Joyce takes Will home. His temperature is strangely low, but he refuses a warm bath. Eleven returns to the cabin. She and Hopper fight, and Hopper grounds her.
Will tells Joyce and Hopper that he is connected to the Shadow Monster. Unable to explain in words, he makes a vast number of scribbles. Joyce and Hopper piece them together into a map.
Nancy and Jonathan try to set up a meeting with Barb's mother to tell her the truth, but are caught by undercover government agents and brought to the laboratory. Dr. Owens shows Nancy and Jonathan the gate to the Upside Down and explains that it can be contained but not destroyed, assuring them that the government are trying their hardest to avoid another tragic incident like Barb's death, before allowing them to go free. Secretly, Nancy records his confession.
Billy warns Max to stay away from Lucas. Eleven finds Hopper's notes on Hawkins Lab. Using her psychic powers, she contacts Terry Ives, who calls her "Jane." Dustin discovers Dart devouring his cat and realizes Dart is a young Demogorgon. Following Will's map, Hopper digs in Merril's field and finds a tunnel corrupted by the Upside Down.
This episode provides examples of:
- Anger Born of Worry: Hopper's attitude towards finding out that Eleven had snuck out of the house is clearly about how worried he was about her putting herself in danger like that. Her frustration at being stuck there all the time means she no longer cares, though.
- Big "NO!": Eleven, when Hopper caps the cable to her beloved TV.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: The first thing a thoroughly-pissed Hopper does when Eleven returns home is use her own Catchphrase against her.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Both Hopper and Eleven in their argument have reasonable points to address, but are both exhausted and frustrated with each other and neither is in a mood for reasonable dialogue, leading to a nasty fight on both sides:
- Eleven is reasonably chafing at spending almost a year stuck in the same cabin that she never gets to leave nor see or contact anyone who isn't Hopper, that he's clearly lying when he claims that she'll get to leave "soon" and that from her point of view all that's happened is she's exchanged one form of imprisonment for another.
- Hopper, meanwhile, has a valid point that Eleven leaving the cabin puts both of them — but especially her — in danger from the government, and that he's just trying to protect, shelter and educate her. He's also not wrong that rule-breaking must face consequences, and that a moody sheltered preteen with no experience of the wider world whatsoever needs to learn discipline and boundaries before she interacts with others, especially when she has a short temper, a tendency to lash out and powerful psychic abilities that she's already demonstrated both lethal capabilities with and a willingness to use to get her own way.
- Captured on Purpose: Turns out getting captured by the goons from the Hawkins lab was part of Nancy's plan to get closer to Dr. Owens.
- Caught on Tape: Nancy and Jonathan managed to extract classified information from Dr. Owens regarding what's happening in the lab plus who are responsible for Will's disappearance and Barb's death.
- Character Title: Named for Will's D&D character.
- Demonic Possession: Part of the episode's plot involves the Shadow Monster influencing Will now that it's inside of him. The first major sign is when he flatout refuses a bath and then walks away, to Joyce's shock.
- Did Not Think This Through: Jonathan and Nancy are so focused on getting justice for Barb that they ignore Dr. Owens' perfectly justified warnings on what will happen if the world becomes aware of the Upside Down. Yet, Nancy still wants to expose them.
- Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Hopper learns the hard way that getting angry at a moody adolescent with psychic powers is probably not the best idea, and that disciplining her is a very, very difficult thing to do.
- Evil Is Deathly Cold: Downplayed. While the Shadow Monster displays no cold-based powers, it does influence Will to prefer excessive cold.
- Eye Open: Will suddenly opens his eyes wide after the Orifice Invasion is completed.
- Failed a Spot Check: Dr. Owens apparently did not think to search Jonathan and Nancy, who are able to record him on a hidden hand-held tape recorder. Justified, as civilian surveillance equipment had only recently become available, and the government was slow to catch up.
- Foreshadowing: Sam tells Nancy and Jonathan that he doesn't want the truth about Hawkins Lab to be discovered because he's afraid of the Soviets finding out about it and using the creatures of the Upside Down for themselves or at least creating creatures. At the end of season 3, it's revealed that the Russians have their own Demogorgon and feed their prisoners to it.
