In Stranger Things Season 5 Episode 3, “The Turnbow Trap,” the titular trap refers to Derek Turnbow (Jake Connelly, Between the Silence), otherwise known as D*pshit Derek, and, as Will (Noah Schnapp) learns, Vecna’s (Jamie Campbell Bower) second target. After the big bad kidnapped Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) in “The Vanishing Of,” we still don’t know why Vecna is targeting these children, but we know he’s sending Demogorgons after them. If our heroes can, say, trap that demogorgon and get a tracker on it, they might be able to both protect Derek and find Holly.
Of course, there are layers to this trap. One of these layers not being handled properly could lead to the end of the world. They include Erica’s (Priah Ferguson) cooking abilities and her relationship with her best friend Tina (Caroline Elle Abrams) which ended over a game of dodgeball two weeks ago. There’s also some Home Alone shenanigans that will involve Steve (Joe Keery) using a chainsaw to turn the Turnbrow’s living room into a death trap for demogorgons. (The Turnbows are drugged by the pie Erica cooked for them, so they didn’t have a say in that.) These layers are absurd, confounding, rib-tickling, and, in a vacuum, a thousand miles away from anything Upside Down related. These hijinks contribute to the stakes, while being an escape from them.
Among these more human hijinks, we see Robin (Maya Hawke) and Will getting to know each other. As the two openly queer characters on the show, their little conflicts reflect two dangers queer people can face: the danger of coming out of the closet, and the danger of staying in it. Will catches Robin having a romantic moment with her girlfriend Vickie (Amybeth McNulty). Robin fears Will might rat her out, but after their mission forces the two to work together, they get to know and trust each other, and Robin can soon see what we all saw in Season 4: Will’s love for Mike, and the agony he feels over not being with him. While the emphasis is initially on Robin’s fear of the world, she remembers why she’s with Vickie to begin with — to escape it. To find joy in places others won’t allow.
The concept of escapism is especially relevant to “The Turnbow Trap” and “Sorcerer” thematically, particularly, and unfortunately, in Vecna’s world. In Season 4, Vecna inflicted terror on his victims by entering their minds, choosing their worst memories like a grotesque mixtape. Time lost its consistency in Vecna’s mind palace. His victims would often run from the memory he was forcing upon them, only for them to run into a different terrible memory, or even another terrible memory … or even just back to the first memory they were trying to escape.
“The Turnbow Trap” and “Sorcerer” both flip this notion on its head, at least for Holly. Holly’s inside Vecna’s memory world, but rather than jumping around trauma to trauma, the world Holly inhabits is a wonderland, and it’s eerily, terribly consistent. It’s a world with dessert for breakfast, surpluses of toys, and perpetual sunshine. Joy is no longer Vecna’s weakness. He now uses it as bait.
(Spoilers for the end of “The Turnbow Trap” specifically from hereon.)
The notion of joy as bait extends to Max’s return to the show. Her mind having lived in Vecna’s world since she went into a coma at the end of Season 4, she’s been hiding in a cave that even Vecna fears (tune in next month). Prior to this, her experience in Vecna’s memory world was similar to what we’ve previously seen. She’d been running from place to place, memory to memory, with nothing to ground her. In addition, Vecna is now using “Running Up That Hill,” against Max, playing it at a distance, forcing her to chase it. This means that Vecna has incorporated Max’s process of escape into the maze she needs to escape from, and Max is depressingly aware of this. When trying to escape your devils means you might be playing into their hands, it’s sometimes easier to just give up and let them passively win.
Long after Max had given up, Holly’s kidnapping has given her that boost she needs. She has another reason to escape now, so they both have. Amidst this morale boost, though, remains a question. Really, it’s multiple questions, but they all bring us back to one single question, and it’s the question that began the show — Why?
Why are they in this situation that they need to escape from?
Why did Vecna kidnap them?
Why did Vecna kidnap Will in the first place?
That this final season’s conflict is a grander iteration of the first season puts the characters in a position where their newfound strengths are put on display, but so are the weaknesses they never resolved.
This means, regardless of how clever Robin’s plan is to rescue children under military arrest, regardless of how communicative Mike finally is with Will and Lucas, by the end of “Sorcerer,” their failure to answer that question will come back to bite them in the ass. It will remain unanswered after their ass is bitten, but they do get one step closer to the answer with “Sorcerer’s” final shot.
This one step is a paradigm shift. It leaves many stones unturned, and failure lingers over this paradigm shift, but it’s a paradigm shift in the purest sense. It’s in these moments that Stranger Things’ iconic elements, its demogorgons, its psychic mind battles, its anonymous military jackasses getting ripped apart by demogorgons, its contortions of the flesh, all come together to redefine everything we thought we knew about these worlds. We may not know why Will was kidnapped by the end of Episode 4, but we do know the implications of that answer are greater than we could have imagined.
It’s easy to get impatient for the rest of this season. In fact, impatience is practically baked into why this season’s unique release model exists to begin with. They know we’re going to be itching in our seats to see how the story will continue, and we’ll be itching again a month from now when we have to wait a week for the series finale. That said, if these episodes have been any indication, then, however cloyingly Netflix is wringing out attention for clicks, it’s nice to know that that what we’re anxiously waiting for is bound to be pretty f*cking great.
