"The Piggyback" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Max's

In a small village in Russia, Yuri works on his helicopter and removes a necessary part while the others discuss their hopeful return to the States. The sabotage doesn't completely slip by; the chopper doesn't start. Inside the church, Joyce and Hopper wait for the phone to ring while changing into new clothes. It gives Hopper the opportunity to dress his wounds and it gives Joyce her first opportunity to see how much harm the Russians inflicted on him. He suggests he shouldn't have sent Joyce the coded message, but she says she wouldn't have preferred it any other way. There's a bit of flirting before the two are all over each other.

Of course, that's when the phone rings.

In Hawkins, the group consisting of Nancy, Steve, Robin, Eddie, and Dustin go over the phases of their plan in their stolen motor home. First, they meet Erica at the playground; she'll signal Max and Lucas. Second, they bait Vecna so that he goes into his trance in the Creel attic in the Upside Down. Third, Dustin and Eddie draw the bats away. Fourth, the others head into Vecna's lair and use their molotovs. Nobody moves into a new phase without everyone copying. There will be no deviations from the plan. The five of them rush into Eddie's trailer under the cover of night, haul themselves up through the gate and down through the other side.

Once in the Upside Down, the groups split up. If things go south, Steve tells Eddie and Dustin to get out; they only need to distract the bats, as decoys, for a few minutes. No one needs to be a hero. The guys tell Steve he can be the hero if he wants. As lightning flashes in the distance, they go their separate ways.

Somewhere between Nevada and Indiana, Jonathan calls every airline he can from a rest station payphone and finds that there are no last-minute flights that can get any of them back to Hawkins. El realizes that she has a back-up plan though. Just like Vecna can go into Max's mind, she can as well; Max can carry her to Vecna and she can fight him from wherever they are. She just needs a sensory deprivation tank. Fortunately, Argyle knows where they can get 600 pounds of salt, more than enough to make her buoyant for a makeshift tank. The group gets back on the road and heads out.

Answer: Return to the Russian prison

In the Creel house, in the real world, Max walks through the attic, Lucas takes the second floor, and Erica wanders at ground level, all of them searching for aberrant surges of light. It's Erica who finds Vecna, her light having picked up an anomaly in the sitting room. It means they can enact Phase One. With that, she races out to the playground and prepares to signal the others. She doesn't realize that she's spotted by a local. That local heads home and calls his info in to none other than Jason Carver. It's the lead the vengeful high school senior has been waiting for.

In Russia, Hopper relays his phone call to the others, indicating that no rescue is on the way as Dr. Owens, indisposed, is unable to draw from his connections. In the meantime, it's told that El is en route to Hawkins, and she's with Joyce's kids. Worse, knowing what the Russians have been hiding in their labs, they know a gate still exists. Even if Yuri weren't sabotaging the helicopter, they wouldn't make it back to Hawkins for another day and a half, but Joyce reasons that they know whatever's in the labs is connected to the hive mind within the gate. They don't need to return to Indiana; they can help from Russia. It means breaking back into the prison, even with the Soviet army looking for them, but it's a solution. Hopper gets Antonov back on hounding Yuri. In the meantime, they have a stockade of weapons to sift through.

Argyle, meanwhile, drives the pizza van to a nearby Surfer Boy Pizza expansion location. Jonathan hands over a joint and it grants them access to the pizza kitchen for the night. Their solution, to have El conduct her mind-fight from a pizza dough freezer, is just a load of saltwater away from reality.

Eddie and Dustin, collecting a pile of scrap from the Upside Down trailer park, start to drill metal sheets to their alternate reality trailer home, fortifying it from the upcoming battle. Once they finish, there's only one thing left to do. Eddie heads inside, grabs his guitar from inside the bedroom, and tells Dustin to prepare himself for the most metal concert in the history of the world.

Nancy, Steve, and Robin, wandering through the woods, find themselves stressed. While Robin worries that they're wandering in circles, Nancy and Steve joke with each other about their circumstances. The conversation takes a more serious turn when Steve thanks her for breaking up with him a couple years earlier. He wonders, out loud, if they would have made it if there were some other way about it. Before long, they make it to the Creel house and find Erica's light in the playground. Phase one is ready.

