Shock Jock
Season 5
Episode 5
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Nothing can go wrong with three teams across two dimensions trying to execute a million different plans, right?
Photo: Courtesy of Netflix/Netflix © 2025
Stranger Things 5: We’ve got plans on plans on plans. It’s true — another episode, another insane plan that only partially works and has dire consequences that will have to be dealt with via … another insane plan. Maybe this is how Stranger Things has always functioned but they were just better at disguising the formula before. Or maybe I’m just coming off that high of the thrilling finale to the first part of our final adventure and much of what’s happening in episode five is feeling tedious in comparison. There’s, like, a lot of group-brainstorming sessions this season, is all I’m saying.
Speaking of, when we last left our ragtag team of lovable nerds, weirdos, Sad Dads, and also Steve Harrington, Will Byers had just had a moment of radical self-acceptance and therefore was able to summon the strength to plug into the hive mind and kill three Demogorgons broken bones–style à la Henry Creel before they killed his friends. You see, kids? Accepting yourself for who you really are will make you more powerful than you ever imagined. God, I want to make fun of that so much, but it is honestly such a sweet sentiment — and also it’s the holidays, and also I am a sucker for cheese, both literally and emotionally-speaking. Unfortunately, Will realizes he’s ready to fly that pride flag high a little too late, and while he saves Mike, Lucas, and Robin, he is not fast enough to stop Vecna from getting other Demos to drag 11 kids into the Upside Down. Those kids, joining Holly, make 12 and are now all tied up to those spires and getting pumped with Upside Down and Mind Flayer particles via vines to the mouth. Meanwhile, Will is blaming himself for the L, and the team remaining in the Real Hawkins needs to regroup.
Being able to siphon power from Vecna and the hive mind is game-changing, but it also has its limits. Will has to be close enough to something in the hive mind in order to plug into it; he can’t just summon powers like Eleven. This is a problem, sure, but not a reason to shelve their new secret weapon. And while Mike and Lucas are ecstatic that their friend is an actual sorcerer now, it’s Joyce who pushes for her son to jump back into that hive mind. She admits to Will that she’s been underestimating him, but so has Vecna. And while she will never make that mistake again, Vecna’s a dick, so he probably will. Sure, it would’ve been nicer if Joyce saw the value in her son for reasons other than his supernatural powers, but that’s something for Will to work out in therapy in a few years, and we don’t have time for mommy issues right now. The clock is ticking. And you know Vecna has a clock kink. Here’s the deal: Joyce thinks that they need to get Will jacked back into the hive mind, but this time, instead of controlling the Demos, he needs to go directly into Vecna’s mind and kill that piece of shit once and for all.
After some brainstorming and Bugles, it’s the Sinclair siblings who come up with two practical ideas. One way to ensure Will can tap into Vecna is to find out where the guy is — maybe the other half of their team, still roaming around in the Upside Down, might have a lead. Since their whole telemetry system is on the fritz, Erica thinks they should enlist “the biggest nerd in town” to help them rebuild it. Erica wants to let Mr. Clarke in to the inner circle. It’s not a bad idea, but it’s time-consuming. Lucas’s idea is more immediate: They grab one of the Demogorgons Will killed and use the power from the radio tower to shock it and heat it up just enough that its Mind Flayer particles kick back into gear — much like how they activated those particles when they trapped Billy in the sauna in season three. If things get out of hand (that means they definitely will get out of hand), they can turn the electricity all the way up, expel the particles (like they did to Will in season two!), and pull Will out of the hive mind. This plan is dangerous, but they can put it into action right now. Joyce says why not do them both? Throw two darts, see which hits the bull’s-eye.
“Shock Jock” focuses on Lucas’s plan — Mr. Clarke will have to have his big moment later. With an impassioned “Kill the bastard” from Joyce, they send electricity into the dead Demogorgon and those particles light up. Will is able to connect to the hive mind, and it’s not long before he finds himself in Dipshit — excuse me, Delightful Derek’s mind.
