"The Massacre at Hawkins Lab" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Into the woods

Steve, having been pulled from Lover's Lake into the Upside Down by a rogue tentacle, finds himself getting eaten alive by some of the dimension's winged creatures but he's fortunate in that Robin, Nancy, and Eddie have followed him through the gate, arriving just in time to fight them off. They manage to save Steve (though he loses about a good amount of flesh) only to find that more creatures are en route to them. Its why they race off into the woods nearby.

In their interrogation room, Lt. Colonel Sullivan's men continue to torture Agent Wallace via unethical means. Finally, he cracks.

In the Nina Project labs, El continues to contend with her suppressed memories, attempting to unlock her powers although she runs against the clock. Behind one-way glass, Dr. Owens and Dr. Brenner argue as to the efficacy of their new experiments. Later, Brenner tells El that she actually seems to be regressing in her treatment. If she wants Nina to succeed, she needs to avoid hiding from the truth.

El's idea of the truth, she hates to say, is that she's the monster that killed everyone in the Hawkins Labs. Fortunately, Brenner is able to convince her into entering the sensory deprivation tank another time. He connects her to a particularly pertinent memory and skips to the critical moments. They need to face the difficult parts.

Answer: Her bedroom

Back at the Wheeler household, Dustin, Lucas, and Max are interrogated by the police and their families having been captured at Lover's Lake while the others took on the gate to the Upside Down. As they try and fail to get their excuse lined up for questioning, Erica calls them out for lying to the room, and the conversation devolves, at least until the sheriff has the room talk at a more civil level. He takes them for questioning one-at-a-time starting with Max.

In the Upside Down, the gang attempts to lose the bat creatures by hiding in the woods under this dimension's version of Skull Rock. It works well enough for the four of them, but Steve, losing blood, appears too weak to move all too far. While they tend to Steve's wounds, Nancy tears her clothes to create a tourniquet for his stomach.

Eddie, climbing atop Skull Rock, looks out into the woods to survey where they've ended up. Robin suggests that they head to the Upside Down's version of her house to secure guns-- she has two-- as the dimension quakes. Nancy reminds them not to step on any vines; everything in the Upside Down is connected, like a hive mind, to everything else. Stepping on a vine will alert the bats and, likely, Vecna.

Answer: Murray

In Russia, Hopper and Antonov await their fates, preparing for the inevitability of a battle against the imprisoned monster in the prison. Hopper tears a piece of the lining from his jacket while Antonov laughs-- even if they kill the monster, the guards will kill them. They have no real way out. Hopper is convinced that he has to do the former, however, because if the Demogorgon is still alive, it means that what he and El faced in Hawkins isn't completely over. Even if it's the last thing he does, he might be able to help her.

Joyce, Murray, and Yuri arrive at the gate to the facility in Yuri's truck, and somehow, Murray manages to pass for Yuri, presenting a doctored passport and keeping both Joyce and Yuri tied up in the back.

In Nevada, El watches Brenner's selected memory from within the Nina tank and it's then that she (along with the other test subjects) is presented with an unexpected lesson about rules. As it turned out, when El was attacked she suffered a concussion, and that would not have been possible if she were on her own. Two speaks up first, accusing Eleven of being clumsy, and for this comment, he's collared by one of the orderlies and put to scrutinous questioning. Every time he lies he's shocked at increasing voltages, and it takes a while before he cracks.

Answer: Lights

In the Upside Down, the group wanders through the woods off memory, headed for the alternate version of the Wheeler household. On the way, Eddie compliments Steve on his bravery-- after all, he appeared to bite the head of one of the bat creatures earlier, just like Ozzy. As it turns out, he says, Dustin was right about Steve's ability to be a hero. He laments that if the past week has taught him anything, it's that he turns tail and runs at any sign of danger, and he only followed into the Upside Down to ensure he wasn't the only one who stayed behind to save Steve. Nancy, on the other hand, dove in without a thought.

In the real world, Dustin attempts to get through to the others on the walkie-talkie and fails. He and Lucas are met by Erica in the kitchen, and she blackmails Lucas into telling her the truth (which she doesn't really believe). The catch is that she manages to ask a key question that gets Dustin thinking-- why did the gate at Lover's Lake even open up? He realizes, then, that Vecna is tied to this. Just like El used her psychic abilities to open a gate, Vecna is doing the same with his victims, ripping a hole in the fabric of time and space, perhaps at the behest of the Mind Flayer. While this hypothesis forms, none of the kids notice the lights flickering on the porch outside.

