Stranger Things season 4 episode 4: "Dear Billy," recap and analysis
Season 4 · Episode 4 · Dear Billy
78 minutes, three threads that never cross, and a song from 1985 that becomes a weapon. In this article: the chapter file, the full recap in order, the threads of the town, California, and Russia untangled one by one, the cemetery scene and what it changes, what the episode sets up for what follows, and the details to notice on a second viewing.
Fourth of the nine chapters, "Dear Billy" is the episode where the show finds its most cited scene: a teenage girl, a walkman, and a run to escape Vecna. Stranger Things season 4 episode 4 runs on a countdown of twenty-four hours, three threads separated by thousands of miles, and a rule pulled from an old man in an asylum. Here is what happens there, in order.
The essentials
- Original title: Dear Billy
- Place in the season: 4th of the 9 chapters, first volume
- Airing: May 27, 2022
- Runtime: 78 minutes
- Directed by: Shawn Levy
- Written by: Paul Dichter
- In the story: March 24, 1986
- Awards: Deux Emmy Awards : supervision musicale, maquillage prothétique
Contents
Stranger Things season 4 episode 4: the file on "Dear Billy"
The fourth chapter is titled Dear Billy in the original version, « Cher Billy » in French. The title is not an image: they are the first two words of the letter that Max Mayfield reads aloud in front of a grave.
Directing is credited to Shawn Levy, an executive producer of the show, who follows on from the previous chapter, "The Monster and the Superhero." The script is by Paul Dichter, whom we will find again writing "Sorcerer," the fourth chapter of the final season.
The runtime is 78 minutes, the second of the first volume behind "The Massacre at Hawkins Lab" and its 98 minutes. The chapter arrived on May 27, 2022 with the six others of volume one; "Papa" and "The Piggyback" followed on July 1.
In the story, the action takes place on March 24, 1986, three days after Chrissy Cunningham's death. The episode was then submitted to the Emmy Awards to represent the show: four nominations, two statues, in music supervision and in prosthetic makeup. Nora Felder, the music supervisor who had gotten Kate Bush's approval, received hers for this chapter.
Max's T-shirt, walkman included.
In the shopWomen's Max's Mixtape T-shirt39,90 €See the product
The recap of "Dear Billy," in order
It all starts with a calculation. The group cross-checks the two previous deaths: Chrissy died one week after her first headaches, Fred Benson after six days. Max is on her fifth. She has about twenty-four hours left, and she learns it at the same time as the viewer.
She decides to write. Farewell letters, one per person, handed out through the day under escort: Steve drives, Dustin and Lucas follow. At the Forest Hills trailer park, giving hers to her mother goes wrong: the hand holding her closes too hard, and the monster's voice reminds her of Billy's death.
Meanwhile, Nancy Wheeler and Robin Buckley show up at Pennhurst asylum with fake papers as psychology students. The director refuses, then grants ten minutes. Victor Creel, committed since 1959 for the massacre of his wife and his daughter, tells the "demon," the visions, and a detail nobody had picked up: a song, heard at the moment of the attack, held him out of reach.
Elsewhere, two threads move in parallel. In California, Dr. Owens's agents tell Mike, Will, and Jonathan that Eleven left of her own will; soldiers take the Byers house, one agent falls, and the boys escape in Argyle's van. Further on, Hopper breaks his irons and flees his camp on a snowmobile before being recaptured, while in Alaska the smuggler Yuri collects Joyce and Murray's ransom, warns the Russians, and puts them to sleep.
Back to the cemetery. Max reads her letter in front of her stepbrother's grave, apologizes for having done nothing, and Vecna takes her. Her friends apply the rule brought back from Pennhurst: they search her bag, find her walkman, and start her favorite song. A gate opens in the trance. Max runs, and falls back into Lucas's arms murmuring that she is still here.
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Opening Max's countdown
One week for Chrissy, six days for Fred. Max is on her fifth. She has one day left.
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Morning The farewell letters
Max writes to the people close to her and hands out the envelopes one by one. Lucas's will never be read in front of us.
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The trailer Her mother's hand
As she hands over her letter, Max is seized by a vision. The monster's voice blames her for Billy's death.
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Pennhurst Ten minutes with Victor Creel
Nancy and Robin get the interview with fake papers. Victor tells 1959, the visions, and the song that protected him.
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Lenora The assault on the Byers house
Eleven left with Dr. Owens. Soldiers attack; Mike, Will, and Jonathan flee in Argyle's van.
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The camp Hopper's failed escape
Hopper breaks his irons and leaves on a snowmobile. He is caught, and Dmitri tips over to the prisoners' side.
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Alaska Yuri's betrayal
The smuggler pockets the ransom, warns the Russian authorities, and puts Joyce and Murray to sleep in order to hand them over.
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The cemetery A song against a trance
Vecna takes Max in front of Billy's grave. Her friends start her walkman, and a door opens in the trance.
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Last shot "I'm still here"
Max catches her breath in Lucas's arms. Nobody had escaped since Victor Creel, in 1959.
The three threads: the town, California, Russia
The town's thread takes up two thirds of the chapter and splits into two teams: Nancy and Robin leave to find a witness hours away by road, Steve, Dustin, and Lucas stay with the victim. Notably, neither Eddie Munson nor Jason Carver appears here. The manhunt is paused for a whole episode, and all the room goes back to Max. The story tightens at the exact moment it could have scattered.
The California thread takes place in Lenora Hills, where the Byers have moved. Eleven is no longer there: she followed Dr. Owens and left only a note saying she was leaving to become a superhero again. Mike, Will, and Jonathan are confined to the house by two agents supposed to protect them, until soldiers in assault gear come in through the window. One agent falls, the other covers the escape, and Argyle's pizza delivery van takes everyone away: in this thread, the threat is entirely human.