After the Demos dragged the other 11 children off to the Upside Down and they got hooked up to the spires, they found themselves joining Holly (and Max) in Henry’s mind. Like Holly, these kids are having the time of their lives. Who wouldn’t? Candy, TV, and no parents? Parents are for losers! It also doesn’t hurt that when Henry gathers the kids around for Mind-Hostage Kidnapped-Child Story Time, he tells them that they are going to be heroes, that they have dormant powers they’ll use to help him expel all the monsters of this world by drawing another world — a much better, monster-free world — closer to them. They are going to not only save their families but the entire world. Holly pretends like she’s super into this, but the first chance she gets, she bolts for the forest to find Max and tell her that whatever Henry is planning, he’s doing it tomorrow. They need to find an exit from this mind trap as soon as possible.
When Max and Holly discover Derek, who has seen too much in Real Hawkins to believe any of the bullshit Henry is selling (not the other ten kids, though; those kids are idiots), has followed Holly out and heard everything she said, they decide to use Derek as a distraction. If he gets Henry’s attention, Max and Holly can start looking for the exit. The plan works but buys them only so much time — when Henry discovers Derek running off to the caves with that map, he realizes that Holly and Max have partnered up and he goes after them.
It’s around this point that Will enters Derek’s mind. Still locked into the hive mind, he reports back that Derek has seen Max — the look on Lucas’s face is a potent mix of joy, relief, and abject terror. That last emotion takes over when Will learns that Henry is already on the hunt for Max and Holly. Will goes on a hunt too.
Meanwhile, Max and Holly are traveling through memories again. Max believes that the exit out of this hellhole will be in the memory of the moment Henry trapped your mind. For Holly, that means they need to return to the night the Demogorgon came for her in her bedroom. She has to watch her mother get ripped up all over again. She has to watch as she does nothing to stop it. Just when the two see that smoky red portal open over the door, it slams shut. Henry has found them. Now, as Vecna — any remaining belief in Mr. Whatsit Holly had is definitely gone — he strangles Max. He’s killing her. This seems bad.
But then, Vecna struggles. His leg snaps and he drops Max. It’s Will. Will has found his way into Vecna’s mind, and he is fighting for control. As Vecna, he screams at Max to run. It is honestly pretty badass. But Vecna is stronger than the Demogorgons, and he fights back. Max and Holly are gone, but Vecna demands that Will get out of his head. And then he pushes him out. Vecna takes off for Max and Holly, but up in the Real Hawkins, Will is unconscious. They crank up the electricity and expel the rest of the particles, but he doesn’t wake up. Again, very bad!!
The two groups in the Upside Down aren’t faring much better, but that’s less because of evil monsters and more because of the angst of youth. Also evil at times! Team Beemer — Steve, Dustin, Nancy, and Jonathan — have left the church, where they were waiting for Hopper and El to find out if Dustin’s theory about a dark-magic energy generator emanating from Hawkins Lab is real. So many awful things have happened at that lab, but also it feels like home — I, for one, welcome this sojourn that is sure to end in disaster. My pessimism, by the way, has less to do with Dustin’s half-baked theory — if they find and destroy this energy generator, it’ll disable the flesh wall so that they’ll be able to get through and find Holly and Vecna — and more to do with the insane level of tension coursing between these four. These are the four exact characters who should not be left to their own devices, at least not without a buffer. But there is no buffer, only tension.
