The Original Master Recording of "Eleven" — Why Stranger Things Chose Violence 💣 ☔️🌈
Hidden in a S2 flashback of cleaning up the cabin (a reoccurring theme), the original master recording of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon pops up.
The last line over a heartbeat: "There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact, it's all dark…"
An album of heartbeats and ticking clocks, similar sound effects end EP 6 & 7, and are the sounds that morph into those of brick laying in the epilogue.
Bricks are symbol of conformity, an allusion to The Wall poster in the radio station's basement.
The album's rainbow on the cover is an illusion of a single, colorless, light beam, where the colors always obey the same order.
And the title's sided moon, represented by a triangle prism, in fact has no sides, because it's all dark, as the sun makes it alight. Therefore, the idea of a side is something we've collectively imagined.
Throughout the final season, its themes of darkness and light match the album's themes. Roger Waters explains that by meeting the listener on "the dark side of the moon," he means seeing their shared troubles that aren't just in their head, as darkness is an intangible, collective feeling.
In the track, "Brain Damage", the lyrics go, "Got to keep the loonies on the path...The lunatics are in my hall...The lunatic is in my head."
Lunatics, admirers of the moon, veer off society's path when they do not obey made up orders. Our characters briefly do the same as Max says there is no "brick road" inside the hall of Henry's mind and they cut through the fourth-wall breaking play.
Therefore, the dark moon symbolism holds deeper connotations about "lunacy." Us sharing in this lunacy is just like Waters' statement and Will and Mike's lines, "crazy together."
Max's reference to the Wizard of Oz recalls Dorothy's subconscious journey to the Emerald City where she finds her heart's desire. In S1, HNL is called the Emerald City, the experimental facility in Will's backyard.
Dorothy realizes that if she ever goes looking for her "heart's desire" again, she won't look any further than her own backyard, because if it isn't there, she "never really lost it to begin with."
What this means is, she never had to imagine a world beyond a rainbow—love, happiness, and fulfillment were powers she already possessed, which mirrors Robin's speech to Will, who comes to terms with his sexuality.
If a friend of Dorothy's is Will, the cowardly lion emblem who finds bravery to come out, then Mike is Dorothy. He is called "the heart," he is the dungeon master who leads the party and is trapped in his own illusion.
Behind The Dark Side Of The Moon is Supertramp, a self-titled album about the naive illusion of love and its lie. The cover is a rose, just like the Creel House door, and the symbol of doomed love in the fake-out play.
One of the songs personifies a shadow, "Shadow's Song," representing feelings of doubt and insecurity that lead to regret and being forgotten. The lyrics go:
"Guess my shadow spoke to me tonight and made me throw my dreams away. Told a story of a twisted man, who was playing with some foolish plan, about a girl who'd have her way."
A girl who is a part of a foolish plan is exactly El's relationship to Mike, who calls her an illusion. Though, the illusion is what she represents in reality—a lack of authenticity or pretense for a much larger issue of corporate greed.
Tracking this thread is the color purple throughout the show:
Bylers are labeled "lunatics" for looking behind the twisted wizard—Vecna's purple curtain, in his Dark Moon play. That's because we would not accept the heteronormative lie of Mike and El marketed to us.
We are told off for not "obeying our thirst," as Sprite's tagline says, a colorless competitor to the lemon [gay] taste of 7-UP, the "uncola" Mike and Will like to share. Sprite, a play on the mage's spirit, El, is in the frame with the rainbow color dice when Mike says there's "a purple light."
Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon is about the evils of influence and illusion, such as capitalism that creates the illusion of choice.
In the show, this illusion is represented in the cola war product placements, the rainbow room, and the color coding of Eleven as a deadly violet blinding spell. When Netflix choose to commodify her, she became their cola product, and no longer prioritized an authentic love story.
At the end of "Money," a solution to a squabble over "eleven" was "a heavy blow," after someone was asked when there was a time when violence was the "right" decision. Just like Mike's bomb, and how everyone acted as if they had a concussion (or brain damage) afterward, this creative dispute over Eleven was settled the same way.
Track 7, also the number Will and Dustin rolled to summon Eleven, is called "Us and Them." The lyrics are about an illusion of choice that controls everyone by creating a fighting mentality.
This mirrors the fandom's infighting between who Mike should choose, El or Will—yellow or purple (like the airport flowers), when it's actually not "any color you like," because the choice was taken away by Netflix.
The #7 is also the last roll pictured beside the Stranger Things player's manual. The last image of the show. The illusion of how the audience is the master of this universe, they can "believe" anything they like.
However, the #7 next to the words "fantasy role playing game," makes the original intent obvious as it's a nod to how Mike and Will were role playing as Eleven.
When Mike talks about "the real story" of the mage while staring directly at Will, the freedom of choice between Eleven and Will—believing they're separate entities—is broken. After all, violet is the 7th color in the rainbow.
The cut to Will and Finn's acting choice suggests that Mike's desire was not lost when Eleven died. Going by his comparison to Dorothy and the album's themes, El was the fake-out, the imagined dark side of the moon, and she was never the "real story" behind his pursuit.
Will is the summoner of the mage, the source of light. He is the sun in this overarching moon analogy and Mike's heart's desire he could've found at home instead of going on a fantasy campaign (or marketing campaign).
In reality, the threat was the corporate greed and illusion of love between Mike and El—and/or the queerbait of Mike and Will. In conclusion, because of Netflix's corporate greed, Mike was left blinded as the ending is left in darkness, illusion, and conformity.
