this time around. This is seen to by Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Steve (Joe Keery), and even Jonathan (Charlie Heaton).
The first episode sets up the season to be intriguing and exhilarating. Especially at the end when we see the return of a certain girl. Surely, there are people who have already binge-watched the entire season by now, and quite frankly, it’s worthy of that. So, grab your Eggo Waffles, sit down, and enjoy the thrilling sequel to the first installment of “Stranger Things.”
