Like I don’t want to get my hopes up on anything conformitygate related bc of how many times I’ve already been burned.
But like…wtf??
I’m a film student. I mention this bc I’m currently taking classes in editing. And when I tell you that with every lecture I attend about the most basic rules of dos and donts in storytelling through editing film. I realize more and more that the duffers aren’t breaking niche rules of the craft, they’re literally going directly against editing 101. Like freshman year shit. The type of stuff you learn week one of an intro level college class. And you’re telling me an entire crew of this size who all do this professionally just… all forgot how to do their jobs?? Simultaneously??
Telling instead of showing. Weird cuts. Long pauses. Suspiciously placed sound effects. Combine this with a lot of the other in-show evidence and guys— I know this sounds delusional but at this point it’s HARDER to explain away everything as coincidence. Like, do you know how minuscule the chances of all this happening accidentally are? Some of it is physically IMPOSSIBLE to do accidentally (set pieces changing colors). I mean, it may not have a deeper meaning, but regardless someone intentionally changed that dial to red.
Like—everything is adding up in a way that the probability of it being nothing is LOWER than the alternative.
And I just think that’s really fucking weird.
EDIT: holy shit I did not expect this post to blow up like this and I’d like to clarify something: I fully realize how low the probability of fake episodegate or whatever it’s called is real. I also realize there’s evidence also pointing in the other direction. This is not meant to be a confirmation of anything —I’m merely speculating for the love of the game at this point. It’s fun and worst case scenario it creates great fanfic ideas. I don’t have any hopes up for anything, but I’m frankly tired of people coming on to these posts and immediately running to debunk everything. At the end of the day it’s just a tv show and we’re having fun thinking about the “what if”.
You can share your thoughts, obviously, but most of the things people comment on posts like these are the same four arguments we’ve all heard a thousand times. We get it. You don’t have to agree with or believe in the theory in the slightest, but stop calling other people delusional or stupid for having fun in fandom.
I know there’s only a few conformity gate people left with me, but for anyone out there still interested, I’ve compiled a list of every piece of evidence I’ve seen recently that points to the idea of more content coming soon, I posted it on Twitter but I’d like to show it here too.
If you’re totally off the conformity gate bus, that’s fine, but please don’t hate or harass because some people still believe it. I’m not trying to grasp at straws or get peoples hopes up falsely, I genuinely just see so much evidence that it feels statistically IMPOSSIBLE for any of this to be a coincidence anymore. Every day I am more sure of it as more things come out.
Both how little everything makes sense if it’s not true, combined with how much DOES make sense if it IS true, has convinced me that this isn’t over.
So here’s some of the evidence I’ve collected (and there’s SO MUCH MORE)
Warning, long post:
- The legal registrations of the last half of the episodes. That one lawyer looked at it and compared to previous seasons and it doesn’t match at all.
- The legal ‘out’ of how they technically didn’t charge anyone for the movie tickets because they were just ‘vouchers’
- The nearly no press after the finale, nearly no comments from cast, and no crew admissions even though the DNA’s should be ending and come on if the writing issues, production issues, filming issues etc really WERE as bad as they’re making it seem, you KNOW some crew member would be talking g about it by now
- It took double the length to film this season compared to any other season
- WAY higher budget for LESS content, LESS production quality?
- Both that it apparently took twice as long to write this season than the others (pointing to much more content, aligning with the budget increase and the filming time increase) AND just the fact that things they said about the writing timeline in the documentary vs everything else we’ve heard about writing timelines do NOT match up, the math DOESNT make sense- plus how the fuck would Netflix EVER let them start filming before the final script… and then EXPOSE that in a documentary?!?!?!
- The way Caleb said traitor and now that’s been scrubbed from the internet, Millie said meta and now it has too
- Steve saying he wants to live in forest hills which has only ever been the trailer park and was only nice in the NINETEEN FIFTIES
- Randy being the ONLY actor in this season to comment and he’s dismissing everything so hard so much so constantly. Going out of his way to. And in the show, his was the character that did that too
- Will references The Grail which is a movie that ends up breaking the fourth wall and it’s a documentary and they see the camera people and it all breaks down
- Still so many proofs of scenes that were cut / not shown (from max’s moms actors to the miwi CGI pics to the proof of the church filming etc) plus in late 2024 I think they claimed the 600 something hours of footage
- The amount of things that the cast said in interviews that straight up just DONT MAKE SENSE. like things that wouldn’t even make sense to lie about (like if they were just lying to hide they didn’t like the ending), lying about weirdly specific things
- For example Millie said ‘ every question she’s ever had about the show and the upside down got answered’ not only does that truly not make sense but in the actual finale it’s like they PURPOSEFULLY left SO many questions about EVERYTHING unanswered, especially the upside down.
- Caleb also gave us the word ‘Zenith’ and Zenith is a movie in which “ creates frustration and paranoia by chopping up its narrative…. It comes off as the director jerking the viewer around…. It’s an examination of the conspiracy fan psychology.” THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO US COME ON
- Script reading discrepancies- Charlie said he was in front of Noah and Finn and they both cried 20 minutes in. This does not match the footage they showed us. The white scripts versus the red scripts. Finn changing clothes mid video randomly, like they’re cutting together a bunch of unrelated footage to set a narrative.
