Eleven, The (Lost) White Knight, And The Gayest Meta Ever in Stranger Things ♞♛
Stranger Things layers its first and last season with allusions to a popular children's fairytale journeying through reversed logic and curiosity to tell a story about a boy struggling with his identity. Through music, framing, and repetition, the main character Mike Wheeler becomes caught in a mirror world where labels are deceiving and desires are hidden. Eleven, his magical companion, functions as his reflection and proxy, allowing feelings he cannot name to surface. As symbols of knights and princesses compound, the show encodes Mike with an internal conflict centered on homophobia and his homosexuality.
Go Ask Eleven, I Think She'll Know…
One of the clearest illustrations of this mirror-world framework arrives through the show’s deliberate use of music and lyrical timing. In the very first episode, the song "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane, plays during a cut to Eleven as the lyric, "And the White Knight is talking backwards," is sung. This is a reference to the character in Through the Looking-Glass, and what Alice Found There, a sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a story where Alice enters a mirror world that operates in reverse. Its themes explore identity, perception, and logic through its mirror-image setting while using chess to outline the plot structure, inspiring how D&D functions in Stranger Things.
Mike then compares El to Yoda, a former Jedi Knight that speaks backwards and in riddles. Another nod to the White Knight, who saves Alice and jabbers on about his backward inventions as he helps complete the final stretch of her journey. Colloquially, a "white knight" means savior, which is a mantle El assumes at the end of her arc too.
A subtle yet comprehensive allusion to the white chess piece is at the very start of the show. Mike is framed betwixt a bunny-eared antenna while the show Knight Rider plays with a poor signal and static on Ted's TV. Signal is also how El uses her powers, fighting the static of the walkie, to get better reception and connect Mike to Will, his close "friend" who went "missing". This single frame becomes the most powerful overarching symbol in retrospect.
More and more, as El clears her mind from the other senses she becomes fully aware of where Will is and sees him clearly—elucidating the theme of perception at the end of the show. This deciphering El does is very similar to the lesson the White Knight imparts on Alice through a musical poem that discusses use-mention distinction and metalanguage of names and labels. The Knight refuses to let Alice conflate a thing with the labels we use to describe it, highlighting the philosophical problem that we often confuse the symbols we mention with the objects we use them to represent.
In modern computing and logic, the Knight’s label hierarchy mirrors the way we use abstraction layers and indirection to manage complex systems. He obsesses over the metadata (the names) at the expense of the data (the song). Likewise in queer-coded storytelling, it is subtext prioritized over queer relationships and behavior (the text) that comes at the cost of actual representation.
Meanwhile, Alice points out that he has completely neglected the origin of the poem's tune itself, that it isn't his own invention and stolen from another real poetic song. Alice’s remark reminds the reader that you can name something as precisely as you want, but that doesn't change the reality of it. Essentially, the Knight is so busy building a logical fortress around the names of his work that he forgets the work itself is just a borrowed tune with some silly new words. The Knight's poem is a parody as Caroll borrows from two real poems to mock their wordplay, self-absorption, himself as a writer, and the inattentive listener, reader, or viewer who believes in the Knight's inventions instead of reality (pg. 146).
An example of use-mention distinction in the show relating to homophobia is how certain labels can cause harm, like using the thick concept of the f-slur to attack a gay person's core identity. There is a lot of metalanguage around homosexuality throughout Stranger Things, like "in/out/hiding," "special," "curiosity," "friends," "different," etc. Apart from those uses, Will is also called "freak," "weird," "queer," "f*g," "fairy," names that bullies obsess over and invent completely separate from the reality of who he is, his essence, and his feelings.
While Will is never out right referred to as a "girl," it is another label sometimes used in a derogatory way toward homosexual men; however, in a close second, he is described as "sweet" and "sensitive." These labels, usually reserved for women, have been given the 1980s perception of masculinity, which are not meant to be favorable descriptions. Referring to a man who identifies as man as a woman or a magical creature like "fairy" is completely illogical—yet, making this distinction is precisely the White Knight's lesson to Alice.
With El around, Mike has the courage to stand up to his bullies and defend Will from name-calling. He noticeably looks to her before he confronts his bully, Troy, at Will's memorial assembly for using slurs. She represents the metadata lesson as an allegorical figure who imparts wisdom and truth that transforms Mike.
He's Called Alice: The Lost Knight and The Proud Princess
El also has many names, such as, "Eleven," "Jane," "Mage," "Wizard," "Yoda," the list goes on and on; therefore, I argue, the "the lost knight," from Mike's D&D campaign in S1, is just another label used to describe her, and is another obvious allusion to the book.
