“That’s it?! What about the lost knight?! And the proud princess?! And those weird flowers in the cave?!”
Good questions, Dustin. A compelling story is like a well thought out Dungeons and Dragons quest, when it’s done correctly there is room for questions and new leads to be pursued. The campaign may be laid out for the adventurers with an intended direction in mind, but there’s no telling which way they’ll want to go. Maybe instead of killing the Hydra and saving the princess, they’re more interested in what the local tavern has to offer them. Any Dungeon Master worth his D20 builds a big enough world to allow for this kind of flexibility. While watching Stranger Things, I was amazed by how the Duffer brothers were able to gradually weave separate plot lines together around the show’s central theme, which should be familiar to anyone who has ever played Dungeons and Dragons: there’s a monster that needs to be taken care of.
That’s definitely an oversimplification of the most enjoyable eight hours I’ve spent since True Detective season one. But this isn’t going to be an episode by episode recap, half because I want to focus on the plot’s lingering mysteries and half because I watched all eight episodes in one afternoon like a crazy person.
Quick aside regarding True Detective. My faithful readers (all three of them, thanks Dad!) will remember I did an episodic breakdown of the much maligned True Detective season two. After struggling through that incomprehensible mess, I find it refreshing that the Duffer brothers fully embraced the weird sci-fi vibe, yet managed to put real people with real problems into that universe.
For example, Hopper’s trajectory from troubled, drunken town sheriff to Sherlock Holmes meets a Rock’em Sock’em Robot punching his way to the truth, could have been handled clumsily. Instead it has all the subtleties of a well written character (and is deftly performed by David Harbour). To cherry pick a moment, when Jonathan Byers is pleading with Hopper that he needs help searching for his brother because Will is "good at hiding", Hopper turns and grabs Jonathan, saying “Well cops are good at finding!”. He doesn’t so much tell Jonathan this, as beg him to believe it. There’s a level of desperation in Hopper’s voice that begins in that moment, and stretches the course of the series. You could easily write off Hopper’s motivation for finding Will as a way for him to come to terms with losing his own daughter, but considering the lengths he goes to find Will (i.e. cutting open a pretty convincing replica of a dead boy), it’s obviously more complex than that.
Nic Pizzolato was famously confused by how fans of True Detective season one latched onto the metaphysical weirdness (Carcosa, the spiral, etc.) of his story. The unfulfilled promise of True Detective was a universe ripe with the unexplained, a place where a real mythos (a la the Cthulhu mythos) was ready to sprout up from unholy soil. Pizz (can I call him Pizz?) created a universe where we wanted to stay, then imploded it with a Tim Riggins supernova (which is coincidentally the name of a movie I would definitely watch). Unlike True Detective’s sophomore season, I don’t think we have to worry about Stranger Things pivoting into a show about failed avocado trees and people who hate getting blowjobs.
But enough about True Detective, let’s talk about Stranger Things. The primary focus from here on out won’t be about how much I enjoyed the show, the acting, THE MUSIC, the nerd references, etc. For one, there were so many touching moments that I wouldn't even know where to start. The scene where the boys give El a makeover and Mike “accidentally” calls her pretty is the type of thing that could seem cheesy if it weren’t so immediately believable. (“Uh, I said you look SHITTY. GOODNIGHT DENISE.”). Don’t even get me started on the look on El’s face when Mike kissed her, unless you’ve got a box of kleenex handy (I’ve just got something in my eye, I swear).
I also won’t have time to get into one of my favorite themes of the show: trust. For example in episode two, Jim Hopper says to a barely hinged Joyce Byers “Little bit of trust here, alright?” This line is repeated nearly verbatim several times across the season, most notably in episode seven when Dr. Brenner unconvincingly asks Mike’s mother to trust him. The whole show could be viewed through the lens of characters struggling to trust one another, exemplified best by El’s journey from weirdo to friend (and snowball date!). What does it mean then, that Hopper (who demonstrates his trustworthiness time and time again) is actually the reason that El is discovered in the high school by Dr. Brenner? Does this imply that the nature of trusting someone is inherently wrought with peril? Crap I said I wasn’t going to get into that, let me stop before this turns into an English paper. Onto the mysteries and what season two may hold.
Let me start by laying out a theory I have about the show, which has helped me wrap my head around many unresolved questions. I call it the peanut butter and jelly theory, which is admittedly a pretty stupid name for a theory.
Imagine that the real world (aka the normal one) exists on top of a piece of bread. The underside of that piece of bread is covered in peanut butter, but much like the “rope” analogy from the show, humans are constricted to move around on the top of the piece of bread. They can’t get to the peanut butter side. Directly below that piece of bread, is another piece of bread, with one side covered in jelly. The jelly side is facing up, towards the peanut butter side of the first piece of bread. In other words, imagine two sides of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich hovering in mid air. Coming back to the rope analogy, in case you’re more comfortable with that, imagine two ropes, hovering near each other.
Now let me pause here because in the show, there is an implication that there are only two dimensions, on one rope. The rope has two sides: the normal world and the Upside Down.
