The whole 'let's kill Max, except he only half kills her, but then she dies anyway so the portals open, but then El decides to un-kill her, which she can apparently do now with no explanation, but the portals are still open?' thing really bothers me. I hate the decision to target her again after the way Episode 4 ended, that was about as close to perfect as I've seen an episode of television and I felt like they undid a lot of that by having Max go back again. But even so - kill her or don't kill her, and somehow they decided to keep us in this weird limbo where she's kinda dead but kinda not without explaining anything? They wanted the gates to open but didn't have the balls to actually kill her, so they did ANOTHER fake out with this character and to me that's really lazy.
Apparently the Duffers said they structured this season after The Empire Strikes Back, so I guess she's meant to be the Han Solo of this story frozen in carbonite until she's brought back in the next installment? She better get some sort of powers or something in Season 5 because otherwise it's a huge disservice to Sadie Sink who carried this season IMO.
Also I can't believe Eddie died and no one seems to care about it except Dustin. You're going to tell me that Steve and Lucas don't have any thoughts about their friend making this big heroic sacrifice? We need to cut away to Jonathan and Nancy's stupid relationship bullshit and some random California stoner eating mushrooms in the woods for comedy? Sorry but Eddie was an amazing character and I can't believe they killed him off so quickly and unceremoniously.
