Stranger Things season 3 episode 7: “The Bite”, summary and analysis

The chapter fact file

The original title is “Chapter Seven: The Bite”, and that is also the title used here. Matt and Ross Duffer write and direct it. The season 3 release date is Thursday, July 4, 2019, with the whole season out at once. The chapter runs 55 minutes. It is episode 24 of the series. The teaser of December 9, 2018 announced “The Bite” as its seventh title.

All the action takes place on the night of July 4, 1985, also a Thursday. The wiki points out that nothing in this chapter happens in daylight. In the United States, the average audience per minute, for people age 2 and older, is 1.18 million on release day and 7.35 million over three days. Over three days, it is the lowest figure of the eight episodes. The finale is at 8.70. It is also, according to the wiki, Alexei’s last appearance.

The night, in edit order

The mayor speaks at the fair, after the high-school band. Ted, Karen and Holly are on the Ferris wheel during the fireworks. Holly says “Mom, the trees”. She sees the trees moving. Karen tells her to watch the fireworks.

Then the cabin, then the mall basement, the movie theater, the road and the supermarket. The fair comes back, then the restrooms, then the fair again.

1. The fireworks The Ferris wheel

   Holly sees the trees moving. She is told to watch the fireworks.

2. The cabin The tendril

   Eleven repeats a line. Later, the roof goes. A piece lodges in a leg, then it is pulled out.

3. The basement The elevator

   A cart, dilated pupils, then a flight through the mall.

4. The road Two keys

   A safe, a famous number, and a piece of advice from Murray.

5. The store The wound

   They clean it, they find firecrackers, a call cuts off an apology.

6. The restrooms The stall

   A conversation, a class recalled, then two voices imitating a song.

7. The fair The shot

   A ride, a game of darts, then a hall of mirrors.

8. The mall The car

   A show car is thrown. A wound starts throbbing again.

The cabin, then the supermarket

Eleven repeats what the creature told her in chapter 6: it is building something, and it is for her. Nancy understands that it remembers the cabin. Will’s neck warns them. Nancy takes a rifle, Jonathan an axe. Tendrils come through the windows. The roof is torn off. A tendril out of the maw wraps around Eleven’s ankle. Mike holds her. Nancy shoots. Lucas cuts. A piece lodges in the leg. Mike pulls it out, and it rejoins the body through the window. Eleven tears apart the head of the flesh monster. The group flees in Nancy’s car.

At Bradley’s Big Buy, Max cleans the wound: “I skateboard. Trust me.” Nancy and Jonathan think the monster is made of the bodies of Tom, Bruce, and maybe Mrs. Driscoll, Heather and Janet. Lucas finds black-powder “Satan's Baby” firecrackers. Mike apologizes for having been jealous and stumbles on a word: “blank makes you crazy”. The call from Dustin cuts him off. The wiki says some of Mike’s lines in the store were improvised.

Later, while Eleven looks for Dustin in the Void, Lucas drinks New Coke. Mike and Max make fun of him. He compares it to Carpenter’s remake of The Thing, in 1982, against the 1951 original. The formula was launched in April 1985. In 2019, New Coke comes back as a limited edition, among the show’s collaborations. As they leave, the blood taken from the wound starts to move. Billy then enters the store and dips his fingers in the blood to track Eleven.

On the serum, from the basement to the movies

In chapter 6, Steve and Robin are captured. The serum misfires: it makes them giddy, and Steve, under the effect, gives Dustin’s name. In this chapter, he admits he may have given his full name. “I might've told them your full name.”

Dustin drives a cart from the base. Steve and Robin argue over the name of the race: “Indy 300” against “500”. In the elevator, Steve surfs on a hand truck and falls. His pupils are dilated. Erica guesses they were drugged. Robin says “We all die, my strange little child friend.” Steve reveals that the guards kept his keys. Armed men spot them. They flee through the mall.

Dustin hides them in a packed theater showing Back to the Future. The film was released in the United States on July 3, 1985. The screening is on the evening of the 4th. Erica stays on watch. Dustin reaches Mike, “code red”, talks about the Russians and the gate, then the battery dies. He would need eight batteries. During the call, the soundtrack plays “Einstein Disintegrated”, by Alan Silvestri. Outside the theater, Robin explains to Steve why Marty McFly is his mother’s age. Steve calls Marty “Alex P. Keaton”. The ceiling lights fascinate them. The cue is called “The Ceiling Is Beautiful”. They run off to throw up.

The Starcourt restrooms

These are the Starcourt restrooms. The ceiling has stopped spinning, and they wonder if they threw everything up. Robin asks to be questioned. After her answer, you hear “Yeah, it's definitely still in her system”. Then she asks Steve if he has ever been in love.

He answers: Nancy Wheeler, in the first semester of senior year, and he does not love her anymore. He has found someone better for him. Steve says Dustin keeps telling him “you gotta find your Suzie”. Robin asks who Suzie is. Only then does he talk about a girl he did not speak to in high school, maybe because of Tommy H. or the prom-king title. She is funny, smarter than him, and she cracks Russian codes.

Robin, in the stall: she really likes him, but she is not like his other friends, nor like Nancy. Steve answers “Robin, that's exactly why I like you”. She recalls Mrs. Click’s class, already recounted in chapter 6: her jealousy did not come from a crush on him. A girl kept looking at him. Tammy Thompson. Steve: “But Tammy Thompson's a girl.” He goes quiet, then he jokes. Tammy sings off-key, wants to leave for Nashville, and sounds like “a Muppet giving birth”. They imitate her as a duet. Dustin and Erica find them singing. Robin does not say the word Steve finally understands.

The scene has music: “You're a Fighter” during the stall, “The First I love You” when they start to sing. Tammy is not on screen in 1985. She is seen singing in 1986, in the first episode of season 4, and that is all. What this duo becomes later, at the video store, is on the Family Video page.

The fair, then the mall

Murray takes Alexei to the fair and presents the games as rigged. Alexei wins at darts and shouts to Murray that it is not rigged. Grigori shoots him with a silenced pistol and calls him a traitor. Murray, who had stepped away for a moment, witnesses the shot: he will tell Joyce he had gone for a corn dog.

Before the ride, Hopper and Joyce walk past Kline. He calls from his car phone. Later, they follow the Wheelers onto a centrifuge ride. At the ride, Hopper is called “Magnum”. The wiki says they take each other’s hand without thinking. Joyce finds Murray by the body. As they leave, she hits Kline. Hopper draws Grigori into the hall of mirrors and fires. A bulletproof vest saves him. Over a radio, Murray hears that the kids are in the mall, on the lower level. Hopper, Joyce and Murray do not go in during this chapter.

At the mall, the guards are about to find the movie group when Eleven throws a show car. Robin introduces herself: “I'm Robin. I work with Steve.” Dustin talks about a Red Dawn situation. Eleven collapses: her wound throbs. The piece still in the leg is removed only in episode 8.

At the mayor’s fair, you hear “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.”, by John Mellencamp. The wiki also notes Gremlins and Fraggle Rock plush toys, a Pet Sematary paperback at the supermarket, Ghostbusters and Smurfberry Crunch cereal. On the road, earlier, Alexei talks about two keys, a safe, and Planck’s constant: “It's a very famous number”. Murray translates. He advises them to admit their attraction, then repeats it to Alexei, who laughs.

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