#excited for S4 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bugsbenefit · 5 months

Text

hellfire in s5, and how it's Really not looking good for the members

the hellfire club is, in my opinion, one of the most obvious set ups for s5 and i never see enough people acknowledge how blatant the show actually is with it. because it's a directly addressed ongoing issue that slowly worsens over time and directly threatens three main characters (Dustin, Lucas, and Mike), at Least

there's a clear structured progression of the threat getting worse, with a major part of the s4 Hawkins plot being only Jason and his team chasing Eddie down, and by the last episodes of the show the rest of the town sides with them and joins the objective. however, we never get any consequence of the town agreeing with Jason, aside form the kids parents getting reaction shots looking insanely worried. the only thing even resembling partisan participation is a dogwalker (the same man that agreed with Jason first and then caused every other member in the town hall to also agree) informing Jason and co about there being someone in the Creel house. a single character ratting someone out is not pay off for a scene that rallies the entire town with anger and fear. especially because he was the First one to agree with Jason, arguably the next reaction, in parallel to the town house scene, will have everyone else also involve themselves

and everything Jason actually said in the town hall looks INFINITELY worse by the end of the season because he not only died the same day (how odd that must look), the town was also hit by a severe earthquake. (and hell-gates open in town but we don't know how people will react to that yet, or if it will even be immediately obvious to them)

like. it's a Terrible look. and with Eddie being dead now, the main target that represented the hellfire club in s4 and got the primary share of blame is now officially un-prosecutable

s4 also goes out of it's way to associate Lucas, Dustin and Mike explicitly with the hunt on Hellfire, ages before the whole town gets involved

Lucas is put on edge by the basketball's team hostility towards his friends constantly and has to actively lie his way out of the line of fire multiple times. the basketball team is also looking for Dustin to question him about Eddie's whereabouts, even going to his house where a confrontation only doesn't happen because he's not home. and they even manage to go out of their way to drag Mike into it despite him being out of town, when Jason starts a conversation with Nancy specifically to threaten her and then asks about Mike right after

which leads to the other thing; not only are all the kids already on Jason's radar, he's also getting more and more direct with the fact that he doesn't just want to have a nice chat with them (culminating in actually physically attacking Lucas by the last episode)

and if them setting all of the kid members of hellfire up for a bad time wasn't obvious enough, it's also fascinating to see the posters of hellfire we get over the season also show a clear shift in focus

when we see the hellfire club year book photo for the first time the focus is on Eddie. he's who Jason sees as the main culprit and when we get a close up of the burning poster we see Eddie

but when we see the hellfire club photo again 4 episodes later the focus isn't on Eddie anymore. not in dialogue and not visually

the shot is from the Wheeler's pov (Karen's specifically), and the only part of the picture that's in focus is the far right corner, with Mike and Lucas. (makes sense that's her son that's currently being implicated in satanic murders). Eddie never gets unblurred, he's not who the audience is supposed to look at in this shot. verbally Jason is also explicitly blaming the whole club now. it's not just Eddie who's "crazy" and killed Chrissy, it's the whole club who's responsible (it's also very notable that he's handing out yearbook photos of the whole club, not just Eddie. a really distinct prop choice. everyone in town now not only thinks hellfire is directly responsible for multiple ritualistic murders, they also know Exactly who's in the club)

and looking back at the season in hindsight, there's actually more than enough instances that would make the members of Hellfire look kind of guilty, or shady at best, even if someone were to do some research. there's multiple instances of hellfire members lying to the basketball team about hellfire member's whereabouts which definitely doesn't make them look more innocent in the team's eyes. not only do Eddie's band members try to brush them off, Nancy pretends to not even know about Hellfire when Jason asks about Mike, and Lucas goes out of his way to keep Dustin and Eddie's locations from them by deliberately lying and sending them to wrong locations

and that's on top of the entire montage of Dustin and Mike trying to find a substitute player for a single game on the same day a student with no previous affiliation to Eddie Munson dies at his trailer? that looks Horrible in hindsight. especially with them asking pretty much every other student, from almost every club, while both prominently wearing hellfire shirts. if anyone actually remembers them and thinks about the events post Chrissy's death they could definitely make some assumptions

