Stranger Things
The Bridge
Season 5
Episode 7
Editor’s Rating
The team puts Steve’s operation into action, but time is running out. It’s November 6th, and Vecna has plans of his own.
Photo: Courtesy of Netflix/Netflix © 2025
It’s the penultimate of the series, right before the supersized finale episode, so you know Stranger Things is going to have some explaining to do. I mean that literally: There are things to explain! We are setting the table. We are making the big, final plan. It all comes down to this.
First, once Mr. Clarke (who gets a crash course in what the hell is happening) locates Dustin, Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan in the Upside Down with the telemetry tracker, the group in Real Hawkins — which, yes, does now include Max! — goes and fishes them out. They have a lot to catch everybody else up on. You’ll notice that despite the previous episode ending with both Max and Holly running toward their respective escape routes, I did not mention Holly in the group being rescued from the Upside Down. She never makes it. Well, she almost makes it. She wakes up in her body to find herself attached to the spire and makes a run for it, out into what we now know is this other world, where Vecna wants to crash into our world. She finds a gate in the ground and when she sees Vecna catching up to her, she jumps through. And that’s when Nancy and company, still in Hawkins Lab, hear her screaming. They race up to the roof to see Holly falling through the sky. She’s so close, she is screaming for her sister, but then she’s pulled back. Nancy can’t see, but she knows it’s Vecna and she’s right. We watch as he floats Holly’s body back to the spire and hooks her back in. He has his 12 vessels.
To explain to the rest of the group where Holly is, of course, means Dustin needs to give everyone — except Mr. Clarke and Erica, of course — a crash course on wormholes. The whole crew, reunited and it feels so good, gathers at the radio station. As we know from the last episode, thanks to Dr. Brenner’s journals, Dustin figured out that the Upside Down isn’t an alternate dimension; it is a wormhole — a bridge connecting Hawkins to another point in space and time. I guess after some thought and some additional reading, he’s decided to call this other world that is on the other side of the bridge the Abyss. “A realm of chaos and pure evil,” Mr. Clarke chimes in. He’s a real part of the team! And he, of course, knows why Dustin’s calling it the Abyss: it’s another D&D term. We are all Hopper muttering “Jesus Christ” to ourselves. But we’ve seen the Abyss, and a realm of chaos is a correct description. As Dustin explains, the Abyss, this other world, is actually where El sent Henry when she expelled him from the Rainbow Room. It’s where he went into hiding after they flambéd his ass at the end of season four. Vecna hiding out in the Abyss explains why they never found him on crawls and why El couldn’t locate him in her Void. The Abyss, Dustin theorizes, is the actual home of the demogorgons and the Mind Flayer. When Dr. Brenner forced Eleven to find Henry and she made contact with the demogorgon, that is what created the Upside Down — that is when the bridge was formed. And since then, Vecna has used that bridge to move himself and his monsters back and forth.
So, why does he need the kids then? Will steps in. Vecna used Will to amplify his powers once; imagine what he can do with 12 impressionable minds. And, now that they have Max back, she can tell them everything Holly told her about Henry’s desire to “draw the two worlds together.” Will realizes something: All this time Vecna’s spent in the Abyss, he must be making rifts in it, too — just like the rifts he made in Hawkins. With both worlds weakened, when the bridge collapses or when Vecna gets his way, the two worlds will merge. He’s always wanted to remake this world in his own image; this is how he does it. That’s a lot of sobering information right there.
To stop the Abyss from crashing into their world, all our team has to do is fly 2,000 feet up into the air, find a way inside the Abyss, kill Vecna, get the kids out, and bring everyone home safely. No big deal, right? Let the brainstorming begin. We know how much Stranger Things loves a brainstorm.
This, not surprisingly, is a tough one to crack. And around the time the group is whole-heartedly rejecting Hopper’s plan to go to the Upside Down base, steal a helicopter, kidnap a pilot, and simply fly in and out of the Abyss, the whole thing devolves into people shouting at each other, zero progress, and Hopper yelling for someone to pull out a magic bean to help them get into this unreachable other world. That magic bean comment is exactly what’s needed to inspire the real man with the plan: Steve Harrington. He finally gets a moment to prove he’s more than the Hair, more than a babysitter, more than a man willing to bite into demobats when needed — he has brains, too. My guy!
They wind up calling it Operation Beanstalk. As Steve points out, they don’t need a magic bean; they have their own beanstalk right here at the station: the radio tower. Remember in the premiere when Steve and Jonathan raced up to the top? That wasn’t just about two doofuses trying to outdo each other. It was setting us up for Stranger Things’ endgame. The tower isn’t high enough to reach the Abyss, at least, not yet. As Steve explains, if the Abyss is being drawn closer and closer to their world, they should let it. Once the Abyss is close enough that the tower in the Upside Down is poking through one of the Abyss rifts, then they can climb up and in. El can jump into Vecna’s brain; they can take him out, which will stop the worlds from moving any closer. They get the kids out, and they save the world.
People are impressed! But there are a few notes to make this plan better. First, El needs to get as close as possible to Vecna in order to infiltrate his mind. Since they saw Holly falling through the sky right over the lab in the Upside Down, Nancy believes that Vecna’s Lair in the Abyss must be right above the lab, and the lab still has the big bath Brenner used to stick Eleven in to go into the Void. That’s where El will go. Dustin also spots a way to end this fight completely. After the team enters the Abyss, rescues the kids, and everyone is safely out, they can set a timed bomb to take out the bridge, separating their world from the Abyss forever. I mean, if anyone has seen any television or movies before, you know that remote timers never work and someone is always left behind. But this is a deep, depressing fear for another day! Specifically, New Year’s Eve. What a cool and fun time that will be for all of us.
