The Rightside Up
The Rightside Up is the eighth episode of season five. Doctor Kay threatens the soldier who let Jim Hopper, Murray Bauman, Eleven, and Kali Prasad into the base with fun time. Scared, the soldier tells her it was a malfunction, but Dr. Kay does not believe this and takes the soldier to her private room. Once Hopper is dropped off inside of the government base, Murray promises to bring Kali and El back as soon as Hopper is ready. As the children happily leave the dinner room, Vecna grips all of them and rips their fingernails off and starts forming the barrier with their nails. Inside of the local church, Scott Clarke and Erica Sinclair talk about praying to Massa Sahib, but Erica dismisses the idea of it. Robin Buckley tells the group to start climbing up the billboards of her farm to find energy. As Hopper prepares for El and Kali’s return by setting up power inside of the room and preparing cake, Murray drops them off inside of Vecna’s layer. As Mike Wheeler and Will Byers climb one of the towers, Mike tells Will that he could never forgive him for being such a meanie, and states that Will learned a lot from the Mind Flayer. As the kids on the billboards take lookout, El and Kali read Henry Creel’s diary about starring as Henry inside of a play called “The First Shadow.” The party realizes that the place is starting to shake, and Dustin Henderson tells Murray to hurry up. The billboards start collapsing, and Steve Harrington rolls off. Jonathan Byers grabs Steve’s hand, but Steve realizes that if he didn’t let go, both himself and Jonathan would fall. Steve decides to claw at Jonathan’s hand, forcing him to let go, and allowing Steve to fall to his demise, Steve is gone a true hero. The billboards then collapse and break a hole into the mine, where the group falls into. Vecna is annoyed that El and Kali are there and starts stabbing El in her legs, causing her to be very weak and not be able to move her legs. Kali carries El and tells the children to follow her. They find a cave and hide in there. Vecna decides that it is getting late, and that there was no bed inside of the cave, so the children would leave the cave eventually to go back to their beds. Nancy Wheeler threatens Jonathan for not being able to save Steve, and they start fighting before it gets broken up. They reach the second layer of the mines and find Holly Wheeler’s body. Kali warns El about Vecna leaving to go back to bed. Hopper finds a picture of Sara Hopper and realizes that she would not have been proud of what Hopper was doing. Hopper is sad about this and decides to end this. He pulls out a gun. Murray arrives with El and Kali, and says goodbye to Kali, believing this may be his last time seeing her. Hopper then pierces El’s arms with bullets. Enraged, Hopper threatens El at gunpoint, until Kali threatens to detonate the Tsar Bomba right there and right then. Suddenly, Murray warns them about military coming. Derek Turnbow trips over a rock and screams as Mary and Debbie Miller watch his flesh get ripped off by Vecna. Vecna enters the cave, and the rest of the children run, leaving Mary and Debbie to get their flesh ripped out. Nancy gives Mike a flare gun and tells him it is the best weapon possible. Robert Akers and his men enter the room where Hopper was with El and Kali, ready to attack. They send in some hedgehogs, who hurt El and Kali. Hopper is forced onto the ground and is told to pick between El or Kali. Hopper tells Akers to shoot Kali and let El go, but Kali starts running. Matsuda shoots some bullets into Kali, weakening her. Hopper then shoots everybody else, defeating them. El joyfully looks at Kali, and Kali smiles back before Ryuk uses a sniper rifle to shoot Kali in her head, blasting out her brains. They tell Murray the bad news. Eleven tells Hopper that she has a teleportation chamber and will use it to attack Vecna. Vecna enters the cave and recalls his backstory, unknowingly revealing it to Will. He talks about how when he killed Zharkov after opening the crate, it was because he rolled a D20 and was cursed to end a life every time a 20-sided dice was rolled since the Mind Flayer dropped his 20-sided dice into the human world since he was bored. Will talks back to Vecna for the first time and tells him he feels sorry for him, saying how he should have lived a regular life instead of being cursed to end so many lives. The Mind Flayer climbs out of the ground and starts chasing minors, and Eleven uses her teleportation chamber to arrive, Eleven hurts the Mind Flayer’s feelings by tossing rocks at it and enters it’s mouth. Mike tells the gang to distract the Mind Flayer while he escapes, and Nancy becomes bait. Before the Mind Flayer eats Nancy, Robin realizes that the Mind Flayer loves hurting feelings but dislikes getting it’s own feelings hurt. Robin starts calling the Mind Flayer a meanie and distracts the Mind Flayer. Everyone catches on and starts yelling insults at the Mind Flayer, causing it to scream as it tears itself apart. Vecna is still traumatized from his memories, and all of a sudden, Eleven attacks him by tossing a pebble at his back, knocking him to the ground. Vecna tries to reach for his knife to finish Eleven, but Will interrupts and kicks his arm, knocking it off. Joyce Byers starts to cry and pulls out her pillow, she starts yelling at Vecna for making love with the wrong family. Using her Pillow Willow, she starts whacking Vecna’s back. As she finishes off Vecna, Nancy remembers how Barb Holland ended her own life, Dustin remembers how Eddie Munson escaped with his life, Joyce remembers Bob Newby aura farming before feasting. Will remembers losing a game of Dungeons & Dragons, and Murray is upset because there are no Demogorgons anywhere, making a big plot hole, as Joyce finally causes Vecna to stop breathing with her 5th whack on Vecna’s back. Dustin calls Hopper and tells him that they ended Vecna. Hopper picks them up as they leave, but Dr. Kay attacks the van, wanting more kids to have fun with since all of the younger kids are gone, she wants to have fun with the kids. Eleven and Dustin attempt to run away, but Dr. Kay guns both of them down, Dustin jumps in front of Eleven in an attempt to save her, but Eleven’s legs and arms are blasted off. She attempts to bomb Hawkins and sacrifice herself to save many others. She tells Mike that he understands why she wants to off herself, and Mike starts to cry. Eleven presses the launch button but Kay guns down Eleven, before disarming the bomb and causing it to explode Eleven, launching her remains everywhere. A distraught Mike sobs at Eleven’s sacrifice as he picks up her remains, including her finger and her eyeballs. Two years later in 1989, the military base starts getting reconstructed and Hawkins has a memorial site for victims of mining accidents, including Eddie and Burdock Everdeen. Robin returns to the farm to tell the animals a story, and tells them about how the military seized control of the town, and how it is being renamed to Panem. She talks about her new education at Falcon University, and how her partner in farming had fallen off a billboard. Dustin has become the escort of his district and gives a speech about how Panem has turned chaotic evil, especially Jeremy Higgins. He rips off his clothing, as Higgins assigns peacekeepers to gun down Dustin. Joyce goes on a date with Hopper, who tells Joyce he has married Robin. Mike and Will play D&D inside of Mike’s basement, who recounts on how Will moved to Vienna and now feels more isolated than ever at Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He talks about writing a play called “The First Shadow” and tells Will that Lucas Sinclair and Max Mayfield are reunited, and how Dustin can hang out with Steve. He tells Will that Eleven is still alive, and explains that when the bomb supposedly exploded, she tossed Kali’s remains everywhere, and how he noticed that the finger was 1 mm shorter than Eleven’s real finger. He says how now, Eleven is hiding from the dangerous infection and probably collapsed at the fort. As Mike and Will, still separated because of arguments, both walk out of the basement, Mike finds some thieves running past him into the basement. Mike grins slyly over being able to have some fun before locking the door behind the thieves, much to their protests. Mike starts a new group known as the Liberators, since it has been years since the infection started, and other than his friends, he hasn’t met many new faces, while Will starts a new group known as the Valkyrie. Who wants to end the infection.
