‘Stranger Things’ Season 2 Episode 2 Review: “Trick or Treat, Freak”

What happened to Eleven, Stranger Things’ middle school Professor X? In the show’s final Season 1 battle, she and the monstrous Demogorgon both seemed to wink out of existence—shattering the door between Hawkins and the Upside Down dimension the young telepath blamed herself for opening. Or so we thought.

“Trick or Treat, Freak”, Episode 2 of Stranger Things Season 2 on Netflix, opens with what really happened: Eleven, pulled into the Upside Down, finds her way right back out after a queasy stroll through the hallways wrapped in blackened tendrils. She stands at a corner, sickened, a wide lens warping the frame for a sense of dimensional disorientation, but there’s a red light down the hall, a way back out. Authorities are on the other end, looking for someone—for her, it turns out—but it’s not long until she makes her gooey way through.

The flashback weaves through the episode, but it explains a few things: the frozen waffles Hopper left out in Season 1’s finale, and a hint at why the Upside Down’s still open for business. The rumors that Bauman, the journalist-turned-investigator, heard about Eleven came from somewhere. Specifically, the authorities who descend on Mike’s house, telling his parents she was the Russian government’s weapon, not, er, cooked up at their lab.

Mike won’t give Eleven up, not ever. He looks through the window and sees her in the shadows—the reason for his nightly walkie-talkie check-ins, going for 352 nights and counting in “MADMAX.” But where did she go?

The grown-ups search through the woods as Eleven hides under a fallen tree, crying, wordless. The ’80s films Stranger Things draws on, from E.T. to Stand By Me to lesser-known oddballs such as the Ethan Hawke-starring Explorers, are defined by their childhood camaraderie—and a healthy distrust for adults outside of their deep friendships. Eleven had that in Mike and his fellows, but now that’s been taken from her—and after her night of monster-battling murder, any last youthful innocence.

Back in present day, there’s a clang of piano: it’s Eleven in a ghost costume, scaring the hell out of Hopper as he makes French toast. The show is still in first-act fake-scare mode in this episode: it works every time, driven by sharp sound editing and the subtle emotional instructions of returning composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein’s synthesizer score.

Eleven is still adjusting to society after her time in science-experiment captivity and she argues with Hopper in sentence fragments: a Halloween costume would let her get out of the house, but Hopper turns her down. She’s annoyed; as we’ve learned from the X-Men, even dangerous telepaths have teen angst. Hopper agrees to come home early and spend the holiday with her, and the wariness trembles on her face. “Promise?” she says. It’s a small moment, but played with so much gravity by Millie Bobby Brown. And then it’s just breakfast, Hopper mussing her hair like Jimmy Fallon, reminding us that Eleven has hair now.

At Will’s house, there’s another moment of teasing panic: the lost boy is gone again. Until Joyce finds him in the bathroom, you know, peeing. She finds a drawing he made, of the sky-high monster he saw in the Upside Down’s thunderstorm: she’s worried, but he plays it off. Will trusts his mom, but he can’t tell her about this, not yet.

Tonight is Halloween, and in 1984, there’s only one costume that matters for four nerdy boys: Ghostbusters. One of Season 1’s prevailing critiques was that the show was too referential, too clearly reliant on its library of influences. But there’s no hollowness to Stranger Things 2. Its allusions and pop culture moments aren’t cover for a lack of ideas or a way of boasting about credentials: they’re to celebrate the canon, one Stranger Things is formidably expanding.

Will, Mike, Lucas, and Dustin pose for their parents’ photos in a montage sequence, a light-hearted scene deepened by what Ghostbusters represents for them: imagine fending off a shadowy monster from another reality, knowing no one believes you, and going to the theater a few months later to watch Bill Murray do the same thing. This isn’t reference: it’s dialogue.

It’s also just delightful, until Mike picks a fight with Lucas about ghost-busting assignments after both show up as Venkman.

“I specifically didn’t agree to Winston,” Lucas says. “He joined the team super-late, he’s not funny and he’s not even a scientist.”

But Mike, uh, can’t be Winston.

“Why not?”
“Because…”
“B-b-b-because you’re not black?,” Lucas says, prodding him.
“I didn’t say that!”
“You thought it!”

