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I am eternally grateful to the particularly eagle eyed viewer of the st5 teaser who pointed out what looks like a tracker on the demogorgon's back here.

I saw some discussion about this maybe being from military experimentation, but I've started to really feel that our crew is actually the one who plants it there.

the below still seems to be the laying of our titular episode 3 'Turnbow Trap' at the mansion set, and the lights were going wild there in the BTS featurette from last July.

I did some admittedly pretty cursory digging into what it would look like to build a demo-tracker in the '80s. it seems very possible that it would be powered by radio frequency ID (RFID). so, theoretically something you could follow with a big antenna.

Dustin and maybe Steve are the two members of our group who are still largely unaccounted for in episode 2. everyone else seems to spend it at the hospital or in the Upside Down dealing with the fallout of the Wheeler house attack and Holly's vanishing (or investigating a haunted tree and THEN going to the hospital).

sounds like a great time to consult your miniature lightbulb catalog and other radio reference materials in order to cook up a device to allow you to follow a demogorgon to its lair, plus switch the antenna to your team's vehicle most suitable for demo tailing.

the below shot feels very much like what it would look like to follow a tracking device on a creature running somewhere on a parallel plane of reality. that maybe looks like this subdivision when it was an open, undeveloped piece of land four years ago.

I've also been talking to friends about the possibility that the farm stuff extends across ep 3 and ep 4 instead of being pretty contained to ep 4. and it is interesting that the group of characters in this shot is the exact inverse of who is at the Turnbow Mansion peering down into the hole with Steve's chainsaw.

I feel like there's a version of these pieces that come together in something like:

After Holly vanishes, they are for some reason aware the demogorgon is going to target Derek

Erica drugs the Turnbow family to knock them out of commission (and move them somewhere safe?) so the group can Home Alone a demogorgon in their mansion, normal behavior I endorse

Joyce, Will, and Robin pick up Erica and Derek and they go to the McCorkle Farm. Joyce is driving the WSQK van there, and it seems like that would be a better sized car to leave with an unconscious family of three and their still awake son than her Pinto. and I guess they have an age limit under which they do not feel comfortable administering knock-out drugs to a person, it's always nice to feel like you have a line

Operation Turnbow Trap is successful at least in getting a tracker in the demogorgon's shoulder, but it immediately beelines for the farm after Derek

Steve's car pursues it there

At the same time, some to all of the characters at the farm flees to WSQK for safety but oops their escape doesn't quite succeed and we get the dramatic sequence that goes down there that likely bridges ep 3/4 (also at this point I feel like WSQK and the McCorkle Farm might just literally be next door to each other)

Mike and Lucas get left at the Mansion I guess and are furiously biking across town like they seem to be for 80% of the season despite the fact that our group has a small fleet of vehicles and they are both 16 ????? (this bullet is mostly a joke)

The demogorgon opens a big enough rift that Steve sees an opening to get his full car into the Upside Down, and he shoots his shot

we know this should be the episode 4 cold open

how this fits into this group's movements from here is hazier to me considering just how long they seem to be in the Upside Down (at least through ep 6, and maybe longer than that for Nancy and Jonathan) - and then even hazier is how that impacts/is impacted by Vecna's emergence from the downtown Hawkins library gate at the end of ep 4.