The Snow Ball in Stranger Things: the middle-school dance, December 15, 1984
Universe, Season 2, Hawkins
The 1984 Snow Ball is held on December 15, from 19 to 22, in the Hawkins middle-school gym. Lucas dances with Max, Will with a girl from school, Dustin with Nancy, Mike with Eleven. In the spring of 1986, Max goes back into this memory to hold off Vecna.
The middle-school gym is dressed for the Snow Ball. Outside, the town is coming out of a much darker autumn. Inside, a sound system plays the hits, a boy is turned down for every dance, and a girl in a blue dress pushes the door open at the moment the song changes.
The essentials
- Date: December 15, 1984, from 19 to 22
- Place: the gym of Hawkins Middle School
- Chapter: the last of the second season, « The Gate »
- Pairs: Lucas and Max, Mike and Eleven, Dustin and Nancy, Will and a classmate
- Return: Max takes shelter there in the spring of 1986
Contents
The Snow Ball, one month after the gate
Hawkins has an end-of-year dance at the middle school. The 1984 edition falls on December 15, between 7 and 10 p.m. Nothing on the dance flyer says a gate to the Upside Down stayed open for a year under the lab.
A month earlier, the group closed that gate. Will was pulled out of the Mind Flayer's hold. Eleven came back. The dance does not erase that. It sets it alongside: garlands, a bowl of punch, students who do not know what happened under their feet.
The contrast is the subject. The show gives the preparations first, room by room, then the gym. The monster is not in the hall. It is in the gap between the sound system and what the characters have just lived through.
Mike and Eleven hand in hand, as a keychain: the couple finally dancing to « Every Breath You Take. »
In the shopMike and Eleven keychain12,90 €See the product
Jingle Bell Rock, the hairspray, and the photos
Before the hall, the houses are shown. Joyce teaches Will the steps, Jonathan films. Mike's mother takes a photo. In front of his mirror, Lucas rehearses the line he will use to ask Max, and his sister Erica makes fun of him. Max's mother helps her with her hair. Dustin looks everywhere for his Farrah Fawcett hairspray.
« Jingle Bell Rock, » by Bobby Helms, covers these preparations. Then « Love Is a Battlefield, » by Pat Benatar, when Steve drops Dustin off in front of the middle school. In the car, he drills his lesson into him once more: act as if he does not care. Dustin promises to go at it like a lion, mimics the big cat, and Steve asks him to stop. Steve does not go in to dance. He stays the stand-in older brother, the one who drives.
Jonathan is the dance photographer. He is not a middle-school student: he is there for the shots. Joyce and Hopper stay in the parking lot. They share a cigarette while the sound system changes songs. A few weeks after Bob died, Hopper tells Joyce that every day gets a little easier. The dance therefore has two scenes: one for the students, and one for the adults who do not go in.
Time After Time, the refusals, and Nancy
Dustin comes in on « Twist of Fate, » by Olivia Newton-John. The others tease him about his hair. He helped save the town, and he does not have a partner.
« Time After Time, » by Cyndi Lauper, comes next. Lucas stumbles over his invitation, and Max says yes anyway. A classmate asks Will. Dustin tries his luck in turn. Several girls turn him down. Nancy, who is serving the punch, sees him. She comes over to ask him and takes him out to dance. She tells him he is her favorite of her brother's friends, and that girls that age will change their minds eventually. It is not a romance. It is the older sister who will not leave him standing there.
Will dances too. His partner has no name in the story. What matters is that he is in the hall, on his feet, after days in which his body no longer belonged to him. The dance does not « cure » him. It puts him back among the others.
Every Breath You Take, Mike and Eleven
The song by The Police starts while Joyce and Hopper are still outside. Eleven comes in. She wears the evening dress they prepared for her. Mike sees her. They dance. They kiss. Lucas and Max kiss too, on their side of the floor.
The track is called « Every Breath You Take ». The title already says what the image shows next: something is watching. On the other side, the Mind Flayer looks at the gym. The sweetest dance of the season closes on a gaze that is not a chaperone's.
Mike and Eleven find each other here in public for the first time, after a year in which she was hidden. The invitation went back to the year before. It arrives a season late, and right on time for the last song.
Lucas as a chibi keychain: the one who rehearses his line in front of the mirror, then flubs it in front of Max.
In the shopchibi keychain Lucas Sinclair12,90 €See the product
The same dance, rotting, in the spring of 1986
Fifteen months later, Max is Vecna's target. To get away from him, she moves herself into a happy memory. She chooses this dance. The sound system picks up « Every Breath You Take » again. She is sitting, she sees the hall again.
The memory does not hold. Balloons burst, full of blood. The room rots. The song warps and becomes « Dream a Little Dream of Me », by Ella Fitzgerald. Vecna walks into the memory Max thought was hers.
The dance changes function then. In 1984, it was a reward. In 1986, it is a hiding place, and the hiding place is punctured.
What the dance says about Hawkins
The Snow Ball, ten days before Christmas, is not a separate episode. It is the last scene of a chapter called « The Gate. » The gate is closed, the kids dance, and the Mind Flayer is not dead. The show puts both pieces of information in the same shot.
Each character has a tiny, exact role there. Lucas stumbles over the line he rehearsed, and it is Max who pulls him onto the dance floor. Dustin takes the refusals, then a dance that is not the one he hoped for. Steve, Joyce, and Hopper do not go through the gym door.
That is why this memory still matters in 1986. Max does not go back because the evening was perfect. She goes back because, that night, she was chosen.
This evening can be filed among the gentle scenes. That would miss the edit: the same episode closes the lab gate, then sends those who fought to close it onto the dance floor. The other students dance without knowing. They, though, dance knowing.
Max's cassette on a T-shirt: in the spring of 1986, before the memory of the dance, « Running Up That Hill » pulls her away from Vecna.
In the shopWomen's Max's Mixtape T-shirt48,90 €See the product
To rememberThe dance of December 15, 1984 closes the second season: four dances, a song by The Police, and a gaze from the other side. In 1986, Max takes shelter there, and Vecna walks in.
Frequently asked questions
Which episode is it?
The last chapter of the second season, « The Gate ». The dance takes the ending, after the lab gate is closed.
What is the date?
December 15, 1984, from 19 to 22, in the middle-school gym.
Who dances with whom?
Lucas with Max, Will with a classmate, Dustin with Nancy, Mike with Eleven. Steve drives Dustin and does not dance.
Which songs play?
« Jingle Bell Rock », « Love Is a Battlefield », « Twist of Fate », « Time After Time », then « Every Breath You Take ».
Why does Max go back?
In the spring of 1986, it is the happy memory she sets against Vecna. The memory breaks down, and the song becomes « Dream a Little Dream of Me ».
Is the Mind Flayer in the hall?
No. It watches the gym from the other side, on the last song.