When the group splits into their usual pairings (no one is happy about it) to cover more ground, Steve and Dustin head downstairs and eventually find themselves in the Rainbow Room. If ever a room were to carry the emotions of events that went on inside it, it would be this one, so it tracks that this is where Steve and Dustin’s problems boil over. What starts as a more snippy back-and-forth between the two eventually turns into an argument about Eddie Munson. Dustin calls Eddie the only real, true, supportive friend he’s had. Steve says Dustin is just mad that Eddie made a bad call trying to be a hero and died for nothing. The attacks coming from Steve and Dustin, whose nerves are frayed at this point, are surprisingly mean. Next thing we know, Dustin knocks Steve down and takes a few swings, and while Steve fights back at first, he eventually stops and just wants Dustin to stop too. Steve doesn’t want to do this — he doesn’t want to hurt him. Enough, he yells at him. Both are in tears as Steve stomps out of the room. Let’s not be too worried about this friendship; it was always going to have to fall apart in order to be built back up. This is part of the healing process, people. And in the meantime, the kerfuffle leaves Dustin in the perfect spot to notice an open door to Dr. Brenner’s office. He finds a bunch of old journals with notes and drawings, some that look suspiciously like big balls of energy — could this be about the energy generator?
Well, yes and no. Whatever Dustin reads in that journal scares the shit out of him. He had it all wrong. He tries to radio Nancy and Jonathan to tell them not to touch it. If they destroy it, everyone will die. But the walkie was damaged during Dustin and Steve’s fight and he can’t reach them. He starts running up the stairs toward the roof, but Dustin is too late.
While the two guys were expressing their complicated emotions with their fists rather than words, Nancy and Jonathan took the upstairs half of the lab to look for the generator. This pair, too, has some emotional tension they’re trying to avoid, although theirs is much less interesting. They are both miserable in their relationship, both lying about how they really feel, and both are terrible liars. Has one ever been so excited to find corpses of military men mid-scream and trapped in melted floors and walls as these two? At least they don’t have to talk about their feelings now. Instead, they follow the path of the melted hallways and stairwells all the way up to the roof. It’s there, up in the sky, that they make out some moving, electrically charged, giant ball of energy, and while Dustin futilely climbs up stairs and yells into his broken walkie, Nancy moves forward with their plan: She shoots a bullet right into that thing.
Even if Dustin is wrong and messing with the energy ball doesn’t somehow destroy all of existence, the team will still have another issue to deal with. As Hopper, Eleven, and Kali wait to get in touch with the Hawkins Lab group, Eleven and Kali have time to catch up. As Kali reveals how she came to be kidnapped by the military and strapped up to that machine, we finally learn what Dr. Kay’s up to. Kali has been powering that sonic kryptonite, yes, but she was initially taken for her blood. It turns out that Eleven, Kali, and all the numbered kids got their powers because their pregnant mothers were transfused with Henry’s blood. His blood created all of them. Dr. Kay wants to restart the program and build more superpowered kids to use as weapons. During one of her escape attempts, Kali found dozens of pregnant women on operating tables, receiving transfusions of Kali’s blood. Her blood, however, was killing all the mothers — it wasn’t working. This is why Dr. Kay is hell-bent on capturing Eleven; she was the closest replica of Henry — Dr. Kay thinks only Eleven’s blood will work. Dr. Brenner. Dr. Kay. The cycle doesn’t end until there’s no blood to use to create more of these kids. Kali doesn’t have to explain much more for El to realize what her sister is telling her. “There are no happy endings, Jane. Not for us.”
• It’ll be interesting to see what El does with this news — and Kali’s implication that they need to die in order to stop this from happening — since the episode starts out with El reeling from the discovery that Hopper was secretly planning on sacrificing himself to protect her and stop Vecna. She was devastated to learn he had a secret fail-safe plan, but is she going to do the same thing?
• From the beginning, Lucas has theorized that whatever Vecna’s plan is, it is going to be completed on November 6, the anniversary of the day Will was taken. That certainly fits the timeline Henry gives to his little captives. We’ve got 24 hours, folks.
• Even though Derek knows Henry is a monster and can definitely kill him, when Henry holds him down and demands to know who gave him the map of the woods, Derek’s response is “Your mom.” A king among men, this kid!
VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows!
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice