Would you attempt to save yourself if faced with a life threatening situation? A therapist might ask you that after you tell them about your suicidal thoughts. It is also the thesis statement of the fourth season of the show. Max's storyline is a poignant exploration of grief, but it is also a dangerous message. I've always been a fan of the show. The first season of the show was released almost eight years ago, and I remember watching it all in one sitting. The reason I like the show so much is that it manages to create and sustain characters that feel real and grounded in themselves regardless of the demons they are facing. Despite some initial turbulence, Max is able to find some respite from her unpleasant home life and aggressive older half-brother Billy by joining the show's core group of preteen heroes as they battle the Upside Down. When we first meet Max, she skateboards in solitude, she's defensive, and she has no one to go trick-or-treating with, but by befriending the main cast, she finds a community to rely on. After witnessing Billy's death at the hands of a monster from the Upside Down, Max is suffering nightmares and bouts of depression. Max and her mother are living in a trailer park across town. Max found solace in the heartbreaking lyrics of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" which eerily mirrored her experiences with grief. She is back to being an island. In the fourth season of Stranger Things, Max is 15 years old, which is around the time I began to experience depression. Depression is not sad, it is just pain at its most terrifying form. People with depression don't push loved ones away out of contempt, we push them away because we're tired, scared, and hurting, and we're trying to protect ourselves from further pain The islands are called we're islands.
The mind and the body are affected by depression. Lack of sleep and appetite are common physical symptoms, but mental illness changes a person's brain chemistry, forcing you to see the world in a completely different way. The new world is very hard to navigate. Since our brains are operating differently, we can't immediately see that the way out is therapy, or antidepressants, or our own social networks. The only way out is death by our own hands.
Vecna, a teen-murdering villain from the Upside Down, makes Max his next target. In the fourth episode of the season, Vecna zeroes in on her, and her proximity with dying gets smaller and smaller. Max leaves notes for her family and friends to read after she leaves, explaining that she is tired of people telling her that everything will be okay. Max grieves the loss of her brother-sister relationship and wishes she could have saved Billy from his death. Vecna, pretending to be Billy, appeared to Max and explicates her trauma.
You know I think there’s a part of you buried somewhere deep that wanted me to die that day. That was maybe even relieved. Happy. That’s why you stood there isn’t it Max? It’s okay, you can admit it now. No more lies. No more hiding. That is why you feel such guilt, why you hide from your friends, why you hide from the world, and why late at night you have sometimes wished to follow me. Follow me into death.
Max has a plan, she's disconnected from her social circles, and she feels an eerie sense of calm as she accepts that death is the only solution to her current situation. When faced with certain death, Max escapes Vecna in a sequence set to a song she loves. When faced with a life threatening situation, she chooses to save herself because she knows her friends will love her. She ran through the storm clouds to reach Vecna's light. She got the win.
She didn't because the plot of the show is to make Max suffer. Vecna has a plan to unleash hell on the rest of the world. Max is still marked from her previous run in with Vecna, so she wants to be the bait and possibly the fourth and final kill. This appears to be an attempt to save her friends and the world from a fiery doom filled with monsters from another world. Things don't go very well here.
While trying to lure Vecna out of hiding, Max reveals that she actually wanted Billy to die because she wasn't sure he was a good enough person to be saved. She wants Vecna to make her disappear. It's not clear if this is simply Max revisiting her painful feelings toward her brother and herself as a ploy to tantalize Vecna into entering his mind-traveling trance-like state. In the movie "Dear Billy", Max showed us that she had developed a will to live so strong that she would risk her life to save her friends. Max is back where she was at the beginning of the season, thanks to this monologue.
People that struggle with mental illness already know that grief and depression aren't always a problem. The climax of Max's story, which is hopeful and optimistic, is not a good thing. Max had her arms and legs broken by Vecna's powers after he tried to kill her twice. I'm so scared. I don't want to end up dead. I'm not prepared. I don't want to leave. I'm not prepared. She dies in agony and blind. Max is doomed to a hospital bed indefinitely after Eleven attempts to revive her telekinetically, but is only partially successful. Lucas says that she might not wake up.
Depression is not linear and suicide is a tragedy. The triumph of leaving the clouds and walking into the sun is one of the bravest battles anyone can fight. No matter how hard you try, you are bound to suffer more and more. This is a dangerous precedent for anyone who has experienced a life-changing cataclysm and for those who struggle with mental illness. Hope can be used to overcome depression, but it is not a magic bullet.
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