~

[domi--mi]

i forgor to post here as well as on twt, anyways wonder twins!!!

[crazy-shapes]

Hot take but the only thing that made sense in episode 8 was how they defeated the Mindflayer. In DnD, the best way to take one down is for the party to rush it and just keep attacking (the best way is with fire) so they can deplete its hit points as quickly as possible so it can’t use any of its magic abilities on them.

They did that bit properly because defeating the Mindflayer isn’t relevant anymore. We won’t be shown that because the main story is about saving Will from corruption and making it so the Mindflayer connection doesn’t exist in the first place

[happyduckfr0g]

so before the finale i had a theory that the final battle would be similar to an adventure module in DnD called “Die, Vecna, Die!”

this is the conclusion written for the end of the adventure, explaining that even if Vecna is removed, there are still lasting effects from his time in power…

[crazy-shapes]

Ok so I’ve been researching the Montauk Project, DnD lore, Stranger Things lore, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and The Neverending Story and I have my final crazy theory.

We fade into a scene. It’s Mike sitting in a recliner watching TV, very reminiscent of his dad. The TV gets interference and greys out. He’s annoyed. He goes over to the TV and grabs the antenna. He moves it around. The TV crackles. He moves it again. A high pitched screeching sound emits. Mike yells in pain and falls over, passing out. . .

Mike Wheeler is the leader of The Order of the Black Sun. A secret group who discovers time travel and occult magic. Dustin, Lucas and Will are also a part of the group.

They find the Mindflayer stone. Will decides to experiment with it and accidentally gets infected by it. It gives him powers. Mike is incredibly excited about it. (“You’re like a real life sorcerer, your powers are innate!” - yes, in THIS TIMELINE, you would define them as innate.)

They use the power to open up a wormhole and eventually learn how to time travel. . . But then Will becomes corrupted by the stone.

Mike Wheeler is in love with Will Byers (but has never told him) and wants to save him, so he decides to go back in time so he can stop it from happening. (Maybe he even had to kill Will in the original timeline. The big horrible original climax happened on Nov 6 either way)

You can’t travel back in time though, you can only split time. So Mike travels to an alternate timeline instead . . . Where he doesn’t remember anything (he may be aware that this was going to happen.)

Everything that happened still happens, but to different people/or it happens kind of differently.

Henry is now in the place of Will. All of the research on time travel continues at the Hawkins lab but not by Mike . . . and they’re trying to work out time travel, but they can’t quite get there like Mike did. they discover Henry. They use his blood to experiment and create Eleven. Eleven fights Henry, creating a wormhole and banishing him to The Abyss. Thus the first step to time travel is discovered in this alternate timeline.

In the Abyss, Henry (having also now discovered the idea of time travel) connects with the Mindflayer who tells Henry the truth. This is not the true timeline and in the original timeline, he is not corrupted and he gets to be with Patty.

Henry then gets the idea that if he merges all of the worlds together, he will merge the timelines back into the original one. He wants to ensure that the one remaining timeline is his ideal one though, so he kidnaps 12 children (meant to represent the twelve mystery schools) whose minds are more malleable and puts them in his own mind. A place that they will believe is reality. “Whichever system or belief has the most members, the most ‘thought feeding’ into the grid, and the prophecy of that religion will come true.”

We see this reality bleeding through during Will’s coming out. He wasn’t wrong about the Milkshake thing, it wasn’t in the past. It was an alternate timeline. Getting lost in the woods and Milkshakes were things Henry liked. No one questions it because the realities are blending. That’s why Will, Lucas and Erica don’t correct Mike when he states that Will’s powers are innate. That’s why the dial at the radio station changed and no one questioned it.

Holly questions the yellow circle being grey because she is NOT in the merging timeline, she’s in Henry’s mind and is not affected by the outside world.

That’s why we see Will standing like Vecna. We get the scene of Will going into his mind/becoming Vecna. Vecna kidnaps Will and for the entire series is tortured by the Mindflayer/Vecna - “he’s haunted by his past.”

But how do they stop all of this?

“Only becoming conscious of the original timeline can we blow off false time”

Mike has to remember. It’s the only way. He was the one that created the alternate timeline and is ultimately in control of it. He has to get his memories back. (That’s why he seems so oblivious all of the time, why his stories have plot holes, why he can’t connect properly with El. . . But he’s also incredibly smart, the heart and the leader)

In the Montauk Project, the character that Mike is based off of gets his memories back by setting up an Antenna that stored time flux waves, allowing him to receive radio signals from the other timeline, letting him remember. I think that Mike hearing the feedback in the speakers at the graduation wasn’t causing him to think about El, it was a hint at the radio waves from the alternate timeline seeping through.