Answer: Max

Hopper, Joyce, and Murray take Yuri's truck back to the main gate of the prison only to find that there's no one stationed at the gate they'd previously busted through. None of them hear the screams through the static on the walkie talkie inside the guardhouse. Instead, they head back to the sewer tunnel they'd used to escape, opening it back up and crawling inside. They leave the car running. As Hopper begins to descend, he spies the muzzle flashes on the horizon.

Back at the church, Antonov watches as Yuri continues to tinker with his helicopter. Yuri complains that Antonov is a traitor, but Antonov speaks about the obvious evil they'd already encountered at the prison. Yuri, at one time, was seen as a hero instead of a coward. When Antonov's back is turned, Yuri ponders the piece of the chopper he'd disassembled.

In the Creel house, Max and Lucas wait for the all clear, talking to one another via pads of paper and planning to see a movie once the world has been saved (again). The chat, however, ends when Erica sends the signal. From there, Phase Two is a go; Max has to distract Vecna. She brings herself into the sitting room and stands next to the glowing light, turning off her cassette player and calling out to the creature on the other side, egging Vecna on in an effort to take his focus. Sure enough, as she wanders through the house, following the light as it pulses, she's directed to the attic.

In the pizza place, Mike makes El a pair of light-blocking sunglasses while the others prepare her deprivation tank. The two talk honestly about how much they care about each other, but before Mike can say the magic words, Argyle serves them some pizza.

In the kitchen, Will appears miserable and Jonathan takes the opportunity, while stirring salt in the dough freezer, to talk to his brother. He tells a story about a time Will lost a LEGO piece up his nose to segue into a conversation about coming to him for help. Jonathan blames himself for this, but it's got nothing to do with Will; he's hiding from different problems. Right now, he says, they need to talk more than ever. Nothing will ever change that they're brothers and they're there for each other. Jonathan reminds him, after a hug, that everything will be okay.

It finally becomes that time. El heads to the kitchen, lowers herself into the freezer, and blocks everything else out.

Answer: Attending the Snow Ball

El manages to project herself while Max and Lucas pass through the Creel house, arriving in the middle of the attic. The problem is that her light dims, indicating that her plan isn't working. It's why she decides to sit on the floor and express her worst feelings-- the ones about wanting Billy to die, the ones that Vecna told her were simmering beneath the surface. Sometimes, she said, she would even pray that something awful would happen to him. On the day Billy died, she just stood and watched because she didn't know if he really deserved saving. She's just never been able to forgive herself for it, and now she guiltily believes something terrible should happen to her.

Lucas asks Max if she's ever thought that about him and lays into her about the fact that he thought she was getting better. It turns out, however, that this is just Vecna, appearing to her to drive the point home. In the real world, Max is in her trance. While Lucas attempts to awaken her, El watches from across the astral plane and takes a seat next to her, attempting to enter her mind. It works. El places herself into one of Max's memories. All she needs to do is find her.

Outside, Erica receives Lucas' signal from the Creel attic and communicates to the Upside Down team that they need to initiate Phase Three. This message heads to Dustin's walkie-talkie, and with that, Eddie plugs in his amp, dedicating his performance to Chrissy. As he shreds the opening riff of Metallica's "Master of Puppets", the bats around the Creel house take to the sky, giving Nancy, Steve, and Robin the chance to get inside unharmed.

While Max flees through the Creel house and finds that every exit is blocked, Jason and his teammates locate Erica at the playground, giving chase into the woods. They manage to grab Erica while Max encounters a horrifying vision of Billy, not unlike the one she encountered when the kids trapped him in the sauna during his possession. Dustin lets Eddie know they have thirty seconds before they have to lock down. Just enough time for the solo.

In her mind, Max tries to think of her happiest memories. And when she does, she finds herself in the auditorium at the Snow Ball.

Dustin and Eddie, shocked at what they were able to get away with for their part of the plan, barricade themselves into the Upside Down trailer and celebrate the most metal thing ever.

Answer: Jason Carver

In the Upside Down, Nancy, Steve, and Robin walk into the Creel house now safe from the bats. They find that the place is crawling with vines, making every step a minefield in terms of alerting the hive mind.

