Twelvegate Theory: Drowning in the Quarry and Will & El (Part 1)
I found some interesting information while analyzing Stranger Things and taking note of the movies that we are shown in the show. In particular, I was mainly focusing on any scenes including Will, El, Joyce, Jonathan, and Hopper. . . because I think something bigger is going on that the writers want you to catch onto, but we don't get the full account of what truly happened (and probably won't!) until S5. The colors are so I know which character I'm talking about, and so this format can also be used later with my other twelvegate theories.
First off. . . there are only three characters directly associated with the quarry (in terms of scenes happening standing on the edge of the quarry).
Mike, Will, and Hopper.
Mike, because he steps off of the ledge and falls (then El saves him) and Will because we find his (fake) body there. Hopper, because he and Callahan are on the edge of the Quarry looking down while searching for Will.
The other direct association with characters to the quarry would be the night that the body was found.
State Troopers found the body. State Trooper, David O'Banon, found Will's body, and Hopper later interrogates him at Hideaway, the bar. Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and El are there on the shore as they pull the fake body out of the lake. Mike gets mad at El because she couldn't find Will, alive. (This is the only direct association we have of El and Will being at the quarry at the "same time" and "one body was found 'drowned'," in the quarry.)
But there are some characters that are associated with the quarry indirectly as well. . . Like Lonnie blaming Sattler's Quarry for what happened to Will. Joyce and Hopper talk about the police and the working theory on how Will fell into the quarry. El watches Frankenstein, alone, in S2 on Halloween night. The young girl in the film, Maria, is talking to Frankenstein's Monster. It isn't shown on screen for long, but after looking up the movie, I learned that Maria drowned in a lake after asking the Monster to play with her.
So, now that we have the direct and indirect associations out of the way. . . we can get to the more interesting connections and parallels that I found!
Okay... So, there's this establishment of the Upside Down/ The Mind Flayer/Henry/Vecna/001's presence as being cold. . . and Will feels scared [frozen] because of it. I find it interesting that the line "I've felt it before," from S3 is actually panned on El and Will, but the focus is on El. Brenner makes the association that El's mother was sick, very sick. Lonnie makes the association that Joyce is sick to Jonathan, as well.
And then, we have the other freezing references.
Lonnie's "Your Mom was half frozen to death when I got here." after Joyce sees Will in the wall, and the Demogoron comes back.
Hopper's "I'm gonna freeze to death out here." after his fight with El, because he wouldn't let her see Mike in person.
The initial connection that I was focusing on, was the parallel of Joyce freezing to Hopper freezing in the scenes above.
Now, this is where it gets interesting:
In 1983, when Will goes missing, there's this shot while Ted and Karen are watching the news on the night of November 7th.
We don't hear much of what the reporter says, but what he says is crucial information.
"Byers' body was found in the water of this quarry by state police earlier this evening. It was discovered by State Trooper, David O'Bannon, just after dark. The state police are mounting an investigation to determine Byers' cause of death, but an initial inquiry. . . [indistinct]. . . Byers isn't the first person to drown in Sattler's Quarry. You'll recall only seven years ago. . . [news reporter cuts out],"
1983 - 7 years is 1976.
(I'll come back to this! )
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In 1984, on Halloween, we see that El is watching Frankenstein.
This is one of the shots that we see of the movie Frankenstein (1931).
Look familiar?
In the 1931 version of Frankenstein, Maria drowns in a lake after attempting to play with Frankenstein’s Monster. The monster misinterprets the rules of a game, and Maria dies by drowning in a lake.
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We know that "El" is short for "Eleven". . . Mike gave El that nickname. . . and we assume that Terry Ives is El's mother.
We also know that El is known as "Jane" by Terry in season 2. . .but I truly don't think that El is Terry Ives' daughter. . . (I'll come back to this! part 2.0)
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Now, I noticed something in Season 1 that made me think of the year 1976 a little differently. . .
1976 is the year that Will and El turned five years old.