When Mike gets his memories back, we’ll find out that a lot of the relationship and love between Mike and El was actually an alternate of him and Will from their original timeline.

I think El will discover that this version of her doesn’t technically have to exist. Not in the way of her killing herself, but that she is actually a human being with her own thoughts and feelings and she can choose her own timeline.

Mike is enlightened now, faced with the idea that knowing the truth can set you free. He goes back to his own timeline where Will is corrupted.

He proclaims to Will that he loves him.

The curse is broken.

Cue another epilogue, this one different but kind of the same for all of the characters. The end.

Also just want to add some screenshots of the Montauk Project breakdown . . . Some of them are self explanatory . . . But also

- “Age of Aquarius” - Aquarius starts in January.

[crazy-shapes]

So I was thinking about how Mike stated multiple times that Will was a Sorcerer and that his powers were ‘innate’. Even though it was shown and explained that Will could siphon Vecna’s powers, not that they came from within.

Mike is shown saying it directly to Will, who did not correct him. He is then shown again saying it to Lucas, another DnD party member who also did not correct him. Not only that, but Erica backs him up.

They clearly want the audience to know/think he’s a Sorcerer class.

The outline of the Sorcerer fits Vecna better. There’s also that scene where Will tells Henry “you’re just like me.”

Anyway, I was looking back at Sorcerer classes and . . .

The Aberrant Mind specifies an origin idea as being from the Mind Flayer. . . But then there’s also the Clockwork Soul

- Dustin says there’s only two Chaos ‘classes’, Chaotic Good and Chaotic Evil. He omits the third one, Chaotic Neutral. One of the Clockwork Soul abilities is to restore balance.

- Obviously Vecna using a lot of clock imagery. So is he a Clockwork Soul or an Aberrant Mind? Which one is Will?

EDIT TO ADD: Mechanus is a place of absolute Law and Order.

What if Vecna succeeded and he wasn’t trying to crash the worlds together, he was trying to create “absolute law and order” - The characters stories turned out as expected because it’s Mechanus.

- Also to reach even further, because I love yapping about Mike being Bastian from The neverending Story. “Bastion of Law” . . . And all of the jokes of Mike being a cardboard cutout because he’s not acting one way or another. He’s neutral.

Anyway, I don’t actually have any narrative to entwine here I just thought it was interesting.

[crazy-shapes]

Ok one last Byler/Conformitygate brainrot, I promise.

Henry kidnaps Will again and tells him he’s going to spy for him “one last time.”

What if the demos finding Max was a red herring.

What if he was spying on someone else.

What if the 12 kids in the Mindflayer are its “batteries” and it’s feeding them to strengthen its power. (There were multiple references to El eating to recharge her battery so her powers were stronger.)

What if Will IS the bridge and is being used to extend the Mind Flayer’s reach into Hawkins.

What if Will is an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer (“An alien influence has wrapped its tendrils around your mind, giving you psionic power. You can now touch other minds with that power and alter the world around you by using it to control the magical energy of the multiverse.”)

What if when an Abberrant Mind Sorcerer reaches level 5 (fifth season), they acquire the Hunger of Hadar spell?

“You open a gateway to the dark between the stars, a region infested with unknown horrors.”

“The void creates a warp in the fabric of space, and the area is difficult terrain. Any creature that starts its turn in the area takes 2d6 cold damage. Any creature that ends its turn in the area must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or take 2d6 acid damage as milky, otherworldly tentacles rub against it.”

What if Vecna saw through Will that Mike was the heart of the group and a great storyteller but Mike hadn’t managed any real contact with Vecna himself.

What if Vecna was testing happy memories with the kids in his mindscape because “you catch more flies with honey”

What if he wanted to use Mike as a conduit for locking everyone in an ‘ideal Hawkins mind prison’ to keep them compliant because he assumed that being ‘the heart’ of the group meant he was closest to everyone and that his imagination and storytelling abilities would come in handy.

What if he was so hell bent on getting Holly because he thought it would be the closest, emotional connection to Mike

What if during part 1, Will really did start to hope he had a chance with Mike.

