When watching the Stranger Things season 4 finale, fans were certain that Max Mayfield was going to be the show’s biggest death yet. Technically speaking, she was.
Max did die in the final episode of the season, but Eleven was able to somehow use her powers to bring Max back from the dead. While she saved her friend’s life, though, Max wasn’t magically healed. The season ended with Max in a coma with Lucas and the rest of her friends left to wonder if she’d ever recover.
Heading into the final season of the show, Max’s fate has been a major talking point among the fans. There have been many theories floating around as to what exactly happened to Max after Eleven brought her back from the dead, and what the season would hold.
With the debut of Stranger Things 5 volume 1, we finally received some answers regarding what happened to Max after Vecna killed her. But the answers to the question of what happened to Max was not what anyone expected it to be.
Warning season 5 spoilers ahead.
Max is alive, but trapped inside Vecna’s mind
At the end of Stranger Things season 5, episode 3, Max makes a surprise return as she greets Holly in the mysterious realm Holly has been taken to after being abducted by a Demogorgon. The appearance of Max immediately left us with questions that were thankfully answered in the fourth episode of the season as we learned that Max, and now Holly, were both trapped within Vecna’s mind.
Max remembers dying in season 4, but she’s unsure how long she was dead and how exactly she was brought back to life. All Max remembers is someone calling to her before she came to in the Rainbow Room on the day Henry had killed the others at Brenner’s lab and been cast into the Upside Down by Eleven. As Max further explored her surroundings, she came to the realization that she’s trapped inside of Henry’s memories.
In the present moment, Max and Holly are both trapped within a memory that exists within a world of thousands of memories. In Max’s own words, it’s a prison of Henry’s making. The specifics of this world remain a bit unclear, but it seems that Max and, now Holly, are somehow trapped within Henry’s mind, thus the world of memories all seemingly connected to Henry.
Max goes on to explain that she nearly managed to escape when a portal into the real world appeared, through which she saw herself lying in the hospital bed with Lucas at her side. The portal closed when the Kate Bush cassette stopped playing and needed rewinding, suggesting that music will be the key to escaping this mental prison. Max has a plan for escaping, but the plan is kept hidden from the audience in the volume 1 finale.
Now that it has been confirmed that Max is alive, but her consciousness is trapped in Vecna’s mind, we imagine her escape will be a key storyline in the final episodes of the season. Max’s plan is likely to play out in the second part of the season, paving the way for her to finally wake up in the real world by the series finale and join the final battle against Henry / Vecna.
The revelation of Max being trapped in Henry’s memories was certainly a fun plot twist, and it left us with more questions. However, it’s nice to see that Max won’t simply be spending the season sidelined in a coma, and that the writers have crafted an unexpected and exciting storyline to make use of Sink in the final season!