Stranger Things 4 Vol. 2 Theory Dump
Ok, I’ve been commenting theories here and there on Youtube videos and such because I can't stop thinking about Stranger Things 4, so I’m just gonna put them all here to get them out of my brain. Also it goes without saying, but ST 4 Vol. 1 spoilers below.
Dustin had it wrong, and that VECNA is the top dog and the Mind Flayer is either HIS five star general or that the Mind Flayer is actually just the physical manifestation of Vecna's powers, a false Vecna that he sent out to test the waters. If Vecna is the top dog that would explain the hive mind, what connects everything in the Upside Down is in fact his psionic powers.
I think that El didn't just toss him into the Upside Down, but that she actually created it, because when he is flying through there, it sure as hell didn't look like Hawkins. If that's the case, then he would be the first being in there, and he could have spent the time between his arrival there and the opening of season one creating the other monsters, moulding it to look like Hawkins, trying to make psychic connections with the real world and succeeding in the sense that "Upside Down Hawkins" was able to keep pace with the real Hawkins, in terms of the physical items in the Upside Down mirroring the real world. But he had no way yet to connect psychically with the PEOPLE in the real world, or he didn't see a reason to. He wanted a human-less world and now he had one.
When the gate opens at the start of season 1, it happens when Eleven "contacts" the Demogorgon. With the hive mind in play, Vecna would see her through the Demogorgon's eyes and could have even contributed to the gate opening up in that moment himself. Time in the Upside Down stops then, or at least the items stop updating themselves, so to speak, as Vecna is no longer focusing on turning the Upside Down into his ideal world. Now he is focusing on revenge on Eleven, and humanity in general, but he has to be careful because Eleven is just as, if not more, powerful than he is, so he practices by possessing Will, sending in the Mind Flayer, flaying Billy and the others. And THEN, Eleven loses her powers and leaves Hawkins, so now he can strike. And even though the gate is now closed, contact has been made. The "mother gate" opened because of a psychic connection between two beings in both worlds, and Vecna knows now that gates can be opened that way, so he learns how to do it from the other side.
There’s a lot of talk this season about what memories evoke what responses. One tells Eleven that thinking of a memory that evokes both sadness and anger will make her stronger, but then Brenner says later that if they allow anger to take over, they will fail. As we see with Max in Vecna’s mind world, what breaks her out isn’t just the music, it’s remembering memories of happiness and love (A la the Patronus charm). We see the same with Eleven in episode 7 when it is the memory of her mother’s love that gives her the strength to beat him. (Side note: how sad is it that the literal only happy memory that Eleven has at that point in her life is her mother saying I love you in the 30 seconds immediately following her birth). I have two theories relating to this:
First, you know who else used anger to fuel their powers: Eight. And One even mentions Eight, so maybe he's the one who taught her that. Maybe her escape was his first attempt to get free, but something went wrong. Either she couldn't remove his tracker/inhibitor chip thing or she just ended up escaping without him some other way.
Second, they also made a big deal about Mike saying I love you to Eleven, so perhaps him saying it to her in her big face off with Vecna helps make her more powerful than ever before. I feel like that has to come into play here somehow.
So we know both that season 5 will be the last season and that there will be less of a time jump between seasons as there has been in the past, so it seems likely to me that the end of season 4 will set the stage for season 5, maybe even leading directly into it, and that it will be bigger than ever before. What could be bigger than the crazy things that have already happened to these kids in the past three years? One thing that has always stayed (mostly) the same is the ignorance of the town to the supernatural events that have gone down. As we have already seen this season, the town now knows something is and has been wrong in the town, though at the moment their assumptions are incorrect. The kids also seem to be backed into a corner right now, what with half the town thinking they are all part of some cult that is responsible for the murdered teenagers. At this stage something drastic would have to happen to rule out Eddie and the rest of the kids as suspects. In the volume 2 trailer, there is a quick scene where we see Mrs. Wheeler protecting little Holly from what seems to be some kind of force that is shaking the house. All this leads me to think that Season 4 will end with Vecna and the rest of the Upside Down bursting into and taking over all of Hawkins. The whole town will find out and have to evacuate the town, or something similar.
