Stranger Things 4X6: Chapter Six: The Dive

I feel like this episode is the opposite of the previous one. Last episode it seemed like they tired to shove 3 hours of story into 75 minutes. This episode it felt a little thin. We could have saved some of the stuff from last episode for this one. Now, the end of all the storylines in this episode, were amazing, but it just felt like it took too long to get there!

So, Eleven is back in the tank. Owens tells Brenner they should just tell her the truth, but he says, she'll figure it out anyway. She ends up reliving a bunch of her memories. Including ones where she was frustrated, and ones where she was bullied. A creepy (he's supposed to be creepy, right?) worker guy suggests she try to use a sad memory to help. He also suggested she not trust Brenner. Like we couldn't have figured that out already.

Back in a memory, El discovers that after a bunch of kids picked on her, she went off the deep end and ended up killing all (I think all) the other kids at the experiment. She comes out of the tank devastated that she 'killed them all.' But is it possible that the truth is that she didn't do it? Maybe Brenner just made her think she did to get her powers to strengthen?

Elsewhere, Hopper realizes they are being fattened up to the fed to the Demogorgon (yes, I had to look up how to spell that). He picks a fight with his cell mate, which escalates to the guards, and the two of them get thrown back in their cell and not taken to their certain death. Hopper tells them that they need fire to kill it, so during the skirmish, he got some booze and lighter.

Joyce and Murray are fine. And so is Yuri, apparently. But we've got a plan to swap Yuri and Murray, so they can get into the prison and break out Hopper. I feel like this is a crazy long shot, but hey, I'm so on board for finally getting poor Hopper out of there.

Mike, Will, Jonathan and Argyle get to Susie's house (which is insane and totally chaotic- I'd never last more than an a couple of minutes there), and she helps them figure out where the bunker is that El is being held. It's in Nevada, if you're curious.

The rest of the group is busy trying to save Eddie, but, in the process, manage to find another gate. Which is good, potentially, because if we close it, we can probably (hopefully- but we probably need El) kill it. Steve manages to find the entrance to the gate at the bottom of Lover's Lake. However, when he touched it, something 'awakened' and when he got back to the surface to the tell the others, a giant ass tendril came up and yanked him down into the Upside Down. One after another, Nancy, Robin, and Eddie go in after him.

In the Upside Down, Steve is being attack by Demi-bats. Do we think that's a thing? Is Dustin gonna coin that term soon?

So, we are three episodes away from being caught up. And I just realized today that the season finale is like, 2.5 hours long. We might need to change to Friday for that week. I'm not sure I can fit in an episode that long with everything else that has to go up that day. Nothing is set in stone, but there's a decent chance the finale might end up going up on the Friday of that week.