‘Stranger Things 3’ Recap – ‘Chapter Five: The Flayed’

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

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If there’s one particular thing that I outright live for when it comes to watching my favorite television shows, it’s the moment when the plot decides to kick into overdrive and wow us with a story that drops all kinds of awesome surprises and/or moments into our laps. Because this is when the stakes are raised, and things get truly interesting and danger is everywhere if the story calls for it, and this just so happens to be on my mind today, because that all-important moment finally arrived in the next episode of Stranger Things. For ‘Chapter Five: The Flayed’, was filled to the brim with exciting moments and wonderful twists and turns, and all of that came about by immediately picking up from where we left off in the last episode.
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Which means that we quickly caught up with Hopper and Joyce in the midst of their search to uncover what Mayor Kline’s stupid deal had done to their town and as it turns out, they quickly came to learn that the Russians had done some industrial modifications to the farmhouses on the outskirts of town. But before they could figure out exactly what was going on, the Russian Terminator showed up to cause trouble, prompting Hopper to arrest one of the Russian technicians he and Joyce encountered and make a run for it, all in the hopes of getting to Illinois to see Murray and hopefully uncover a few military secrets in the process and this was just, intense and wild and the wonder of this tale didn’t end here.

Because Steve and Dustin and Erica and Robin were finally able to get out of the mysterious elevator that dropped them into the depths of the earth, and it didn’t take long for them to discover that this was some kind of massive Russian base. One filled to the brim with more soldiers than they could count and of course, they needed to figure out exactly what was going on in this place and took the time to sneak around, which brought about a stunning moment for Steve, since he finally got into a fight and won. But while he was able to defeat a trained Russian soldier, there was no time to bask in the wonder of his victory, for this motley crew was able to finally discover that the Russkies in this base, were working to re-open the gate. 

However, once again, the centerpiece of this particular tale involved Eleven and her group. Because after much discussion, the team decided that they needed to take the fight to the Mind Flayer as quickly as possible, which means they needed an assist in finding Billy, and that brought them to the hospital in order to turn Mrs. Driscoll loose in the hopes that she would lead them right to Billy. But there was a slight complication in this plan in that, some of the Flayer’s minions already discharged Mrs. Driscoll and they had plans to add Nancy and Jonathan to their ranks and despite putting up one hell of a fight, one that dropped two of the minions in epic fashion, the closing moments of this tale revealed just how powerful these hybrid beings are since they were able to meltdown and reassemble into something straight out of our nightmares…

If anything, I was quite impressed with how action packed this particular tale turned out to be. Because this one was filled to the brim with complex action sequences and breathtaking moments, and plenty of lighthearted comedy as well since this one taught us that Russian scientists love Cherry Slurpees. But outside of that, while this episode didn’t exactly offer up a ton of new revelations, since the audience has been privy to a lot of the secrets that were revealed to the characters here, it’s nice to see the heroes of Hawkins finally figure out exactly what’s happening in their town, and it’s awesome for the audience to see everything begin to come together. And now that the stakes have been raised, I have no doubt that the final three episodes of the season are going to escalate the plot further and well, I definitely want more, so, on that note, it’s off to Hawkins to see what other challenges await our heroes. Until next time. 

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