I don't use google as my regular search bar so I was unaware of the whole dice thing so has it always done this? Or more specifically, has it always rolled a one, cracked, turned the screen red, then flipped the webpage upside down when the air particles?
The original title of Stranger Things was the "Montauk Project." The Montauk Project(s) are a set conspiracies that a government lab was kidnapping and experimenting on young boys to give them psychic abilities. The only remaining outpost of the lab is a guarded building and a large radio antenna. Stranger Things took a huge amount of inspiration/basically stole the plot of the Montauk conspiracies to make season one.
Before the Montauk Project, though, their was the Philadelphia Experiment, also known as Project Rainbow.
The Philadelphia Experiment was an alleged test conducted by the U.S. Navy on October 28th, 1953 that attempted to make one of the naval ships---the USS Eldridge---invisible through electromagnetic fields and various other science stuff. The ship did disappear---through time. Witnesses alleged the ship traveled ten minutes back in time to a port in Norfolk, Virginia, before coming back to the port in Philadelphia. Now, this is not new to Stranger Things lore. "The First Shadow" is actually based off of this.
The first ten minutes of the play basically recount the Philadelphia project. It's 1943, their trying to disguise the ship, it goes wrong---except, instead of traveling back in time to Virginia they travel to the abyss. The captain of the ship, Captain Brenner, Dr. Brenners father, is the only to survive the encounter, but he was driven mad. Several things are alleged to have happened to the crew on the ship in the Philedalphia experiemnt. They were either driven mad, killed, or melted into the ship.
Where have we seen that before?
Ohhhh thats right
In the lab in the upside down, never to be explained. And those soldiers---their uniforms look pretty old school don't they?
ALMOST LIKE WWII NAVY UNIFORMS!
Those soldiers in the melted lab are not soldiers from the modern army, they're soldiers from Captain Brenner's ship from 1943. The Philadelphia experiment/project rainbow shot them through time and space to end up in Hawkins Lab in 1983, where their bodies have been rotting ever since.
Now I have multiple ideas on how this may have happened, but all of them are pretty shaky as of now, so I'll focus on just pointing out facts from the show.
Even more---the older fours ending conversation.
This lines pretty weird, right? It does make sense in context I guess---Nancy just said she dropped out of college, and Robin is making fun of how badass Nancy is in combat situations. But why a Navy SEAL? Why that line specifically?
Furthermore, and this is the line I noticed before I even did any research into this, this exchange:
Philly. Philadelphia. The Philadelphia experiment.
Hopper says he has a job offer in Montauk, and the four of them agree to meet up in Philly.
Furthermore, again, the Back to the Future allusions:
The first picture is a crew t-shirt, and the second pic is from the documentary. Steve and Dustin have been depicted twice now as Monty and Doc from Back to the Future. While Steves car did drive them into the upside (back to the past/upsidedown).
I'm thinking Steves car will actually take them back to the future/right side up.
The last we see of the car its floating in the nothingness after Nancy shot the exotic matter that disturbed the wall. I believe that when Nancy shot the exotic matter, it disturbed the space-time continuum, and shot Steve and Dustin out of their timeline into another, and their journey in the (hopefully existent) volume 4 will be figuring out a way back to their timeline. The car was only sucked into the abyss in the normal timeline after Nancy shot the exotic matter. In Steve and Dustin's timeline, the car stays in place in the wall. Steve and Dustin will have to search for inter-dimensional signals using the antenna/radio technology to get home + also using boosted technology Dustin makes.
Now this is where the theory gets kinda shaky. I believe the car may keep an important role because of a line on the whiteboard in the Documentary in the background. The board has some suspicous text, including korean and japanese characters? But the line was "My car hasn't been washed in weeks." I wondered if that was just a one line or something important. It reminded me of a scene from back to the future.
In the improved future at the end of "Back to the Future", the bully Biff is shown waxing and cleaning the main characters cars. Maybe the line "my car hasn't been washed in weeks" is an illusion to how they need to get back to the 'good' timeline, like back to the future, where the car will be washed?
This whole second part of the post is a little bit of a stretch, but time-travel has been alluded to in the show multiple times now, and I think a Steve + Dustin time-travel combo would be wicked.
The original title of Stranger Things was the "Montauk Project." The Montauk Project(s) are a set conspiracies that a government lab was kidnapping and experimenting on young boys to give them psychic abilities. The only remaining outpost of the lab is a guarded building and a large radio antenna. Stranger Things took a huge amount of inspiration/basically stole the plot of the Montauk conspiracies to make season one.
Before the Montauk Project, though, their was the Philadelphia Experiment, also known as Project Rainbow.
The Philadelphia Experiment was an alleged test conducted by the U.S. Navy on October 28th, 1953 that attempted to make one of the naval ships---the USS Eldridge---invisible through electromagnetic fields and various other science stuff. The ship did disappear---through time. Witnesses alleged the ship traveled ten minutes back in time to a port in Norfolk, Virginia, before coming back to the port in Philadelphia. Now, this is not new to Stranger Things lore. "The First Shadow" is actually based off of this.
The first ten minutes of the play basically recount the Philadelphia project. It's 1943, their trying to disguise the ship, it goes wrong---except, instead of traveling back in time to Virginia they travel to the abyss. The captain of the ship, Captain Brenner, Dr. Brenners father, is the only to survive the encounter, but he was driven mad. Several things are alleged to have happened to the crew on the ship in the Philedalphia experiemnt. They were either driven mad, killed, or melted into the ship.
Where have we seen that before?
Ohhhh thats right
In the lab in the upside down, never to be explained. And those soldiers---their uniforms look pretty old school don't they?
ALMOST LIKE WWII NAVY UNIFORMS!
Those soldiers in the melted lab are not soldiers from the modern army, they're soldiers from Captain Brenner's ship from 1943. The Philadelphia experiment/project rainbow shot them through time and space to end up in Hawkins Lab in 1983, where their bodies have been rotting ever since.
Now I have multiple ideas on how this may have happened, but all of them are pretty shaky as of now, so I'll focus on just pointing out facts from the show.
Even more---the older fours ending conversation.
This lines pretty weird, right? It does make sense in context I guess---Nancy just said she dropped out of college, and Robin is making fun of how badass Nancy is in combat situations. But why a Navy SEAL? Why that line specifically?
Furthermore, and this is the line I noticed before I even did any research into this, this exchange:
Philly. Philadelphia. The Philadelphia experiment.
Hopper says he has a job offer in Montauk, and the four of them agree to meet up in Philly.
Little version of Mike Wheeler: Figurines, fantasy, and trauma
So I've got a funky little list of Stranger Things thoughts and observations I've wanted to explore, which I've slowly been working through on here. One of them has basically just been this, since I first watched Volume 1:
Mike’s figurines? (??)
I only had one rather vague idea about what the figurines meant (which has to do with Robin, and I’ll come back to it in a moment)…
… until I read this post by @animbillasblog and it finally connected the dots for me.
The Stranger Things characters have always used D&D as a way of sense-making about all the weird shit happening to them. (Poor Hopper.) And the D&D figurines certainly came up occasionally, like during games, and occasionally as intentional explanation tools. For example, El used them to explain to the boys what had happened to Will in S1.
But the figurines were such a focus in S5, and it stood out because they haven't ever been such a big deal in the show before. Certainly not to the extent we saw in S5.
And because it's just Mike we see relying so heavily on the figurines (Holly does too, but only because of and as a parallel to Mike), it was obvious that they are meant to be telling us something specifically about Mike.
What animbillasblog's post pointed out to me is that the figurines are part of a wider picture of Mike using fantasy (specifically D&D) for sense-making beyond just their supernatural opponents:
he uses his D&D campaigns as a model for El’s fantasy happy ending, in a faraway land with three waterfalls
he uses fantasy characters of Mike the Brave and Holly the Heroic to encourage and reassure Holly
he uses a fantasy power model to encourage Will and explain his abilities
And the post concludes that in the epilogue of 5.8, we see Mike still using fantasy as a way to explain and cope with the painful reality when, narratively speaking, he should have learned to move past this and accept reality as it is—
—which any viewer would recognise as a problem.
In a previous post (On bravery and heroism: Mike, Holly, and the Heart) I talked about how Mike and Holly use their respective alter-egos in completely different ways. You can read the whole post for more detail (or this one for a summary)—
—but in short:
Mike separates himself from the character of Mike the Brave, telling Holly that when he’s feeling scared or nervous: “I just imagine that [Mike the Brave is] at my side.”
Holly uses the character of “Holly the Heroic” very differently from this—culminating in her becoming Holly the Heroic.
There’s a strong parallel between Mike and Holly, starting with their respective alter-egos, and hammered home through Max’s very pointed observation that Holly doesn’t just remind Max of Mike, she is Mike (5.6).
As of 5.8, the only payoff for the Mike and Holly parallel is that Holly becomes a great leader, as the kids escape Henry’s prison—she is what Mike should have been in S5.
According to this parallel with Holly, Mike needs to stop separating himself from the character of Mike the Brave, and instead become Mike the Brave.
Now, in terms of the figurines, Mike mostly uses them as props, for example to run through battle plans in 5.1 and 5.3, support Holly in 5.1, and, interestingly, as the conduit for the bomb they use to blow up the Upside Down in 5.8.
But Holly uses her figurine from Mike completely differently.
