“Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat worms!” That childish taunt helped inspire the Goosebumps book Go Eat Worms, which serves as the inspiration for the fourth episode of the new Disney+ and Hulu series. Unlike the books and original TV series, which took an anthology approach to each story, this new adaptation of R.L. Stine’s masterpieces weaves them together into a cohesive story. So if you haven’t seen and recapped the previous episode, “The Cuckoo Clock of Doom,” be sure to go do that now.
(Disney, Katie Yu)
Episode 4: Go Eat Worms – Written by Courtney Perdue & Baindu Saidu
Lucas Parker (Will Price) sits on his dirtbike recording a video announcing that he’s about to ride the “Booms of Doom” in memory of his father. He puts on his helmet with a GoPro camera mounted to it and revs up the bike. But something tells him to stop. “Something’s not right,” he says as he cancels his daredevil plans.
Lucas’ mom Nora (Rachael Harris) wakes up in a motel room next to Colin (Rob Huebel), freaking out that she fell asleep. Their afair is a secret. “No matter how we spin it, it’s wrong and sad,” she tells him about their relationship. “And amazing, and weird, but also wrong.” She feels like every time she starts to feel good, something bad happens. Colin wants Nora to be more open with him and says he can’t wait to take their relationship public.
Parking his bike in the garage, Lucas looks at his dad’s old desk, full of posters and trophies from his death defying stunts. “I’m gonna do it for you, dad,” he promises to live up to his dad’s legacy. As he leaves, his foot knocks a bag under the desk and an eyeball rolls out. Lucas picks it up and takes it with him. Outside, he sees a car pull up. It’s Colin and his mom is in the passenger seat. They make out and he records them with his GoPro.
Inside the Harbor Stop, Lucas asks his mom what she was doing that morning. She lies, saying she had to get downstairs early to make pies. Lucas is wearing his dad’s old hat and she comments that he must miss his father. “Don’t you?,” he asks, sounding accusatory. He tells her he wants to make a hat like it of his own. She agrees, so long as its for his safe accounting firm, which upsets him. He takes the hat off and puts it on Nora’s head. “It looks good on you,” he says before taking it back. “I’ll see you later,” he says. Nora hands him his breakfast burrito to go.
At Port Lawrence High School, Colin has been tasked with talking to Mr. Bratt (Justin Long) about the fact that he’s used up all of his sick days and is now requesting a mental healthy day. “I shouldn’t be expected to teach if I’m not feeling like myself,” Nathan coldly responds. He tells Colin that a friend of his has gone missing and he’s freaked out about it.
In the hallway, Mr. Bratt passes Lucas and sees the eyeball, which has been turned into a keychain on his belt loop. He tries to grab it and Lucas skirts away. Mr. Bratt asks for Lucas’ name. When he leave, Mr. Bratt looks at his reflect in the vending machine, seeing Harold Biddle (Ben Cockell) starring back at him. “Nora has him,” Harold says.
Margot (Isa Briones) goes to the library to meet up with Isaiah (Zack Morris), James (Miles McKenna) and Isabella (Ana Yi Puig) to share that she doesn’t know when her mom will return yet, but she’d like to tell her dad what’s going on. Her friends ask if they can trust him and she says he never lies. In the hallway, Lucas approaches Margot and says he has something he wants to show her in his room. She thinks he’s hitting on her, but he says it’s not that.
In Lucas’ room above the Harbor Stop, he powers on his computer and shows her the video he recorded of his mom making out with her dad. “I can’t believe he would do this to my mom,” she says, upset. He tells her he tried to talk to his mom about it and she lied. Trying to cheer her up, Lucas goes to his aquarium and shows her the worms he found in the Biddle house on Halloween. “Wanna see me eat it?”, he asks, picking one up. Margot is grossed out, but as he dangles the worm by his mouth, it wiggles up his nose quickly and before he can stop it, it’s too late. She brings up that he doesn’t know what kind of worm what was. “Well, it’s all protein now,” he laughs, offering to walk Margot home.
(Disney)
When they get to Margot’s house, Isaiah is waiting outside for the conversation with her dad. He asks Margot if she’s bringing Lucas, but she tells him the plans have changed. Colin steps out and offers to let the kids help him with an 8,000-piece Milky Way puzzle. They boys decline. As Harper enters her house, her dad says“I didn’t know you’re friends with Lucas Parker.” Before Isaiah can walk away, he notices that Lucas doesn’t look well. His tummy seems to be troubling him and he runs off.
That night, as Lucas sleeps, the worms in his tank work together to get out, slithering all over him and entering his body through his mouth, nostrils, and ears. In the morning, he leaves the Harbor Stop with his breakfast burrito. When he takes a bite, he spits it out, disgusted by it. He goes to the compost bin and picks up a handful fresh dirt and starts chowing down.