My theory is essentially this: when El touches the monster, what she is actually doing is slamming together those two pieces of bread. In the middle of the two pieces of bread, you are left with a gooey mess of peanut butter and jelly mixed together. This gooey mess is the Upside Down (which has the fun side effect of also being technically upside down from the bottom piece of bread, depending on your orientation). The key difference here is that the Upside Down isn’t the “monster’s dimension” it’s a mix of our world and...something else. So what lives on the jelly piece of bread? My theory would suggest this is the “home” realm of the monster that haunts the show, let’s call this Monster World and continue my terrible naming convention. What El has done is pull a monster from a different reality into a sort of estuary world. The Upside Down is an imperfect mix of our world and the monster’s world.
To put it another way, imagine superimposing two photographs onto one another. You get pieces from both photos, but neither of the original photos are preserved.
I think this is a key distinction to make, because in the show it’s heavily suggested that the Upside Down is the realm of monsters and evil (the Vale of Shadows!). Yet in this theory, the Upside Down is an “in-between” world, not the monster’s natural habitat. There are a few facts that support this theory.
First, when El sees the monster for the second time in her tub experiment (she technically sees it once before this during her Russian espionage mission, but we don’t as viewers) the monster is eating something. We never get a clear picture of what the monster is eating, but this is evidence that other things exist in the monster’s world, things it can eat. The Upside Down, on the other hand, is completely devoid of any life forms with the exception of the monster. Dr. Brenner claims that the monster needs to eat, and that seems to be a motivating factor for the numerous attacks on people and animals in the real world. If the monster needs to eat, how could it survive in the Upside Down if it was the sole inhabitant?
Second, the Upside Down is a strange combination of our world and a bunch of spider-webby monster stuff (a technical term, of course). Cars, buildings and trees exist there, but the air is filled with (apparently) toxic air particles. Familiar objects are covered in monster stuff. Yet the Upside Down isn’t an exact replica of the normal world, there are discrepancies. For example, when poor, sweet Barb falls into the pool with the monster in the Upside Down, the pool is drained. In the real world, the pool remains filled with water. This suggests that the Upside Down is an incomplete merging of two worlds. What we’re seeing in the Upside Down is the peanut butter dimension merging with the jelly dimension. Two dimensions colliding, in a new third dimension.
Now, there are a couple of terrifying implications if this theory is correct. Instead of two worlds (the normal world and the Upside Down), there is the Monster World. Is this a world filled with monsters? Does this mean there even more unseen horrors lurking beyond the Upside Down? It’s entirely possible that the Upside Down is a taste of things to come. El’s “first contact” seems to have been the beginning of a process of the two worlds merging together fully. To use my analogy, if you leave a peanut butter and jelly sandwich sitting for too long, the filling on the inside begins leaking through the bread on both sides. In other words, I have a feeling we’re just getting started.
This continued merging is perhaps the best explanation for what happens to the newly returned Will Byers while he’s “washing his hands” in the bathroom. His vision flashes briefly, showing what appears to be the Upside Down, then back to the normal world. Is this just an effect of Will being tainted by his time spent in the Upside Down? Or an insight into the gradual merging process that began when the gate opened, and will continue until...who knows? The “gate” in the show backs this up as well, as the Upside Down appears to be spreading into the hallway at Hawkins Labs.
The theory isn’t without flaws. The biggest knock is that El’s “in between” world is a great visual clue that there are only two worlds, ours and the Upside Down (see below). The Duffers use El’s reflection on water to drive this point home. So why does a monster suddenly start attacking people if it’s been living in the Upside Down all along? El opened a gate, which allows it to hop in and out of our world like dudes coming in and out of Nancy’s bedroom. That’s obviously much simpler than my theory, but doesn’t explain Will’s bathroom vision or what the monster was eating when El finds it.
There is of course, another reason why this theory holds water. Perhaps the greatest mystery at the end of season one is the fate of El. On the surface it appears that she killed the monster and died in the process. But the fact that Hopper leaves Eggos for El suggests that she is still alive. So where did her and the monster go? If my theory is correct, El sent the monster back to it’s home, the monster dimension. She couldn’t have simply sent it back to the Upside Down, because after all it lived there for a week and was able to punch through into our dimension, attacking people. This would also imply that El is either in the monster dimension, stuck in the Upside Down or perhaps exists solely in her reflection dimension as psychic entity.
Want more proof that El isn’t dead? In the first episode, Dustin and Will bet on who can get home the fastest. Dustin wagers issue #134 of X-Men. What happens in issue #134 of X-Men? Just a little something called “The Dark Phoenix Saga”. This story arc concerns itself with a powerful but inexperienced female telepath (Jean Grey) who sacrifices herself to save her friends, then comes back to life as (you guessed it) Phoenix. She returns, but there is something “off” about her, and it’s clear that the whole “I died but came back to life thing” took a toll on her mentally.
