There are a lot of questions that the show left unanswered, so I’m gonna take a few of these things and try to make some sense of it. This is gonna be long but I promise it’ll be fun, at least for space nerds. I’m gonna talk science but I’ll try to make it more easy to digest so let’s say I’ll stay science-adjacent rather than exact.
Here are some of the things from s5 that made me come up with all of this stuff:
12 kids → why 12 and why 12 power sources
Wormhole → like why was there a wormhole at all? Where did it come from?
Exotic matter → how do you even find exotic matter in a 3D universe
The wheels that are everywhere but no one knows why or what they mean
The circular shape thingy from Holly’s playground (the one who Finn wears around his neck during the SNL skit and Will the Wise wears in a drawing)
Memories lagging and identities being distorted in the epilogue
The Jancy breakup scene in the UD lab having weird physics
These are obviously just a few, of course I’m talking from the point of view of someone who thinks the Abyss wasn’t actually Dimension X (missing monsters, battle too easy, etc) but rather something else entirely that was put there on purpose.
This theory started because I was looking at the pages from Brenner’s journal that Dustin finds in the UD lab when I was trying to understand when the “anomalies” started + why Nancy shooting the exotic matter seemingly had no repercussions for the universe.
We have a wormhole, and exotic matter to keep it stable, but how do we find exotic matter and how do we form a wormhole?
Exotic matter and wormholes exist only in theory, because they defy our standard physics. But there is a way to make them plausible, or rather a way for which they’re not only mathematically possible but the physics would actually allow them to exist.
And that is M-Theory.
M-Theory → think of it as a framework in which exotic matter (negative mass) can exist.
The thing about M-Theory is that it doesn’t operate in 3 dimensions like we do, it operates in 11 dimensions, exactly, eleven. So we have 3 + 7 other curled up dimensions + time.
What do I mean with curled up dimensions?
Remember the analogy that Mr. Clarke makes with the ant and the rope? That is exactly what happens here: we see a line, but the ant also sees the circumference and can navigate it → it’s a tiny hidden dimension.
Now imagine Swiss Cheese, but the cheese stretches on forever, and like a static shock tiny bubbles form inside the cheese, imagine these are our tiny dimensions, where different rules apply since the cheese keeps stretching and they move around.
This is an image from Brenner’s journal and this is the representation of M-Theory:
Now we have our framework where exotic matter and wormholes are possible, but how do we form a wormhole? In theory a black hole could be paired with a mirror twin white hole and form a wormhole, which becomes a bridge between two points in time or space. Here is a reference:
The issue about black holes is the “information paradox” that results from the Hawking radiation discovery: information falls in the black hole and is lost through the Hawking’s evaporation process that erases it completely - this is a paradox because in quantum physics no information can be lost.
There are many solutions to this issue (you can read about black holes’ entropy about this) and one of these is called: Wheeler’s bags of gold → in curved space a surface area can enclose a larger volume (imagine a universe contains another big universe). But this is a paradox: if it’s true then the entropy contained isn’t proportional to the surface area. This made me obviously think about the Wheelers and Mike, but also about all the wheels references we see in the show, like this one:
Another solution is called the island formula with replica trick, here it’s how it looks:
Reminded me a lot of this:
Basically the island formula makes sure the Page curve can be correct and it solves the paradox: the entanglement entropy disappears, black hole evaporates and no information is lost (to make it really really easy).
Extreme forces like the ones near a black hole/wormholes/exotic matter can fuck up physics as we know it: it could be an explanation for the white goo room in the UD lab with Jancy → it didn’t have any sense from our point of view because we think in standard physics terms.
Other two key facts are that: Radio signals can go both ways into a wormhole (particles can go one way and waves can go both ways) and that the Matrix Model, based on nine matrices, has a low energy limit which can be explained by an 11 dimensional universe → Matrix model, M-Theory and wormholes are interconnected.
So let’s say the anomalies started when Nancy shot the exotic matter, destabilizing the wormhole → the exotic matter kept the entanglement wedges aligned between Hawkins and the wormhole and the disturbance basically re-wired what is entangled with what → information shifted because certain parts of spacetime are now part of other quantum islands = the information is conserved but now it’s not accessible to the characters (memory distortion and weird behaviours).
