By Owen Quinn author Photos copyright Owen Quinn and Netflix
WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!
I’ve said already, there’s very much a Nightmare on Elm Street / IT feel to this season continuing from last season and the opening moments only reinforce that notion. I’ve also said that this is not the kids and Hawkins we know. They are hardened, fighting for survival. That is demonstrated beautifully when Will turns on his mother and tells her what he really thinks of her plan and clinginess. He says they don’t have time for safe because he now knows Vecna’s plan. I have to add, the inclusion of Robin in this scene makes it fun. The humour is much needed in this tense moment. It is a mother realising her child is now a man and she has to find a way to cut the apron strings or at least, loosen them a bit.
Jamie Campbell Bower continues to be as haunting and evil as Pennywise or Freddy ever were, appearing to his chosen victims. That first scene as he smiles at the spoiled, foul mouthed, Derek, in the classroom is pure run like hell fear. As with Holly, the kids don’t fear Vecna, now looking like his old self and using his real name, Henry. He is their friend and that opens up so many parental horrors like Vecna is grooming them for his own devices. Jamie is just so serpentine and demonic in his performance when he stands still and smiles from behind those glasses. His manipulation of Holly is horrifying as he nests her in an Elm Street house in the middle of nowhere with the warning not to go near the woodds or the monsters will get her. The greatest threat is the one you can’t see standing in front of you, wearing the face of a friend.
If you recall the Reverend Henry Kane from Poltergeist 2, then that is the air I’m getting watching Jamie Campbell Bower’s performance here. Vecna and Kane are literal sharks as is Pennywise but evil works best when it uses the familiar to trap us.
I have to say though that from a personal point of view, having met Jamie in Dublin this year, every time I see him, I just think “Ach, there’s our Jamie!” He is the nicest celebrity I’ve ever met and truly genuine when meeting and talking to fans. So, Vecna is alright with me.
Each episode is peeling a layer off an onion as more questions form. We are getting the jigsaw pieces but no box to see what picture it is meant to show.
We were told that the gang would be actively hunting Vecna and bringing the fight to him from the get go. Well, here it is in full flow and Will is right. There is no more safe. They have to fight and a daring plan is hatched. The excitement I feel watching them work together is exhilarting because these characters are engrained into our psyches, our buddies. Add to that, with the return of Erica, we are on to a winner. This plan is very Home Alone times ten. But then, Kevin never drugged a family before to monster proof their house and nobody could do it better than Erica.
They need to track the demogorgon to follow it back to Vecna’s hiding place. Where that is, the kids are. They need to shoot it with a bullet containing a tracking device that Dustin, Steve and company can follow in the car. But it goes dangerously wrong leaving us on a cliffhanger. The build up to the trap being sprung in the Turnbull house is funny and the demogorgons seem more terrifying this year for some reason.
But Hopper and Elle are fighting their own war as we discover the army has a weapon to paralyse Elle leaving Hopper to fight for his daughter in a do or die scenario. Hopper has always known she is a target and their bond grew even closer last episode when he opened up to her about his daughter that died from cancer. Harbour gives a beautiful performance here. They continue to butt heads but from a place of love rather than conflict.
Murray and Erica bring some much needed humour especially as Murray is aghast that Jonathan has not had sex with Nancy yet. It seems sex guru Murray has a failed student. The humour is much needed given the dire straits everyone is in, between Hopper and Elle battling the military, each other and the mysterious wall in the Upside Down to the plan to save Derek from the demogorgon hound ready to snatch the kid.
But more layers of the onion are peeled as Hopper and Elle interrogate a high ranking soldier under Dr Kay in their own unique ways. We see the hardened edge I spoke of earlier as Hopper knows no bounds in finding out what he wants to know. There are no limits to the lengths he will go to where his daughter is concerned. Elle discovers that there is something as powerful as her locked in the military base. Is it Vecna? And how is he reaching out to steal the children?
Holly finds a note from Henry telling to meet him in a specific place even though Henry’s instructions were to stay out of the woods in case she gets eaten by monsters. Away she goes with shades of Red Riding Hood and Litttle Miss Muffett. These are subtle clues as to where she really is. She finds a monster in a cave that chases her into the woods. Trapped, she hides but the monster finds her and is revealed as….
Tune in next episode but the ending of this is going make you scream.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 