She weaves the Holly the Heroic figurine onto her necklace, grips it when she’s scared or upset, and rhetorically asks the figurine for advice before departing on her quest for the X—in 5.7, the breaking of her necklace and the loss of the figurine symbolises that Holly herself has truly lost the fight.
As Max later points out, Holly doesn’t need the figurine; she doesn't need the fantasy.
She is Holly the Heroic.
Previously, my best guess about the meaning of the figurines came from Robin’s speech to Will in 5.4:
Robin: “I found this 8-millimeter film reel. […] I got it up on the projector and all of a sudden, I was looking at this little version of myself. And that little me, I could hardly recognise her. You know, she was so carefree, and like, fearless. She just loved every part of herself.
“And that’s when it hit me. […] It was always just about me. I was looking for answers in somebody else, but… I had all the answers. I just needed to stop being so goddamn scared. Scared of… who I really was. Once I did that, oh, I felt so free. It’s like I could fly, you know? Like, like I could finally be […] Rockin’ Robin.”
By which I mean that the figurine of Mike the Brave could be to Mike what the 8-millimeter film was to Robin: a little version of himself who is fearless because he isn’t scared of who he really is—he loves every part of himself.
And if only Mike could stop being so goddamn scared, he could finally be… Mike the Brave.
This actually ties into a different parallel between Robin and Mike:
Robin: “And, uh, it was right then and there that I knew she was the one. That with Tammy, I would finally be able to be myself, you know, all of myself. Because there was always this part of me that kind of scared me, you know? But I thought that if Tammy loved me, all of me, you know, I wouldn’t be so scared anymore.”
vs.
Mike: “I feel like my life started that day we found you in the woods. […] And I knew right then and there, in that moment, that I loved you. And I’ve loved you every day since.”
The word-for-word repetition of that phrase implies that Mike is using his relationship with El as a stand-in for true self-acceptance, like Robin tried to do with Tammy.
But like Robin—and Will—what Mike really needs to stop being so scared of himself is to accept himself (including, presumably, his sexuality), without relying on external validation.
(Also, this is such a minor parallel, but I just noticed it while making this post...)
But going back to the figurines, I thought perhaps Mike, like Robin, was meant to be finding some sort of truth about himself in his D&D figurines—particularly in Mike the Brave, this “little version of himself”, but I didn’t really know what to do with that concept.
Ah, but now! The fantasy connection makes this an actual point!
Essentially, animbillasblog's thesis (that from 5.1 all the way through to 5.8, Mike is using his figurines as one way of filtering his reality through fantasy) expands on the point I made previously about Mike and Holly's character arcs: that Mike needs to stop hiding behind fantasy and start engaging with reality as himself… by becoming Mike the Brave.
… But this picture is complicated by this one line Holly says to Max in 5.6:
Holly: “Mike. He said that [Holly the Heroic] had divine powers and that she never gets scared, and so if I ever got scared I could just… become her.”
… except that is not what Mike said.
Mike actually said:
Mike: “Know who I turn to when I get scared? Mike the Brave. […] But Mike the Brave is never scared. So whenever I’m feeling frightened or nervous, I just imagine that he’s at my side, and I feel better. So maybe the next time you get scared, you don’t need this Mr. Whatsit. Maybe you just need… Holly the Heroic. […] She’ll keep you safe. I promise.”
There’s more or less four ways to interpret that discrepancy:
The writers just made a mistake with Holly’s dialogue.
Holly misunderstood or misremembered what Mike said to her.
Holly reinterpreted what Mike said to her.
Holly was right, and what we the audience saw Mike say has been tampered with.
Which one you prefer will basically depend on where you stand on the conformitygate spectrum, by which I mean the idea that ST5 is intentionally unsatisfying.
Regardless, there’s obviously an enormous difference between Mike saying that he imagines Mike the Brave at his side, and Holly actually becoming Holly the Heroic.
But why could Holly become a brave hero while Mike… hasn’t?
Well, Holly became a hero in part because she believes or (mis)remembers that Mike told her she could.
... Just like Mike told Will he could become a wizard sorcerer.
So Holly becomes Holly the Heroic, and Will becomes Will the Wise (or Will the Wizard, as the soundtrack would have it), and Robin becomes Rockin’ Robin...
And while Robin’s breakthrough came when she stopped being scared of and learned to accept herself, Holly and Will’s breakthroughs were both thanks in part to Mike's encouragement, and their sense of Mike’s belief in them.
So what is holding Mike back from being brave? (What is scaring him so badly?)
Why hasn't he become Mike the Brave?
Because he doesn't feel like anyone believes in him? Because he doesn't believe in himself?
Because he, like Robin and Will before him, needs to realise that he has all the answers—he just needs to stop being so goddamn scared of who he really is?
Or maybe because he has walled himself inside this fantastical coping mechanism, trying to make sense of all the trauma he's experienced but never truly processed?
Mike, to Holly: With all the crazy stories people tell, I mean, I get scared sometimes too. […] Everyone in Hawkins is scared shitless. Anyone who says they aren’t are full of it.”
Mike, to El: “Maybe it’s just getting to us, you know? Being… being stuck in here, not knowing where Vecna is, no end in sight. I mean, we’re really starting to lose it. I mean, we really need to catch a break.”
We've seen basically everyone but Mike have at least one breakdown about all the terrible things that have happened to them (if they weren't letting their emotions out organically along the way).
Yet the last time we saw Mike lose it like that was in S2, when he found out Hopper had been keeping him from El, letting him think she was dead for a whole year.
But to become Mike the Brave—the inspirational leader, the Heart of the Party—not only will Mike need to learn to not be scared of himself, he'll need to break down the wall of fantasy he's constructed as a defence mechanism against his trauma.
(… Which just so happens to be more or less the plot of the Pink Floyd album (and film) The Wall, the poster for which we see behind Mike twice in the WSQK basement, and again in his epilogue dorm room. Which I wrote briefly about before: Another brick in the wall…)
And, in breaking down that protective / constrictive wall of trauma, Mike will finally be able to make good on his own character arc: becoming Mike the Brave, the paladin, the leader.
Guiding and inspiring the whole Party.
Shielding himself with love instead of fear.
Becoming Will's the Heart.
Thank you to @animbillasblog for making this excellent observation, which has consumed my brain all day!
What I find really interesting in interviews is that the Duffer Bros are always praising Finn Wolfhard for his acting, directing, and all around creativity. I won't say that Finn Wolfhard is their favorite, cause I don't actually know those guys, but they speak very highly of him.
If conformitygate isn't real, it would be really strange if they just completely side-lined Mikes character despite liking Finn Wolfhard so much.
This image is my Holly the Heroic figurine.
This image was posted by a production designer on Instagram January 1st. The woman in the picture is one of the lead designers. She’s been photographed with the Duffer Bros multiple times.
No matter how I spin it, no matter what I rationalize, this prop does not make sense outside of birthdaygate. ‘Happy Birthday Will’, the crayon candles, the clown decorations (Will being afraid of clowns, Mr. Baldo the clown), the set that appears to be in the Byers house. I literally don’t know what else this prop could mean.
It could very well be that birthdaygate was planned, this prop was made, then massive cuts were made to the script for some reason that led to cutgate—but if that’s the case I want a definitive explanation from Netflix/the Duffer Bros on how and why that happened. I’m not holding onto conformitygate cause I love Stranger Things and can’t let go of the show, I’m holding on because I’m legitimately confused and want answers 😭😭
Along with this, I’ve been listening to a lot of Duffer Bro interviews recently trying to figure out their thought process. I found this clip interesting.
“George Lucas it” refers to retconning/editing material once it’s already published. This interview was 3 years ago post season 4. They still have not “George Lucased” March 22nd like they said they would. They “George Lucased” the under armor logo in a day, but still have not changed Will Birthday (to my knowledge).
I considered the on set birthday cake as well, but the explicitly creepy clown decorations and references to Wills crayons make me think that’s not the case. And if they’re celebrating Wills birthday on set, that means the crew is aware of Wills birthday, which just begs the question why do they keep getting it wrong in show? And if they did just get it wrong by accident, why have they not fixed it yet on the recording in rink-o-mania? Also why would they celebrate Wills birthday with such a creepy cake…
This image is my Holly the Heroic figurine.
This image was posted by a production designer on Instagram January 1st. The woman in the picture is one of the lead designers. She’s been photographed with the Duffer Bros multiple times.
No matter how I spin it, no matter what I rationalize, this prop does not make sense outside of birthdaygate. ‘Happy Birthday Will’, the crayon candles, the clown decorations (Will being afraid of clowns, Mr. Baldo the clown), the set that appears to be in the Byers house. I literally don’t know what else this prop could mean.
It could very well be that birthdaygate was planned, this prop was made, then massive cuts were made to the script for some reason that led to cutgate—but if that’s the case I want a definitive explanation from Netflix/the Duffer Bros on how and why that happened. I’m not holding onto conformitygate cause I love Stranger Things and can’t let go of the show, I’m holding on because I’m legitimately confused and want answers 😭😭
Along with this, I’ve been listening to a lot of Duffer Bro interviews recently trying to figure out their thought process. I found this clip interesting.
“George Lucas it” refers to retconning/editing material once it’s already published. This interview was 3 years ago post season 4. They still have not “George Lucased” March 22nd like they said they would. They “George Lucased” the under armor logo in a day, but still have not changed Will Birthday (to my knowledge).
