The Battle of Starcourt
The Battle of Starcourt is the eighth episode of Season three. Dustin Henderson and Erica Sinclair must go to Cerebro on Weathertop in an attempt to learn binary taught by Suzie Bingham in order to help Murray Bauman, Jim Hopper, and Joyce Byers break into a Russian base. Meanwhile, Dustin and Erica, after being dropped off at Weathertop by Steve Harrington and Robin Buckley, climb up Weathertop to be able to assist the adults in breaking into the Russian base. However, when they arrive to Weathertop, they find that the Russians have installed a fence blocking Cerebro, and that they need to use a trapdoor to go underground and travel through the Russian Base. They experience many levers everywhere and follow the pattern of Levy, Prevvy, Levy, Levy, Prevvy, Prevvy, Levy, opening the door and allowing them to get a glimpse of sunshine before going back underground and venturing through more of the tunnels. Dustin follows the tunnel again and finds out the code is L R R, but sometimes the person who designs the code is dummy and makes mistakes. Eventually they reach Cerebro, and Dustin tells a bald eagle to stop making so much noise. Some Russians come and start attacking them and destroying Cerebro, and luckily Erica helps fight back. Dustin finds out that Murray needs Planck’s constant in binary, and after another wave, Dustin gets in contact with Suzie. After clearing another wave, Suzie gets in contact and forces Dustin to sing the song ‘Your Obedient Servant’ with her before telling him Planck’s constant in binary. However, Erica is exhausted and runs away after seeing even more Russians come, leaving Dustin alone on Weathertop. As Dustin gets surrounded and beat up, Erica leaves Weathertop. Meanwhile in The Showdown, Mike Wheeler, Will Byers, Eleven, Max Mayfield, Nancy Wheeler, and Johnathan Byers meet up at the fountain before they see the Mind Flayer crushing through the mall. They hide in a store, and Johnathan and Nancy decide to run away from the mall. As they start driving away from the mall, Billy Hargrove starts driving his car towards Nancy and Johnathan’s car. As Billy is about to crash, Steve decides to save Nancy and Johnathan, pushing Robin out of the car and crashing straight into Billy’s car, knocking the car off course. Unfortunately, Steve’s car exploded in a blaze of glory while Steve was still in it, and Steve dies as a true hero. Billy runs into the mall to join the battle. As the kids decide to have some fun and launch some fireworks, they annoy the Mind Flayer. Eleven pulls out a sword and gets ready to deliver a final blow to the Mind Flayer, but Billy jumps in front of the Mind flayer, getting stabbed instead. As his life starts ebbing away, he apologizes to the Mind Flayer. The fireworks get out of hand and explode the Mind Flayer. Meanwhile, Hopper and Joyce are searching for the second key in The Device after acquiring the first from Murray. They find a computer, and Dustin plays a Russian computer game on it, and finds it hard. Annoyed, Hopper breaks the computer, causing Zharkov to get alerted on their location and shoot Dustin. Hopper then shoots Zharkov and finds the second key in his pocket. When they enter the room and start twisting the keys, Grigori appears and knocks Hopper into the room with the generator. Hopper and Grigori get into a fight in the generator room, as Joyce realizes the machine is made of many magnets. She uses her clothes as a makeshift handle and grabs and gets ready to twist both keys at the same time. However, Hopper slowly pushes Grigori into the machine feet first, but Grigori shoots Hopper’s head. Joyce realizes she must turn the keys and turns off the machine, causing a laser to hit Hopper directly in the chest before Hopper falls off a great height into the lab’s storage of liquid nitrogen. As the mall starts burning down, people reunite and Joyce unfortunately tells Eleven Hopper has died. Before Starcourt mall explodes with Hopper’s remains in it. Three months later, Larry Kline has been captured and is being prepared to be executed. The Byers are moving to a new house inside Hawkins with Eleven, and they prepare themselves for this move. Joyce finds a letter written by Hopper and shows Eleven, and the letter talks about how Hopper believed that he used to be a nice person with many feelings before Eleven came into his life and ruined it, causing Eleven to be emotional. Joyce and family drive away. In a post-credit scene, Russians talk about feeding a prisoner to a Demogorgon, but when the guard reaches a cell, the other guard tells him, “Not the Jim Hopper bloke.” They take another prisoner away.
