Stranger Things 2: Episodes 7 – 9 recap and review
By Buckie Wells
Stranger Things 2 publicity photo. Image courtesy Netflix
Mother of the Year Eternity
Every time I watch Stranger Things, I’m immediately like ‘I need more Winona in my life.’ She brings so much to the character and to the show itself, I get so bummed when Joyce Byers is gone.
She isn’t like Regular Mom, you know, and she’s not just Cool Mom either. She’s Sarah Connor, pumping the shotgun like ‘We’re doing this and we’re doing it now’ mom. In order to save Will, she decides to make his body inhabitable for the shadow monster and forces Jonathon to watch as she heats Will’s body to grueling temperatures. Between the radiators and his proximity to the fire, I’m thinking he was just a few degrees shy of death. As they watched Will (as the monster) writhe around and scream for mercy, Joyce held her ground and understood that this is what they needed to do to save him.
Not to mention, this season dropped enough hints about high school Joyce that I really want a flashback to see her as a teenager. I’m sure she may be just a bit of a cliche, but was she more Veronica Sawyer or Kim Boggs?
As a mother, she’s just so fearless and compassionate (even her reunion with Eleven got me!) but she’s also wearing like ’80s Reebok sneakers and your average green jacket while sewing a Ghostbusters patch on her son’s Halloween costume. She figured out the shadow monster was legit, she mapped out Will’s tunnels of Hawkins … I mean, I don’t want to get too emotional here, but without Joyce, the entire show collapses.
Yeah, Dad Steve and Dad Hopper are cool, but they don’t have anything on Mom Joyce. Especially when they made Mom Karen so dumb this season. *perpetual eye roll*