Martina Radwan, the director of the Stranger Things documentary "One last Adventure," recently sat down for an interview with The Hollywood Reporter regarding the documentary. I've seen some screen-shots of it floating around the tag, but I thought I'd do a a bit more of a comprehensive overview of interesting things mentioned throughout the interview.
I don't really know what Martina Radwans goals are. Her most recent documentary before "One Last Adventure" was about Mongolian orphans, so Stranger Things is kind of an insane pivot. Her answers read as genuine, but some of them are a little suspicious---or so bad that I hope they're fake. Either this documentary is real and she is genuine, or it's fake and she's apart of the ragebait train. I can't tell.
First point of interest is this line in response to the interviewers question, "Do you know if Eleven is dead or alive?" Radwan essentially says its up for interpretation, which I am all in for ambiguous endings but I feel like in this case it's so lazy for your main character, but Radwan ends her response by telling the audience to participate. "You can't just sit and watch and get spoon fed." I think this response is interesting because the ending Is spoon-feeding us. It tells us Jane killed herself. Then it tells us very directly through Mikes monologue that Jane might be alive in Iceland. I guess the 'participation' Radwan is talking about is the audience choosing between Jane being dead or alive, but, again, we were spoon-fed that in the first place. She says the audience can't just sit and watch, but thats literally what we did during the ending. Unless she's talking about something else.
"Magic has to die for everyone to move on. But you hold it in your heart, you never let go of that."
We have to move on, so magic has to die, but you should never let go of magic in your heart. We have to move on, so Jane has to die, but you should never let go of Jane in your heart. This entire line of thinking is completely non-sensical. We're moving on but we're actually not cause she's always gonna be in our hearts and we'rer never gonna let go of that but yes she does have to die so we can move on. I guess it goes along with the 'is Jane dead or alive' open ending where she's dead but not if you believe she's not dead.
Why is she answering like a politician. "They are no Epstein files." You MADE the documentary. YOU WERE THERE. You filmed the footage, you were apart of the editing process, I think you know whether they had ChatGPT open or not.
First red underline is a bandwagon fallacy---trying to claim that just cause everybody else is doing it it's fine if you/another person does it. This is really interesting coming from Radwan, who is a relatively experienced documentary director and cinematographer. I would think she would be one of the first to take a position against AI.
The second red underline gets really confusing. "How can you possibly write a storyline with 19 characters and use ChatGPT, I dont even understand." The previous answer she was defending the Duffers possible use of ChatGPT, and now she's saying that it's improbable that the Duffer Brothers use ChatGPT because they wrote a storyline with 19 characters. If she had said 'how can you possibly write a storyline with 19 characters and not use ChatGPT, I don't even understand" that would be in line with her previous statement, but she didn't---unless its a typo in the article. These two back to back statements completely contradict one another.
Third paragraph is full of some bullshit, "nobody's proved they were using ai", "it's just like having your iphone nearby" blah, blah, but the last underlined sentence I find interesting. "Everybody loves the show, and suddenly we need to pick it apart." This just feels like gross ignorance to why fans are picking it apart. She implies that this criticism of Stranger Things is a sudden reactionary action by the fandom for no reason, when there are in fact multiple, obvious reasons. Her documentary literally fanned the flames of fan anger, she couldn't have not realized that when releasing the documentary.
The last underline Radwan is asked if she saw the "unethical use of generative-AI". The definition of 'unethical AI' is not clearly defined, so Radwan could say no, but mean she saw no 'unethical AI' while having seen 'ethical AI' (also not defined). Anyway, whats really funny is after this she starts talking about "creative exchanges" and "story development" that she saw in the writers room. The writers room was full of some bullshit in the documentary. It was the most 'mockumentary' of the whole doc. She has to know this, she literally made it.
Four? FOUR? FOUR DAYS? YOU WERE ONLY IN THE WRITERS ROOM FOR FOUR DAYS? No wonder they all seem to be wearing the same outfit in the documentary, Radwan barely got any footage in there. All of these 'creative exchanges' she saw were barely a glimpse into the story. This is particularly strange because Radwan was there for all of production---the whole year, but she only spent four days in the writers room? Yeah, I really don't think anything we saw in the writers room was real.
The second underline refers to "Demo fatigue" and "how much thinking goes into that." The 'thinking' in question was Paul Dichter saying they need demogorgons in the abyss and the Duffers essentially telling him to shut the fuck up telepathically. Radwan says she included it to show "how complicated it (writing) is". Having demogorgons in the abyss is one of the least complicated writing decisions you could ever have. It's shown in season four that there are literally demogorgons already there. Dimension X is there crib. This is the final fight of the series ever. NOT having demogorgons in dimension X is more complicated than having them there. The most basic of basic GA audience members could put that together. This has to be satire. The reality of the situation and the logic presented by Radwan do not much up what-so-ever.
As for the last underline, I thought it was interesting she mentioned 19 characters and 12 locations again. Maybe it was apart of pre-interview instruction she received? Or just a coincidence.
The interviewer acknowledges that Radwan spent barely any time in the writing room. Radwan says it was because she had to choose between being the writers room or on set, so she chose being on set. She also says "you never have all the scripts" in reference to how the Duffers were still writing episodes while production began. I think this could also be in reference that only certain people got to see certain scripts to prevent leaks---such as the Duffers and MBB being the only ones who know Janes true ending.
Also interesting how Radwan says it was her choice to stay out of the writers room.
"every actor brings in another interpretation."
BULLLLSHIITTTTT.
It's not 'interpretation', it's logic. It's the eighties. We've literally seen characters get hate-crimed for being gay in the show. Robin doesn't know Lucas. They don't have a relationship like that. Maya Hawke did remind Shawn Levy, even if it was staged. It's not her wanting "to play it like that", it's the fact that logically her character should "play it like that." It would have been illogical if she hadn't. Radwan's framing and dismissive attitude towards this is intriguing. She must have realized while filming y the narrative that scene constructed, but here she is dismissing her own hands doing. Her logic is not matching reality.
This is the biggest proof to me. "They were very happy with it." NO WAY they watched that and were like 'oh yeah we look so cool and awesome and smart not having our finale finished and the other department heads shitting on us lets publish it.' No way.
The first red underlined sentence is interesting. Radwan says no, then says she can't talk for the Duffer and doesn't want to, then says no again. Radwan has done this twice now. Once before in a Variety article prior to the documentary's release where, when asked about conformitygate she said "I can't confirm or deny, but no." She says no, but then negates her answer by saying she can't actually answer. This entire interview is full of paradoxal answers.
The second red line makes me laugh. "Why are we discussing things that are not there, (I'm assuming she's referring to fans pointing out plot holes or worrying about what didn't happen) and not what's actually there." Again, her tone is dismissive and negligent. The current Stranger Things ending failed to realize what it had set up---November 6th, upsidedown frozen in time, Henry backstory---so thats why fans are hung up. What is there Is a mockery of what should be there.
I think Radwan is also rage baiting, just in a much subtler way than the Duffer Brothers. Her answers are often circular, non-sensical, and completely dismissive. She's not as outrageous like the Duffer Bros, but enough to be infuriating.
If confromitygate doesn't exist, her answers in this interview are quite confusing. The doc itself doesn't really show anything about her, but saying you saw "creative exchanges" in the writers room then literally showing a scene from the office is kinda crazy.
I feel like we are being gaslit by every single person whose worked on this show when they try to justify decisions made during the finale. No, demo-fatigue is not an adequate answer for why there were no Demogorgons in the finale.
Anyway this post was really long. Thanks for reading.
I made this with the help of @fixthehyper and their translation of Dr.Brenner’s book.
One of the theories is that, in the end, Vecna/The Mind Flayer obviously won, right?
The first instinct is to think that what he did was merge the worlds, just as the characters theorized.
@beaulesbian has a gorgeous theory about The Abyss & the Upside Down Hourglass, which I highly recommend reading. It works really well alongside this theory I have.
This theory involves pancakes and Dr. Brenner’s drawing of the lipid bilayer, which is a component of all cell membranes. In this analogy, the cell would represent the fabric of time and space. The phospholipids would be the membrane that divides and unites the Abyss and the Rightside Up Hawkins. Phospholipids are formed by a polar head, which is hydrophilic, and a lipid tail that is hydrophobic (the little “legs” in the drawing).
This could work in two ways. The Abyss could be on one side of the membrane, represented by the polar heads on one side, while on the other side we have the Rightside Up Hawkins.
I want to propose something else: the Abyss and the Rightside Up Hawkins are proteins, which in the picture appear as the small chains of spheres that pass through the membrane. We could interpret these proteins as individuals, or as part of a single protein (part of the same universe), meaning the Abyss and the Rightside Up Hawkins are one and the same, but each has a specific domain within the membrane, a specific side. This would include the space in between, which in this analogy would be the wormhole, the Upside Down Shadowfell, and the Upside Down Hawkins.
(This could also tie into the DNA theory, since DNA; roughly and simply speaking; contains the information necessary to make amino acids, which are the basic components of proteins.)
I digress. The key point is that phospholipids have the ability to flip from one layer of the membrane to the other (and also within the same layer, but that’s neither here nor there). Funnily enough, this is called flip-flopping, like pancakes. This process can occur spontaneously, which is rare, or be facilitated by flippases, floppases, and scramblases (enzymes, which are proteins, by the way). These could be interpreted as the gates that connect the Rightside Up Hawkins and the Upside Down Hawkins.
