Episode Details

It’s Season 5, Episode 5 of Stranger Things, titled “Shock Jock,” and the show fully commits to emotional damage as Will Byers once again volunteers as the human Wi-Fi extender to the hive mind in a desperate attempt to outplay Vecna, who has escalated his villain era by abducting children as supernatural batteries. Inside a psychological nightmare maze, Max, Holly, and new kid Derek scramble to escape while piecing together Henry Creel’s extremely on-brand plan to merge dimensions and ruin everyone’s lives. Elsewhere, the horror shifts from supernatural to medical as Dr. Kay’s experiments are revealed to involve forced blood transfusions in a truly upsetting attempt to recreate psychic powers. Back in Hawkins, tensions boil over when Steve and Dustin get into a raw, ugly fight about whether Eddie Munson’s sacrifice actually meant something—or was just another tragic loss the town will conveniently forget. The episode ends by gleefully dropping a cliffhanger grenade, with Nancy and Jonathan attacking a mysterious energy source that may or may not trigger the literal end of the world, proving once again that this group should maybe stop touching glowing things.