Facing off against Demogorgons and (ideally) ending Vecna’s reign of terror has always been serious business, but that doesn’t mean that the final season of Stranger Things won’t have a few laughs along the way. Saying goodbye to such a major series, and the characters within it, is depressing enough — that may be one small reason why series creators Matt and Ross Duffer split the blockbuster-sized Season 5 into a triptych. The Duffers also sprinkled plenty of comic relief into the first few episodes of Season 5, reintroducing its funniest and most competent character, Erica Sinclair (Priah Ferguson), in a sequence so zany it almost feels akin to a different show entirely.
“I think this is one of Erica’s craziest adventures,” Ferguson tells Inverse of her return to Stranger Things. After two episodes with no Erica in sight, Lucas Sinclair’s (Caleb McLaughlin) scarily-smart kid sister arrives to help our heroes with an impossible task: drugging an entire family with spiked cheesecake. Though their intentions are pure — said family is being hunted by Vecna — Ferguson felt “almost like the villain” of the scene: “Luckily, she’s still a minor, so she won’t get into too much legal trouble.”