it's just bad looks all around. and that's not even mentioning how they have the potential to look even worse in s5. if it got out Lucas was with Max when she somehow died and broke all her bones? would look horrible. or Dustin now associating with Eddie's dad? and we don't even know how he'll fulfill Eddie's wish to "look after the little sheep"

and even Mike, who didn't even have the chance to attract suspicion post e1 due to being out of town has a whole thing going on with his image paralleling Eddie, with being the other DM and having his s4 style be directly in reference to Eddie's looks

while there's building hostility towards the hellfire members, and the focus (both visually and vocally) switches more to the members Other than Eddie, by the end of the season there just hasn't been a chance for the townsfolk to respond to Jason's speech yet. they all agreed with him, but everything immediately went to shit the same night. however, even the last few minutes of the show, that always have the most direct foreshadowing for the next season, include a shot focusing on the rise of religion and the fearmongering that started with Jason's speech

which serves as a great reminder that the entire town hall just agreed with Hellfire being a satanist cult they need to stop

s4 ends with the hellfire set up being one of the most explicitly obvious plot threads that are about to be a problem for multiple main characters in s5. like the few other obvious established about-to-be struggles: the gates opening, Vecna still being alive, Max being "gone"; we've gotten a full set up there but no payoff yet

and then there's obviously the question of what the people would even DO in s5? they all agreed that Hellfire needed to be stopped, so... what now?

on one hand there's the interesting concept of the town refusing to help the protagonists but they could also be acting as a hostile force against them

say anyone tried to warn the town about the upside down or it's creatures, the chances of people listening to them talk about actual "demons" and reacting in any positive way is probably near 0. even if you saw a Demogorgon nibble on your neighbour an hour ealier, would you really listen to someone you think intentionally opened the Hellgate that let the creatures through in the first place?

but then there's of course the active antagonistic angle they could also take. Jason was calling for Hellfire to be actively opposed and stopped, not passively. and the show Does go out of it's way to show the overcrowded weapons store in multiple shots post Jason-speech

we're supposed to know these people are armed going forward. whether they're buying them to go hunting, or wanting to go shoot Eddie Munson, the weapons are there now... also ignore the 7 separate hellfire wanted posters in the opening shot of the store alone 💀(it's actually 9, i didn't circle the two that are cut off in the bottom corner. that whole board is just plastered with that one photo)

(the implication of what the guns are for couldn't be more obvious if they tried. again, also the scene where Jason tries to intimidate Nancy and directly asks about where Mike is. also the scene where Erica and co try to hide from the basketball team members in the store. the scene features, guns, hellfire posters everywhere, and characters specifically asking about the whereabouts of a member while other people are actively hiding)

and the weapons could play out in a positive way in s5 too, say the lady from next door gets hands on involved and takes shots at the Demobats in her front yard

but the reactionary, scared, and angry town that blames a specific small group of people for everything that's happening could also lead to MCs having to actively worry about getting shot by someone they've seen at the supermarket for 10+ years on top of the supernatural threat

TLDR: re Hellfire, none of these members will have a good time in s5

Edit (because i forgot to include these images and am silly)

Hellfire even makes it on the local news by the end of the season

and in line with the focus shifting from Eddie to the other hellfire members, the news anchor then goes to say that Eddie Munson is presumed dead after the earthquake but that that isn't enough for the town. the news even mentions the conspiracy theory that the hellfire murders CAUSED the earthquake. so anyone who hasn't heard Jason's speech, now they're getting it from a "reputable" source too. call that high quality journalism, let's throw the local highschoolers under the bus

we're supposed to remember the fear of the "satanic cult killing children" that Jason spread to the town. it's still there. and it's not just in the local town hall anymore, its being broadcast on live television. so just in case you didn't catch wind of who caused a "gate to hell" to open in your suburban neighbourhood the first time, the news anchor thankfully tells you who everybody Says is responsible, it's the 14-18 year old satanist serial killers duh

#the hellfire set up for s5 being so obvious gets me okay #i'm excited about it #watching s4 you can really just see how it progressively looks worse for the members #i'm just curious which route they'll actually go with it #mike wheeler #dustin henderson #lucas sinclair #st s5 #st s5 speculation #stranger things

271 notes · View notes