- The duffers are answering questions in interviews more dumbly, dismissively, and vaguely than they ever have before, switching up the way they’ve always acted
- The fact that the documentary itself was just weirdly bad. The directing was weird the things they focused on were weird. The amount of time they spent on the duffers struggling with the writing and pointing out so many flaws that then never got fixed in the actual show. Why would they point out the flaws so clearly if it shows incompetence on their part unless they wanted us to notice those flaws? They focused on this more than they did on most of the major import scenes from this season too which immediately stood out to me as odd. And we think the Netflix execs, famously PERFECTIONISTIC AND ANAL, would allow ANY OF THIS, for Netflix’s BIGGEST PROJECT EVER??
- The fact that Netflix still has not made any official statement about this. In any other situation they would have. Every day they continue to not address it it feels less and less likely that this is a money making marketing ploy, because THE DOCUMENTARY IS OUT???? ALL THE STRANGER THINGS CONTENT IS OUT??? how would not addressing this make them more money besides keeping some people on the subscription a bit longer? That’s not a sufficient explanation to me. This is objectively odd behavior
- The ‘Mike wake up’ sign at the sponsored wrestling event perfectly matching the blank yellow sign in the background of the epilogue graduation (and what are the chances they’d leave something like that in the show anyway?)
- All the weird coincidences/changes/inconsistencies from the season of course- the dial color changing and them NOT changing it even though they changed Holly’s wardrobe mistake very quickly. It’s autumn leaves in the background at graduation even though it’s GRADUATION, it’s supposed to be SPRING. Will saying melvald’s milshakes, even though that’s not only obviously wrong but so specific to get wrong, something they so specifically showed us in TFS play. The vacuum at the graduation is one only sold in the 1950’s. Dustin calls the guy ‘a square’ even though that’s slang ONLY USED IN THE 50S AND WEIRD ANY OTHER TIME. All the characters specifically growing up to do things they’ve seemed they’d never want to do, like Robin wearing girly clothes and Nancy quitting her dream college and Max emulating her abusive brothers rage issues and Mike acting and dressing just like his father etc.
- The amount of parallels to movies that have said ‘this is the final one’ and then come out with MORE.
- The 11 tapes that were sent out to creators to decipher. The cursor flicker pattern decodes to ‘STILL HERE’. The audio pulse decodes to ‘VECNA LIVES’. The tape also gives hints to a timeline ‘needing to be reset’ and Eleven being missing from said timeline as an anomaly
- The fucking Morse code of the tape wall behind Robin in that one scene, spells out ‘U DID NOT STOP ME’ baby how could that possibly be a coincidence. Do you understand how low the probability of that happening is.
- The fact that all of this directly makes US Joyce Byers in season one, not being believed, looking for and holding onto obvious undeniable clues even though no one else believes us. Parallel to the fake Will Byers body
- This also makes US the children in Henry’s house in his mind. Being surrounded by an illusion and only some see how none of it is real. Trying to convince the others. Not being able to find the way out
- It also makes US Lucas- “is this all just Vecna messing with us again?” “I don’t know about you guys but I don’t believe in coincidences, not anymore”.
- The documentary ends with Finn in the light with upside down, looking particles around him, saying “something is definitely coming” which is in itself, very telling that they would end on those words and from Finn’s mouth especially, but now add to it that those words are the first ever said in the first episode of Stranger Things in season 1- “something is coming, something hungry for blood” WHAT ARE THE ODDS????