If you look at the light cone theory, we can say that the characters’ past is now outside their present (light cone).
It’s like the UD isn’t actually between Hawkins and Dimension X, it’s another part of spacetime behind the wormhole’s horizon.
This could also explain what Camazotz, the UD, the Abyss and Dimension X actually are: the Upside Down is our Wheeler’s bags of gold (WBG), it has its interior geometry and lacks life forms because it’s grown from entanglement. Camazotz is another entanglement or a memory pocket that MF and Vecna can access, so Henry’s memories are basically encoded inside the 11D bulk. People can access Camazotz and the Abyss because they are 4D projections of Dimension X - they are sub-islands, with low entropy. While Dimension X is actually one of those bubbles we talked about, it’s one of the eleven dimensions, the tenth, actually.
Now, what is still unanswered?
12 kids
Will connection to Dimension X and Vecna + his innate powers
The fake Hawkins we see in the epilogue
M-Theory = 11 dimensions → 10 spacelike + 1 timelike → the wormhole connects two points in time rather than in space. That is why time is important (November 6th) and also fucked up in vol.2 and 3 (watches not showing time, November 6th not showing the year, 1987/1989 + references to the 60s).
And if we think of the kids as power sources that Vecna needed to activate, this would bring us back to the Tesseract Derek was building in the classroom when Mr. Whatsit approached him: a Tesseract is used to understand spacetime beyond our 3D, or how events happen across time → it has 16 vertices, so 4 + 12 (4 used in s4 to open a rift in space and 12 in s5 to open a rift in time). The kids are basically anchors to stabilise Vecna’s plan (or rather the Mind Flayer’s).
They are a discrete holographic boundary = boundary of a lower-dimensional system that encloses a higher dimensional system.
What is going on with Will is completely different: he was taken directly to the UD (our WBG) not the Abyss) and not only exposed to the particles in there, he also died in the UD. It’s like his mind is between two entanglement wedges, and that is why Vecna calls him a builder: he creates form, he has access to space.
That is why he can sense things and why he works like an “antenna”: his powers are “innate” in the sense that he became part of the 11D, which is why he’s able to enter Henry’s mind → he has access to the high-dimensional structure Henry is part of (and his memories in Camazotz).
It’s like Will isn’t fully part of the 3D world, he’s part of the whole 11D system, this means that he’s not fully part of the same spacetime the others are part of = the reason why they’re forgetting things like his birthday.
The Abyss we already said is a projection - to make our party believe they are fighting and defeating the real Mind Flayer (this is why nobody died even if they should have, like Steve who was already out of reach when Jonathan gripped his hand) → this is why we don’t see them getting out, because they entered a low-entropy replica in spacetime.
And that is exactly what we see in the epilogue → when they exploded the exotic matter/the lab, they entered a “shadow” of Hawkins, where everything works for the observers’ comfort (the characters).
But everything already started when Nancy shot the exotic matter → the destabilization made the wormhole lose timelike structure and memory/reality collided and re-wired themselves → the entanglement islands start overlapping and with them the memories in Henry’s memory pocket (Will coming out speech = him feeling emotions that aren’t fully his own) bleed into “Hawkins”: 60s songs/clothes, etc.
And this is also why in the epilogue everyone is behaving weirdly (they are basically compressed versions of themselves in a low-entropy shadowed Hawkins) and objects keep coming back (clothes from s1/2, Jonathan’s ring being the one Hopper uses,etc).
So how do they fix this? How do they “go back” to the “future” (real) Hawkins?
They basically need to force a Page transition (in physics terms) by triggering the entanglement island. They have to make the universe remember and overload (remember how waves can travel through spacetime wormholes?) by overcharging it with everything that doesn’t belong in that reality because it isn’t coded in its essence.
They need to synchronize walkies, clocks, music, radios and broadcast signals from many different locations and they have to recall shared memories from the real Hawkins → creating a conflict with how “fake Hawkins” expects them to behave - like saying things they never said, or telling the truth → that is why the white goo stopped when Nancy and Jonathan told the truth to each other, they basically stopped time.
Those exit signs aren’t there because they will get out by crossing a physical door, they will force a door to open by overloading the signal and making the fake system collapse.
here is pt.2 - where I also talk about Will's tunnels
