#this was so beautifully worded op oh my god yeah
maybe its the trauma and mental illness, but something about max mayfield escaping the fake upsidedown shakes me to my fucking core.
shes spent the last seven or so months in a depressive state, curling in on herself and locking everyone out. shes dealing with intense trauma and negligence and grappling with survivors guilt at the same time. most of her life has been filled with lesser issues of the same variety, producing someone who defaults to being unknowable when in pain. we had seen how bright and open she could get when she was with the party, but then this season we’re reintroduced to someone empty and guarded and shut off from the rest of the world, who hardly engages with her friends and deflects when someone shes supposed to be closest to tells her that he knows shes not okay and can see shes struggling.
her running and hiding from vecna feels like symbolism for her running from herself and from her trauma until she ends up in a place of limbo in the creel house. shes in the trance and cant see that lucas, dustin, and steve are right there with her, giving her a lifeboat and begging her to come back, which mirrors her real life in that her depression keeps her from wanting their help. when youre in the throes of depression, its so easy to just go through the motions and let things happen to you. maybe you dont actively seek out death, but like… if it happens, it happens. vecna!billy bringing up how max sometimes thinks about killing herself adds to these themes tenfold.
its supposed to be easy for her to listen to vecna tell her that everything is her fault and that she deserves to die. he preys on her self-imposed loneliness and pushes on her survivors guilt, telling her that she can hide herself in the real world (which she also feels guilty for), but she cant hide from him.
it doesnt matter how much they want her to come back, or how much they beg- the party cant reach into the upsidedown and pull her out, much like how lucas asking her to talk and telling her he knows something is wrong isnt enough to pull her out of her depression alone. it was always up to her to want to keep living.
she finally starts calling dustin and lucas for help because shes terrified. max doesnt actually want to die, she just wants to stop feeling like this. asking for help ends her up in limbo after running around in the darkness of the fake upsidedown, and vecna is surprised to see her there, not expecting her to try to reach back out to her friends. he then tries to lure her back into the darkness of her own mind.
the shots of her running towards the portal were so fucking well done- you can really feel her desperation, and the stress and anxiety of the moment permeate through the screen and it triggers this sense of panic in the viewer. we dont know if its too late for her to come back. we certainly dont want it to be after shes just remembered everything she has to live for and breaking free from vecnas grasp. we have to watch for an agonizingly long time before getting an answer, seeing her frantically trying to escape without so much as looking back after she realises she has a chance. she claws her way out of the fake upsidedown because she violently needs for this to not be the end.
max mayfield survives because she wants to, and that strength will forever leave me in awe.
