It’s time to go insane over set design again because despite everything, that’s my house and I cannot and will not be convinced that everything is meaningless.
Starting off with: the WHATZIT games.
I’m unsure whether this is the one detail that actually started conformitygate, but it definitely is one of the earliest discoveries, so most of us know by now that there are WHATZIT games looming in the background of not only the scene in which Jonathan takes graduation photos of Will, but also in Mike’s basement:
An entire department is responsible for decorating a set, so if there's an item in the background of a scene then that means it was put there intentionally. Especially when said item reoccurs and ties back to something within the narrative, which is exactly the case here. “WHATZIT” refers directly back to Mr. Whatsit/ Henry/Vecna and the epilogue is also not the first time we've seen the game this season; when Holly gets abducted by the demogorgon, a WHATZIT game falls on top of her:
So the implications of the game aren't even ambiguous, it very clearly means that Vecna is present/in action/attacking. My honest question is why would they do this in the last episode?
This we mostly already knew (and putting it out there once more can’t hurt), however, when I came across a frame of Mike’s basement from the epilogue earlier this week, I noticed something interesting. Not only does the pizza carton say “Pizza One” but two of Holly’s toys are lying on the sofa, Waldo/Wally and Tenderheart Bear:
Starting with Waldo/Wally, he’s the main character of the “Where is Waldo/Wally?” puzzle books which are a series of books featuring detailed illustrations of big crowds of people and the goal for the reader is to find Waldo/Wally amongst them. The Waldo/ Wally doll, too, is seen in Holly’s room when she gets abducted by the demogorgon:
Moving an item is also always intentional. Having Waldo/Wally in Holly's room makes sense because while Waldo/Wally isn't missing per se, the goal still is to find him and s5 was partially about finding Holly. Now, the question is, why transfer the doll to the basement and put him next to a pizza carton saying “one”? Now, while it isn’t his room, we can all agree that the basement is Mike’s territory, so Mike somehow being affected by the supernatural could be a possible explanation as to why they moved Waldo/Wally to the basement (also considering that part of Waldo’s/Wally’s signature look are his glasses and his striped sweater just like Mike is wearing in his imaginary college life), especially with how Mike was “missing” at the beginning of the epilogue and that being paralleled to Will’s disappearance as well as the constant Holly = Mike talk this season. However, Waldo/Wally might also be a stand in for Henry (“W” for Waldo and Whatsit, glasses, our characters looking for him).
Now, let’s talk about the Tenderheart Bear plushy on the sofa. Tenderheart Bear is one of the original Care Bears and often even seen as the face of the entire Care Bears franchise because he’s the leader of the bunch and responsible for initiating new members into the Care Bear Family - sounds familiar? His belly badge is a heart full of love and it gives him the power to create tangible hearts to help him solve problems:
Mike’s the leader, Mike’s the heart, just like Tenderheart Bear. And it’s once again stuff like this that makes it hard for me to dismiss everything as merely coincidental. I know someone in the comments will tell me “I don’t think they did this deliberately” but how could they have done this anything but deliberately?? They put the Mike Wheeler bear in the Mike Wheeler room and you’re trying to tell me that this was done by accident? I don’t believe it. And as far as I can tell, the plushy doesn’t appear in Holly’s room earlier this season, however lots of other Care Bears do, so they had to have specifically selected Tenderheart Bear to go in the basement (making this not a case of oh they just liked the aesthetic, but a case of they had a selection of Care Bears to choose from and actively decided that Tenderheart Bear would go in the basement for. some. reason). The question is, once again, why? With how they’ve seemingly forgotten that Mike is the leader and heart of the party in s5, this seems so weird, kind of like how they showed the painting in Mike’s college dorm room after ignoring it all season.
Speaking of the painting, though, another interesting aspect of the epilogue is the reoccurring red dragon:
1) The red dragon in the painting in Mike’s dorm room
2) The red dragon on the shelf with the dnd binders
3) the red dragon in an drawing next to the WHATZIT game (+Hellfire)
But I’m once again unsure about what they mean, especially because a red dragon didn’t play any role this season/in the final battle. I truly lack the imagination to come up with possible implications, so my question is, again, why put them in the epilogue at all? The painting wasn’t addressed, it didn’t pay off and yet there it is in the frame for seemingly no other reason but to put salt into the wound. Why? And why have two different red dragons appear throughout the scene?
Moving on, because last but not least, we have Max’s skateboard:
The underside of Max’s skateboard says “Twisted” with a kind of spiral in the background which reminded me of not only the mandala/spiral that Robin spots in the forest in s5,ep.2, but of Vickie’s spiral earrings in s4,ep.9. And surely “Twisted” is a very fitting way to describe the finale of s5 because not only does it feel like I’m watching a twisted reality in that episode, but with all the contradictions between what the cast says and what the episode shows as well as the documentary, I feel like I’m living in a twisted reality, too.
Now the only question is, are they deliberately twisting reality to purposefully deceive us or does all of this amount to nothing?
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