Stranger Things Season 4 Part 2: How Eleven’s piggybacking works

‘Stranger Things’ Season 4 finale is titled ‘Piggyback’ referring to Eleven’s tactic to fight Vecna. Since the start, Millie Bobby Brown’s character has shown psychic powers, giving her the ability to enter a person’s mind. Vecna, who was originally One, and in the same facility where Eleven was, has this power too but uses it to distort people’s memories and eventually kill them. 

Eleven requires a sensory deprivation tank for this part of the plan to work, which involves a tub full of salt water and vision-blocking glasses, so the psychic can focus and locate Max. Once she does, she enters Max’s mind trying to assist her in the fight against Vecna. Max has her own plan to hide in happy memories, while the others physically destroy the antagonist in his Upside Down lair. However, this doesn’t quite work out with Vecna breaching Max’s memory of the Hawkins Snow Ball.   

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Eleven enters Max’s mind but is stuck in a different memory – one where she’s skateboarding as a younger kid. However, the psychic finds a music system in the memory, leading her to the one where Max is hiding. She reaches just in time to stop Vecna from getting to Max. While piggybacking in Max’s mind, Eleven faces off against the antagonist, dealing some serious blows, before Vecna seems to get the upper hand. 

With the Upside Down hivemind vines restraining Eleven, she’s forced to watch Vecna take complete control of Max’s mind. Normally, this is where Kate Bush’s ‘Running up the hill’ would come to the rescue, but Lucas, who was supposed to play the song is otherwise occupied with fighting Patrick – the basketball team captain, and definitely a hated Season 4 character, among fans. The music player breaks, and there’s no escape for Max. 

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Vecna snaps her hands and her eyes start bleeding, which in earlier cases has happened to victims moments before their deaths. In a last-ditch effort, Eleven gets the vines away from her and gets Vecna away from Max. However, it seems to be too late as Eleven looks on at Lucas holding Max. 

The psychic is determined not to lose her friend though and tries for a final time to infuse Max’s mind with happy memories – of the two of them. It seems to work since Max comes back after her heart completely stopped, in what Hawkins doctors labelled a “miracle”. 

However, it was Eleven and her piggybacking, but the mind battle wasn’t enough to vanquish Vecna. That is a fight for another day, or in this case, another season.