He did think it, and now Mike’s just learned a lesson in white privilege. One of Stranger Things’ most important advances from its ‘80s kid-movie roots: people of color. There’s a heart-stopping moment later, when Hopper’s out inspecting another farm turned rotten and Upside Down gooey overnight: it’s getting late, he draws his gun, and—pow! He’s interrupted by a black child with a toy gun. Hopper shrugs off the scare, but the image—a black boy, a toy gun, a police officer—can’t help but evoke the real-world loss of Tamir Rice. Suddenly it’s Hopper who seems scary, only a fraction of a second between his trigger finger and potential tragedy.

In the lab, the soldiers continue their trips into the Upside Down, replacing a fried piece of possible monitoring equipment: they’re not just keeping the door open but building into it, leaving a trail. It’s all quiet on the toxic monster dimension front for now, but Dr. Owens watches Will’s examination tape again and grips a blue stress ball.

There are so many little detail shots that give “Trick or Treat, Freak” tension: in the next scene, Nancy snaps her pencil as she sees a Barb look-a-like in the library. She can’t go on like this, she confides to Steve, who’s more worried about the consequences of explaining the truth about Barb’s death. The camera inches closer with gentle intimacy as he convinces her to go to a Halloween party instead.

In Eleven’s flashback, it’s Into the Wild with telekinesis; she knocks out a hunter with a flaming squirrel—her dinner—and steals his hat as the weather turns colder. Lucas and Dustin find their courage and invite Max, their new gamer idol, to go trick-or-treating: they spit their best tween-boy game and she gives them a verbal eyeroll. Her brother, denim god Billy, turns out to be Kiefer Sutherland in Stand By Me, brutal and sadistic—he screams at Max on the drive home from school and almost runs over the nerd squad.

Jonathan gives Will a break, leaving him to trick-or-treat alone with his friends—a horror-movie alarm bell if there’s ever been one—and takes up Nancy’s invite to the Halloween party. He meets a like-minded outsider but doesn’t catch her Siouxsie Sioux costume, and besides, it’s Nancy he’s here for: the love triangle lives!

It’s good that he’s there. Nancy gets drunk and breaks Steve’s heart in a bathroom conversation actress Natalie Dyer delivers like Tommy Wiseau. “It’s bullshit!” she says over and over, and please let there be an outtake where she turns and says, “Oh hi, Mark.” Steve—the former keg king who’s apparently never talked to a dramatic drunk person—only hears the bad parts. “Like we’re in love?” he says. “You don’t love me?” She’s not in a position to answer, but he hears what he wants to and bails. Jonathan takes her home, serene synth music playing as she falls and he picks her back up. The camera is behind his car and we barely see the motion: it frames the moment on his steadiness.

Without his brother watching over him, a sudden scare leaves Will falling into the Upside Down: he sees the new monster rising at the end of the road, the beast whose sketch frightened Joyce. He runs and hides, its smoky tendrils after him. Mike finds him, and the two leave Dustin and Lucas—preoccupied with keeping up with Max—to head back to Mike’s house, where a Reagan-Bush ’84 sign rests on the law and Eleven’s old bed remains a kind of shrine.

Will finally tells Mike about his surreal trips back to the Upside Down. Is it PTSD, like the doctor says?

“I don’t know,” he says. It turns out Mike feels the same way, about Eleven: “Sometimes I feel like I still see her.” We know the two aren’t crazy, but they don’t: at least now, they have each other.

In Hopper’s cabin, Eleven ties on a blindfold and enters black emptiness of the telepathic void. She finds Mike on his walkie-talkie, calling to her, but he leaves as she reaches for his face. She’s left isolated, alone in the literal dark.

At Dustin’s house, his trash can is rattling again with a little comic relief: he knocks it open and looks inside. The episode ends with his cut-off “Holy sh—“ and the “Ghostbusters” theme song. There’s something stranger in the neighborhood.

David Greenwald is a critic and cat owner in Portland who has written for The Oregonian, Billboard, and the Los Angeles Times. He has opinions on Twitter (@davidegreenwald).

Watch the "Trick Or Treat, Freak" episode of Stranger Things 2 on Netflix