Stranger Things season 4 episode 6: "The Dive," recap and analysis

Stranger Things season 4 episode 6: the chapter file

The sixth chapter of season 4 is titled « Le Plongeon » in the French version and "Chapter Six: The Dive" in the original version. It runs one hour and thirteen minutes, that is seventy-three minutes: the second shortest of the nine chapters, behind "The Monster and the Superhero".

The release date is May 27, 2022. It arrived with the six other chapters of the first volume; the last two followed on July 1. The story, for its part, takes place in March 1986, a few days after Chrissy Cunningham's death in Eddie Munson's trailer.

Nimród Antal is credited with directing, a Hungarian-American filmmaker known for Kontroll in 2003 and Predators in 2010. He is the season's only outside director and takes two chapters, the fifth and the sixth.

Curtis Gwinn writes the script, and he had already written "E Pluribus Unum" for season 3 and will later sign a chapter of the final season. The chapter picks up where the previous one had stopped: at the edge of Lovers' Lake, where Patrick McKinney has just died under the eyes of Jason Carver.

The chapter's course, in order

The chapter follows four groups separated by thousands of miles and cuts them in parallel. It starts on the shore of the lake and ends on the other side, with Steve, alone.

Between the two, the story alternates without lingering: an isolation tank in the Nevada desert, a town hall where the fear changes sides, a house in Salt Lake City where four boys wait for an answer, a Kamchatka prison where a meal too generous to be honest is served.

The construction is that of a countdown: each thread moves one step, then the last quarter comes back to the lake and does not leave it. Here are the eight stages, in the order of the edit.

1. The lake The police recover Patrick's body

   The chapter opens where the previous one stopped. The police question Jason Carver, who has just seen his teammate rise above the water and fall back, bones broken.

2. Nevada Eleven goes back down into her memories

   Immersed in the Nina Project tank, Eleven picks up the thread of the lab. An orderly watches over her there and whispers that she should be wary of Brenner.

3. Hawkins Jason turns the town

   In front of a full town hall, the basketball captain describes the Hellfire club as a satanic cult. Wanted notices circulate with the members' faces, and the room believes him.

4. Utah Suzie and the coordinates

   Mike, Will, Jonathan, and Argyle arrive at Suzie Bingham's, in Salt Lake City. Suzie traces the number Agent Harmon left and draws the position of the Nina Project from it.

5. Kamchatka The feast and the lighter

   The prisoners are served a feast. Hopper understands they are not being fed to make them strong, but to fatten the beast waiting for them. He steals a lighter in the cover of a fight.

6. The snow Joyce and Murray take back control

   Joyce and Murray hold Yuri, the smuggler who sold them out. The plan takes shape: Murray will take his identity, Joyce will play the prisoner to be delivered.

7. The rock Dustin's compass goes wild

   The group finds Eddie hidden at Skull Rock. On site, the needle of Dustin's compass veers: a magnetic field very close, therefore an open door.

8. The dive Steve passes to the other side

   Steve goes down toward the red glow. Vines come out of the gate and pull him. Nancy, Robin, then Eddie jump after him while a swarm of winged creatures closes in.

The chapter's four threads, separately

Hawkins. At the edge of the lake, the police question Jason. Later, he speaks before the town council and names a culprit: the Hellfire club, which he presents as a satanic cult. The hunt for Eddie Munson stops being a basketball team's business and becomes the whole town's. It is the moral panic of the 80s in one scene, filmed without caricature.

Meanwhile, the group finds Eddie at Skull Rock, and Dustin's compass starts to lie. The needle veers, so a magnetic field is pulling it off, so a door has opened not far away. It is Dustin who sets the rule, on site: the Demogorgon left an opening behind every attack, Vecna must do the same. Patrick died above the water; the door is at the bottom of the lake.

Nevada. Eleven is immersed in the Nina Project tank and goes back up through her memories of the lab. She sees an orderly again, the only gentle adult in those corridors, who advises her to be wary of Brenner. Above all she sees the other children again, who reject her. On the way out, a mirror sends back the image of a child covered in blood.