What if when Henry took Will, he could see that Will had a strong, emotional connection with Mike because he wasn’t hiding it anymore.

What if that was when Vecna was able to link everything up.

What if that’s why after episode 5, everything in the “real world” started being a little off here and there.

What if Mike is so beige because he’s so closed off.

What if his story parallels what Will spoke about in his coming out scene because it’s actually taken from Mike’s thoughts and fears of himself.

What if their minds are currently linked up.

What about “we’ll go crazy together”

What if Vecna also has to use Will’s memories and thoughts of Mike to pad Mike out.

What if Mike starts to notice cracks in the illusion because it’s not just his thoughts.

What if Mike breaks out of the curse because more of Will’s ideas of him break through and Mike is really thrown because he doesn’t see himself in a positive light

What if there’s a realisation that it was Will’s words and thoughts about him in that van, not Elevens.

What if Mike then saves Will (and therefore breaking everyone else out of mind prison) by calling out his name and holding his hand

What if Will manages to escape because he could “feel Mikes hand on his and the love in his heart.”

What if Mike has always been paralleled to Bastian in the Neverending Story, where he is thrown into the fantasy world and has to continue writing it.

What if El and Will were both deliberately paralleling the Child Empress with no clear outcome of who it would be yet because Mike’s arc was always going to parallel Bastian, who saves Fantasia specifically by naming the Child Empress. He chooses a name emotionally linked to his own mother which is a show of his love and belief in the Empress and Fantasia.

What if Mike saves the day by expressing real love.

What if that’s why he didn’t say it to El.

What if season five confirmed it with Mike naming Will “Sorcerer” and the shot of Will in the Abyss mimicking the Child Empress

What if El was confirmed to parallel Atreyu the warrior when she stood in the upside down and was vanished by the nothing but then after the evil is defeated, reappears out in the wilderness ‘on an adventure’

What if in the interview when Caleb and Gaten spoke about the date that Will went missing and one of them joked about it being twice, they were referencing Vecna taking Will again and using him as a spy.

What if it’s actually meant to parallel the first time he went missing where it is said he was in there for “about a week.”

What if the random event for upcoming releases on Netflix on the 7th (where the promo mentions something about coincidences and has a poster of Stranger Things in it) just so happens to be exactly a week after the last episode

What if?

[crazy-shapes]

What if Vecna has managed to get to Mike and in the same way that Vecna used Will to create the tunnels with the vines, he’s making Mike create this new reality for everyone. He’s the storyteller after all. . .and mentally vulnerable because he’s so upset by El’s “death”.

Vecna states that he’s much stronger now and so upgrading from tunnels to a new world makes sense. (he’s also been practicing by putting children in his own mindscape and seeing if they believe it. Because if they believe it, the illusion is stronger)

*also worth noting the scene where Mike tells the story about El and the others all say “I believe” - strengthening the false reality.

Mike is the traitor, but not on purpose.

And Mike is also the heart!

We’re shown in the battle scene that once the Mind Flayers heart shrivels up, Vecna is less powerful and is killed pretty quickly.

They will have to kill the heart to shatter the illusion (whether literally or figuratively, that’s whatever)

Also there’s a lot of Alice in Wonderland references in the final season. At the end of the book, Alice “defeats” the queen of hearts and is then woken up by her sister, realising that it was all a dream.

We see this play out with Holly dressed similarly to Alice and being in a false reality. Nancy wakes her up when she pulls her from the Mind Flayer.

But remember there is also that scene with Max when she tells Holly “you’re not LIKE your brother, you ARE your brother.”

We also get references to The Neverending Story in earlier seasons. . . But we also get a subtle reference to it in episode 8, when Will is in Henry’s mind, sympathising with him. The shot is incredibly similar to and reminiscent of the child empress’ monologue to Bastian in The Neverending story.

This would put Will as the “sickly, child empress of the fantasy land.”

It would make sense that Mike was Bastian, “the kid who loves reading stories, who gets sucked into a fantasy land and starts losing his memories” - He also “actively uses his imagination to shape the fantasy land around him.” (This could be used for Will as well, but makes more sense for Mike with the rest of the theories)

And El would be Atreyu -A warrior tasked to find a cure for the sick empress AKA El helps to save Will from the upside down.

The parallels to The Neverending Story are pretty overt.

The antagonist in the movie; the Nothing, feeds on human hopelessness. It is defeated by the power of belief, imagination and love.

