#st plot holes

[bixb]

Topic is: forgotten characters that should have appeared/been mentioned

[monsterkill--er]

Will's Lost Escape From Camazotz Plot

The timeline in EP6 was majorly reordered. There are large gaps in time and chunks of story missing that hurt logic and pace. It was immediately noticeable to me upon first watch when it came to Will and Vecna's scenes as it cuts away jarringly, lacking structure as it appears. Yet, this goes beyond their storyline in the library to where the chronological order of the entire episode is messed with.

The Set Up (With No Pay Off)

First, there is fairly strong evidence and sound logic supporting the idea that Will was traversing Camazotz with Max and Holly for longer before being taken to the library.

There is important missing context explaining why Will and Max are suddenly as close as they appear after having been apart for years. They were never paired together within the larger friend group, and their reunion would not realistically supersede one between El and Max, who are established as best friends. If Will and Max shared a larger plotline in EP6, it would resolve this narrative inconsistency.

Additionally, Will finding Holly and rescuing her in person would give him far more agency, especially since this was his explicit goal established in EP2 during his fight with his mother. After having such a significant role in Vol1, and given that his entire arc centers on reclaiming agency, it is strange that Will appears to have almost no influence on the plot in EP6 besides knowing where Max is. However, there are major contextual clues in surrounding scenes that suggest he actually did have more to do.

One such clue is a visual hint, the pattern referencing Holly and Max framed behind Will’s head while his eyes shift in a trance. This composition suggests they are together in the mind. Cinematically, this functions like a thought bubble, a visual representation of Will’s mind. In directing, filmmakers often use background or overhead composition to convey subjectivity and interiority without relying on flashbacks or overt effects. This framing acts as our first indication that a larger plot involving Will, Holly, and Max was planned during production design and planning stage, but later either not filmed or cut in editing.

The second clue lies in the physical behavior of the characters in trance. During Max’s “Running Up That Hill” sequence, as she navigates Vecna’s mindscape with Holly, her eyes roll in her physical body. Her eyes roll again when she travels through El’s mind and Henry’s memories in the finale. Will’s eyes also roll in this scene. We have seen this before: in Season 2, Will’s eyes roll during his demo-link when the demodogs are creating tunnels, which is effectively him traversing too. His eye rolling here mirrors Max’s exactly, indicating he is traveling inside Camazotz.

At the same time, Robin establishes through her conversation with Lucas and Mike that all three characters are in a trance simultaneously. In the dialogue, she explicitly sets up the idea that Max and Holly could tell the group “where Will is” once they escape Vecna’s mind. Yet we never see Max and Holly interact with Will again after his brief possession of Vecna in the Wheeler house. Still, this dialogue supports the broader idea that Will and Max are mirroring each other, operating under the same rules of a trance. If Will’s eyes are rolling, then by the show’s own visual language, he must also be traveling through the mind.

Non-linear Patchwork

Now this is where the timeline gets interesting. There is an entire night between the Camazotz–Wheeler house events in EP5 and when we see Vecna with Will in the library in EP6. After Holly and Max reach the cave, Vecna goes looking for Will (timestamp: 0:08:33). There is then a time jump to the next morning (timestamp: 0:09:40), which Mike later clarifies was a few hours. After that, we finally see Will being Vecna’d in the library (timestamp: 0:12:43).

What’s curious is that Will’s eyes are seen rolling at least two minutes before Vecna meets him in the library, before Vecna searches through Will’s memories to find Max, and before the builder-and-spy speech (timestamp: 0:10:02). This suggests Will was not restrained in the library the entire time, roaming freely in Camazotz.

This leads me to believe one of two scenarios.

Will may have found himself back in the Wheeler house after Vecna shoved him. He could have chosen to stay inside Vecna’s mind in order to save Max and Holly. It’s possible Will traveled through Camazotz while Vecna was chasing them. When Will says, “They got away, didn’t they?” it sounds as if he already knows Max and Holly made it to the cave safely, as if he was present in Camazotz. Will could have spent the entire night running from Vecna as Vecna hunted him down.

Later, during his coming out in EP7, Will says Vecna showed him visions of his greatest fears that we never actually see. These visions still have a major effect on the plot, since they are what ultimately push Will to come out. They resemble Nancy’s vision sequence in Season 4. That suggests Will could have been traveling through visions and/or memories, which theoretically could have taken all night, especially considering Max’s trance lasted eighteen months. Perhaps Will uncovered what truly happened to him in the Upside Down, and the unraveling of those memories led him to the library. Vecna’s line, “The more you resist, the more this will hurt,” implies that the next part of this plot should have been Will’s traumatic visions or memories too.

In the cave with Holly, Max says they should wait for rescue from whoever helped them escape, assuming it was El, while the audience knows it was actually Will. This sets up the idea of Will coming to find them. Based on the dialogue, blocking, and overall context, this cave scene takes place right after Vecna leaves, before the time jump to Nov. 6th (timestamp: 0:16:15). Yet in the final cut, it is reordered to appear after Vecna meets Will (timestamp: 0:10:02). As a result, these plots are not being told in chronological order with the rest of the episode. There is a lot of editing trickery meant to make it feel that way, but once you look closely, the timeline does not add up, which is why the episode instinctively feels jarring.

