Stranger Things Season 4 Stars React to Max’s Attic Scene

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 2. Marked for death, Max (Sadie Sink) makes a terrible confession in the Stranger Things 4 finale, “Chapter Nine: The Piggyback.” “I pray that something will happen to me,” Max says when baiting Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), the Upside Down predator who will break the world with the death of his fourth victim. “That something terrible will happen to me.” That something terrible happens when Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) — piggybacking into Max’s mind from a pizza dough freezer — is unable to stop Vecna from claiming his fourth kill: Max.

Floating in the air inside the attic of the Creel house, Vecna telepathically twists Max’s limbs and breaks her bones. It was Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” that helped Max escape Vecna’s Mind Lair in “Chapter Four: Dear Billy,” but it’s Moby’s somber “When It’s Cold I’d Like to Die” that plays as Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) cradles Max’s mangled body. “I don’t want to die. I’m not ready,” Max cries as she succumbs to her wounds — even if only for a minute.

Max is clinically dead before being revived by Eleven’s powers, but a psychic probe of Max’s mind reveals an empty void. Season 4 ends with Max comatose — but alive — and Vecna successfully breaking the barrier between Hawkins and the Upside Down.

Sink watched Max’s death for the first time on Netflix after-show Stranger Things 4 Volume 2: Unlocked, reacting to the attic scene with co-stars Finn Wolfhard (Mike), Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin), Priah Ferguson (Erica), and McLaughlin (Lucas). Watch the video below.

“The last two episodes especially were kind of insane,” Sink said. “But I’d never seen that [attic scene]. I feel like I’m in [the floating position] for half of Season 4.”

Series creators the Duffer Brothers revealed Max permanently died in original plans for the penultimate season of Stranger Things, which will conclude after a fifth and final season on Netflix. In a separate appearance on the Stranger Things after-show, Russ Duffer said of Max’s fate, “We don’t know if Max is going to be okay… We don’t really know. We wanted to leave it up in the air moving forward into Season 5.”

Left in limbo ahead of Stranger Things 5, Sink doesn’t know what becomes of Max after Eleven’s psychic mind fight with Vecna. 

“I just hope that she’s able to do anything, I guess,” she said. “I have no clue what is going on with her. But I don’t know, hopefully, she’s out of the hospital. Out of the full-body cast would be great.”

All nine episodes of Stranger Things 4 are now streaming on Netflix.

Stranger Things 4 stars Winona Ryder (Joyce Byers), David Harbour (Jim Hopper), Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven/Jane), Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler), Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin Henderson), Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas Sinclair), Noah Schnapp (Will Byers), Sadie Sink (Max Mayfield), Natalia Dyer (Nancy Wheeler), Charlie Heaton (Jonathan Byers), Joe Keery (Steve Harrington), Maya Hawke (Robin Buckley), Priah Ferguson (Erica Sinclair), Brett Gelman (Murray), Matthew Modine (Dr. Brenner), Robert Englund (Victor Creel), and Jamie Campbell Bower (Vecna).