- Incredibly Obvious Tail: At the park, the government agents are not doing a particularly good job at hiding their spying activities. Justified, as their goal was to seize the kids, not shadow them.
- Loose Floorboard Hiding Spot: During her cleanup of the cottage, Eleven discovers a hidden storage place under the floorboards. There she finds her mother's file which prompts Eleven to run away and seek her out.
- Motherly Scientist: In a non-scientist variation of the trope Dustin adopts and lovingly cares for "Dart", the Upside-Down creature that Will vomited up at the end of Season One. It... doesn't go well.
- My Car Hates Me: An Invoked Trope. Jonathan and Nancy get up to leave the park to which they have gone for a meeting. They get creeped out by people around them and get in the car to leave. It won't start, and those creepy people reveal themselves to be government agents waiting to kidnap them. After being released from the government base where they'd been taken, they find their car waiting for them and perfectly functional, whatever Vehicular Sabotage the agents had done to it reversed.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Hopper slowly regrets his treatment of Eleven more and more as time goes on. First, he appears to start an apology, only to instead say that he might consider fixing the TV he'd broken in a rage should she clean the house before he gets back. He gets worse as time goes on.
- Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Invoked. Will ends up too distressed to describe what the Shadow Monster shows him, at least with words. Joyce comes up with a solution - letting him draw what he sees, like how he first drew the Shadow Monster.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Eleven accuses Hopper of being just like Martin Brenner with how he strictly controls her and keeps her sequestered away from civilization. Hopper does not take that well, and it only escalates their argument.
- Overt Rendezvous: Nancy arranged one with Barb's mother in the park, which the agents at the lab heard through their phone tap of the Wheelers' line.
- Shame If Something Happened: A veiled example; Dr. Owens is perfectly pleasant and reasonable when escorting Nancy and Jonathan through the facility to the breach and never outright threatens them at any point. However, the primary theme of his conversation with them is the necessity of and extreme lengths that must be taken to keep the breach secret and protect people from the consequences of it being unleashed, and it is significant that he is pointedly showing them the primary method that the government is using to contain the breach and the things that can come through it at the time. Nancy and Jonathan don't have to look far to see the subtext that, if it became necessary, he would have little choice or hesitation in 'containing' them in a similar fashion. And while the threat is definitely present in his speech, he's also trying to make them understand that there are bigger things at stake than the lives of a few people and one family's emotional trauma.
- Silent Credits: After Hopper finds himself in the underground maze, the end credits roll with no music, just creepy ambient sounds from the location.
- Smash Cut: One scene cuts from Will having a nightmare to toast popping out of a toaster.
- This Is Reality: When Dustin notes that the shadow shouldn't be able to hurt Will according to D&D rules, Mike reminds him that this is not D&D, this is real life.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Nancy's plan to catch Dr. Owens on tape just had to work out flawlessly because the audience wasn't let in on it.
- Villain Has a Point: Dr. Owens tries to be nice and logical with Jonathan and Nancy. He takes the time to show them the breach and their efforts to contain the infection. He also explains how they cannot reveal the truth to the world, as Hawkins Lab is trying desperately to contain the infection from the Upside Down, and that if the Soviets found out about it, they would almost certainly try to replicate the breach, which could have disastrous results for everyone. From what we have seen of the dangers of the Upside Down, his concerns are completely justified.
- Wham Line: After Jonathan and Nancy drive away from the lab, they are seen leaving Hawkins.Jonathan: You still want to do this?Nancy: Let's burn that lab to the ground.
- And before that, Will's Blunt "No" when Joyce tries to make a warm bath for him. It's a sign that the Shadow Monster is influencing him.
- Wham Shot: two:
- Dart's transformation. He's a baby Demogorgon.
- What's in the bottom of the hole Hopper digs? A series of tunnels that seemingly link to the Upside Down.
- You Are Grounded!: In one of the worst groundings ever recorded, in the history of history, Hopper grounds Eleven, and the whole experience traumatizes her into a psychic tantrum.