Max and Holly also talk about traveling through traumatic memories from when their minds were first stolen by Vecna in order to escape. They then realize they can escape through Vecna’s traumatic memory. That is the secret passage they find. To escape, they use something that ties them to the physical world. This suggests the same rules would apply to Will, and explains why he went to the library when Vecna first stole his mind. He may have been trying to escape on his own.

Enter El, which further highlights this missing plot. When El first tries to find Will, she says, “I can’t reach him, he keeps slipping away” (timestamp: 0:26:50), as if she has found him traversing his memories. This mirrors how she moved through Billy’s memories in Season 3 and Max’s in Season 4.

At 0:36:33, Will’s demo-link sends the demodogs after Max. He is flinching, convulsing, and whispering “Max,” making it clear he is spying on her comatose body.

At 0:50:19, El returns to the void, asks Will to show her where he is, and finds him at the library. El initially appears with no nosebleed. In the next shot, when she touches Will, she has a nosebleed, as if she used her telekinesis in a moment that was cut. Meanwhile, Will is no longer convulsing, despite the demodogs still searching for Max. These could be continuity errors, yet—

At 0:55:09, there is a flashback of Vecna’s “found you” as he finds Max at the hospital within Will’s stored memories. These memories reuse the exact same demodog montage footage of the hospital shown twenty minutes earlier. Why is this plot specifically told in a non-linear structure when the others are not, and why reuse the same hospital footage twice?

Will then says, “I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t. He saw.” This line has double meaning. Vecna saw Will’s secret that he has tried to hide, and/or Vecna saw where Max’s body was in Hawkins. Considering Max’s earlier line about waiting for rescue, it feels important that we should have seen Will trying to stop Vecna to rescue Max and Holly, and the reason he failed, which is tied to his secret that comes into relevance later on.

Somehow, El brings Will home after it has been established that the way out through Vecna's mind for Will is a traumatic memory.

At 1:04:14, the demodogs are blown up after Lucas rescues Max’s body and they hide in the laundry room. At the same time, Holly and Max are still in Vecna’s mindscape. They again reiterate that the way out of Camazotz is something that “connects you to the real world, to home.” Earlier, El said Will was going to bring him home. This creates another narrative inconsistency. It is minor, and because magical girl El is involved, I guess it can be overlooked.

Finally, at 1:09:59, there is a moment that is especially confusing. When Max runs toward her portal back to Lucas, we hear a heart monitor she is no longer connected to. This could be read as a callback to Lucas being Max’s heart. However, the next episode opens with a heartbeat sound effect, which conveys the same idea with stronger narrative clarity.

In the next episode, Joyce tells Will that Max is safe and that “none of this would’ve happened if it weren’t for you.” Will says Vecna “knew it, which is why out of everyone in Hawkins he chose me.” This touches on one of the biggest dramatic questions of the show: does Will remember what happened and why he was chosen, a mystery set up in the first scene of S5EP1 when he is abducted in a flashback. That question is now boiled down to an ambiguous reference to “it,” framing his homosexuality as “it.” It feels like he is referencing something we already saw, and then references it again during his coming out. What he saw remains unresolved because there is a whole chunk of EP6 missing.

Later in EP7, Max says, “So I leave you alone for a second and you turn into a sorcerer…It sure seemed like it to me.” Despite no one explicitly telling her that it was Will and not El possessing Vecna, at least not on screen, Max knows. This is also the moment of their overly affectionate reunion that lacks context.

TL;DR: Visual and narrative inconsistencies prove Will was traversing Camazotz alongside Max and Holly for longer than the episode shows, and that a larger shared plotline was planned but removed. That, or Will's Vecna vision was cut, which is why we never get an explicit answer as to why he was chosen.

[vanillaaprils]

why is it forgotten about that the upside down is hella freezing? i mean look at will in season 1, he was always shaking and telling his mom how cold it was, but just after season 2 that was completely forgotten about, eleven HAD to freeze if she was soaked with water all the time but she seemed just fine in s5

idk if i i missed something but i haven’t seen anyone mention it

[rowanintheriver]

so. will disappeared to the upside down on nov 6th. as per canon, vecna found him on nov 12th.

the upside down has no food or water.

how the fuck did this boy survive those 6 days?

[monsterkill--er]

Watergate Scandal: HOLES? DICK? 🤨

Don't the tunnels reach Lover's Lake? In fact, wasn't every major waterway in Hawkins mentioned in Will's tunnel puzzle? Yet, on the S5 tunnel map they don't even span near at least two major lakes clearly visible on the right. This is what I'm talking about:

This is a MAJOR plot hole, while in the same breath they make a Richard Nixon reference and this "great escape" scene builds to a huge leak. On the bottom left is the tunnel epicenter, the secret government lab, HNL, which is the origin of the town's conspiracies.

Lover's lake is "guarded" by demo bats in S4. There are literal military guards there in S5, where the explosive billboard scene's wall is calculated to be on the other side of lake. Not to mention, the HNL and Dustin's incongruous maps.

That wall is an offense against history and humanity (/s).

Max and Holly technically have a water scene in Vecna's mind, but Will doesn't… For some reason, Noah is there at the gigantic blue screen also used for a lot of the Lover's Lake scenes in S4.