Joyce drives to the school, parks, and goes inside. As she checks the AV Club for Will, she hears Dustin yelling for Will. Lucas runs in and calls them out. Mike is with Will, who standing in the middle of the yard. As Joyce tries to get him to wake up, on the Upside Down the darkness invades Will... and Will opens his eyes.
A few minutes later, Joyce takes Will home. The boys figure that Will is getting worse. At home, Will tells Joyce that he can't remember what happened to him. Joyce shows him the sketch and the tracing, and figures that the "episodes" that Will is having is real. Will says that he saw the creature on the field, and doesn't know what it is or what it wants. He says that he tried to make it go way but it got him, and he felt it everywhere and still does. Crying, he tells Joyce that he just wants it to be over. Joyce promises him that she'll never let anything bad happen to him and promises that she'll fix it.
That night, El walks back to the cabin and finds Jim waiting for her. She goes in and he goes after her and slams the door. Jim asks her if she went to see Mike, and tells her that the mother and daughter saw El. She insists that no one else saw her, and Jim tells her that she put them in danger. El reminds him that he promised that she'd leave, and Jim tells her that he's protecting her and all he asks is for her to follow the rules. He tells her that she's grounded and gets no Eggo or TV for a week. As he tries to take out the TV, El holds it in place telekinetically. Jim extends her grounding and then pulls the plug entirely, and tells El that she has to understand that there are consequences to her actions. El says that he's like Brenner, and Jim tells her that she's a brat. he tosses her a dictionary to look it up, and El telekinetically catches it and throws it away, slams a couch into his legs, goes into her room, and slams the door shut. Jim yells at her and El screams, and all of the windows telekinetically shatter.
Jonathan returns home and calls to Joyce and Will. There's no answer, and he finds them sleeping in Will's bed, Joyce protectively holding Will. As he sleeps, Will's eyes twitch.
The next morning, the Wheelers are having breakfast and Nancy tells Karen that she was planning on spending the night at her friend Holly's. Karen agrees and later Nancy meets with a waiting Jonathan. He says that he left a note for Joyce, and Nancy tells him that he doesn't have to do it. Jonathan tells her to stop saying it and drives off.
Joyce calls the station and leaves another message for Jim to call her. Will comes out and he tells his mother that he's still feeling weird. She takes his temperature and discovers that it's abnormally low. Will says that he feels out of it, and Joyce assures him that she won't call the doctor but will run him a hot bath.
Dustin gives Dart nougat and says that he's going to school but will be back soon. When he gets there, Dustin finds his friends in the back looking on as Lucas digs through the garbage for Dart. Dustin smiles at Max, and they start poking through the garbage.
Later in science class, Clarke talks about how organisms flee from danger.
Will goes to the bathroom and looks at the window, and starts panicking.
Joyce gets Jim's voice mail again, and Will comes out and says that the water is too hot. She checks it and discovers that Will pulled the plug. When Joyce offers to cool it down, Will tells her that "he" likes it cold and walks off.
Jim repairs the windows and El looks out of her room for a moment and then slams the door shut. He talks through the door, starting to apologize. He then tells El to clean the place up and maybe he'll consider fixing the TV. At his pickup, Jim gets Florence's call on the radio. She tells him that Joyce called eight times and tells Jim to deal with her.
In the school gym, Steve and Billy's teams are playing basketball. Billy shoves past Steve and scores, and tells him to plant his feet. In the shower, Tommy tells Billy that Nancy and Jonathan skipped the day before. Once Tommy goes, Billy tells Steve that he'll find someone else and turns off the water.
At Forest Hill Park, Jonathan and Nancy wait for Marsha. They spot a man watching them and glance around nervously looking for others. They finally go to Jonathan's car but he can't start it up. Four of the people in the park come up to the car and one of them asks if they need a lift.
Jim drives to the Byers house and finds the front door open. Joyce tells him to keep it open and takes him to Will's room where the boy is sitting on the bed with the window open. Will says that the shadow creature likes it cold, and he just knows things that he didn't know before and has memories that aren't his own. He thinks that they're "now memories", and describes how they're growing, spreading, and killing. Will breaks into tears, and Joyce asks him to draw what he's experiencing. As Will starts drawing, Mike calls but there's no answer.
Mike tells the boys to meet with him in the AV Club, but insists that Max can't go with them because she isn't part of the party. He tells Dustin and Lucas that Will saw a shadow in the sky on Halloween night, and figures that Will saw it again in the field. They don't know what the creature can do in the Upside Down, and Mike tells them to continue looking for Dart while he goes to Will's after school. he figures that Dart is from the Upside Down and must be connected to it somehow.
At the cabin, El tries to turn on the TV without success. She cleans up the place and notices a trapdoor in the floor. El peers down into the crawlspace and sees a box marked "Hawkins Lab", and she goes through the contents.
At Hawkins Lab, Nancy and Jonathan wait in an interrogation room. Owens finally comes in and invites them to come with him. He leads them through the complex and admits that mistakes have been made. Owens says that the men responsible for Barb's death and what happened to Will are gone, and he needs their help to make things better. The doctor takes them to the portal room. They watch as the soldier, Teddy, goes in to burn the growing portal. Owens tells Nancy and Jonathan that they can't get rid of it but they can stop it from spreading. He explains that foreign powers wouldn't consider it a mistake and would try to replicate it. The more likely people like the Hollands know the truth, the more likely the scenario will happen.
Will draws at a furious pace, tossing his pages on the floor. Jim and Joyce look at them, and Joyce realizes that the lines on the pages connect. They spread them on the floor and put them together, and realize that they form a lightning-like path. Jim realizes that they're vines and leaves.
When school ends, Lucas asks Max if she's seen Dustin. She walks away, angry, and tells Lucas that they're keeping secrets from her. Lucas says that there are things they can't tell her for her own safety, and Max asks if they kept secrets from El. He says that it was different, and Max tells him that she's out. She skates over to a waiting Billy, who asks who Lucas is. Max tells him that Lucas is just a kid from his class, and Billy asks why she's so upset. He asks if Lucas caused any trouble, and says that they're friendly whether they like it or not. Billy tells her that there are certain people in the world to stay away from, and Lucas is one of them. He orders Max to stay away from Lucas and drives away.
Jim drives to one of the rotting pumpkin patches and starts digging.
El goes through the files and finds a file on Terry Ives and how she claimed the DOE stole her baby daughter Jane. There's a photo of Terry with Brenner, and El grabs a radio from the shelf and tunes it to a blank channel. She then blindfolds herself and holds onto the photo, and finds Terry in the void, rocking and talking to herself, muttering a combination. She opens her eyes and sees El, and mutters "Jane". El calls to her mama and takes her hand, and Jane disintegrates into dust. Crying, El drops to her knees.
Mike goes to the Byers house and Joyce answers the door. She tells Mike that Will isn't feeling well, and Mike figures that it's about the shadow creature.
Back in Jonathan's car, Jonathan discovers that his car works fine. As they drive back to Hawkins, Nancy plays back the recording she secretly made of what Owens said. Jonathan asks if she still wants to do it, and Nancy says that they'll burn the lab to the ground.
Dustin returns home and goes to his room, and checks on Dart. He finds the front of the glass case shattered and shedded skin and slime on the inside. Something growls in the corner, and Dustin finds a larger Dart chewing on the cat. It opens up its mouth and growls at Dustin.
As night falls, Jim finally unearths a moving black vine. He jams the shovel down and finds a tunnel below the field. Dropping in, Jim realizes that the Upside Down has infested the area.
Written by Gadfly on Nov 5, 2017