At the Byers house, Joyce tries to call Jim but gets his answering machine. She looks at another of Will's sketches and tries to fit in with the hundreds of others.
Mike sneaks into Will's room, and Will says that some of the shadow creature is in the Upside Down and some of it is in him. The boy explains that the now-memories are getting stronger, and Mike suggests that now Will can spy on the shadow creature and knowing what it's thinking is how they can stop it. Will glances down on his sketch of the creature and wonders what happens if the creature spies back on them. Mike takes his friend's hand and says that they won't let it.
Jim goes through the Upside Down tunnels beneath the pumpkin patch and hears someone. Pustules spit liquid at him, forcing him to retreat before he collapses from the poison. Above him, the vines grow over the hole Jim made to climb down.
At the motor motel, Jonathan and Nancy nervously tell the owner that they want a double room. Once they get into their separate beds, Nancy smiles and says that it's deja vu, and that it feels like the world is going to end. They compare the scars on their hands, and Nancy wonders what happened to them. She points out that Jonathan disappeared afterward, and Jonathan tells her that Will needed her and she had Steve. Nancy says that she waited, and Jonathan pointed out that she only did so for a month. Irritated, Nancy rolls over and tells him to turn off the light.
The next morning, Will wakes up gasping for breath. Mike is on the floor next to him, and wakes up when he hears him. They go to the living room where Joyce is looking at the drawings, and Will tells her that he saw Jim and thinks that he's going to die.
Jim wakes up sand vomits. He gets to his feet and continues on, and discovers that the hole is grown over. Jim cuts off pieces of his jacket to cover his mouth, and comes to a fork in the tunnels. he uses a cigarette to mark his path and goes left.
The Sinclairs are having breakfast and Lucas asks his father how he makes his wife not mad at him. He tells Lucas that he apologizes and gets her whatever she wants. Lucas says that he's heading out with Dustin and leaves. He rides past Dustin's house where Claudia is calling for her missing cat Mewsy. She goes back inside and asks Dustin if he's seen the cat. Dustin is on the phone, faking a call, and tells Claudia that they saw the cat near Loch Nora. Relieved, Claudia goes to search for the cat and once she leaves, Dustin puts on protective gear and lays down a trail of lunch meat to the cellar. He opens his bedroom door and runs to his treehouse. Dart follows the meat out of the house to the cellar door, but then turns and looks at Dustin. Dustin draws back, and when he looks, Dart is still staring at him. The boy charges out, knocks it into the cellar, and slams the door shut.
El hitches a ride with a truck driver to Terry's address. As she gets out, he tells him to apologize to her mother for being away so long. El walks up to the house and knocks on the door. Terry's sister Becky assumes that El is a Girl Scout, and El telekinetically opens the dead bolt and says that she wants to see Mama.
Becky takes El to the room where Terry is in a chair staring at the TV. Terry is muttering the same thing she was in the void, and El takes her hand. Her mother looks at her but doesn't respond, and El asks Becky what's wrong with her.
Nancy and Jonathan drive to an old building at an address they have and ring the bell. Murray tells them over the intercom to look at the camera. Once they do, he closes the door and takes them to the wall that he's put up articles, notes, and maps on. Nancy tells him that his timeline is wrong and El is from Hawkins Labs.
Billy drops Max off at the arcade and she discovers that the DigDug machine is outside. Keith says that it shorted out but he has another machine running in the back. He takes her to where Lucas is waiting, and Lucas promises that he'll get Keith the date with Nancy. Once he leaves, Lucas says that he's going to tell her the truth about everything but warns that she could be arrested or killed. He asks if Max accepts the risk, and she sarcastically does. Lucas then tells her what really happened to Will a year ago.
Will draws again trying to show where he saw Jim. Joyce and Will add it to the hundreds of other sketches in the proper spot. Bob pulls up outside and Joyce goes out to greet him so he doesn't see the sketches. He brought brain teasers for Will to focus on, since Joyce told Bob that Will is sleeping. Joyce nervously tries to get him to go, but then realizes that he can help. She brings him in and they show him the pages. Joyce makes him promise not to ask any questions, and asks him if he can figure out where Jim is. Bob talks to Joyce privately and says that she and Will don't look well. He wonders if it's one of Will's episodes, but then recognizes the shape of Lover's Lake in the pages. He works out that the drawings are a map of Hawkins.
Jim continues through the tunnels, trying to raise someone on the radio. He enters a cavern filled with animal bones and vines that back away from the cigarette lighter. Jim makes a torch and forces them to make a gap in the wall, and then digs through it.
