In the real world, Max collapses in Lucas’s arms (poor baby was watching this the whole time while fist-fighting a school bully), still conscious and begging not to die.

Eleven regains her strength and pushes Vecna off before he can complete the job, but the damage is already done. Vecna holds off Eleven long enough to brutally attack Max in his signature style-she levitates, her eyes go white and bleed, and he snaps her limbs. The 'Stranger Things' Kids Look So Different Nowīut even the Hawkins crew’s four-phase plan of attack and Eleven’s revived telekinetic blasts are not enough.Though El is all the way in Nevada, she’s able to face Vecna in one of Max’s memories, all in hopes of saving both her friend and the world. While within Vecna’s clutches, Max gets a surprise assist from Eleven, who enters Max’s mind using her psychic powers in a makeshift sensory deprivation tank. (That way, her friends could kill Vecna in the Upside Down while he was distracted.) Lucas isn’t a big fan of this plan-Vecna isn’t known for displays of mercy-but, collectively, they decide it’s the best move.

In the season’s final two episodes, Max and her buddies in Hawkins devise a plan: In a ploy to kill Vecna, she’ll ditch the headphones and invite him into her mind, luring him in with her darkest thoughts. But with the help of the Kate Bush song now stuck in your head for, shall we say, forever- “Running Up That Hill (Deal with God)”-she managed to exercise the villain from her head.īut that Kate Bush cassette could only loop for so long. Feeling fragile and standoffish (it also didn't help that she and Lucas broke up or that her best friend, Eleven, moved across the country), Max was marked by Vecna early on. Wavering between guilt, grief and relief over her stepbrother Billy’s death, in season 4 she becomes a prime target for Vecna, the big bad from the Upside Down who preys on kids haunted by past traumas, infiltrating their minds via their distressing thoughts before killing them in gruesome fashion. No one knows when she’ll come back, if at all. The last we see of her, she’s in the hospital, severely maimed and comatose after her final encounter with Vecna. Spoilers for Stranger Things season 4, volume 2 below.Īt the end of the Stranger Things season 4 finale, it’s frustratingly unclear just how dead Max actually is.

Max and eleven stranger things