SPOILERS

“Chapter Two: Vecna’s Curse”

That was much better.

Interesting that of the two new series that I am watching, Obi-Wan Kenobi had a first episode that I absolutely loved and a second episode that I was disappointed with. Now, Stranger Things season four had a first episode that I did not like much and a second episode that I liked way more.

My complaint about Chapter One was that there was too much focus on characters that I did not know or care about. Chapter two is just the opposite as we see so much more with our main characters as the story kicks into high gear.

I will say that I was not a huge fan of the answers about Hopper. His whole Hopper in the gulag bit is not what I would want, but Joyce and Murray stuff helped make that storyline more engaging. In a show with so much fantastical things happening, Hopper’s story feels very mundane, or pedestrian. Maybe it’ll pick up as other sections of the plot have done.

Mike arrives in California and meets up with Elle. There is some issue going on with Will, but we will see more of that as the season moved on. Elle gets tormented by Angela at a roller skating rink, showing Mike that Elle had been lying to him about how positive her life in California has been. After Angela and her minions embarrassed Elle, she came back and hit her in the head with a roller skate in a terribly violent encounter. She kept flashing back to the slaughter in 1979.

My favorite parts of this film was the story going on in Hawkins. With Dustin and his crew searching for Eddie to get him to tell his story about what happened to Chrissy and with Nancy and Fred following the story and having Fred be the next victim of Vecna.

We got a name to pay attention to as Enoch from Agents of SHIELD (Joel Stoffer, playing Eddie Munson’s father) told Nancy the story about Victor Creel. Victor Creel will be a major piece of this season, I am sure.

This episode took a huge step in the right direction for me. There is a lot of horror elements that make the show stand out. It looks great on the screen and the effects are top notch.