- Why the FUCK did Jimmy Fallon randomly in the middle of Maya talking look directly at the camera and say “meta” then look back and not explain it or acknowledge he did it at all. He’s in on it I swear
- Jaime saying “tomorrow it begins” and “eleven lives” on the show. No explanation of course
- The finale’s opening being a shorter length than any opening of any episode. When they cut to the epilogue it begins with NO YEAR and a heartbeat and a clock ticking. When it becomes Nov 6 earlier on, they show NOVEMBER 6 but again, no year. Before this season they have always shown the year when putting dates on the screen
thank you ao3 for being an archive and not an algorithm. thank you for letting me like things without consequences, thank you for being free with no ads, thank you for having lawyers to defend our freedom of speech. thank you tag wranglers. thank you to all authors and thank you ao3
growing up with an angry father is terrifying but growing up a daughter with an angry mother is gut wrenching because you get it, you understand that she’s been worn down by the world and being treated as less and she’s been carrying the rage and traumas of her mother and her mother before her and her mother before her and when you see her you recognise that same rage in you
but her rage is not pointed at the world, it’s pointed at you because you’re 14 and not used to the harshness of it yet but she will make sure you get there and you don’t know what to do but cry and she hates seeing your tears because they make her nauseous
growing up with an angry mother feels like being ripped apart because you know she loves you, she’s your worst enemy, she makes you feel safe, she terrifies you, she’s your best friend, she’s the reason you can’t let people get close, you love her, you never cried over a boy or a girl as much as you cried over her words, she made you, you’re her puppet, you’re desperate to leave, you’ll never escape her blood or her judging gaze and even when you leave you can hear her voice in your head and it will haunt you until you’re dead
you understand her rage but you see it in yourself and that scares you more than anything else
found this on twitter about stranger things and the duffer brothers (apparently this is from “beyond stranger things” interview on netflix) and umm so this is… weird to read
why are some ppl on the byler tag still saying "you guys are so dumb omgggg the duffers are clearly geniuses they have u all fooled they're throwing us off" is this a cult
god i just went down the rabbit hole of how insanely misogynistic mileven is as a ship holy shit how can anyone ship this and think it's not egregiously misogynistic. like it is built off the fact that a woman should be taught how to be a human being by a man, that therefore that man is the only one who understands her, and she dies to uplift a man's character arc. she is there as a prop for a nerdy boy to feel better about himself i CANT. MIKE BEING BROKEN UP WITH BY EL WOULD HAVE FIXED EVERYTHING and im not even talking about mike or will getting together. im talking about el freeing herself from that bs. mileven just means el was simply a symbol to help better mike's character and a prop for these male writers to get their revenge on all the real world women for rejecting them. el, in canon, is simply their "ideal" woman built off of a man's ideal. that their ideal, romantic thing is for a woman to need a man. once will says "el always needs you mike" then mike says i love you. it sickens me.
this doesn't even go into the fact that will, a queer character who was sexually assaulted, canonically holds up their relationship i cant even with them
stop calling bylers misogynistic for shipping two men together rather than a ship where the man is literally the "nice guy" and the woman is the fridged female character, born sexy yesterday trope. im sorry but shipping mileven is a disservice to el im sorry but its just true i will argue i will.
Now that the final episode has been released, we must confront an uncomfortable truth: the fact that Vecna never once attempted to weaken Will by exploiting his fears—including his homosexuality—renders the coming-out scene narratively unnecessary.
Will explicitly states that he chose to reveal his fears, to name them aloud through his coming out, so that Vecna could no longer weaponize them against him. This confession was framed as an act of reclaiming power. And yet, Vecna never uses this knowledge. Not once. There is no consequence, no narrative echo, no payoff. The promise collapses into silence.
This means that, from a storytelling perspective, the scene ultimately served only two purposes.
First, to suggest that Will is “moving on” by reframing his feelings for Mike as a mere crush, reducing them to a childish infatuation—his so-called “Tammy.” A claim that rings false, because love does not evaporate in twenty-four hours.
Second, to expose Will’s sexuality as spectacle, offering homophobic segments of the audience an open stage on which to mock him.
There was no reward for the vulnerability demanded of him. No narrative protection. No dignity.
This could have been an intimate coming-out scene—quiet, human, reverent—one that honored queer experiences rather than consuming them. Instead, it was staged as public theater: a performance played out before an audience, centered on a Will who is crying, apologetic, and visibly terrified. A boy laid bare, not held.
What makes this more disturbing is the reality behind the camera. Noah Schnapp was subjected to twelve hours of filming that forced him to tap into the deepest, most fragile parts of himself as a gay person—so deeply that he reportedly dissociated by the end. And yet, the creators later had the audacity to present this scene as a flawless example of progressive representation, proudly positioning themselves on the “right side.”
But this scene is, in fact, a perfect reflection of how Will’s arc—his feelings, his sexuality—has been treated all along: pure performance, concealing manipulation, steeped in heteronormativity and internalized homophobia. The emotions of a young gay man are exploited to prop up a heterosexual couple that was already narratively broken. Will’s love becomes an instrument of emotional and psychological torture, used against him until it culminates not in growth, but in humiliation.
And worst of all, this is where his personal arc ends.
He is denied reciprocity after being fed false hope—both as a character and as a mirror for the audience. His story is then summarized in a hollow epilogue image: Will in a gay bar, paired with a generic boyfriend, as if that alone were fulfillment. As if his soul were not better reflected in an art school classroom, or a museum, or any space that resonated with his sensitivity, his creativity, his inner life.
The Duffers dared to reduce Will to this:
a martyr who never attains what he desires most—not only love, but mutual love—and the sole gay character of the series.
Mike, too, is hollowed out. Reduced to nothing more than Eleven’s obsessed boyfriend, despite never behaving that way throughout the season. His trauma is ignored, his complexity erased, his character flattened, retroactively rewritten so that all his emotional turbulence since season three is never explained. A convenient simplification that discards years of nuance.
The fact that most of the strongest Byler-centered episodes since season two—and Volume 1 itself—were not written by the Duffers, while Volume 2 and the finale were, stands as damning evidence to me. Evidence that the Duffers are, at best, mediocre writers who have reaped praise built on the labor of others—the true storytellers behind the series’ most compelling, layered, and human moments.
What remains is a story that asks queer characters to bleed for symbolism, to suffer for aesthetics, and to disappear once their pain has served its purpose. A story that calls this progress.
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