From this image, Eleven draws the simplest and heaviest conclusion: she is the one who killed the other subjects. The chapter leaves her on that certainty. It is false, and it will take the next chapter to demonstrate it.

Utah. The California thread has left Lenora Hills. Mike, Will, Jonathan, and Argyle drive to Salt Lake City, to Suzie Bingham, Dustin's girlfriend. From the phone number Agent Harmon left, Suzie finds the position of the Nina Project. The four boys finally know where to go.

Russia. Two groups, separated by the snow. In the Kamchatka prison, Hopper and Dmitri see a feast arrive, and Hopper understands what that generosity is for. He steals a lighter: he has already faced the creature waiting for them, and he knows it fears fire. Outside, Joyce and Murray take back control of Yuri and prepare an infiltration by substitution.

A word on the arena beast: it is a Demogorgon. It is not Vecna, and it is not the Mind Flayer either. The story holds these three entities as distinct, and the chapter never confuses them.

The key moment: Steve's dive

The title announces one thing, and the chapter holds it. In the middle of Lovers' Lake, Steve Harrington takes off his T-shirt and goes down, while Nancy, Robin, and Eddie wait in the rowboat. The plan is simple: check that the door exists, and come back up.

Down below, he finds the gate, a red tear open at the exact place where Patrick died. It looks solid, almost inert. He touches it, comes back up to tell the others it does not give, and it is at the surface that a vine come out of the gate wraps around his leg and pulls him to the other side.

He emerges in the water of the Upside Down and a swarm of winged creatures dives on him: the Demobats, bats with a mouth of petals and a prehensile tail, the first flying beasts of this universe. They squeeze his neck, bite him in the belly and the side. Nancy jumps first, Robin next, Eddie last and reluctantly. The chapter stops there.

This dive changes the geography of the story. Until now, you passed to the other side through the lab's great gate, or through a tear already spotted, the tree in the Mirkwood forest, through which Nancy passed alone in 1983. Here, four teenagers without powers cross through a hole in the water, without anyone authorizing them. The story stops investigating the Upside Down: it settles there.

The scale of the danger changes too. The first three victims died in a trance, lifted and broken without anyone being able to reach them. There, the threat is physical and immediate, and it is fought with bare hands. Steve will keep the scars of the bites, and one of the four divers will not come back from the season.

What the chapter sets up for what follows

The end of the chapter opens the next one directly. The four divers will discover that the Upside Down is frozen, stopped on the evening of Will's disappearance, in November 1983. Nothing there has moved since. It is the revelation that gives the story its retroactive coherence, and it would not have happened without the lake.

The chapter's objects are all tools for later. Hopper's lighter will serve against the arena creature. Yuri's identity will serve Murray. Suzie's coordinates will send Mike, Will, Jonathan, and Argyle toward the Nevada desert, where two of the threads will end up meeting. Nothing is decorative: "The Dive" is a chapter of preparations.

Eleven's certainty, that she killed the children of the lab, is the false lead the next chapter takes apart. The massacre was not hers, and the kindly orderly was not what he claimed to be.

What remains is Jason's speech. He turns a high school rumor into a municipal manhunt, and that hunt will not stop: it will lead Jason to the Creel house, the night of the last chapter, and to his own death.

The details and references to notice

The title has a double bottom. Two characters dive in this chapter: Steve into the lake, Eleven into the Nina Project tank. The two immersions are cut together, both look for a truth under the surface, and both go wrong.

Dustin's compass is a quotation. In the first season, broken compasses had already led the group toward the lab's door, because a magnetic field strong enough twists the needle. Two and a half years later in the story's chronology, the method has not changed.

The gate at the bottom of the lake will get a nickname, signed Dustin: the Watergate. It is the third of the four doors opened by the murders, after the trailer and the road, and the only one underwater.

The Demobats are a creation of this season, and the other world's first flying creature. They guard a territory rather than hunt, and they react to noise. The rule is set here, almost in passing; it will decide a character's fate in the last chapter.

One production detail, finally. Nimród Antal inherits chapters five and six, like Andrew Stanton in season 2 and Uta Briesewitz in season 3. The creators keep the opening and the end and hand over the middle: three seasons in a row, the guest took the same pair.

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