That last DnD session in ep 8 re-establishes Mike as the storyteller. He has the imagination . . .

At the moment though, he doesn’t have the belief. We are shown that by how upset he still was after the others went upstairs. He doesn’t truly believe his own story about El.

He also doesn’t have love. He very blatantly did not say it back to El in their final scene together (+ that entire arc)

So Mike will have to find love to break the illusion and defeat the darkness.

You could argue that both El and Will have parallels to the Child Empress, but if we look at all of the other references and information we’ve gotten, Will makes more sense (he definitely wouldn’t be Atreyu.)

It’s fun to think as well, that Mike giving Will the name of “Sorcerer” and being incredibly adamant about it could be another nod to TNS where Bastian names the Child Empress.

I’m honestly just rambling now but I do want to end on the fact that in the Neverending Story, the name Bastian gives the Child Empress is directly connected to his own mother.

Karen Wheelers maiden name is Childress.

**Edit to add that there’s a plot point in TNS where Atreyu thinks he’s failed in his quest to save the Empress and Fantasia but the Empress reveals that she was communicating with Bastian through him which parallels Will talking to Mike through the lens of El.

Also in the climax, the Nothing sweeps through and wipes out Atreyu, but after the nothing is defeated, we see Atreyu alive, galloping alone through the wildnerness on his horse

[crazy-shapes]

I’m sure other people have talked about this already

But I was thinking about this secret episode and theoretically when they would drop it, and it would make sense to be the 7th.

“I rolled a 7. The Demogorgon, it got me.”

So I searched for Netflix and Jan 7 and they released a teaser for something happening on the 7th which looks like it’s going to be about their releases for this year and showing clips etc . . . BUT!!

The voice over narration is interesting

“Sometimes, the universe shows you a sign. You can brush it off-“

*all of the inconsistencies in the props and story/Mike and the feedback in the speaker at the graduation

“-call it a coincidence”

*Lucas literally looking into the camera and saying there are no coincidences

“- but I know you’ve got some questions.”

*so many things left unanswered, even though the Duffers stated that everything would be wrapped up.

“-lucky for you, your futures on it’s way. Even when you’re not looking. It finds you.”

*We’ve been told that ep. 8 is the finale. No one is looking for any more content

In the promo, the woman stumbles into a tarot reader and the tarot reader says “all you’ve gotta do is ask” and the words “what next” appear on screen. This is obviously a reference to what content do Netflix have coming up. . . But also

*At the end of episode 8, Mike “reads” the others futures and Will asks what’s next for him

I’m just saying 🤷🏻‍♀️

[crazy-shapes]

I have been enjoying reading your byler theories and general netflix fuckery feelings.

Hahaha, yeah even now it still sucks me in. . . But the ending was so meh that I’m reading theories from really smart people on here to clasp onto hope that it’s a good tv show and the Duffer brothers are actually good writers 🥲

[crazy-shapes]

You know what, Netflix would 100% go hard into the crazy idea of a secret ST finale

“We’ll release S5 pt. 1 which will get people who don’t have Netflix to pay to sign up and then we will release pt. 2 exactly a month later so they’ll have to pay for another month. . . and then we release episode 8 which has plot holes and weird things happening and there will be a bunch of people who hate it and cancel Netflix. . . And then boom! We’ll cold drop a secret new ending so those people that cancelled will have to pay to sign up again! And we’ll wait long enough for lots of people to cancel but not too long that we’ll lose momentum. . . But we have to wait enough so that when people want to rewatch the whole series to spot the clues, they won’t be able to do it before the next monthly payment!”

[kexing-wen]

incorrect wenzhou quotes (63)

[boykavalier]

“See, I killed Joe. I watched myself do it with my own hands, and I have no guilt. None. No remorse. I have been spared all of that. How does that make you feel?”

MIDNIGHT MASS 1.05

[deputyrook-deactivated20231017]

The Raid 2: Berandal (2014) | Gareth Evans

[loganlermansboyfriend]

HUNTERS — In The Belly Of The Whale (S01E01) Logan Lerman as Jonah Heidelbaum

[crazy-shapes]

Alien 👽

[loulovehome-deactivated20220122]

LONG HAIR LOUIS MY BELOVED

[rob-pattinson]

If I may… No! Apologies. I really think I’m invaluable… Shut up! If we do this, you don’t make a move without our permission. Fair.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, 1.03 “Power Broker”