Stage two can be more generally described as overvaluing a topic/author in its importance for whatever purposes you are pursuing (including the "worship the object of fandom"). Stage three is what stage two looks like given time. Then, stage four is a "correction", reversing of stupidity of stage two, and stage five is "return to reason", when you realize that reversed stupidity is not intelligence.

This parallels a healthy exploration regime. When you are searching for something useful for some purpose, but don't expect to find a "packaged" solution, you look for cues (1). Finding a cue, you start understanding the topic, which requires learning at least superficially a lot of info (2). Given time and effort, you start understanding the topic, knowing your way around it (3). Having understood the topic, you find out that what you were looking for isn't there, and so stop being interested and forget most of what you learned shortly thereafter(4). Sometime in the future, the expertise you developed pays off, tipping off your intuition on a way to make use of the topic, and now, knowing where to look, you return and find a required answer (5). Here, effort is necessary to have any hope of finding the answer, so even low expectations lead to a lot of activity (stages 2-3).