In the Upside Down, Nancy guides the others to her alternate house and leads them inside, heading up to her room. They don't find the guns, however. Instead, Nancy determines that the version of her room that they've found themselves in is from an earlier time than the present. Even her diary indicates a date in 1983-- the date Will went missing and the date the gate opened.

Downstairs, Steve has split off from the others, following Dustin's voice into the kitchen but seemingly having no way to communicate with him. With Nancy's quick thinking and Eddie's rudimentary use of SOS, they're able to use the lights to cause a power surge in the real world-- something Erica manages to catch out of the corner of her eye. Dustin gets their message loud and clear.

Answer: Her orderly

After Yuri and Joyce are taken in by the wardens, Murray hams it up pretending to be Yuri. Joyce, the Russians recognize, having seen her when she and Hopper infiltrated the basement of Starcourt Mall, but Murray is able to get away with his act with his fluent Russian. Fortunately for them, they've arrived just in time for the show. As they're brought out to an observation deck overlooking the arena pit, they finally get the opportunity to see Hopper at the same time the prisoners are being told the rules of their battle.

Once again in her memories, El spends time in the Rainbow Room, this time being watched closely by her fellow test subjects, all of whom have it out for her after their earlier lesson. Despite the tension in the room, her orderly sits her down for a game of chess and a conversation. During this, the orderly tells her not to show emotion while he speaks, and that's when he reveals something to her:

First, two of the test subjects are in the infirmary, but when they're released, the plan amongst the other children is to come after her and kill her in the Rainbow Room. Secondly, he says, Dr. Brenner wishes this to happen. All of the children, he says, are just chess pieces for Brenner, being moved into position because Eleven frightens him. Her power is uncontrollable and she's too much of a threat. She must escape, and to do that she must do exactly as he says. He gives her a keycard under the table, and with that, she may be free.

Answer: Eddie's trailer

In Hawkins, Dustin, Lucas, and Erica steal Holly's Lite Brite and work together to create a light panel on Nancy's bed. Sure enough, the experiment works, creating a platform on which the Upside Down crew can write letters, at least while the device is off, to spell words in the real world. Using this method, Nancy communicates that they're stuck in the Upside Down and that the gate back through Lover's Lake is guarded. Fortunately, Dustin believes there are other gates, one at each of Vecna's murder sites. They decide to head to Eddie's trailer, riding the family's bikes the seven mile route. They don't realize that Vecna is aware of their movements.

As the police finish taking Max's story, they tell the families that Max, at the very least, has stuck to the narrative she's already laid out. They reassure them that they'll find the missing kids, but this moment gives the kids the chance they need to leave out Nancy's bedroom window, steal bikes, and head out to Eddie's trailer on their side. On the way, Erica punctures the officer's tire. None of their parents are quick enough to give chase.

In her memories, El executes the orderly's plan, waiting for the right moment to have a guard take her to the infirmary. While the guard speaks to the nurse, El sneaks off, using the keycard to vanish into a stairwell, descend into the boiler room in the basement, and meet with the orderly waiting for her to arrive. He leads her to a narrow tunnel that she can take beyond the lab fence, emerging into the woods. She asks why he's not joining her, and he claims to be just as much of a prisoner as she is; he even has a tracker inside him designed to weaken him and keep him under Dr. Brenner's control. She realizes that she wants to help him, but to do that, she may have to do something severe.

Answer: Two

At long last, while Hopper and Antonov stand in line, the buzzer sounds and the prisoners are able to grab rudimentary weapons to brace themselves for the fight ahead. As the doors open, Hopper starts to modify his spear, preparing for a battle he knows well. On the balcony above, the guards worry about Hopper's plan while their leader, unexpectedly, finds himself held at gunpoint by Yuri.

And from the darkness, the Demogorgon emerges, leaping free and dispatching prisoners with ease. Hopper is finally able to light his spear, keeping the monster back from himself. In the meantime, Murray uses his hostage to compel the guards to open the doors. His timing his quite helpful as the arena doors are only opened (and quickly reclosed) when Hopper and Antonov are the last two men remaining, a result of Joyce hitting all the buttons in the facility and causing absolute chaos. In his last moments facing the creature, Hopper hurls his spear directly into the Demogorgon's mouth.

With no one to stop them, Joyce and Murray finally open the passageway connecting the prison to the guard room, at long last connecting them with Hopper in an emotional reunion.