She briefly turns into a villain (Dark Phoenix), accidentally destroys an entire planet, dies again and...listen I like comic books and even I’m confused by what happens exactly. I’ll spare you all of the “retcon” nightmares and branching storylines that make comics so unapproachable for most people. There are dopplegangers, psychic chrysalises, and even a rare Marvel-DC crossover you can ignore. All you need to really focus on is the fact that a powerful telepath “dies” and comes back to life, possibly as an evil version of herself. Sound familiar?
What’s cool about this explanation is you don’t even need to fully subscribe to the peanut butter and jelly theory, the two aren’t exclusive to one another. It’s just another strong hint that we haven’t seen the last of El. Have we seen the last of the monster?
The “rules” of the monster are perhaps the most perplexing aspect of the show. For starters, it’s unclear if the monster is eating people or “impregnating” them. We see Will with a incubation tube in his mouth, which leads me to believe the monster is impregnating people. But the skull that Joyce and Hopper come across in the library would suggest a little of both. Is this an Alien situation with eggs that hatch face-huggers to lay more eggs inside of incapacitated humans? Hopper does see what appears to be a hatched egg on the way to Castle Byers, and the same slug-worm thing that Will spits into the sink at his house is seen crawling out of Barb’s mouth by El. As Dr. Brenner points out, six people have gone missing since the gate opened (the first scientist, Will, Barb, Shepard, and the two hunters). Technically we only really know what happened to Will and Barb, but I think it’s a safe bet to assume everyone else was gobbled up like frozen Eggos.
Yet the most puzzling aspect of the monster is how exactly it’s able to burst into our world, creating portals in walls and trees. I’ve tried analyzing how, when and why the monster is able to do this, but I’ve come up empty. Believe me, I’ve spent too much time on this. Does it enter our world when El is sleeping? When El uses her powers? When El is weakened? Aside from it's thirst for blood, is it drawn to El as sort of a psychic beacon? It’s hard to say for sure and I personally don’t think this is a bad thing. The monster, like all good monsters, should retain an air of mystery about it.
It’s worth noting that the portal that Joyce sees Will through in her wall is created independently from the monster. Is this portal possible because El is acting as a conduit with the ham radio? Or is it because there is more to Will than meets the eye?
While every other disappearance can be explained by the monster’s attraction to blood (or working the late shift next to an inter-dimensional gate, sorry first scientist!) this doesn’t answer why Will was taken. Another theory of mine is that Will has latent psychic abilities, which drew the monster to him. This may seem like a stretch, but stay with me for a second. There are references to Will’s powers while the boys play Dungeons and Dragons. It’s up to Will, after all, to cast either protection or fireball. I always found it interesting how difficult it was for the monster to attack Will's mother Joyce in their home. Was he protecting her somehow? Then there’s the password to Castle Byers, which is Radagast - the forgotten brown druid/wizard from the Lord of the Rings (Note: he was turned into a weird side character in The Hobbit movies). The final thread connecting these thoughts is a reference to druids being able to survive in the Vale of Shadows longer than most (yup, I paused it and read the description). If the air in the Upside Down is toxic, how did Will survive a whole week inside? Perhaps Will's powers kept him alive.
Aside from those hints, Will also seems pretty capable of escaping the monster and communicating with his mother and El from the Upside Down. Even if it is a one way call, sort of like a better version of the Cinco Phone. The final hint of Will’s hidden powers is that El’s stuffed animal is discovered by Hopper in Castle Byers during his foray into the Upside Down. How did it get there? Was Will walking around? Was he drawn to it psychically? If you look closely at Castle Byers (both in his flashback and when Joyce first searches for him there after he's missing), you can see the same stuffed animal there. Was he using it to communicate with El? Or do they just have the same stuffed animal? Who knows, it’s hard to say, but something tells me that Will the Wise may have some powers of his own.
“The Boy Who Came Back to Life.” “Hawkins Lab Inquiry.” “Coroner Arrested for Falsifying Autopsy.” “More Heads Roll in Ongoing State Trooper Scandal.” These are the headlines plastered on the bulletin board at the police station Christmas party in the season finale. While this suggests everything is wrapped up nicely, there are obviously more unanswered questions that I haven’t even touched on. Did Dr. Brenner really die? What happened to the first ten test subjects? Is the Upside Down localized to Hawkins? Is the gate spreading? How are they going to make the roads safe after they used up all of the de-icing salt? Did Mr. Clarke get laid?
“What about the lost knight? And the proud princess? And those weird flowers in the cave?”
I personally think season two will expand the world, hopefully not at the cost of the small town 80s vibe that made the show so great. If our world is merging with the monster world, then the government (and everyone else) has a bigger issue than Russia on their hands. Maybe a Russian experiment will open a second gate. Maybe people from neighboring towns will start disappearing. Maybe whatever Will spit into the sink will grow up. Maybe they’ll need El to stop it.
One thing’s for sure, it’s rare for a show to strike such a delicate balance between scary, smart and downright heartwarming. I have high hopes for season two but regardless of where the story goes from here, I'll always remember how great season one was. Promise.