In the memory, El searches and finally finds a young Max learning to skateboard amongst older kids. The problem is that there's something that doesn't fit-- a memory within a memory where Max appears to be able to hide herself. But it isn't for long. Before El can find her there, Vecna arrives, making his presence known and decaying the happy memory from within. In little time, the storm clouds of the Upside Down roll in.

At the same time, while Erica is kept away from the Creel house in the real world, Lucas is met by Jason who ascends the staircase into the attic. Jason draws his gun and asks if anyone else is in the house, forcing Lucas to relinquish anything in his pockets. He tells Lucas that he must wake her up, but Lucas insists that if he does this too early, they'll all die. It's a stalemate; Jason says that if Lucas refuses, then he'll shoot.

Finally making their way back into the prison, Hopper, Joyce, and Murray reemerge from the tunnel to find the place a wreck. In their absence, as it would seem, the lab has been destroyed, and the creatures in the tanks have been set loose. Hopper takes that moment to fire up the flamethrower pulled from Yuri's stash. One battered survivor reveals what happened to Murray who, translating, explains that the Demogorgon got into the building, and when it did, the guards' gunfire shattered the tanks. When this happened, the shadow-- what Hopper and Joyce know to be the Mind Flayer-- went into the suspended creatures and brought them back to life. As they watch on the camera monitors, the facility is teeming with monsters.

Hopper brings the trio out into the pit and puts a plan into the world. If they can herd the monsters into the arena in the middle of the building, they can re-lock the doors and blast them with fire from above. The catch is that if Hopper acts as bait, he only needs to lure one and the rest will follow. Joyce doesn't fully trust the plan; she's lost heroic men in her life before. Hopper insists they'll make it out of this one. He heads off to the laundry room to collect his creature while the others stay at the ready.

Answer: Eddie

Steve, Robin, and Nancy make their way up the stairs in the Creel house to find the door to the attic and all that remains, for the three of them, is a staircase. They're halted in their tracks, however, by a quake that rocks the house. It's enough that Robin accidentally steps on a vine, putting the hive mind on high alert and ensnaring them before they can continue their ascent.

At the same time, Hopper arrives in the prison laundry, locating a demo-dog feasting on one of the guards. He attracts its attention and it gives chase through the building.

Eddie and Dustin, at the same time, deal with the bats that try to find their way into the trailer, attacking their way through the vents. Dustin climbs up and out the gate, but Eddie, realizing that he needs to keep the creatures at bay, severs the rope and cuts off the exit to buy more time. Fleeing the trailer he hops on one of the bikes outside and rides off, bringing the bats with him. Dustin climbs his way back through the gate just as Eddie is knocked off his bike. Instead of running this time though, he brandishes his makeshift weapons and fights the swarm head-on. Dustin arrives just in time to see Eddie amidst a cyclone of bats-- a hero's turn to be sure.

In her memory of the Snow Ball, Max attempts to barricade the exits only to find that Vecna has created his own passage into the memory. She attempts to find her way into other happy moments, but he shows what he sees-- her friends attempting and failing to fight back in the real world and the Upside Down. As the clock chimes once more, he insists that her time has come. He restrains her in her memory while...

...at the same time, Lucas tries to explain to Jason that there was never a satanic club, and the reason Chrissy was at Eddie's trailer was because she was buying drugs. As the two fight at gunpoint, Lucas attempts to count down from five. Before he can count down, however, Lucas attacks, knocking the gun from his hands. The two brawl across the attic, Jason accidentally stepping on Max's cassette player in the process.

As Vecna comes in for the kill, he's ripped back from Max and sent hurtling across they auditorium. El, as it turns out, has managed to locate the proper memory and is able to keep Henry out of reach. Finally, after years, the two former patients of Hawkins Lab find themselves face-to-face. El manages to hold off Henry long enough to check on Max, but the battle doesn't pause. Instead, Henry rises from the rubble and uses his powers in kind. In the pizza kitchen, the boys realize that she's fighting for her life. As Vecna gets the upper hand, he grabs El with his powers and launches her into his dreamscape, lashing her to a wall and insisting that she watch the proceedings amidst the corpses of his victims.