Dustin buries Mewsy and calls to the others on the radio, saying that it's a code red. No one responds, and Dustin clings up the blood on his bedroom carpet. Erica finally answers Lucas' walkie-talkie and says that she doesn't know or care where Lucas is., and then turns off the radio.
Becky asks El where she came from and where she's been. She explains that Jim and Joyce came looking for her a year ago, and El figures that Terry won't get better. Becky tells El that Terry always believed that El would come home one day, and takes El to her nursery. El looks at her crib, and Becky offers to let her stay there. The girl agrees and Becky says that she needs El to tell her the whole story when she's ready. The hallway light flickers and another light down the hall flickers. El follows the lights downstairs to Terry, and Terry's nose is bleeding. The girl says that Terry knows that she's there and wants to talk, as the TV changes channels by itself.
Bob takes a map of Hawkins and has Mike and Joyce measure distances. He takes a guess at where the X marking Jim is, a half mile southeast of Danforth. Joyce kisses him on a cheek and they head out.
Dustin rides to the Wheeler house and rings the bell. Ted finally answers the door and tells Dustin that Mike isn't home. Karen yells that he's at Will's and Nancy is at Ally's. Dustin tells Ted that he's no use and leaves, disgusted. Steve pulls up with flowers, and Dustin grabs them, says that Nancy isn't home, and tells him that they have bigger problems than Steve's love life. He asks if Steve still has the bat with the nails, gets into Steve's car, and says that he'll explain it on the way.
Jim continues digging his way into the cavern wall but realizes that it's hopeless. Vines slither up his legs and yank him down, covering him.
Lucas finishes telling Max everything, and Max says that she liked it. She figures that he's making up a story to impress her, and says that it's stupid but funny. Lucas follows her out and insists that it's not a joke, and says that their group's most important story is that they don't lie. Max starts playing the DigDug game and when she mentions El, Lucas covers her mouth and tells her to stop talking. She realizes that he's serious and asks for proof. Lucas admits that he can't, and Billy pulls up outside. Max tells Lucas not to follow her out and runs to the car, and Billy reminds her that he told her not to talk to Lucas. Max insists that they weren't hanging out, and Billy drives off.
Nancy plays back what Owens said to Murray, and asks if that's enough to incriminate the government. Murray pours himself a drink and put on music, and says that he's thinking. He warns them that there's nothing simple about what they told him, and they need the public at large to believe. Murray warns that the government will bury the tape and nobody will believe it. Once he waters down his vodka, Murray says that they water down the story and moderate it. They'll say that Hawkins Lab leaked something, and the government people will go down.
At Hawkins Lab, a lab tech tells Owens that they found nothing hazardous. But when they expose the soil to heat, it forms a vortex and the samples in the other tubes react as well.
El has Becky make a blindfold and puts it on, and then makes mental contact with Terry in the void. Terry still doesn't respond, but then takes El's hand and disappears. A younger Terry runs through the void, bleeding from a miscarriage, and El runs to her as she collapses.
El sees Terry being taken to the hospital and the doctors performing a c-section. Later, Jane wakes up and Becky tells her that Jane died during the birth. Jane says that Brenner was there and starts to struggle, and the nurses give her a sedative. Later, Jane takes a gun from a safe, loads it, and goes to Hawkins lab. A guard stops her, and Jane draws her gun and shoots him. She then searches the complex for Jane and finds her in a room with another girl. However, the guards drag Jane away before she can go to her daughter. Brenner has a tech, Ray, give her electroshock to scramble her mind.
Ripping off the blindfold, El realizes that Jane is mumbling things of what happened to her.
As night falls, Bob tries to direct Joyce to where Jim is. Will suddenly tells Joyce to turn right, saying that he saw Jim in his now-memories. They pull into the field and Joyce brakes just before she hits Jim's truck. She and Bob find the hole that Jim dug and the vines in the bottom. Joyce uses the shovel to stab through them and asks Bob to help her get down there. He lowers her down and drops down with her, and he realizes that they're in Will's map. They search for Jim and find his discarded cigarette, and go down the left branch.
On the surface, Mike asks Will if he sees anything. Government vans pull up into the field.
Joyce and Bob find Jim's hat and flashlight, and Jim himself nearby. They find his knife and cut enough vines off of him so that he can cut off the rest. Government agents in protective suits are behind them, and tell them to clear the area.
As the government agents torch the vines, Will collapses in agony and convulses.
Written by Gadfly on Nov 6, 2017