‘Stranger Things 4’ Chapter 1 Recap: The Hellfire Club

By Kase Wickman @worstkase | May 27, 2022 at 10:55am

Photo: Netflix

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Hello, strangers! Been a sec since we’ve checked in with our friends in Hawkins, Indiana, huh? The third season of Stranger Things
premiered July 4, 2019, nearly three years ago here in the Rightside Up, and we’ve all gone through our own mass Upside Down in the
meantime. Nostalgia! Fun!

As a reminder, when we last left our Hawkins heroes, they’d just reigned victorious in the Battle of Starcourt, leaving poor Billy dead and me
really craving an Orange Julius. (The heart wants what it wants, okay?) Everyone was wearing great shirts, none greater than Steve and
Robin’s extremely jaunty Scoops Ahoy uniforms, the crew met Murray for the first time, and Lil Sis Erica really came into her own as my own
personal role model. Hopper’s mustache was in its full glory and then he died* (*didn’t die even a little bit, turns out), and Joyce, Will, and
Eleven left Hawkins. “Come again soon,” the road sign read on their way out of town. I…don’t think that’ll be a problem, and I definitely
don’t want to talk about all the onions that were being chopped when Eleven read Hopper’s letter.

Which brings us to…now. Which, when Season 4 opens and your ass-groove in the couch is but a mere dip, a premonition of what it’ll be
when you’ve made it through the seven monster-length (eh?) episodes of Part 1 in the next day or two, is 1979.

An administrative note: As our heroes are all over the literal map this season, I’ll attempt to make these recaps as modular as an Ikea closet
system so it doesn’t take as long to read them as it does to watch the episode itself.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s flashback time!

Turning It Up to Eleven
Meet Baby Eleven in 1979, but one of a dozenish little kids with shaved heads and telekinetic powers, wearing hospital gowns and virtually
begging for Dr. Brenner’s — Papa’s — approval while doing Jedi stuff in a rainbow-bedecked rec room. Papa and Ten walk hand in hand
down the hall for more tests, which end abruptly when Ten psychically senses that “something’s wrong” and “they’re dead” when told to
locate another doctor with his mind. The door blows in, and after a cut to black, when Papa walks the halls to investigate, things are bad. The
place is trashed like it’s the West Hollywood Hyatt House, but worse than that are the twisted, bloody bodies. The kids, the doctors. The
walls are smeared with blood. Papa reaches the rainbow room, where Baby Eleven stands with blood dripping from her eyes like tears and a
defiant look on her face, a smashed two-way mirror across the room.

“What have you done?” Papa asks. “What have you done?”

STRANGER THINGS S4E1 ELEVEN EYES

Welcome to the show, folks! Roll the credits!

Back in the present day, meaning 1986, we find El in her California bedroom, working on a Sculpy diorama version of Hopper and his cabin
in a Reeboks shoebox, a small shrine to Mike nearby, while her voiceover updates us on life in the Sunshine State via a letter to Mike. Joyce is
selling encyclopedias over the phone, Will is painting, and Jonathan and his new friend Argyle are smoking all the weed. Just…all of it.
“Jonathan says the plants are super safe because they come from the earth, but do not tell Joyce,” she says.

She’s painting a rosy picture for Mike, even bragging about her improved spelling, but all is not well: There’s a real asshole popular girl,
Angela, who’s ready to taunt El’s every move, including mocking her dee-ay-ram-uh (she gives a very cute and tentative presentation about
her hero, Hopper, including a clay homage to a squirrel named Mr. Fibley, for whom I would most certainly step in front of a bus) and then
later trips her in the courtyard and fully smushes the diorama, squirrel and all. El is doing terribly in school, has no friends, and no
superpowers to keep her warm at night. In the courtyard, she’s had enough and tries to pull her signature scream-and-explode-someone’s-
head move on Angela, but it doesn’t work. Even worse for her social standing: A teacher sees Angela bullying El (known as loser Jane to the
other students, of course) and takes her away for a talking-to, even though El says she just tripped.

Joyce to the World

Joyce takes a break from selling Britannicas to take delivery of a mysterious package covered in Russian stamps, containing a porcelain doll
who looks like she knows something Joyce doesn’t, which I’d wager is absolutely true. It also, she discovers while on the phone with Murray,
has nipples. They just don’t make toys like they used to. He convinces her to smash it, and she finds a note inside, using at least a few issues’
worth of cut-up magazine letters to tell her that “Hop is alive, he looks ford to date” in broken English, referencing their date at Enzo’s and
giving her a number to call.

Robin Banks
Back in Hawkins, Robin and Steve are still the world’s best coworkers, having secured positions at the video store. No cute hats a la Scoops
Ahoy, but you can’t win ’em all, or so I’m told. We learn that Steve is conflicted about his emotional prospects, Robin has a crush on a girl in
marching band, and that people who pause Fast Times at Ridgemont High at 53 minutes and five seconds like boobies. “Boobies!” Steve
adds one more time, for good measure.

