Stranger Things Season 2 Episode 8 Review - Chapter Eight: The Mind Flayer

“The Mind Flayer” finally reveals much to what has hounded as the past seven episodes. While the solutions that our characters devise feel a little bit forced at this point, it does well enough to build up excitement for the ninth and final episode.

And where back in Hawkins as the Demogorgons escape the portal and attack the Hawkins Laboratory. Pretty much everyone minus the main cast has been devoured. Will is now considered as a spy, not to be trusted, and is quickly sedated but they are trapped in the lab. Bob, the only one who knows BASIC programming language, must restart the power and access the computers to unlock the door fail-safe. Outside, Jonathan and Nancy bump into Steve, Dustin, Lucas and Max. Bob surprisingly is successful and everything goes smoothly until an unfortunate set of events render him eaten alive. Honestly, we miss him now and props to Sean Astin as even with the limited scenes given to him, he had a significant effect on us. Everyone else is able to escape and decide to go to the Byer’s residence to wait out and plan out a solution. They eventually think that the Shadow Monster is a Mind Flayer - one that controls the mind of its minions. Kill it and every Demogorgon (a.k.a Demodog according to Dustin) will die. They tie-up Will and think they can confuse the Shadow Monster if Will doesn’t know where he is. It works and they get a cryptic morse-coded message from Will on how to kill the Shadow Monster. But when the phone rings, Will finds out his location and soon the Shadow Monster knows where they are too. As the demodogs attack, someone arrives and saves the day. We’re pretty sure you know who that person is based on the previous episode.

At this point, it's pretty clear that Season 2 of "Stranger Things" is not as good as the first one. We still have mixed feelings about it and this season has been a roller coaster ride in terms of episode quality. “The Mind Flayer” sort of encapsulates how the season has gone. It has its high points especially with the emotional death of Bob but it also has its low points like the force-feeding of the unnecessary side story of Max and her step-brother. Even Will's development has been weak and we say this because there are certain elements that still fail to tie-up well and this is definitely the point of no return for those key plot points. The tying him up in a chair and morse code all sound silly even for a sci-fi film.

Rating: 4 reels