Previously, I assumed "the lost knight" and "the proud princess" to mean Jonathan and Nancy based the assumption there is a romantic connotation ingrained in the archetypes' relationship (the "white knight" concept is often used romantically). This confusion is compounded by the fact El is supposedly a fairytale allusion (many saw her as heavily inspired by E.T., a non-sexual children's puppet, in S1). Moreover, the White Knight and Alice, technically a "princess" in the book, are not romantic; yet, they mirror El and Mike respectively. This is another choice I believe to be deliberately deceptive, as their kiss and the outside commentary on their relationship is a guise for the much deeper themes of misperception and internalized homophobia, which I will discuss later on.
A compelling counterpoint to this looking-glass argument would be Mike's D&D character who is a paladin, also known as a holy knight. One could ask how he does not represent the lost knight in this scenario but is an allusion to Alice instead. Both El and Mike make promises or vows to save Will, Mike contributes just as much effort into being Will's savior. To this, the answer comes down to plot and who the show assigns references to.
El was lost in the woods (after she escaped "the emerald city"), and by the end becomes lost again in the Upside Down. Her "holy" power is the reason Will was found, a power referred to as a "miracle". Her sacrifice coincides with his miraculous revival in S1. Ultimately, she becomes a white knight by saving Mike from the Demogorgon and Will from the Upside Down.
There are also many other references in the show supporting that El is an allusion of the White Knight. His inventions consists of a disgusting type of pudding, an upside down container, and his poem, 'A-Sitting on a Gate,' he recites before he and Alice depart. The latter two inventions being what El was used to create in the show (examples below).
Feed Your Head, Subconsciousness, and the Internalized Homophobia of Mike Wheeler
With the following, I'll highlight a few scenes and shots that further reference the White Knight's lesson, El as the knight, and Mike as Alice, utilizing film semiotics. These examples provide enough evidence to argue an intentional meta narrative that touches upon themes of identity, perception, and logic in association with internalized homophobia that caused Mike's subconscious love to substitute Will for El.
To preface, the cinema study of symbols and signs is often called film semiotics—the analyzing of film narratives as a language where instead of words and punctuation, shots and sequences through editing make up syntagms. Widely regarded film theorist Christian Metz pioneered this psychoanalytic cinema study, whose work argues film is an ‘impression’ of reality interacting with a spectator's subconscious much in the same way Carroll's book satirizes spectatorship in the White Knight and Alice's exchange. Being a large part of film criticism and history, semiotics has influences in all stages of production and has become one of the biggest contributions to perfecting the craft.
One sign of the meta lesson is the dress-up scene. There is a direct cut from fairy wings to Mike putting make-up on El. This episode makes an important parallel to the first shot with Troy's homophobic use of "flying fairies". Bracketing Mike dressing up El with this signifier with what is already a behavior associated often with queer men during this time period, playing with make-up, symbolizes Mike's internalized homophobia that projects his self-expression onto El.
El, dressed in a frock and blonde wig, is reminiscent of the iconic Disney version of Alice (in the book she is a brunette). Later on, she role-plays Mike's cousin. While the dressing up is an unconscious transference of self, the deliberate action of pretending they are related further ties them to the idea of how El is Mike's mirror-image.
At the end of the dress-up montage Mike and El are framed inside a mirror or looking glass. A reference to the mirror-world where logic is reversed, this shot punctuates the El-Mike-mirror-image interpretation. When logic is reversed, so are the roles—meaning, our perception of gender roles are turned on its head, and Mike is who truly represents Alice or the "proud princess," even wearing the blue of iconic 50s version. Moreover, this shot and the "kissing cousins" parody suggests a synthesis of the lost knight and the proud princess ideas as related, practically the same. Therefore, Mike's role as paladin makes sense.
From above, I pulled a lot of the metalanguage previously discussed. Such as Mike sending his distress signal "not out" in a conversation where he says, "this is about Will," more metadata for concealing his feelings and identity. Similarly, the word "hiding" is used. When Mike asks who Will is hiding from, the scene cuts to El pointedly looking at Mike. Linking him to the idea of hiding, Will, inner fear, and to the Demogorgon, a two-headed figurine signifying duality, masking, or mirroring. All together in this scene, the concept of internalized homophobia manifests by the image and word association that combines these signs into a syntagm, or single idea, in relation to Mike.
Another example is "friend," where throughout the show the use of this word has meant something more. Case in point, Mike sits next to Will across from a canon couple in said romantic setting, the Snowball dance. The mentioning of Will and "secret" in the same breath compares these two ideas. In addition, it is established that El is "channeling" Will, at least that is what Mike thinks. She is embodying or representing Will's essence. Particularly as when Mike hid her in his closet there was a ouija board, which is a game with movement driven by the subconscious, known as the ideomotor effect. If El is meant to be a reminder of Will, Mike should not be behaving romantically towards her or see her as something more than a "friend," or else he would exposing his subconscious feelings towards Will. He also reveals his internalized homophobia in his denial of the possibility.