The Russian thread plays in two places and ends in two failures the same day. At the camp, Hopper organizes his escape with a broken sledgehammer, a disarmed guard, and a stick of dynamite; he wins a snowmobile and loses the game a few miles further on. In Alaska, Joyce and Murray understand too late that Yuri has sold everyone out. Dmitri, the man who had passed the message, ends up on the wrong side of the bars.
The three threads never cross. The editing moves them side by side, and that is the principle of the whole season: characters who do not know what the others are living at the same moment.
The key moment: the cemetery, and what it changes
The scene is built in two spaces. In the real world, Max reads in front of a headstone, her friends a few yards away, and her body ends up rising above the ground. In the monster's mind, everything is red and still, and the grave opens onto a bloodied version of the boy who died at the Starcourt mall, the previous summer: it is the face the creature borrows to finish the job.
What saves Max is not a weapon, but a piece of information brought back from Pennhurst a few minutes earlier: music reaches areas of the brain that words do not, and a track you care about can serve as a thread to come back. Dustin, Steve, and Lucas find the walkman and start Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). A door opens at the bottom of the trance. Max remembers, and runs.
The chapter changes three things at once. It gives the group its first defense against an enemy it can neither see nor touch. It turns a song from 1985 into a survival tool. And it places Max at the center of the season: she is no longer the third target on a list, she is the only person to have escaped, therefore the only one the monster has to take back.
What remains is what the scene does not do. Max is not cured, and the story is careful not to suggest the opposite: she gets up, she breathes, and the countdown starts again in silence.
The Max Mayfield figure, headphones on her ears.
In the shopBuildable mini figure Max Mayfield on a bike14,90 €See the product
What the episode sets up for what comes next
The music rule will serve again. It comes back in the last chapter, when the group's plan is to occupy the monster while others attack his body.
The Creel trail starts again from Pennhurst. What Victor tells points the investigation toward the town's big abandoned house, the one where everything began in 1959, and which will become the battlefield of the end of the season. The old man does not know that the "demon" he describes is his own son; his two visitors do not know it either as they leave.
The two distant threads meet at the low point. Hopper recaptured, Dmitri imprisoned, Joyce and Murray taken against their will, the California boys on the road with no destination: at the end of the chapter, none of these characters controls anything anymore.
And for Max, the episode is only a reprieve. She will serve as bait in the finale, be broken by the monster, and spend the end of season 4 and the following eighteen months in a coma, until she wakes during season 5.
The details and references to notice
The cameo at the grave. The actor who plays Billy never set foot in this cemetery. Stuck in Australia by the travel restrictions tied to the pandemic, Dacre Montgomery shot his sequence in Perth, directed from a distance by Shawn Levy, about a year after the part shot with Sadie Sink. The director has said the sequence was pushed back again and again, between lockdowns and border closures, before he resigned himself to directing it by video call.
The Pennhurst nod. Victor Creel is played by Robert Englund, the original Freddy Krueger. Giving the role of the father of a monster who kills in dreams to the actor who invented that principle in film is the season's most direct reference to its models. The song that protected Victor is "Dream a Little Dream of Me": a lullaby against a nightmare.
The fake students. Nancy and Robin introduce themselves under borrowed first names, with fabricated documents and an outfit chosen to look academic rather than attractive. It is Robin's improvised monologue on the place of women in psychiatry that opens the door, not the fake papers.
Three monsters, not to be confused. The creature in this episode is not the Demogorgon that took a child in 1983, and it is not the Mind Flayer that possessed the town in the summer of 1985 either. They are three distinct creatures, with three ways of operating, even if the end of the season reveals that a single being commands them all: this one does not need to enter a room to kill.
The effect on the real world. In the weeks after the release, plays of Running Up That Hill rose by more than 8 700 %. The track, released in August 1985 on the album Hounds of Love, became number one in the United Kingdom thirty-seven years after it came out. Kate Bush had given her approval after reading the pages of the script where the song came in.
The Season 4 poster, Creel house included.
In the shopMax Mayfield cosplay jacket and top set121,90 €See the product
Frequently asked questions
What happens in episode 4 of season 4?
Max understands she has about twenty-four hours left, writes her farewell letters, and goes to the cemetery, where the monster takes her. Nancy and Robin learn at Pennhurst that music protects; her friends put her walkman on her and she escapes. In parallel, the Byers house is attacked and Yuri betrays Joyce and Murray.
Why is the episode called "Dear Billy"?
Because they are the first two words of the letter Max reads in front of her stepbrother's grave, dead the previous summer. The original title is "Dear Billy."
Which song saves Max in this episode?
"Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)" by Kate Bush, released in August 1985 on the album Hounds of Love. It is Max's favorite song, which her friends start on her walkman during the trance.
Why does music protect against the curse?
Because a track you are deeply attached to ties the mind to happy memories and opens a way out of the trance. The rule comes from Victor Creel, who had discovered it at home in 1959 without understanding it.
Who directed and wrote episode 4 of season 4?
Directing is by Shawn Levy and the script by Paul Dichter, who will later write "Sorcerer" for the final season.
How long does the episode "Dear Billy" last?
78 minutes, the second-longest runtime of the first volume, behind the 98 minutes of the seventh chapter.
Does Eddie Munson appear in episode 4?
No. Neither he nor Jason Carver is present in this chapter, so the whole room can go to Max's thread. Eddie, who exists only in season 4, comes back from the next chapter.
Does Max die in this episode?
No. She escapes the curse thanks to her song, like Victor Creel in 1959. But she stays marked, and the monster comes back for her in the season finale.
