A major theme throughout the recently released first part of season 4 of Stranger Things is grief. While Max’s grief is directly tied to the loss of her brother, she’s not the only one who lost someone. Eleven lost the only stable home she knew, with Hopper, and she lost her father figure in that same moment, and so it was fascinating to see how the two coped with their own respective losses and how different they were.
There’s nothing wrong in how the show depicts each of their journeys. It’s just different, and that’s fine. We all cope in different ways, and for both Max and Eleven, they’re both at completely different ends of the spectrum. Some scream and cry, some quietly grieve, and others find different things to do to help keep them occupied. All of these are explored in the show, and we get to have a deeper look into both Max and Eleven as characters because of it.
To break down how both Max and Eleven handle their losses, let’s talk about each of their journeys.
Max
Max has been losing herself to music, and in her coping, she’s shut everyone out and refused to talk about Billy’s death. That is incredibly relatable in terms of how many of us cope. It’s easy to shut down, and that’s exactly what happened with her. She broke off her connections to everyone and set herself up to cope completely on her own, and while it isn’t the best move, it is clearly what Max needed.
Turning to “Running up That Hill” and losing herself to music is something that I know I’ve done. It helps sometimes to just set yourself away. It might not be the healthiest move for Max, but she’s at least trying to find ways to make herself happy, and we can see how her coping both hurts her and helps her understand what happened with Billy and how she feels about it.
Pair that with Max’s exploration of her mother’s alcoholism and how their relationship changed, and so much of her life and the changes in her character in season 4 begin to make perfect sense.
Eleven
While Max is very clearly grieving, Eleven seems like she’s moved on and is fine, which is also clearly not the case when we see how much she’s lying to protect herself, and everyone else, from how she’s feeling. She lies to Mike in her letters, pretending like she has plenty of friends and is doing fine, and even Will can’t help her because she’s not opening up to anyone. But unlike Max, she’s hiding that pain in a lie and acting like she’s fine. It then manifests itself in her causing harm to her school bully, showing Mike just how much she’s been lying about everything, and second-guessing the relationships in her life that she still has.
And I think all of that stems from the loss of Hopper and her not unpacking it and just leaving with the Byerses to go to California.
Grief is ever-changing
What’s great about season 4 is that seeing how both of these characters are unpacking their grief, we can see how they change as the season goes on. Max has to come to terms with her own pain, and she’s forced into doing so, but she then begins to open up and starts to unpack what happened to her, and it seems to be healing for her. The same is happening with Eleven as she’s exploring her own past. The two have a lot of work to do but the show is exploring their pain and that’s continuing (hopefully) into part 2 later this summer.
(featured image: Netflix)