Proteins cannot flipflop like pancakes, it is energetically impossible, it does not happen in real life. Switching sides aside of altering the wholeass function of the protein would also entail going through all the hydrophobic nucleus, it cannot be done.
Here come the children and Will. Everything gets fucked from the moment in which the children get taken (source: Me, trust.) and Will “reclaims his powers” (read: Vecna LETS Will claim them.) The moment this happens the protein starts to switch sides, the children plus whatever Vecna is doing to Will are this impossible energy source that is needed to make this protein flip like a pancake breaking the fabric of time and space in their way.
CONCLUSION: The fabric of time and space is a cell, the components make the phospholipid membrane and The Abyss and Hawkins are a protein. Vecna/The Mindflayer flips ‘em like a pancake. Why? Idk ask them.
This theory possibly has a bunch of holes. It is the first one I’ve ever made this long but I wanted to see if I could somehow integrate the DNA and the membrane pic in a theory.
Edit: There’s something else to say as well, mutations (AKA: El/Vecna) could create the gates meaning: The enzymes that allow the amino acids to flip through the layers.
I feel like this theory interacts with the melted lab really well. The 'exotic matter'---or whatever it really is---is literally breaking the protein structure of the world around it. It's irrevocably changing the materials DNA.
I would love if this is real cause it would add a level of originally to the wormhole, time-loop, and time travel ideas the Duffers seem to be playing into and fully pull the world of Stranger Things back into science fiction instead of fantasy.
My overall opinion on conformitygate is that the awfulness of Stranger Things 5.8 is so… complex that I genuinely think the more likely option is that it was deliberately bad than that it was accidentally bad.
I do also think S5 has been set up to be added to in a big meta move. If any show on the planet right now could pull this off, it would be Stranger Things, and it would be genuinely historic.
I see motive, means, and opportunity...
... and I also see giant, gaping plot holes.
So here we go:
The top 10 things that lead me to believe we're going to be getting more ST5 content, in rough order of how gravely they would have had to fuck up to do this by accident
Contents:
Clocks and time travel references that went nowhere
Spotlighting plot holes and inconsistencies
Sets and shots being changed
Mike Wheeler vs. A satisfying character arc
Missing songs
Signals (snowball) subplot dropping off
Fourth wall breaks (or, S5 already is meta)
False, alternate, twist, or meta endings
Whatzit? board game (x3)
X marks the spot: Will, the exotic matter, and Nancy's smoking gun
More detail (lots of detail) and examples of each of these below.
Seriously, fair warning, this is a looong post.
1. Clocks and time travel references that went nowhere
1a. Vecna’s association with clocks.
This association was built up incredibly strongly in S4 and reinforced in S5. I won’t list out all the points here because there are so many and it’s too obvious, but here is a handful of key examples:
Vecna’s grandfather clock chiming sound effect, and the presence of the floating grandfather clock in Vecna’s mind lair
multiple shots of young Henry standing in front of the grandfather clock, turning the hands anticlockwise—obvious implication of either turning back time or existing outside of time, especially given…
… Henry’s speech about time being a prison to baby!El in 4.7: “Where others saw order, I saw a straitjacket. A cruel, oppressive world dictated by made-up rules. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades. […] Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for it all to be over. All while performing in a silly, terrible play, day after day”
the first thing we find out about Mr. Whatsit’s appearance is that he has a pocket watch (which comes with a ticking sound effect, in case we didn’t make the connection)
after Vecna begins his ritual with the kids in 5.7, the credits music is basically composed around a bassline of ominously ticking clocks (timed with the credits text, to make the ticking stand out even more)
(related to clocks but not Vecna specifically,) we got a seemingly random clock ticking sound effect several times this season, for example when El goes into the void in 5.2 and when she interrogates Akers in 5.3 (there were others, but I didn’t take note of them all)
1b. Time travel references
S5 was filled with references to time travel, including references to famous media featuring time travel.
From the incredibly strong connection to A Wrinkle in Time, to the solid connection to Back to the Future, to the casting of the star of famous time travel/time loop movie The Terminator (Linda Hamilton), to the passing mention of Slaughterhouse Five, this theme was everywhere.
If there was not (and was never going to be) any time travel in ST5, explain all these references to me, plus:
In A Wrinkle in Time (referenced constantly in relation to Vecna and his plans), the tesseract is an object the characters use to travel through space-time—it’s also an object we saw Derek make in class in 5.3 (a cube within a cube)
When Mr. Clarke is teaching Erica’s class about wormholes, his line delivery is interesting—after Erica says wormholes allow matter to travel between galaxies or dimensions, Mr. Clarke says, “Just think of all the places mankind could go. Another galaxy. Another time, even” (the bit about time travel is sort of hidden by the fact that Erica (and the audience) are distracted by Mike and Lucas at the window—this is a move they've pulled in previous seasons: Mr. Clarke drops important foreshadowing information while our attention is pulled elsewhere)
Why the clocks and time travel references that went nowhere matter:
On its own, I guess I can excuse all the time travel references going nowhere. It’s... possible that was all… accidental, or coincidental. (Implausible and dumb, but not impossible.)
But the “Vecna is obsessed with clocks and/or time” thing coming to nothing is inexcusable. Why belabour this connection to the point of near-silliness if his evil scheme has literally nothing to do with clocks and/or time?
… And these two things both amounting to nothing??
2. Spotlighting plot holes and inconsistencies
We see several instances of the show shining a spotlight on its own plot holes or inconsistencies, both in-text and from a meta standpoint. I give four examples below.
Note that I am not talking about ‘lampshading’—or deliberately drawing attention to something potentially jarring, simply in order to get it over with and move on.
What I’m talking about here is more like leaning on the fourth wall—the show engaging subtly but directly with the audience by critiqueing its own content, while keeping plausible in-universe deniability.
With that in mind, if there was not (and was never going to be) any additional S5 content, explain the following to me.
2a. Milkshakes at Melvald’s
After Will made an objectively incorrect, easily disproven statement about him and his friends “biking to Melvald’s for malted milkshakes” in 5.7…
… why did the crew then go out of their way to highlight that Melvald’s is a general store in three separate scenes in 5.8?
First there’s a looong shot of it when Kay is storming the Radio Shack, then several shots of it in the MAC-Z arrest scene, then a looong (well-lit) shot of it in the epilogue.
Melvald’s is the general store where Joyce worked for 10 years, up to 1985 (S3), which we the audience have been inside several times since S1.
But Melvald’s used to be a diner that sold milkshakes in the ‘60s, before Will was born (or of biking age)…
… when Henry Creel was a teenager.
It even had a milkshake on the logo.
(I talked about this point a bit more in On anachronisms: milkshakes at Melvald's, and orange graduation gowns.)
With how much emphasis the Duffers put on how carefully they wrote Will’s coming out scene, I simply do not accept that this was a script error:
Matt Duffer: “I think we probably spent longer writing that scene than any other scene this year. We were very nervous about it. Obviously, we've been building up to that for a while. We took a long time working on that.”
2b. The “real” me
In 5.8, El tells Mike:
El: “You understand me. Better than anyone. You always have. From the day we met… you’ve seen me. The real me.”
Aside from the gross display of “tell, don’t show” in both the dialogue and the flashbacks in this scene, and after literally the whole season of El and Mike never being shown acting like a couple…
… El tells Mike that he:
Saw the real her, from the day they met, and
Has always understood her, better than anyone
Firstly, both of these points are objectively disprovable (I'll get to that in a second).
Secondly, you barely even need to recall the events of the show to question the first statement—the edit immediately does it for you.
When El tells Mike he’s always seen the real her, the literal first flashback shot they show is of El in a "normal girl" costume.
This isn’t an anti-M!leven point, it’s just a startling choice of all possible shots they could have chosen to indicate that Mike has ever understood who El really was.
The edit just… ruthlessly mocks the dialogue.
And perhaps that’s fair, given that in their fight in 4.3, El makes it explicitly clear to us and to Mike that he can never truly understand her and her experiences—and that he makes her feel even worse about herself. That entire conversation is just heartbreaking for El, and it was never resolved.
To add insult to injury, Mike repeatedly insists on calling her a superhero—when she so clearly just wants to be loved as a person. For who she is, not for her powers. The real her. (And the fact that Mike seeing El as a superhero makes him feel like shit about himself (4.8) just makes the whole thing even more dysfunctional.)
As for whether Mike understands El “better than anyone", here’s my take on two characters who are shown to understand El better than Mike and/or actually see the real El, beyond her powers:
Max, her best friend, who encouraged El to discover who she was outside of her relationships with men, gave her female role models (herself and Wonder Woman), and helped her express her own style and femininity after a lifetime of enforced androgyny
Will, her brother, who saw and stuck by her during one of the worst, weakest times of her life (orphaned, stripped of her power, bullied cruelly), who knows what it's like to be different, and to worry about your place in the world, and to have an un-asked-for supernatural connection
Both Mike in his 4.9 monologue to El, and El in her 5.8 farewell to Mike, reference the day they met as the start of some sort of epic romance. But on the day they met, Mike wanted to get rid of El as soon as he could without getting busted for going out to search for Will in the night, by having his mom “send her back to Pennhurst [asylum] or wherever she comes from” (1.2).
