Stranger Things: Resurrections (bringing back Billy...)
Since the Harringrove fandom has begun to demonstrate an amazing resilience to certain outside forces (thank you fandom <3 <3), I threw together a list of (some) resurrection precedents and possibilities, all “borrowed” from other actual media/TV/film canons adapted and applied to one Billy Hargrove: (Please do feel very free to add, expand, use, WRITEALLTHEFICS, etc. at will).
‘We Can Rebuild Him’: Still stuffed with remnants of the upside-down in his blood stream, the Russians scrape Billy up on their way out and rebuild him. Because alien world super serum goes a long way in building a super soldier (and unlocking more gates). (Late 80s bonus points if they rebuild him with metal and wire that renders him part crude cyborg). (Re: Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier, Captain America).
Old School Resurrection: Unable to accept that Billy is gone, Max and Eleven tap into the upside-down to bring him back to life. Suddenly re-thrust into his old life that still includes systematic abuse at the hands of his father and the responsibility of facing up to all his past mistakes (including all the lives he took while possessed), Billy’s not exactly grateful to be back. (Hardcore 80s points if they forget to get Billy out of the coffin first, thereby making him have to claw his way up to the surface alla every 80s zombie film). (re: Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
Super Powers Save the Day: Another secret child product of the MKUltra style lab experiments, Billy’s powers of cellular regeneration take a minute to repair that much damage, but revivify him in the morgue in a crazy cool special effects scene where he zips back up his body…(Also canonically explaining how a kid who gets shoved around by his father that often manages to still remain unbruised and shirtless as much as he does). (80s bonus points if filmed like a late 80s body horror film). (re: Clair Bennett, Heroes).
Cloning: Having been “impregnated” by the mind flayer (first with the ‘Alien’ face hugger reference, and then with the strange moment of the alien tentacle pushing into his chest…), Billy tries to kill the monster by sacrificing himself. Only the US government isn’t too keen on letting that kind of alien biotechnology go. They scrape up Billy’s body and clone him—a process that maintains the alien DNA that they can then harvest (and making Billy “patient zero” in their new attempts to use human hosts to create more). Now confined to a laboratory cell, Billy has to fight to regain his own autonomy, not an easy feat when the military-industrial complex has labeled his body as government property. (Meta-Homage bonus points on account of Alien IV being one of Winona Ryder’s films…) (Ellen Ripley, Alien IV: Resurrection).
The Fake Out: Having made enemies of everyone in high school and knowing he’s in danger from both the law and his family (aka Neil), Billy takes the opportunity to fake his death. And yet, he can’t seem to stay away from Hawkins and the people he secretly cares about. (Re: Alison Dilaurentis, Pretty Little Liars).
Stranger Twins: Billy comes back as his brunette twin cousin to move in with the Hargroves and inexplicably looks exactly like him and might actually be him, because Hawkins is a weird dreamscape space (re: Laura Palmer, Twin Peaks)
Conspiracy!: With his body already broken and dying, Billy sacrifices himself to save Eleven, only to turn up (8) years later in a maximum security prison as a pawn in a larger government conspiracy (Cold War 80s bonus points for just being a larger government conspiracy…) (re: Micheal Scofield, Prison Break).
Deal with a “Devil”: Feeling guilty that they couldn’t save him, and unable to comfort Max, Elle uses her astral projection powers to make a deal with the Mindflayer or some other entity in the upside down to bring him back, but like all para-supernatural contracts, “the devil” wants to make a deal…(80s bonus points for really playing up any element of the “Satanic Panic” crisis) (Dean Winchester, Supernatural).
Time Travel: The alien tentacle pushed into his chest created a gateway that sucked his consciousness into the future, creating the dopple!Billy that greeted him in the upside-down, setting off a strange time line of events in which future Billy has to travel back in time to the 1980s to warn of or even jumpstart the Mindflayer takeover, as such a series of events is actually the only way to ultimately defeat it. Sacrificing his past-self to kill the monster, the ‘Billy from the future’ finds himself stuck in 1980s Hawkins, a changed man haunted by the things he’s seen (and the things he will see). Only now that this apocalypse has been averted, the things he can see in the future keep changing, not all of it for the best… (Essentially rendering Billy “The Party’s” Seer.) (The Terminator (kind of)).
Alien Parasite: Closing The Gate weakens the Mind Flayer, but it doesn’t kill it, leaving the MF trapped inside the body of seventeen year old Billy Hargrove. Now both need the other to continue to survive, and Billy needs to learn to find some kind of harmonious compromise with his other-worldly parasite (Eddie Brock, Venom).
(More theme-borrowed than direct references:)
(Psychic) Coma: After the events of the mall showdown, Billy is left in a coma with a healing fractured mind. The only problem, his psyche effects the world around him as it processes all its demons. As the gang gets sucked into the weird hellscape of Billy’s internal life made manifest on the streets of Hawkins, they must help him fight all his monsters before his lifetime of aggregate trauma destroys the town.
The War isn’t Yet Won: Billy’s demise was greatly exaggerated. The calvary came in, the ambulances scooped him up, and he’s fine now—physically. But the experience changed him, has left Billy quiet and hollow. He can still feel the mind flayer everywhere, phantom crawling over his skin. There’s only one other person who can even begin to understand—Will Byers. Everyone thinks the two former MF meat puppets are simply suffering from PTSD, but Will and Billy know better. They’ve seen the future; what the Mind Flayer has in store. The two form an unlikely alliance as the only two in town who know the war isn’t over.
(My personal head cannon for Season Four):
Nightmares on small town streets: After the events of season three, the gang starts dreaming: weird twisted nightmares that seem more vivid than the waking world. What’s more, they all meet up in their dreams: Will, Steve, Eleven, Dustin, Nancy, Lucas, Max. etc. who all physically went to sleep in different towns/places, find themselves in a sick simulacrum of Hawkins at night. What’s more, is that when they call each other up the next day, they all remember it: they were there. Soon it becomes clear that this dank space is even more dangerous than they ever could have anticipated. Whatever happens to them in the dream space follows them through to the waking world. And something is after them. They need to figure out how to defeat the shadows, but until they do, there’s only one solution: don’t fall asleep. (Meanwhile, Max and Eleven see Billy in the dream world, seemingly living at the Hargrove’s house and caught in a robotic glitch cycle of abuse at the hands of a nightmarish hybrid of the Mindflayer and his father. They become determined to bring this Billy back with them, unsure if that’s even possible, but Max refuses to leave him there. But waking him up and pulling him out is a much bigger task than they can handle alone. They bring Steve.).
(i.e. I actually do really want a Nightmare on Elm Street season…).
(And really, if all else fails, we saw *one* Billy go down, yes, but what about *second* Billy…?)
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