STRANGER THINGS S4E1 BOOBIES

The rest of the crew is going places: Mike is wearing a baseball t with a giant “Hellfire Club” logo, and he’s first bound for a D&D campaign
after school (the aforementioned Hellfire), then a flight to California for a spring break visit to Eleven in the morning. Nancy — proudly
wearing a chaotic pastel Emerson College shirt, her planned destination — drives him to school. She’s not going to visit Jonathan, and he’s
not coming to her. Everyone’s busy, okay? Or at least that’s what she tells newspaper colleague Fred.

Dustin, also a Hellfire Club attendee, is potentially bound for juvie as we see him convincing Susie to hack into the Hawkins grading system
and change his Latin (!) grade from a D- to an A. Max, listening to Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” on her Walkman and scowling darkly, is
heading to the counselor’s office, where she details her nightmares and headaches while flashing back to Billy’s gruesome monster-related
death. Lucas is a benchwarmer on the basketball team, but he thinks he can lift his friends to popularity — and he’s a card-carrying, though
secret, member of the Hellfire Club too.

Speaking of the Hellfire Club, meet Eddie, the long-haired drug dealer who acts as their Dungeon Master and swears that 1986 is his year,
man — even though he said the same thing about graduating last year. And the year before that. Which is why he won’t postpone the grand
finale of their campaign, the Cult of Vecna, when Dustin and Mike reveal that Lucas will be in uniform at the championship basketball game
that night instead of dungeoning some dragons with them. They’re tasked with finding a sub for the campaign.

Eddie, meanwhile, plays Let’s Make a (Drug) Deal in the woods with a surprising figure who, spoiler, won’t be with us for long: Chrissy the
cheerleader. See, Chrissy is the girlfriend of basketball captain Jason, who at the pep rally delivers a speech about winning that night’s
championship game in honor of all of Hawkins’ dead with such vigor and conviction that a megachurch pastor would be like, woah, buddy,
what kind of coffee are you brewing? Jason is one hundred percent a creep, and Chrissy is Troubled. Max catches her throwing up in the
bathroom, but the real issue is the hallucination of her mom fat-shaming her that turns into a gnarly monster standing outside her stall door
and screaming at her while rattling the door as the lights flash. It’s over as quickly as it started, but people don’t forget. Later, when she goes
to meet Eddie in the woods, she sees a grandfather clock embedded in a tree, bonging ominously. Not…not great. As she approaches it,
black widow spiders scurry out of its face, and she snaps out of it, the clock disappearing, as she crashes bodily into Eddie. He reveals
himself to be actually kind of a handsome goof, and Chrissy turns down a hefty discount on weed for something “maybe…stronger?”

That night, the Hellfire Club — with desperation-move sub Erica, plucked from the middle school and literally wrapped in an American flag —
battle a villainous dark wizard named Vecna in the game. Erica continues to be awesome, and informs the group that her character’s name is
Lady Applejack, and that she likes to smile as she watches her enemies die a slow and agonizing death. I buy it, so does Eddie. The crew
struggles, and ultimately it’s Dustin and Erica’s rolls versus Vecna. Dustin falls, but Erica’s final move defeats him. Is this foreshadowing Erica
saving everyone this season? If so, yes.

Oh, Lucas saves the day too. He’s subbed into the game and makes a buzzer beater shot for the win. Sports!

STRANGER THINGS S4E1 SPORTS

After the game and the campaign, everyone goes off to celebrate their respective victories, and Chrissy and Eddie head to Eddie’s trailer to
find her Special K — and for poor, doomed Chrissy to die. While Eddie is riffling around for the drugs, Chrissy has another vision of the
monster who stalked her in the bathroom. She’s walking through a house and sees her mom letting out her cheer uniform, her face morphed
into the terrifying burned visage of the monster. She runs, and sees her father, trapped in a recliner, his eyes and mouth freakishly removed.
A table is set with a feast, crawling with spiders. She can’t escape. The ticking of a clock is overwhelming. If you have surround sound, you’re
going to absolutely live inside the groan that the monster makes as it lurches out of the shadows to stroke Chrissy’s cheek and tell her,
“don’t cry, Chrissy. It’s time for your suffering to end,” then covers her face with his hand.

In the real world, Eddie panics as the lights flash. He sees Chrissy in a trance, her eyes rolled back, and then her white Reeboks floating off
the ground. She’s jerked upwards and smashes into the ceiling, her limbs popping and contorting backwards, her jaw popping and blood
pouring out of her eyes. Chrissy, we barely knew you. Onto the next episode.

Body count: 1. RIP Chrissy.

Most ’80s moment of the episode: Susie’s statue of Jesus and “I will not drink” button.

Kase Wickman is a writer, editor, Ravenclaw and certified fraidy-cat who lives in New Jersey. If she had powers, she’d never have to wash off
mascara again. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram, if you dare.

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