Or, at least, he wants to get her out of the way until he finds out that bad people are after her… and she points out Will’s photograph… and he connects the dots.
In other words, he wants to get her out of the way until he finds out she might be useful. Later, he outright calls her a “weapon”.
All in all... it’s not a particularly honest or romantic farewell from El.
And again, the edit tells us that what El's saying is suspect, at best. Never mind the way the actors perform it so stiffly. Everything else we see in the scene is disagreeing with the dialogue.
2c. The painting
Will’s D&D painting was a major plot point in S4. The first shot we see of Will in the season, he’s painting it. We find out El thinks it’s for a girl he has a crush on, because he won’t let her see it. He brings it to the airport and it’s repeatedly pointed out. He brings it on their impromptu roadtrip (after Mike apologises for being an asshole to him the previous day).
Then he gives it to Mike, to assuage Mike’s fear that he is a useless nerd who his superpowered girlfriend has no need for.
Will hides his own love confession behind El’s name. He tells Mike that he’s the heart and leader of the party, and that Will El is reassured and strengthened by his her relationship with Mike, fears losing him, needs him… and always will need him.
Then Will breaks down crying, presumably at Mike’s obliviousness because he just sublimated his own feelings into a proxy love confession to try to make his best friend/crush and beloved sister happy together—
—and in doing so, lost an internal fight against his own belief that Mike does not value Will or Will’s love as much as he values El and El’s love.
(In 5.4, Vecna cites that moment of pain as a reason Will does not belong in the real world, but instead in Vecna’s world.)
Finn Wolfhard said in an interview that the van confession and painting scene was hard to film because Mike was so painfully oblivious:
Finn: “How is he this… clueless [scoffs] right now? What with the Will scene, in the car, I was like, what, how? I remember asking the Duffers, ‘Why—how—why would he not know this?’ And they were like, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll pay off. The end.’ And so I trust them.”
The payoff for this would be Mike finding out (and, if there is any screenwriting talent in the room, confronting and dealing with the implications of finding out) that:
El had nothing to do with the painting, and
Will loves him
(I talked about this more in On bravery and heroism: Mike, Holly, and the Heart)
Both of these facts would have pretty fundamental interpersonal consequences for all three characters involved—and El doesn’t even know this happened. Hell, given the Willel sibling relationship, the ‘payoff’ should also really require El to find out who the painting was for, and therefore about Will’s feelings for Mike.
In the next episode, Will quoted his own love confession to cajole Mike into giving his choking girlfriend a rousing speech, instead of just frantically repeating her name (though Mike does it with yet more superhero crap that visibly pisses El off to hear).
So it’s arguable, at best, that anyone other than Jonathan (and maaaybe Robin) is aware of Will’s actual feelings for Mike after 5.7—except perhaps as a past crush—
—but it’s inarguable that Mike does not know that the painting (and the accompanying love confession) was from Will, not El.
And then they shamelessly spotlighted this glaring plot hole and lack of payoff in 5.8 by having the painting clearly visible on epilogue!Mike’s wall, front and centre in the frame.
(And that’s in addition to the Funko Pop! released as part of the S5 promo merch that clearly considered the painting to be a defining feature of the character of Mike Wheeler. Not to mention the Funko Pop! of Mike dressed how Will painted him.)
So where the hell was the payoff for the painting, the confession, and the lie… and why the hell did they actively point out the lack of any payoff for this whatsoever in 5.8?
2d. The exotic matter
It was made incredibly obvious that the exotic matter had already been disturbed and resettled at least once before Nancy shot it in 5.5, from the fact that Jonathan and Nancy found the top of Hawkins Lab (a) pre-melted and (b) home to the corpses of three soldiers.
(They also note that there are no spores in the air, and that whatever happened must have been Vecna’s dark magic—which Dustin later refutes... but that's all we get on that, folks.)
And just in case you somehow missed these guys, they used a gross close-up of wall!soldier as a transition shot, and Nancy later says in the goo room that one of the soldiers downstairs had managed to cut through the door.
So what disturbed the exotic matter the first time? Did one of the soldiers do a Nancy and shoot it? And when did this happen? Presumably it was in the 18-month timeskip, after Vecna opened the gates in S4, when the military moved into the UD. So the military is aware of the exotic matter!
(The soldiers' helmets look contemporary to the 80s, maybe a little older. The button-up shirt and lack of camo print suggests an even earlier time period, like, 1940s, but it's a bit ambiguous.)
But what happened, exactly, and were there any… uh, consequences?
Because in 5.6, after Nancy shot the exotic matter, it sent out a double blast wave that made the entire wall of the wormhole ripple, and punched a hole right through it at the weak point where Steve’s Beamer had been embedded.
And if this ‘first disturbance’ is, as it appears to be now, a pointless plot hole, why did they call it out in the episode recap videos on YouTube?
They show a gruesome shot of one of the soldiers' corpses... why?
Why this shot, of all possible shots to include from that episode??
It’s the third shot in that video. It comes before we see Will, who just manifested superpowers.
What happened the first time the exotic matter was disturbed??
Why all the spotlit plot holes and inconsistencies matter:
This one almost doesn’t need explanation, but in short: if you knew that your show contained plot holes and inconsistencies, why in the hell would you go out of your way to point them out to the audience through in-text and metatexual editing??
The only reasonable answer has to be: because you want the audience to notice your plot holes and inconsistencies, for some sort of payoff…
… and/or because they aren’t really plot holes and inconsistencies, they just have yet to pay off.
3. Sets and shots being changed
If there was not (and was never going to be) any additional S5 content, explain to me why dozens of people not only forgot how to do their jobs and maintain continuity, but actively injected continuity errors into final shots?
3a. Radio tower voltage dial changing colours
By now, a conformitygate classic.
This dial was an actual set piece, so for this to happen, they would have needed to procure or make it in two separate colours.
If it wasn’t deliberate, everyone involved in production would have had to miss that they were two different colours, from creation or procurement of the prop/set piece all the way through installation, rehearsals, and filming.
Someone had to swap them out.
And worse, both coloured dials are shown in the same episode—in 5.5, when Lucas is talking about pumping the dead Demo with electricity from the tower, there’s a flashback to Steve turning the dial in 5.1. So we know that this "inconsistency" also went past an editor or two.
3b. Mike Wheeler vanishing and reappearing
I absolutely did not spot this one myself, but I went back and checked after someone else pointed it out and, lo and behold, a magic (disappearing and reappearing) Mike!
Not to put too fine a point on it, but where the fuck did Mike go in that middle shot?
As with the radio tower dial, that is not an editing or VFX or minor continuity mistake, like someone’s arm or hair not being in the exact same position from shot to shot.
That is a whole-ass real-world human being—and one of the core cast members since the first season of the show—who straight up vanished and reappeared from shot to shot, which means they either:
momentarily forgot Finn was in this sequence, so accidentally filmed a shot without him while he was having a quick break and then, oopsie, kept that shot in the final cut, OR
intentionally kept Finn out of that shot for some reason…
3c. Wheeler basement door swapping sides
The door handle, uh, swaps sides?
(To phrase it another way… “it flipped!”)
Again, as with the radio tower dial, this is a set piece. The Wheeler house set(s), as far as I am aware, have just sat there on the studio lot for the last 10 years.
The décor in the basement is different, fine, but it's the same door... just flipped.
Why the sets and shots being changed matters:
This one is also fairly self-explanatory. The changes I gave examples of above are not mere continuity errors: they required effort to achieve. They were deliberate.
But as of now we don't know why this was done.
If no new content is incoming, then it was a bizarre waste of time. But if new content is coming, this could be a way of showing that we are perhaps in a false or reconstructed world, where some of the finer details have just slipped through the cracks...
4. Mike Wheeler vs. A satisfying character arc
If there was not (and was never going to be) any additional S5 content, explain to me why Mike Wheeler—one of the six OG main characters—was the only one who fell off the face of the earth after about 5.4...
... despite being obviously set up for a hero arc through foreshadowing and clear parallels with newly-promoted main character Holly and her (manifested) hero arc.
(I talk about this in more depth in On bravery and heroism: Mike, Holly, and the Heart)
4a. Mike the Brave Holly the Heroic
We see Mike telling Holly that he uses the character of “Mike the Brave” to help him when he’s feeling scared:
Mike: "I just imagine that he's at my side."
Mike separates himself from the character of Mike the Brave.
But Holly uses the character of “Holly the Heroic”—which Mike gives her in 5.1—very differently. First, the figurine becomes a little totem for her, with Holly weaving it onto her necklace and gripping it when she’s scared or upset.
And later, when Holly is in mortal danger, she actually becomes Holly the Heroic, both in dress and in actions. In 5.6, Max explicitly says that Holly is Holly the Heroic.
There’s a strong connection drawn between Mike and Holly, starting with their respective alter egos, and continuing through Holly’s adventures in Camazotz with Max. In 5.6, Max first says Holly is reminding her of Mike for stress pacing, then says, “You don’t remind me of your brother. You are your brother!” when Holly hares stubbornly off into danger.
Later, Max reminds Holly (and the audience) that she is a Wheeler, like Mike, like Nancy—and that heroism is not simply the ability to physically fight off a monster. According to Max, Holly’s heroism lies in her intelligence, bravery, conviction, and willingness to step up to help others.
However, as of 5.8, the only payoff for the Mike and Holly parallel is that Holly becomes a great leader, as the kids escape Henry’s prison.