More than anything, I do not want this theory to be true, but I think Steve will die. I love Steve, he’s basically my favourite character, and I can’t imagine the show without him, but I think all the clues are pointing to his death. First of all, Steve has been much more heroic than usual this season, gotten a lot more screen time. He dove down to find the gate, was a total badass taking out the bats, which could possibly be a set up for another heroic, yet fatal, moment for him later. Eddie emphasized further how awesome he was, “Steve Harrington is a badass, Steve Harrington is a good guy, everybody loves Steve”.
They are also underlining his close relationships with so many of the characters. Eddie talks about how Dustin worships him, Steve got to interact a lot more with the other kids (Max even had a letter for him, the only one of the older teens she gave a letter to), he has a close relationship with Robin, even he and Eddie start to bond a bit.
Most glaring of all, is all of the heavy handed hints at the rekindling of his relationship with Nancy. Eddie, Robin and Dustin all make extremely pointed comments about it, plus Steve and Nancy have all their little moments together (like her ogling him shirtless, the awkward moment in the Creel house with the spider web, when she bandages his wounds, the flirty “you almost deserved it” when their talking about guns in the Upside Down). The hints are NOT subtle, seems a little silly for the Duffers to have Nancy swing from Steve to Jonathan and back to Steve again. It makes sense for her and Jonathan to break up, if it happens, because they’re 18 and their lives are going in different directions, it would be perfectly fine and normal for them to drift apart. But, I’m not sure if it would do anything for the characters if Steve and Nancy were to get back together. Why else would their romance be so hinted at?
Steve has evolved from the typical douche jock that everyone hates into one of the most likeable characters with personal connections to MANY of the main characters. Season 4 is proving darker, more serious, and more mature than any of the previous seasons and the death of a main character has been heavily hinted at by the Duffers and others. Given the focus this season on how great Steve is and a cool, hero guy, and how important he is to so many characters, it seems to me like they are setting him up to have a gut-wrenchingly tragic death. Steve’s death would rock our Hawkins crew to their core, Nancy, Robin, Dustin, and the rest of the kids would be devastated, providing the fuel to destroy Vecna and the Upside Down even more.
He could go out one of two ways, either he sacrifices himself to save someone (Probably Dustin or Nancy), or he could suffer some complications from his injuries from the demobs. I think the latter is more likely (Robin’s hints about rabies, the ominous music/creepy and suspicious Upside Down squelching sounds when they saw his wounds, his coughing when they reached Eddie’s trailer).
I really hope I’m wrong about this, I’ll lose it if Steve dies. Or I hope that if I’m right, it’s either a Hopper situation and they just think he’s dead or that everyone’s theories about time travel is correct and they can somehow go back and redo events including saving Steve.
This is a much wilder theory, especially since we’ve already had a triple reveal about the identity of Mr. Orderly, but what if Henry Creel/One/Vecna is also Eleven’s father? First of all, the timeline lines up: if Eleven was born in 1971, and Henry Creel was 12 at the time he attacked his family in 1959, that would make him 24 at the time of her birth and 32 when she sent him to the Upside Down in 1979.
Also, when he is recounting his past to Eleven, One said that when Brenner realised that he couldn’t control him, he tried to remake him, which caused him to start his program. How would he remake him?. Brenner could do research and seek out other people or children with psychic powers or he could use One’s DNA to create more children himself. Either he did one or the other, OR a combination of the two.
We know that Terry Ives has a bit of psychic power, enough to make lights flicker and communicate with Eleven in her mind. Her powers were clearly nowhere near as powerful as Eleven’s though, as she wasn’t able to fight back in her altercations with the people at Hawkins Lab, but she did have some sort of powers. What if the experiments Terry Ives joined prior to Eleven’s birth were a front so that Brenner could find others with powers and create more powerful children with the DNA of his test subjects. Terry could have been tricked, or she could have agreed to be a surrogate so the they could claim her child and she just never told her sister the truth, and she changed her mind when the time came. This would explain why she knew so absolutely that Brenner had taken Jane. Brenner’s experiments could have used only the DNA of the test subjects, or he could have used One’s DNA for some or all of them. I think it’s most likely that he used One’s DNA for only some of the pregnancies, and used DNA from male volunteers to create some of the kids, as if would be a better experiment scientifically that way. Also, if he only used One’s DNA, this would make ALL of the kids in the lab his children and that would make him killing them all even more horrific.