Before Mike's closet thumps, his mother tells Mike he does not need to "hide" anything from her after bringing up Will in conversation. The "closet" is slang originating from the 1960s described as a queer person concealing their sexual orientation, but during that period it especially referred to discreet gay men (an alternate name was "closet queen"). This closet sequence is bracketed by the scene showcasing Mike's trophy and Mike holding Will's hand on said trophy in a photo as El recognizes Will.
The trophy figure is Nike, the ancient Greek goddess of victory, often winged holding a crown and/or a torch, like it is here, inspiring the popular shoe brand that El wears in S5 as a call back to this. She is also often depicted as a charioteer, a warrior who symbolizes the intellect or soul of human passion and will in Greek philosophy (Plato's Phaedrus). In Christianity, this statue also looks exactly like an angel, who can be spirit guides or guardians, and as this is a cut from El's perspective we begin to associate her in this role starting from this moment. Chiefly, carrying a torch is also a popular idiom that means suffering from unrequited love.
Framing this trophy in front of a rift, that looks very similar to the gate El created, the day she was found exactly where Will disappeared, which Mike says is not a coincidence, also denotes her as a substitution. In this syntagm containing "hiding," "the closet," a subconscious game, a spirit symbol of unrequited love, and the picture of hand holding (as Mike says "totally political" about a rigged fair), the combining theme is Mike's closeted orientation and shame stemming from internalized homophobia.
Although gender is not explicitly brought up here, the fact that El, a girl, is the mirror image of Will and Mike, two boys, is interesting. A common cliché line, although relatable to many in the queer community, is to wish you or your object of desire was the opposite gender ("I wish you were a girl," or "If I was a girl…") due to societal oppression and heteronormativity. Mike dressing up El as Alice, a character who represents him, and paralleling the proud princess, not prince, implies this stems from his own wish fulfillment. As soon as El defeats the Demogorgon and disappears, Will is returned to Mike, and is more evidence of role swapping. Therefore, El mirrors them both.
Note the prominently framed poster in the background about photosynthesis in yellow lettering with a flower that looks exactly like the Demo's head in the color blue, the color associated with Mike. Synthesis is a term used in both biology and philosophical analysis, where for the latter it means the process of combining multiple ideas to form a new, cohesive argument. In the composition, the two allegorical figures, El, who represents unrequited love, and the Demo, who represents internalized homophobia, established through previous examples, framing this sign of synthesis then become one through disintegration.
This is also how S5 ends off too. El's final conversation with Mike highlights the theme of unrequited love when he cannot say it back in the mirrored void, a metaphorical space for someone's mind or subconscious. When Mike says he "doesn't understand," El responds, "one day you will." A line that contains the name of the boy she represents. It speaks on internalized homophobia and the societal oppression Vecna targeted Will with, that Mike is afraid to face too as he is known for "hiding" with El, who is safe.
In S1, when Will says the Demogorgon got him, he looks at Mike. When El sacrifices herself, she looks at him from the gate to the Upside Down as it disintegrates. These two ideas of unrequited love and fear disappearing represent Mike overcoming these mental and emotional hurdles to come to the truth he is in love with his best friend, Will.
Both endings are similar to Alice and the White Knight's farewell before she becomes queen and wakes up from a dream to reality. With all of the comparisons of Mike to Alice, this is an intentional meta symbol that he is compared to a "queen," another slang word for gay men—today mostly used in relation to drag queens, performers (typically men) who adopt a flamboyant or parodic feminine personas, with glamorous or exaggerated costumes and makeup. Alice's arc from a pawn to a queen is ultimately the allusion used to reveal Mike will find queer acceptance.
El's words promising he'll understand one day and his hopes for Will are both signs that he has awoken to the realization he was gay the entire time and was in love with his childhood best friend as the final D&D game is all about retrospection. Alice's final goodbye to the White Knight is a farewell to childhood that cannot follow you into adulthood but the dream or magic continues, and by waking up she begins to control her own narrative. Therefore, Mike controlling his own narrative and finding acceptance is the promise, yet the completed arc is how he found identity and perspective.
Circling back to queer-coded storytelling, and this issue of prioritizing subtext, in this case choosing allusions over queer relationships does come at the cost of actual representation—as it is clear viewers choose to "believe" the impression that Mike was in love with El, rather than see how she represents himself and Will. And it is ironic that the show ultimately falls in line with the poem about stoicism Carroll parodies, Resolution and Independence. As the theme of accepting what we cannot control to achieve inner peace is what the Duffers promise for Mike and Will rather than address the reality of societal oppression with clear opposition. Therefore, that is why the ending of Stranger Things feels hallow and unfinished choosing the stoic approach that it had always meant to critique.
eta: Also I forgot to add in my rush to finish this post that the song Heroes, the show's anthem and final note, is about becoming "queen," too.