Holly is what Mike should have been.
Mike is a main character, in theory. He needs an arc. But as of 5.8, Mike has had no unique plot points and no character arc in S5.
According to his parallels with Holly, Mike needs to stop separating himself from the character of Mike the Brave, and instead become Mike the Brave, like Holly became Holly the Heroic—become the leader guiding and inspiring the whole Party.
Become the Heart.
4b. Finn’s monologue? Finn carrying emotional weight?
A lesser point, since I haven't personally seen sources on these, but before S5 came out we were apparently told that Finn carried a lot of emotional weight this season, and that he had another “pizza dough freezer"-style epic monologue.
… where are they?
Mike had little to no emotional presence in S5 aside from his goodbye to El, and the only thing he did that could be squinted at and called a monologue is his “Where are they now?” epilogue lines… and that's a stretch.
Why Mike's lack of plot and Finn's lack of… presence matters:
On the Finn thing, either we were lied to, or we haven't yet seen whatever these clues were talking about. I hate it, but fine.
But on the Mike thing… to so comprehensively lay the groundwork for his character arc and plot points, only to literally hand them off to his baby sister and give him absolutely nothing whatsoever to do but narrate the finale flash-forwards… is grossly incompetent.
The setup was all there. It was all deliberate. We're missing the payoff.
5. Missing songs
If there was not (and was never going to be) any additional S5 content, explain to me why we're missing at least 10 songs that appear on official S5 albums.
5a. The WSQK vinyl
They released two vinyls for S5: Stranger Things Season 5 and Stranger Things: The WSQK Collection.
All the songs from Stranger Things Season 5 appear in the show, even as a brief gag (like Oh Yeah by Yello, which plays when Dustin desecrates the Beamer).
But as many other people have pointed out, of the 10 songs on Stranger Things: The WSQK Collection, only two were played in the show:
I Think We're Alone Now by Tiffany (Holly’s song)
Upside Down by Diana Ross (secret radio message song)
(Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2 by Pink Floyd is… referenced, in the Pink Floyd - The Wall movie poster that’s on the wall in the WSQK basement, the poster in epilogue!Mike's dorm, and possibly in the first shot of the epilogue in 5.8, but the song itself doesn't appear.)
I Think We're Alone Now actually appears on both vinyls, which is weird in its own way.
Both it and Upside Down were used very obviously (diagetically) in the show, so it's actually weird that Upside Down, easily the most pointed use of music in the season, didn't appear on the S5 vinyl (with the other diagetic songs, like Rockin' Robin, Fernando, Human Cannonball)…
… but instead only appeared on the WSQK vinyl… with a bunch of songs that didn't feature in the season?
Again, as with the previous point about spotlighting inconsistencies, this oddity feels like it's drawing attention to itself.
5b. The OST
There are at least two songs on the S5 original soundtrack (OST) that do not, to the best of my knowledge, appear in the show: We’re Friends, Good Friends, and End Credits.
We’re Friends, Good Friends is a beautiful synthy track based on “Friendship” from S1 OST.
It starts with a humming, emotional charge and builds to a swooping midpoint crescendo (at around 55 seconds) that sounds like the backdrop to a major feel-good moment (here's hoping for either a love confession or a big damn kiss!).
It’s quite a distinctive track; and it doesn’t make an appearance in S5. (If it does, and I’ve somehow managed to miss it, someone please enlighten me!).
The title is most obviously a callback to Robin’s line to Will in 5.2 (but is not the music playing in that scene):
Robin: “Vickie, she's a candy striper. She’s my friend. We're friends, good friends. But, uh… The thing is, some people might not understand our friendship.”
The “joke", such as it is, is that Robin and Vickie are of course not just “good friends", but rather girlfriends.
Meaning the song title is... quite literally queer coded.
(It may also call back to Mike and Will’s “Friends. Best friends” (which itself is calling back to the Rink O Mania fight, when Mike told Will, “We’re friends, we’re friends”, and Will rebutted with a, “Well we used to be best friends”.))
Meanwhile, End Credits is exactly what it sounds like: a triumphant, rocking sort of song, an epic version of one of the show's major musical themes: “Kids" (S1 OST), later adapted to “Teens” (S4 OST).
But it does not appear in the end credits of any of the episodes: 5.1 plays Upside Down by Diana Ross, 5.2 plays Mr. Sandman by The Chordettes, 5.3 plays I Think We're Alone Now by Tiffany. 5.4 to 5.6 play instrumental songs I can’t identify (but I’m sure someone else has), 5.7 plays an ominous instrumental under ominously ticking clocks….
… and 5.8 plays Heroes by David Bowie, which fades into a rather sombre remix of the title theme (S1 OST).
None of them come close to the punchy, triumphant song on the OST called End Credits.
Why the missing songs matter:
I mean, just, why include these songs in official season albums, or buy them or, in the case of the OST, compose and record and name them if they don’t appear in the show and/or have no actual importance?
Musical references have been important in the show since its beginning… so bypassing the vinyl songs seems to be a clear signal of something being missing. This is even more noticeable since (1) one of the vinyls does have all its songs pay off, making the other one stand out in contrast, and (2) two of the songs on the WSQK pay off—in a big, unmissable way—making it even more obvious how many of them do not feature in the show.
And the inclusion of at least two OST songs that don’t actually appear in the show is even more baffling to me, not least because We’re Friends, Good Friends is beautiful and genuinely my favourite song on the album (next to Will the Wizard, for obvious reasons), and End Credits is also a phenomenal song… which does not appear in any of the S5 end credits…!?
... Implying, of course, that we haven't yet seen the end credits.
7. Signals (snowball) subplot dropping off
If there was not (and was never going to be) any additional S5 content, explain to me why the “signals" subplot between Robin and Will, radio and hive mind, superpowers and sexuality, was so well-developed in 5.1 to 5.5…
… and then dropped like a rock before its final payoff.
I talked about this (extensively) in On "signals": radio, hive mind, and romance, but will recap here:
In Volume 1, Will’s entire plotline revolves around a very clear connection that’s drawn between three different forms of intentional communication: radio signals, hive mind signals, and romantic signals. This is done using terminology, character context, in-world analogy, and explicit plot points.
The connections are particularly well-established between radio and hive mind signals, and hive mind and romantic signals.
This thematic structure means that once Will has “mastered” one type of signal (hive mind), he should be able to “master” another (romantic signals).
Mastering the hive mind looked like transmitting signals instead of just receiving them—taking control. The romantic equivalent would be something like flirting instead of just waiting to be flirted with, asking someone on a date, or (on the more extreme end) confessing your love without waiting for a confession.
For Will, the recipient of any romantic signals he sends out would obviously be Mike—and he does begin to do this, with his flirty body language and playful little shove to Mike’s chest in 5.4.
So we’re working with two separate—but related—plot points, only one of which was addressed by Will accepting his sexuality in 5.4 (and coming out in 5.7):
Will's sexuality
Will's feelings for Mike
Paralleling these two separate—but related—plot points are Robin’s two bouts of advice and autobiography:
Tammy in the tunnels
Vickie in the hospital
Robin’s advice and story about Tammy is critical for Will’s self-acceptance and very literal empowerment.
But her advice and story about Vickie plays no part in that plotline—the “snowball” scene is very explicitly about finding gay love.
Meaning… as of 5.8, the snowball scene has no payoff.
Furthermore, in 5.4 Vecna didn’t just use Will’s queerness against him—he specifically used his feelings for Mike against him. Meaning Will is still vulnerable to Vecna, because he hasn’t resolved his feelings for Mike (whether by reciprocation or by a let-down).
And worse still: despite the fact that we’re told that Will is empowered by his love (for Mike, his mom, and his brother), he has not actually attempted any sort of romantic relationship with Mike.
Why the dropped "signals" narrative structure matters:
Yes, this could just be bad writing… but it would have to be a sudden shift to bad writing! Up until about 5.5, it was great writing!
And it matters because this storyline went out of its way to promise something… which it didn’t deliver. We got the payoff for the radio/hive mind/sexuality connection…
… but not for the radio/hive mind/romance connection.
This dropped plot also had a material impact on the story we did get. It’s (one of the reasons why) Will’s coming out scene felt forced and pointless—this underlying “signals” structure told us that even though he accepted his queerness and came out to the group, Will is still vulnerable to Vecna because he hasn’t resolved his feelings for Mike.
But… luckily… apparently... Vecna never planned to use Will’s sexuality or secret love against him in the first place. Will’s self-acceptance earned him powers (and one of the highest rated ST episodes) but his coming out achieved nothing (except the lowest rated ST episode).
Dropping this narrative matters because it meant that that entire plotline only half paid off. The romantic aspect (snowballs) had no relevance whatsoever to the plot.
This is bad, unsatisfying writing because it set but then did not meet its own criteria.
And to add further insult, the path to a satisfying conclusion to this plotline was basically handed to us: Mike needed to at minimum find out about Will’s feelings and, ideally, reciprocate them and give love-powered Will a power boost.
7. Fourth wall breaks (or, S5 already is meta)
People have cited probably dozens of shots in S5 as fourth wall breaks. I am sceptical of many if not most of these, which I think are just front-facing shots and/or are just up for interpretation…
… but I do think we had some indisputable fourth wall breaks in S5.
Here are two big ones.