1976 is the year that Will would have gone into kindergarten at the age of five. 1976 is also the year that Mike meets Will on the swingset, and there is an emphasis on the fact that Will is alone on the swings, but Mike felt less scared because Will was alone on the swings too.
Mike is Will's first friend. . . and Mike is also El's first friend. . .
Mike gave Eleven her nickname of "El". . . so is it really that much of a stretch to assume Mike gave Twelve a nickname of "Will" because "Well" wouldn't work as a name? (Obviously this would need some explaining, and the timeline would be off. . . But the timeline that we’re told is already askew…)
In season 2, in 1984, when El goes off on her own to find Mike at the school, she ends up at a house where a woman and her daughter are playing on a swing-set. One swing is left alone, while she flips the other over the top of the swing-set.
Now, I didn't think anything of this, until I paired it with what Mike said about meeting Will on the swings. And then, I thought of this scene of Will and Joyce:
So. . . what happened to Will when he was five years old to scare him enough that he had nightmares for a week?
Maybe he saw a "monster"? Maybe he met a monster that tried to take him (and/or someone he was very close with) somewhere against his/or their will?
I think El was the first "drowning" [read: kidnapping] victim in 1976 in Hawkins. . . and I think Will might have gotten away (at least for 2 years).
In season 4, there's this association of Brenner with the word "Monster". And this only shows up in the titles of two Stranger Things episodes. . .
In Season 1, we assume the "Monster" is the Demogorgon. . . and by Season 4, we learn that the real "monster" is Dr. Brenner. . .
Joyce and Hopper visit Terry Ives in S1 Episode 6 (The Monster). . . Terry has two books on how to care for Bonsai trees. . .
In the opening of S4, Brenner is trimming his Juniper Bonsai tree. . .
Then, we have this shot of El searching for her "mother" in S2:
El finds a photo of Terry walking with Brenner almost as if they are equals. . . But Terry was accusing this man of kidnapping her daughter by the accounts of almost every newspaper Hopper found?
Hmmm . . . that's very suspicious if you ask me.
I think Terry is "Mama" to Brenner's "Papa".
Because in S4, we get this from El's "memory":
Brenner (at one point) told El that her mother died giving birth, but we know that wasn't true.
I think that Terry and Brenner might have managed to kidnap a set of twins from their parents. . . within a two year span. I think El was taken first, in 1976. . . and Will was taken second, maybe in 1978. Maybe something didn't go according to plan, and Brenner finds himself with a mess on his hands. Either way, we find that Brenner electrocuted Terry Ives in 1978. And we find that Hopper's daughter Sarah died in the hospital in 1978 at seven years old from cancer.
(Keep in mind, the hospital we are shown from Hopper's memories, looks eerily similar to the "hospital" section of Hawkins lab.)
We also learn in S4, that Brenner and Owens aren't showing El the full memory from The Hawkins Lab Massacre, because we get these scenes as well:
What secret would Brenner and Owens have the answer to that could compromise the whole of the NINA project? That could - as Brenner puts it - "Risk everything?"
There's an emphasis on fail safes in season 4 as well. . . Max's letters acting as a fail safe, Nancy and her plan to kill Vecna -> the thought that Vecna can't hurt anyone else if they kill him (but her plan fails and there was no back up plan). . .
When Owens tells El that she is the cure, he says "I wouldn't be here if I didn't think this was the only way. If I didn't think that you were the only one who might have a shot to hit this thing so hard that it can't get back up."
His use of the phrase "the only one" implies that there might be another person that could help take Vecna down, but they aren't ready yet. . .
So. . . Will might be the fail safe, but Brenner and Owens don't want El to know the truth? That she has a [twin] brother? Because they know that she would refuse to have him put in harm's way?
(I am making a part 2, because this it a bit long, and part 2 is detailing more on Will.)
(again, i'm not 100% certain on this, there's a lot to explain in terms of plot holes, but it's a theory, so just roll with it)
