Where are Max and Holly? All the details about Camazotz in Stranger Things season 5

Contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 5 part 1

Stranger Things returned in the early hours this morning (27 November) for its fifth and final season, and it’s safe to say we are stunned over what went down in those first four episodes.

From that unreal Will moment at the end of episode four, to the military takeover and the secret they’re keeping in the vault, to Dustin getting attacked by the school jocks, it’s been an intense four episodes to say the least.

However, nothing shocked us to our core more than seeing Holly getting kidnapped by the Demogorgon, taken into Vecna’s mind and reuniting us with Max. So are the pair actually alive? And where are they really? Here’s what you need to know about the Camazotz.

What is Camazotz in Stranger Things?

Season five sees Holly Wheeler, Mike and Nancy’s younger sister, become a main character. During the first episode of the new season Holly begins chatting to a mystery figure who no one else could see and by the end of the first episode a Demogorgon comes to her house and ends up kidnapping her and taking her into the Upside Down. Or so it seems…

Will and Nancy end up working out by talking to their mother that the person Holly was talking to was in fact Vecna as Holly called him Mr. Whatsit and also Henry, which was Vecna’s name before he became Vecna.

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By episode three we then see Holly in a grand 1950’s house, which turns out to be Creel House, where Henry grew up. The house and the garden surrounding it appear to be idyllic and there is no suggestion it’s in the Upside Down or Hawkins either. So where is it?

Well in episode three Henry tells Holly not to go in the woods near the house. However, after he leaves she receives a note and a map instructing her to go into the woods, she follows it. She walks right up to the top of the map where she gets spooked and runs back. However, then Max jumps out of the shadows and appears to be alive.

Both Max and Holly it turns out are trapped in a world that is part of Vecna’s mind which Holly ends up nicknaming Camazotz, inspired by an alternate world in the book she likes to read A Wrinkle In Time.

It’s likely that Holly’s physical body is very much trapped in Vecna’s lair and her life force being zapped away, while her mind is “carefree” and being kept in this world in Vecna’s mind. Max’s body is in the hospital but her mind is also in the Camazotz.

While it appears Vecna is in complete control of the mindscape world, when Max runs into the cave Henry is unable to reach her and so he is not all powerful after all.

Maybe this is the key to their escape?