Answer: That he loves her

As Henry prepares Max for her sacrifice, El informs him that their Papa is dead and that she knows what he did to both of them. She tries to appeal to the sense of cosmic justice in this, but there's no relenting; Henry doesn't see Brenner as the monster here, just a ordinary man who sought greatness in others. In the end, Brenner did not make Henry into what he became-- she did. As it turned out, he thought that she had sent him to purgatory, but he was sent somewhere new entirely-- a realm unspoiled by mankind. And one day, he found something extraordinary; a means to become a predator, metamorphosing out of his human form using the power of the shadow that would become the Mind Flayer. All he needed was someone to open the door, and it was her the whole time.

The problem Henry found was that when faced with the unknown, Eleven had closed the doors to the Upside Down. Because of this, One needed to find a way to open new ones. And he did. Through their encounters, he gained the power to finally accomplish his goal. She and her friends, finally, lost the fight.

While Lucas is beaten to a pulp by Jason in the real world, Hopper is run down by the demo-dog in Russia, Eddie is pulled apart by the bats in the Upside Down, and the explorers of the Creel house are attacked by the vines inside, Henry informs El that she's too late. Hawkins will burn and fall and Henry will be the one to pick up the pieces and remake it into something beautiful. He'd hope to have her by his side, but now he just wants her to watch.

This time, when Vecna approaches Max, he brandishes his claw at long last. In the real world, she rises to the ceiling of the attic, prepared for her inevitable death.

In the pizza kitchen, the boys realize that El is struggling in her fight so much so that she's stopped breathing. Mike, pulling her from the freezer, tries to shout through to her across the void. As Will reminds him that he's the heart of the group, he tells her that he's right there next to her and, at long last, that he loves her and can't lose her. She just needs to fight.

It's enough to allow her to free herself from the vines just in time to cast Vecna away.

Answer: It disappears

While El regains her powers, Lucas manages to get the upper hand against Jason, knocking him out, but perhaps a bit too late. He can only watch as Max's arms and left leg are broken, her eyes nearly pulled from her skull. El's blast casts Vecna off her in that moment, stopping the process from continuing any further. Max falls to the ground in the real world and into Lucas' arms.

In Russia, Joyce manages to save Hopper, using one of the guards' stun batons to incapacitate the demo-dog, just in time for the pair of them to draw the creatures into the arena and have Murray blast them with the flamethrower. Vecna feels every ounce of the heat through the hive mind of the Upside Down. As the Demogorgon rises to its feet, Hopper unloads his gun into it and lifts a sword off the ground. Rushing in, he takes several swings, inevitably decapitating the creature.

Antonov and Yuri fly over in Katinka, allowing the five of them to make their escape.

Out in the alternate trailer park, Dustin arrives on the scene as all of the bats, affected by the blast, fall out of the sky.

In the Creel house in the Upside Down, Nancy, Robin, and Steve are saved, almost by miracle, as the vines restraining them are pulled away. It means they can continue Phase Four, putting an end to Vecna's body in the attic. They arrive to find him suspended in the air, attached to his vines, distracted by the proceedings. They light their molotovs and toss one directly at his body.

In the dream world, Vecna informs El that her friends believe they have won, but in fact it is only the beginning of the end. They have already lost. But as he says this, his real body lights ablaze, destroying his dream self and his dream world in a puff of smoke. While Max breaks free of her trance in the real world, Vecna awakens ablaze in the Upside Down to face the trio in his attic. They simply light another bottle and hit him again. Nancy, advancing forward, fires her shotgun directly at this shoulder, and his stomach, and his arm...before blasting him out the attic window, causing him to tumble to the front walkway below. When the three of them head down through the house, it's perhaps not a surprise that Vecna's body is nowhere to be found.

Answer: No

Dustin manages to hobble out into the Upside Down to find Eddie injured and dying on the pavement amidst the bat corpses. Eddie smiles up at Dustin-- he didn't run away this time. On Eddie's request, Dustin promises to look after the others and the club. There's nothing else that can be done after the sacrifice he made.