7a. Henry!Vecna looking into the camera
At the end of 5.7, when the children are all chanting “back to the light”, Henry!Vecna stares and smirks literally right into the camera.
It's a sustained shot, lasting around six seconds. It's also an unambiguous break in the fourth wall.
Vecna is looking at you 🫵
… but why?
7b. Steve’s death fake-out
In 5.8, when Steve falls off the radio tower, there’s a glaringly obvious cut to black, after the shot seems to clearly establish that nobody is in range to catch him.
But then the screen goes black for about seven seconds… with some weird clanking noises…
… and we come back at a completely different camera angle to find that Jonathan has (teleported over there and luckily!) grabbed Steve’s arm.
I see this as a clear fourth wall break for three intertwined reasons.
Firstly, Steve was the undisputed “favourite” character to die, and has been for a while (him or Jonathan, I guess, but Steve’s death would hit harder at this point). In 5.7 he and Dustin literally traded the lines, “You die, I die”, priming the audience to expect one or both of them to, uh… die. (Even that dialogue was a subtle nudge at the fourth wall, stoking audience expectations or fears.)
Secondly, seven seconds of a blank screen is so incredibly long that you have ample time while watching to contemplate how jarringly long it is—jolting you right out of the narrative.
Which brings me to…
Thirdly, the cut to black after Steve falls is so obnoxiously obvious, and the shots on either side of it are so spatially incompatible and non-continuously composed that I can’t read this as anything other than a spotlighted deus ex machina.
The editors saved Steve’s life, then winked at us and said, “You thought he was a goner, didn’t you?”
Doing a clear death fake-out with editing trickery—on a character all but earmarked to die by the narrative—is, as far as I’m concerned, a direct shot at the audience and our expectations.
Why the fourth wall breaks matter:
Firstly, why have that incredibly obvious fourth wall-breaking shot with Henry!Vecna for literally no payoff?
And secondly, if you must do a fake-out Steve death, why make it so obnoxious, and why stop with just an almost-silly near-death moment… with no payoff whatsoever?
The payoff for a fourth wall-tapping narrative beat like this (if there is indeed any screenwriting talent in the room) would be that it is later subverted when there is a twist death—Steve the obvious candidate is saved, but Jonathan, or Nancy, or Robin, or literally anyone dies in a way we did not anticipate, maximising the shock of it. (El’s painfully foreseeable suicide absolutely does not count.)
The fourth wall breaks matter because they should serve a purpose and, as far as we know, they do not.
8. False, alternate, twist, or meta endings
If there was not (and was never going to be) any additional S5 content, explain to me why there are so many textual references to (and examples of!) false or fake-out endings.
There are loads of examples of S5 referencing media with false, alternate, twist, or meta endings, which many, many other people on here have noted. A lot of them were on the S4 inspiration board, so we can be very confident they were intentional references.
In addition to references to other media, the show itself contains at least two examples of false endings and major plot twists—in S5, even.
The purpose of all this should be to foreshadow a false, alternate, twist, or meta ending to the audience.
8a. So many media references
Because so many other people have covered this, I'm not going any further down this particular rabbit hole than giving two examples.
The first is Little Shop of Horrors:
seen in a poster in Will’s room in S4
famously filmed a cop-out alternate “happy” ending in response to test audiences’ critique of the original Broadway ending—where the monsters win and “attack” the audience…
The second example is Prince’s Purple Rain - a song about love in the apocalypse, which had a secret ending message revealed if you played the record backwards… you nerd.
6b. Game with a false ending
In 5.3, we’re clearly shown that Derek is playing Ghosts ‘n Goblins:
The player controls a knight who must defeat various monsters to rescue a princess—who has been kidnapped by the king of Demon World.
Ghosts ‘n Goblins is often cited as one of the most difficult games of all time: after defeating the final boss, the player must then replay the entire game on a higher difficulty level to reach the genuine final ending.
(I went into more detail about this in On unreliable narration: possession, the fourth wall, and you 🫵)
(And note that the first shot we get of the game is ‘full-screen’, as if we ourselves are playing it... another brush against the fourth wall.)
This made me think of a different post I saw about the pointlessness of Holly’s ultimately futile "escape from Camazotz" plot—especially since a shocking amount of time was spent on her in lieu of the original cast (particularly Mike, see point 4a above).
But what if that escape from a mind prison was a blueprint, “easy mode”, or Act I…
… setting us up for Act II, which ups the stakes: now everyone needs to escape Vecna’s mind prison.
Hard mode.
6c. D&D fake-outs
In the epilogue in 5.8, Mike messes with the Party while they play D&D, just like he did in S1:
In 1.1, he fakes out that they’re facing an army of troglodytes… but it’s actually the Demogorgon!
In 5.8, he fakes out that the summoning incantation did nothing… but there was just a delay!
These scenes are mirrored down to the shot composition. The beats of both false endings are almost exactly the same.
(I went into more detail about this in On unreliable narration: possession, the fourth wall, and you 🫵)
6d. A play fake-out
In 5.8, we know the play in the 1969 memory in Henry's mind is meant to be Oklahoma!, because Max (and we) saw Joyce's flyer for it in several different shots in 5.4 (a scene we were reminded of immediately before Max and the others went onstage).
I don’t think any play could more obviously not be Oklahoma! than what Max leads El and Kali through—with its dark lighting, jagged purple set, creepy chanting, writhing dancing, and the ensemble in animal skull masks and black cloaks.
Even viewers who know nothing about The First Shadow could have picked up on this discrepancy, or at least been a bit… confused.
For those of us a little more in the know, this is a reference to Joyce’s subplot in the play which involved putting on a show called Dark of the Moon…
… but telling everyone it was a different, classic (boring) show to dazzle them, or shock them, or something something bold and memorable when the real play was revealed.
Why all the false endings matter:
In short? Foreshadowing.
Currently, empty foreshadowing.
9. Whatzit? board game (x3)
A comparatively minor point, but if the plot is all wrapped up and Vecna / Henry / One / Mr. Whatsit is truly dead and defeated…
… why does the (pointedly named) Whatzit? board game appear in both Hopper's cabin (where El’s bathtub used to be) and Mike's basement (behind Will, and later Derek)…
… also calling back to when it fell on Holly when she was being attacked by the Demogorgon in 5.2 (indicating Mr. Whatsit's responsibility)?
(Also note that Vecna called himself Mr. Whatsit—we know Holly didn’t name him that because the other kids also called him that independently (Derek and Debbie in 5.4).)
Why the Whatzit? appearances matter:
This isn't necessarily a reason to believe more content is incoming, but it's certainly a reason to believe in conformitygate.
The reference—to Vecna and his plans—is clear and deliberate, even if the relevance is open to some interpretation.
10. X marks the spot: Will, the exotic matter, and Nancy's smoking gun
At the end of 5.5, two significant things happen that seemed to bode very ill… but actually amounted to very little:
Will getting trapped in Vecna's (?) mind, and
Nancy shooting the exotic matter
Nancy's shot was the climax of 5.5, and was framed as a massive deal that would kill “everyone"—the opening shot in 5.6 focuses on her literal smoking gun (a well-established metaphor for indirect proof of guilt of a crime).
And in fact, these two things that go wrong near-simultaneously—Will’s capture and the exotic matter shooting—are later linked together again by one of the most (if not the most!) on-the-nose shots we've seen this season.
In 5.7, Dustin draws a diagram of the bridge/wormhole on the glass of the WSQK recording booth, annotated with an H for Hawkins, an A for the Abyss, an X for the Upside Down (?), and a central circle for the exotic matter.
Dustin: “[The bridge] is wildly unstable, but held together by exotic matter—which we found dead centre, right above the lab.”
Later, we are shown Will overlaid with that diagram—twice!—with the exotic matter over his head (mind?) and the X over his heart. This (repeated!) shot is so pointed that anyone with a reasonably well-functioning brain would notice its apparent significance…
… but it ends up going nowhere.
(I talked about that shot more, including “X/M marks the spot", in On bravery and heroism: Mike, Holly, and the Heart.)
That shot also connects Will(’s heart) with the rifts in the Upside Down, via the big red X—the beginning of 5.8 is the first time, I believe, we ever see the rifts from above, to see that they form a big X through Hawkins.
(Also consider the red X on Max's map for Holly!)
Another thing that goes wrong in 5.5 is the ol’ conformitygate classic, point 3a on this list: the radio tower voltage dial changing colours (to red!)… closely connected to the plot point of “Will attacking Vecna” going wrong…
Why this 5.5 connection matters:
I personally felt that 5.5 was more or less a coherent continuation of Volume 1 (in terms of the storyline and how the characters (especially Mike) were behaving).
But shit definitely started to get weird in 5.6, right after these two intertwined plot points—Will’s attack on Vecna and Nancy’s attack on the exotic matter—both go wrong at the end of 5.5.
But neither of those events had any major impact—El and Hopper could have found another way out of the Upside Down, and surely Vecna had other ways to find Max (including, but not limited to, applying basic logic).
So why was this episode such a turning point?
Bonus round:
Any and all real-world clues that we are missing content, such as:
the “For Will” mixtape that was pushed heavily in merch, but never appeared in the show
BTS shots of Noah filming the mind fight with Vecna in 5.5 inside a circular camera track that was never actually used
other BTS shots we haven't seen used, such as Noah in a stunt harness and at Rink O Mania, both in the S4 orange plaid shirt; (possibly Will with an earring and “Harrington hair” in the 5.8 epilogue); Will in his 5.1 school outfit (and Miwi actors in their basement outfits) set up in a camera array for creating digital doubles for VFX
the fragmented “love——” message the writers put out on Twitter
… and plenty more which others on here have discussed at length.