Although, the timeline lines up for Two, the first kid created, to be One’s child as well. If the kids created with his DNA were done so by artificial insemination, One will have had to have reached puberty at the time of the first one’s birth. Two looks to me to be no older than 16, and that would make One 16 at the time of his birth at the youngest, which is possible. If Two and Eleven are both One’s children that would explain why they are so strong psychically, given how powerful One is.
If Eleven is One’s daughter, that would also explain why he gravitated towards her to single out as well. If psychic power is inherited genetically, as we can assume as Terry Ives has powers, Eleven would HAVE to have a father with stronger powers than her mother, as her mother’s are so weak.
Yes, I’m agreeing with all the theories out there that Will is gay and has a crush on Mike, it’s completely obvious, has been hinted at since season 2 really. I also agree with many similar theories out there that Will’s painting is related to Mike in some way.
First of all, the painting was obviously supposed to be a gift for Mike, as he brought it to the airport. He clearly decided not to give it to him after Mike greeted him in a lacklustre manner, you can even see Will dejectedly scrunching the painting a little as they leave the airport. Then, Will puts the painting in his backpack after he and Mike have a heart to heart, so that is clearly him changing his mind about giving the painting to Mike.
As to what the painting is, it’s anyone’s guess, but since he was originally intending to give it to Mike in a public place in front of his friends and family, it is probably not meant to be a way to confess his feelings for Mike or come out to him. I doubt he would do that in front of other people, if at all. I think the painting is about friendship, maybe it’s of just him and Mike, maybe it’s all of their friends, maybe it’s the swings where they first met as kids, maybe its their D&D characters, etc.
As for when Will’s sexuality is revealed, if it ever is, I think it may have something to do with Vecna. As soon as Will steps foot in Hawkins, he will become the PERFECT candidate for a Vecna victim, given his extensive past trauma, and the secrets/problems that are currently haunting him (his sexuality/feelings for Mike). Whether his secrets are revealed to Mike or any of the other characters or if just we the viewers find out remains to be seen.
Another quick theory I have is that Lucas gets Vecna-ed. This theory is solely based off of the two clips of him alone and looking at something terrified in the trailers and this one behind the scenes clip. In the clip, Gaten is in a trailer getting his make up or hair done, and Caleb walks in having just finished some filming. Caleb shows Gaten a photo on his phone of whatever he was just filming and the editors blur out the image so the viewers can’t see what it is. Gaten then asks if they had given Caleb contacts and if they were uncomfortable. Caleb answers yes and yes. The most probably reason I can think of to give Caleb painful contact lenses is if he gets Vecna-ed. Although, it could have just been a distorted version of Lucas showing up in somebody ELSE’S Vecna hallucination.
Parallels between Eleven and One:
This isn’t a theory really, just me noticing evidence in past seasons of Eleven’s repressed memories coming out.
1: The little head flick One does when snapping the guard’s neck. Eleven does that in season one to snap a guard’s back as well and also to break Mike’s bully’s arm. She learned that from One
2: In season one, where she kills the Lab people who were trying to capture her in the middle school, all their eyes bleed, just like One does to his victims.
3: In season 3, Eleven lifts Billy into the air like One did to her and to his victims.
4: She removed the piece of Mind Flayer gunk from her leg in season 3 the same way she removed the inhibitor chip from One’s neck. Honestly, the fact that she loses her powers immediately after that and Brenner says that the reason she can’t access her powers is because of her repressed memories, makes me think that her doing that subconsciously triggered her PTSD and that is why she lost her powers after removing the thing from her leg.
5: The most obvious one, Eleven destroying the Demogorgon in season one, EXACTLY the same way she destroyed One.