In the Creel house in the real world, Erica finally breaks into the attic door to find Lucas cradling Max's body. He screams for an ambulance while Max asks after him, unable to see or feel anything. He tells her to hold on while she cries that she's not ready to die. From the astral plane, El can only watch on, unable to help, as Max appears to breathe her last breath.

But as this happens, the clock chimes in the Creel house in the Upside Down. Four chimes.

In the attic in both the real world and the Upside Down, a fissure forms, destroying everything in its path (even bisecting Jason Carver, left on the floor after the fight with Lucas). The Creel house splits in two and the ground cuts a path between it and the Munson trailer. Another path cuts from the road in Hawkins Woods. A fourth comes from Lover's Lake. And all of them converge in the middle of Hawkins proper, creating a shockwave that destroys several blocks.

In a pizza parlour somewhere in Nevada, Mike tries to get El to wake up, but she's in a sense of calm. Watching over Max from the astral plane, she tells her friend that she is not going. Placing her hand over her heart, El uses her powers, her love, and her memories, in an attempt to bring Max back from the dead.


Two days after the fissure forms in Hawkins, things changes. While many townspeople depart with their belongings en masse, Argyle drives the pizza van into the city. Black smoke billows on the horizon, up above the trees. The earthquake that rocked the town measured 7.4 on the Richter scale. At this point, twenty-two people have been declared dead. Many more are missing. It's an unprecedented disaster. Eddie Munson, the presumed perpetrator in a spate of recent cult-related murders, is still missing. Many believe that the tragedies are linked. The townspeople are calling it a gateway to Hell.

The pizza van arrives at the Wheeler household just in time to reunite El, Mike, Will, and Jonathan with Nancy, Dustin, Steve, and Robin. There's a lot to discuss.

Answer: Max

The gang reunites at the hospital where Lucas and Erica are reading to Max while she's in her coma. No one knows when she'll wake up; she might not at all. The doctors claim her heart stopped for over a minute before she came back. It is, they said, a miracle. Sitting next to her on the bed, El tells Max that she's there with her. She slips into the astral plane but can't seem to find Max in the darkness.

Robin, Steve, and Dustin drop off unneeded belongings at Hawkins High School, where locals have set up a relief center. They offer to stay and help and it's there that Robin runs into Vickie. Over PB&J sandwiches, the two of them fumble while talking, both of them seemingly giddy to talk to one another. Steve can only laugh while he watches. Dustin, meanwhile, runs into Mr. Munson who, putting up missing posters, continues to look for Eddie. Dustin claims to have been with him when the earthquake hit and, when he hands over his necklace, he gives the man some much-needed closure. Both of them lament that not enough people really got to know Eddie. Dustin assures him that he was a hero.

Seeking a place to hide El from the government agents that will be sure to converge on Hawkins, the group takes it upon themselves to clean up Hopper's old house which, after his alleged death, has seen better days. Nancy makes light of the obvious issues (including holes in the walls and ceilings) as they start making repairs. While she and Jonathan board up the broken windows, she makes a comment that she was somewhat glad he wasn't in town during the nightmare. Jonathan jokes the same, after all, no one would've been in charge. Certainly not Steve. She asks if they're okay and she reassures him that they are; it's just hard being apart and life keeps throwing things in the way. Nancy asks about his college admission letter, but he lies, claiming that he never received it.

Mike and Will talk about the most recent developments, confiding in each other once again, but the conversation is still about El. Now that the chips have fallen, El is worried that Dr. Brenner was right-- she wasn't ready to fight One. She's never lost the fight before. Mike hopes she won't need to fight again, but Will tells him that Vecna is still out there; he feels him, hurting, but still alive, and waiting for the right time to strike. He will never stop. They have to kill him.

An unmarked black car pulls up outside. Fortunately, it's Hopper and Joyce, finally able to reunite with their children at long last.

The reunion is a short-lived spell of happiness as Will feels goosebumps on the back of his neck. Clouds roll in and, soon after, the unmistakeable spores of the Upside Down begin to rain on the town of Hawkins. As the group at Hopper's cabin head through the woods to the nearby clearing they look out over the town to find that the clouds are spilling from Vecna's four gates, bringing with them pestilence, red lighting, and the most urgent threat Hawkins has seen thus far.