Why real-world clues matter:
If the showrunners do have something up their sleeve, it's certainly feasible that they've managed to keep it pretty well under wraps. We saw a similar manoeuvre pulled for Spider-Man: No Way Home, which included the actors involved lying through their teeth about their involvement.
... but something will always slip through the cracks.
Each of the real-world clues we've received on their own mean, at minimum, that there is something we aren't seeing.
Taken all together, they hint at a whole lot that we are not seeing.
So basically, against my will… and at least 50% of my better judgement…
...I remain on the bus 🙃
Okay, now that the original shock, anger, confusion of the Documentary has dawned a bit, I wanna talk about something.
Within the first 5 minutes of the docu you meet all the writers. Here i'm going to focus on one: Caitlin Schneiderhan.
You see, back after Vol.1 dropped and it still felt like there was hope in the world, i tried to get my hands on the new stranger things book. I could not for the life of me find a store that sold it, but because of that i typed in the name of it so much i can dream it; Stranger things: one way or another, by Caitlin Schneiderhan.
I was very curious about this book because it was written by one of the main writers of the show and takes place in the 18 month gap we have between season 4 and 5.
I kinda forgot about all of this untill today, when i saw her name flash by on a clip from the documentary. She was in the writers room. For example, when they were talking about El's death in the finally.
This sents me down this whole rabbit hole.
In the book Nancy is graduating and it specifically tells us that the graduating gown are this awful green colour. But then why are they orange only 4 years later when we see the party graduating in the show? From a storytellers pov is this a very unusual choice. (Why create more unnecessary questions)
Okay, the costume designer has told us in a bts clip that they were originally green in the script, but they changed it for contrast with the outside. That can be an explanation, but there are some inconsistencies here.
The thing is: Why not change it in the book?
Caitlin Schneiderhan was a staff writer on season 4, a story editor on s5 + writer of S4E03 and S5E03. She originally was the (directors) assistant of the Duffer brothers and, among other things, is credited as the creator of the offical stranger things writers twitter account.
She has been close to the show since the beginning. She is one of the 5 people shown in that writer room in the documentary. If so, then why those mistakes in the book when they're so close to the original source material?
Now lets dive into timelines
Writing for ST5 began on August 2, 2022 with on November 6, 2022 the Ep1 title reveal.
Filming for ST5 wrapped on December 20, 2024.
Caitlin Schneiderhan started writing the book at the beginning of 2025 (as stated in this Instagram post.)
The book came out on December 2, 2025.
So if the writing for the book started AFTER filming was offically over, how come the gowns were green for Nancy? Why change the colour from orange to green, knowing it would bring up questions from the audience. And on top of all: why not adress it!
(To add to this, Caitlin Schneiderhan has 3 publisched books as of this moment. One of which is her own. But her first published book was Stranger things: Flight of Icarus. An Eddie Munson's prequel. So she's definitely stranger to writing in-universe books. Especially since she worked on season 4 herself)
While researching this analysis my original question has changed. At first I wondered why they wouldn't change the description of the gratuation gowns in the book. Only now, knowing what I know, I wonder: why did the author specifically write them as green as she -of all people- would know they were orange in the final product?
A lot of these things just do not make sense. Not just from a professional standpoint, but also from countless others.
One or two things can be viewed as a mistake, 10+ is a deliberate choice.
The more they release about this show and the more i look into it, the more questions i end up having...
For who made it to the end: thank you for reading and bearing with me on this *adjusts tin foil hat*. As I'm writing this at 3am, i very much hope its a bit coherent and readable, like, at all... (._.)
(Side note, i have not yet read the books. There may be more of these inconsistencies in there, but this is the one i am currently aware of)
Interesting! Reminds me of how the other female writer in the room, Kate Trefy, was a lead writer on the stage play "The First Shadow". If she was a lead writer on that production, which pre-dates S5, she should have caught and shut down any inconsistencies between the play and S5, such as the malted milkshake line in Will's coming out scene. Unless the Duffer Bros were just completely shutting down the other writers in the room, like Paul Dichter saying they need to have Demogorgons in dimension x and Duffer going 'hmm', then this ending really is full of plot-holes that almost seem too purposeful.
Along with this, if the Duffer Bros were having such a hard time writing the final episode like they said they were, why not hand it over to one of the writers? I know it's the final episode, so it's a big deal, but have one of other writers do it then review it and add anything you want. The best episodes in the series---The Sorcerer, Dear Billy---were written by Paul Dichter, could he have not written the finale? The Duffer Bros said so themselves they don't like writing, they like directing, so why force themselves to write when perfectly capable writers can do it for them?? Were the other writers struggling just as much as they were?? Or was it ego???? Which doesn't even make sense cause they said they don't even like writing???
The more you analyse the behind the scenes content, the less and less sense it makes. Timelines, quotes from the Duffers, actor remarks---everything contradicts one another. I wanted to analyse the timeline set up in the documentary to the the actual behind the scenes filming time based off of social media posts cause something felt off, but, like you said, I think this rabbit hole goes too deep and I don't have the free time for all that.
I'm very interested to see where this goes next. Cause either it's the craziest meta reveal in existence, or the craziest behind the scenes drama in existence. Either way I'm here for it.
"There such a promise for some sort of battle................................there."
ok.
The Duffer Brothers say that "the thing thats cool is the giant monster, I mean, thats whats new."
Not only is the second part of that statement laughably incorrect---media is flooded with big CGI monsters, but this whole quote contradicts things they've said in previous interviews and in the documentary.
55 minutes into the documentary the Duffer Brothers say "at the end of the day, the audience cares most about the characters, and not the spectacle."
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter In late 2025 the Duffer Brothers says "We want bigger visual effects and bigger set peices but we don't want to lose sight of the characters or the emotion, I think thats the most important thing. And so we love these kind of sequences in movie and shows but sometimes we do find ourselves zoning out because we're not connected to whats happening on an emotional level. Like you could have the most incredible action sequence ever , but if I'm not invested in the people on the ground then I'm, really, I've actually, I do fall asleep sometimes. The key, or the sweet spot for us is the action is sort of climaxing at the same time as a character or theirs an emotional climax."
They did this perfectly during the MAC-Z fight, which not only has incredible action, but is an emotional climax to Wills journey of self acceptance. The Duffer Brothers have shown with the MAC-Z fight that they are capable of making emotionally poignant action sequences.
They did not do this in the final battle. In fact, that final battle represents to a T the very thing the Duffers were criticizing in that interview. Big action sequence with no emotional weight.
I truly don't know if conformity gate is going to happen or not, but the finale, previous interviews, and the doc make me think the Duffers are trying to make a meta commentary about the film industry and what audiences will accept now-a-days.
The finale was ripped straight out of a MCU movie. Big, big CGI action that has no weight to it cause the audience knows all the characters are going to survive. The epilouge is, as Max would describe, 'trite.' All in all, epsiode 8 is mid. It's mid. But GA audiences accepted it. It has a good rating on IMBD. People know its worse than previous season. People know it failed to meet expectations. But still, so much of the GA says its 'good enough'. So what it has plot holes? It has a normal ending. Boy kiss girl. It's not awful. The teenagers go off to college. They pass the flame down from one generation to the next. It hits the beats of an ending. It could be worse. The GA accepts the ending, and I think thats what the Duffer Bros are criticizing.
They are criticizing the laziness that pervades modern writers rooms in Hollywood. They are criticizing the blatant us of AI over human talent. They are criticizing all those tv shows and movies with similar mid-ass endings. They are criticizing the people that accept them.
Now the reason I think this theory has some weight to it is because the Duffer Bros are film snobs, and if their's one thing film snobs hate, its the current 'MCUificatoin' of movies. It's been a complaint with modern media for a while, but film snobs ESPECIALLY hate it. The Duffer Brothers biggest inspiration's are Stephen Spielberg and Stephen King. Two block-buster authors/directors that made good blockbuster films. The modern soul-less big block-buster movies must feel like a slap in the face to those creators for them.
26m 30 s into the documentary Hope Hyns Love, the Duffer Bros drama teacher, said this about them. "They were never afraid of failing, so they took big swings."
Where has the big swing been? Where is that fearlessness? The Duffer Bros want to be remembered like Stephen Spielberg. Like Stephen King. They want to make film history. They said Season 5 was bigger and bolder. They said they knew they knew the ending for years. They said they had extra time after season 4 due to covid to start working on season 5. They said season 5 was a love letter to Stephen Kings "Dark Tower" series, which has a fake ending. They said season 5 would wrap up any plot-holes. They say they say they say.
The Duffer Brothers are liars. Maybe in a good way, maybe in a bad way, but I hope, even if it’s a one-in-a-hundred chance, it's in a good way.
something interesting I noticed while watching the documentary was that Alex Sherrod, the lead sculptor, when talking about the interior rib cage of the pain tree where the kids are kept, said “This is what Shawn (levy) likes as far as texture…with these kind of dragon skin almost looking details.” This quote is about 56m 50s into the doc.
someone else also pointed out that the rib cage columns look a lot like dragon heads.
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