Answer: A test subject

In the Upside Down, the gang rides out to Eddie's trailer in the Forest Hills Trailer Park and passes by the old Creel house, seemingly the point of convergence for the bat creatures swarming overhead. They don't stop on their way, instead opting to arrive at the gate as soon as possible. Sure enough, when they make it they find a gate waiting for them, and something punching through. Fortunately, it's just the others in the real world, pushing through the membrane with a broom handle.

Tying together a series of knotted blankets and placing a mattress on the floor, Dustin, Lucas, Max, and Erica prepare themselves for odd physics and the return of their friends. The blanket rope heads into the gate and Robin decides to be the guinea pig, pulling herself up and through the impossible portal, emerging into Eddie's trailer in the real world. Eddie goes next, pulling himself up and out in short order. Nancy pulls herself up third, but when she does, something goes horribly wrong; she plummets through the other side and into darkness, landing on her back in the pool in the Upside Down where Barb was attacked many years ago.

In her memory, the orderly tells El that she'll be able to help him by removing the chip placed behind his ear, a limiting device he calls 'Soteria'. Using her powers, she deftly tears it from his body, allowing him to pick it up off the floor as if it were no more harmless than a bug. He thanks her for her help moments before the guards discover their whereabouts. It leads to a chase, but not a long one, as El and the orderly find themselves cornered. The problem is that the orderly isn't limited any longer. Using his powers, he disables the guards in short order, even killing some of them. He places El into a storage closet and tells her to wait, revealing the tattoo on his wrist indicating that he's actually test subject One.

Answer: No

El, meanwhile, hears the alarms sound in her memories and emerges from her hiding spot to hear screams on one of the fallen guard's walkie talkies. Navigating to the Rainbow Room she comes across the bodies-- all the ones from her deeply-hidden memories-- and she comes upon the bloody scene that caused her trauma so long ago. And the one committing the murders was none other than One, who she freed from Brenner's control.

When One was young, he never fit in, and because of this, he's very much like Eleven. His family moved to Hawkins, but nothing changed in his life...short of a discovery he made in one of the vents, a family of black widow spiders. He found great comfort in them. They feed on the weak and bring balance to an unstable ecosystem, he states, and the human world was disrupting them. He could not pretend to be like humanity, and he didn't have to. Like the black widows, he could restore balance.

El realizes that One tricked her. She no longer believes, in that moment, that Brenner completely lied to her. And at the very least, she realizes that while she may have freed the monster that killed the patients of Hawkins lab, she was not the one who committed the massacre there.

When One asks El to join her, she firmly tells him no, casting him back with her powers. Realizing her formidability, he faces off against her in the middle of the Rainbow Room, their powers clashing in the middle of the space. El is able to use One's own suggestion-- to dredge up a horrible memory from her past-- to push back, even as One brings her off the floor in a way akin to his other victims. But a memory of her mother brings her back.

In the Nina Project labs, Brenner realizes that Eleven has achieved her breakthrough.

Answer: Nancy

While Steve tries to awaken Nancy in the alternate version of Eddie's trailer, the others can only watch on. Meanwhile, Vecna connects to his hive mind to possess Nancy from a distance. In the pool, Nancy stumbles upon Barb's long-lost corpse and blood flows in from above. In her mind, she can hear Vecna urging her to remember what she did to her friend on that fateful night.

As the blood rises, Nancy is eventually able to climb free of the pool but, in doing so, she emerges at the top of the staircase in the Creel house, the ruins of which are in Vecna's dreamscape. The sound of the grandfather clock ticks nearby. As she descends, it tolls and Vecna reveals himself. He asks after Victor, who he knows she met, and he claims he's wanted to check in on him if not for the fact that he's been busy.

The truth is, as he reveals to her, that after the Creels moved into their new home, his powers manifested. Discovering new things about himself and the punishing rules of humanity allowed him to change. He learned how to reach into others-- their minds-- and he could destroy them from within. While his father believed him to be a demon, his mother saw the truth in her own son. On the night of the massacre in the Creel house, he killed his mother and sister and left his father to go mad. At the time, he did not know his limits. It nearly killed him. While Victor was sent to an asylum, he, his son Henry, was found by Dr. Brenner and placed into the labs in Hawkins.

When Dr. Brenner could not control Henry Creel, he created a program and commenced an effort to recreate Henry's abilities. It's how Eleven was born.

And when Henry Creel became One and attempted to use Eleven to free himself once again, she managed to destroy his physical body, burning him to death in the real world, but tearing open a gateway to another dimension. It would condemn him to this alternate plane, sending him hurtling through the red lightning of what would become known as the Upside Down, a world in which he would be known to others, eventually, as 'Vecna'.