The team begins prepping for Operation Beanstalk. When it is decided that Kali, too, will go in Vecna’s mind with El — the two sisters are going to kill their brother together — Hopper’s not thrilled. As he heads off to the MAC-Z to take his initial position, he tells Joyce that he thinks Kali is up to something and if she tries anything that puts El in danger, he won’t hesitate to kill her. He cannot lose his daughter, he tells her. He won’t. And we know Hopper is right to worry.
When Eleven and Kali practice going into El’s Void together, they have the frank conversation they’ve been tiptoeing around these past few episodes. Kali is insistent that the only way to end this is not just to kill Henry, but to have all three of them die. El wants to find another way, but Kali tells her that a happy ending is just a fantasy. Personally, I think Kali could use a few hits of Purple Palm Tree Delight because that tiny person seriously needs to chill out, but instead, El acquiesces, and they decide that once the kids are out and Henry is dead, they’ll stay in the Abyss as the bomb on the bridge goes off. If they don’t exist in the Real Hawkins, no one like Dr. Kay can use them to create more kids, to create more monsters. This certainly adds some extra tension to what will already be an intense trip to the Upside Down Hawkins Lab bathtub.
Kali won’t be the only one assisting El, though. Max is going to be Eleven’s tour guide through Henry’s mind — she knows it well. And then there is the other kid who knows Henry and who has the power to hurt him, too: Will. Oh, Will. He’s had a tough time. Since coming back from Vecna’s mind, he’s been blaming himself for being weak again. He thought he could defeat Vecna and save those kids, but he failed. And now that he knows he created those tunnels, he’s realizing just how many people Vecna’s had him kill. He’s feeling the weight of it all. But then Max tells him about Henry’s traumatic cave memory, she reminds him that Vecna is Henry, and Henry, although an absolute psychopath, is still human. He has fears; he is not invincible. Will realizes what he has to do.
As the team begins to load up Murray’s truck, Will wants to talk to his mom. He begins explaining that Vecna has power over him because he can fully tap into Will’s mind; he knows his fears, his memories, his secrets, and he uses that against him. Thinking of happy memories worked when Will wanted to control the demogorgons, but that alone isn’t enough to overtake Vecna. He needs to face his fears so that they no longer have power over him. Our boy’s coming out! Of course, Mike walks in the room just as he’s about to open up, and Will realizes that he doesn’t need to just tell his mom. In order to truly let go of his fears, he wants to tell everyone. Even Murray Bauman, which is certainly a choice, Stranger Things. Now, honestly, it feels like this is taking up a whole lot of time while worlds are literally colliding — is Hopper, who is already at the MAC-Z, wondering where the hell everyone is? — but it is also genuinely moving. I cried! A lot! Mostly when they cut to Jonathan, who seems so proud of his brother, it’s a nice bookend to the conversation he has with Will at Surfer Boy Pizza in season four, assuring him he would always love him no matter what. But Will has been so scared to tell anyone that he’s gay because he’s afraid that he’ll lose everyone, that eventually he’ll be alone, and that’s exactly what Vecna showed him. It’s Joyce who speaks first, assuring her son that his greatest fear is impossible. He will never lose her, ever. Jonathan stands up to hug his brother and make sure he knows he’ll never lose him, too. One by one, Will’s friends tell him the same. Murray doesn’t, but he’s probably thinking it. It’s a group hug for the ages, and now with that out of the way, Will’s ready to face Vecna again. He’ll be helping El, too. “I need to be there,” he says, “and I’m ready to show him I’m not afraid anymore.” Get it, Zombie Boy!
The team moves out, and while they meet some military resistance as the truck barrels through the MAC-Z and through the gate to the Upside Down, Dr. Kay finally gets her eyes on Eleven — they make it inside. Operation Beanstalk is a go.
But let’s not forget that Vecna has a plan, too. He’s turned all the other kids against Holly to make sure no one tries to escape again, and when it’s time, he gathers the 12 kids trapped in his mind around his dining room table. Suddenly, their heads snap upward and their eyes turn white. It’s November 6th, and Vecna’s plan is, unfortunately, a go, too.
• Admittedly, I also cried during Max and Lucas’s reunion. Gah! It was so sweet. He tells her he never stopped believing she was there. He admits to being so bored of Kate Bush. She tells him she didn’t really need the music; all she needed was him. It’s all very sweet.
• Also sweet? We get another moment really solidifying that Dustin and Steve are okay again. As the team preps, Dustin has some weapons the two of them can use — the same ones he and Eddie used against the demobats. I mean, Eddie did die using that weapon, but it’s the thought that counts. And Steve uses the moment to apologize for disparaging Eddie earlier. He admits that instead of just being there for Dustin when he needed him most, he got angry that things were so different, that Dustin was so different. “I missed my best friend,” he tells Dustin, who echoes the sentiment and tells Steve that his Beanstalk plan is genius. They realize that if this plan fails, at least they’ll be going out together. “You die, I die,” they tell each other. My! Boys!
• With stakes this high, it is very hard to care about anything Dr. Kay and Akers are up to. It would’ve been nice if we had wrapped them up ahead of the big finale. Their obsession with capturing El just makes them seem so far behind on what’s really going on; it’s hard to take them seriously. Obviously, they are going to interfere with Operation Beanstalk in some annoying way, but, like, get a clue for once!
• Oh, wait, another sweet moment: Dustin giving Nancy the biggest hug when they pull her and Jonathan out of the melted room. He thought she was going to die! His Snow Ball dance partner!
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