In the school stairway, some boys horsing around accidentally knock Luas down the stairs. He springs up from the fall, amazed that he didn’t feel anything. He goes to his locker and slams his fingers in the door. They break, but he feels no pain. And he watches them heal. Mr. Bratt is watching secretly from the window in his classroom door. Margot approaches to ask how he’s doing. “I’m just rolling with the punches and doing all the things that need to be done,” he tells her.
Margot meets up with Isabella, Isaiah, and James in a classroom to find them debating whether or not they should talk to Allison. But Isaiah didn’t give them a choice, having already texted his girlfriend. Allison (Rhiannon Payne) enters and overhears Margot telling Isaiah not to tell her. “How about you don’t tell my boyfriend what he should and shouldne’t tell me,” Allison snaps, storming off. Isaiah runs out after her and she demands to know the secret he and Margot shares. He tells her that Margot helped him cheat on the history test so he could play the game. As Allison walks away, she passes Lucas in the hallway, trying to take his dirtbick up the stairs. She goes to Colin’s office and says “I need to talk to you about something.”
When Isaiah returns to his friends, he hears Margot talking about how Lucas at a worm and how now he’s acting strange. “Oh, he finally at the worm?,” Isaiah asks, remembering that Lucas bragged about doing it at the Halloween party. And then Margot remembers that’s where Lucas got the worms. “Camera, mask, dupes,” she says out loud. They all share the same thought, but theyre interrupted when Colin enters to pull Margot into his office.
“I know about everything,” Colin tells his daughter, telling her that she is putting him in a tough spot as her dad and the school guidance councelor. He asks her if she cheated. “Yeah, I did, and I guess I learned that from my dad,” she snaps, revealing that she knows about his affair with Nora. But their fight is interrupted by the sound of an engine revving from the roof.
Outside, Colin and Margot watch a crowd cheering Lucas on. Lucas speeds up the bike, reces it off the roof, and lands on the windshield of Colin’s car, cracking it. The landing was not graceful, and Lucas’ left shoulder has become dislocated, but he doesn’t seem to be bothered by it. Colin rushes to Lucas to check if he’s ok, then tells him he’s goig to have to recommend he be expelled for this stunt. “I’m gonna have to recommend you stop banging my mom,” Lucas says, winking at Colin. Margot asks Lucas about his shoulder and he slide it back into it’s socket. “I’m invincible,” he brags, but she can see worms wiggling under his skin as his shoulder rapidly heals. “I have a death defying date with the Dooms of Boom,” he tells her as he races off.
Margot runs to the Harbor Stop to get Nora. “This is about Lucas, I think Biddle got to him,” she tells Lucas’ mom. Margot tells her about the worms and Lucas telling her he’s going to the Booms of Doom. Nora says that’s where Lucas’ father died. They race off.
“Time for a death-defying stunt,” Lucas repeats to himself as he sits on his bike at the Booms of Doom. Nora rushes to him and tells Lucas he’s not like his dad. She reveals that this stunt was one his father knew he couldn’t survive. “He left a note,” she cries. “I didn’t want to tell you because I knew how much you idolized him.” Lucas breaks down, gets off the bike, bends over, and vomits up the worms. He and his mom hug as she apologizes to him. “I’m never gonna lie to you again,” she swears. But as the ground begins to rumble, they look over and see that the worms have merged together to create a menacing monster. Lucas tells his mom and Margot to run as he gets on his dirtbike to give the worms a chase. Nora and Margot follow him and the worm monster to a lumbermill on the coast.
Inside, Lucas barricades the door as he asks Nora and Margot to go up to the office and turn on the wood chipper. The worms break through and Lucas rides his bike around the catwalk to buy Nora and Margot time. The machine became unplugged, so Margot risks her neck to go down to the floor and plug it back in. At the last moment, Lucas races towards the wood chipper, jumping off his bike at the last second. The worms follow his bike into the machine, getting squished into goop that falls out the other side into the ocean.
The police arrive. “I’m going to tell you everything that happened here,” Nora says to one of the officers. But the next thing she knows, she’s in a padded cel at a clinic. The officer is talking to Isabella’s mom Victoria (Francoise Yip). “She’s been through a lot with Dennis dying,” Victoria tells her. “You brought her to the right place, I’ll take care of her now.”
Nathan Bratt enters the warehouse. He goes to the woodchipper and looks around. He finds the eyeball, which must’ve fallen off Lucas’ clip during the hase. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you back together soon enough, Slappy,” he says to the eyeball.
You don’t have to be a diehard Goosebumps fan to know who Slappy is. The iconic ventriloguist dummy is the second most famous iconography associated with the books, seconde only to the green goo logo. That’s right, folks, he’s coming! But when is anyone’s guess. For now, here’s what you can expect from the next episode.
Mr. Bratt gives Margot an old scrapbook he found in the basement of the Biddle House. As she flips through the pages, she's sent on an unexpected journey to 1993 when her mom was a student at Port Lawrence High. As Margot delves deeper into the book, she learns secrets that have terrifying consequences.
Songs Featured in This Episode:
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