Who gets lost in the upside down in Stranger Things?

*** Spoilers for the finale of Stranger Things 4. Be warned. ***

Raise your hand if you’re still reeling from the Stranger Things Season 4 finale. Whether you enjoyed it or not, I think we can all agree that it packed a massive punch—and that those final minutes really shot the stakes for Season 5 sky-high. As if they weren’t already—what with Season 5 being confirmed as the final season and all.

Amongst the many revelations and twists—like how Vecna is Henry Creel who is 001 in Doctor Brenner’s program and it was he who created the Mind Flayer, as well as Eddie’s absolutely legendary cover of “Master of Puppets”—there’s one nugget of information that might have gone a bit unnoticed, but that is definitely equally as important. 

In fact, the Duffer Bros themselves confirmed that the Upside Down being stuck in 1983 will be one of the main propelling forces behind Season 5. In a Deadline interview, Ross Duffer says that “that’s something we don’t answer in volume two, and that is really the key plot point, the key question that is going to drive our final season as we try to wrap up this story and give the rest of the answers out.”

And another interview that the Duffers had with Collider confirmed that Season 5 will all revolve around the Upside Down. They said that while all the major reveals of Season 4  were about Vecna, the focus will shift in Season 5. “The big reveals that are coming in Season 5 are really about the Upside Down itself, which we only start to hint at. There is that moment where we realize in episode seven this year that it’s frozen in time.”

So, let’s unpack this.

The revelation that the Upside Down is stuck at a precise moment in time arrives in episode 7, titled “Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab”—the one that closed off Volume 1. Nancy, Robin, Steve and Eddie headed to the Upside Down version of the Wheeler house to get a hold of Nancy’s secret stash of weapons—only to find that the guns are not there since she bought and hid them after 1983. Her diary, which as Nancy herself says “should be full of entries,” stops on November 6th, 1983.

And that isn’t just any ordinary day—November 6th, 1983 is the day Eleven first makes contact with a “monster” with her powers, upon the request of Dr. Martin Brenner, also known as Papa, also known as you-got-a-death-scene-that-was-longer-than-Boromir’s-but-I-could-not-care-less-about-you-horrible-man. That contact created the first gate between the Upside Down and Hawkins, and it allowed the Demogorgon to walk out—and then right back in, bringing Will “Does Not Deserve Any Of This” Byers with it. 

One theory…

One explanation for why time in the Upside Down is frozen, rather than flowing ahead to 1986 like in the real world, could be the impact of Eleven opening that first gate. The outburst of power she used and the deep emotions that were running through her were enough to shock the Upside Down into time standing still.

Maybe.

But this leads us to another equally important question:

Why is the Upside Down stuck in 1983 and not 1979?

So, 1979 is when Eleven confronted 001 a.k.a. Henry Creel in the Rainbow Room and sent him through to the Upside Down, turning him into Vecna in the process—and effectively putting in motion all the events of the seasons we’ve seen so far, from the Mind Flayer of Season 3 to the four murders of Season 4.

So, if the cause of the Upside Down’s time-freeze is Eleven’s power, why didn’t that first outburst of it have the same effect as in 1983?

One theory floating around the Internet is that Eleven didn’t technically open a gate in 1979—more like a window. While a gate implies that travel is possible from both directions—as demonstrated by the Demogorgon roaming Hawkings and various members of the gang entering the Upside Down—what happened in the Rainbow Room felt more like Eleven shoving Henry through a very small crack—one that shut off immediately after, leaving not enough space for a full-contact to be established.

Finally, there’s the question of what the Upside Down looked like in 1979 versus in 1983. 

When Vecna is telling Eleven how he survived her shove into the Upside Down, he describes a world “unspoiled by mankind.” And in truth, the place we see in his flashbacks is nothing like Hawkins—more like a primordial landscape of lava and mountains, with Demogorgons roaming around and lighting barreling down. So, did the Upside Down take the shape of Hawkins when Eleven made contact in 1983? That could be one possibility.

Another one, though, hinges on a small sentence Vecna says to Nancy, also in Episode 7—that he had been meaning to check in on his father, Victor, over the years, but he had been busy. “So very busy,” he adds. 

Could that hint that the Hawkins-shaped Upside Down we have come to know was Vecna’s work? That he bent and reformed this primordial world he had been thrown into according to his will—much like he did with the Mind Flayer? In that case, the reason the Upside Down hasn’t progressed past 1983 could be that, since he had been searching for Eleven ever since their confrontation in the Rainbow Room, the second she made contact he immediately moved his focus to her and abandoned all the work he was doing up until that moment.

This would explain, for instance, the vines that are everywhere to be found in the Upside Down—massive extensions of the tentacles that are connected to him when he makes his kills—and it would also somehow integrate within his masterplan—bleed the Upside Down into the real world to create a reality where his power and his concept of reality reign absolute, without being subjected to the imperfect creatures that are humans.

It does make sense, but if there’s one thing we know is that Stranger Things will always do its best to surprise us all. So what do you think? What are your theories on what will happen in the upcoming Season 5?

(via: We Got This Covered; featured image: Netflix)

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Warning: contains Stranger Things Season 4 spoilers.

When the Stranger Things gang needed weaponry to fight off the Upside Down’s demobats in Season 4 Vol. I, they stopped off at the Byers house to pick up Nancy’s gun collection. There, they made two major discoveries. The first was how to communicate between the Upside Down and the normal world through lightbulbs, like Will did in Season 1.

The second discovery was that the Upside Down – previously thought to be a copy of the normal world where time ran in parallel – was stuck in the past. Specifically, time there had stopped moving forwards on November 6th 1983, the exact date that Will Byers went missing after Eleven opened a gate to the Upside Down. Nancy realises it when her bedroom décor is outdated and still contains toys, shoes and revision notes that she no longer owns in 1986, and her guns aren’t there. Picking up her journal, she says:

“This diary should be full of entries, it’s not. The last entry is November 6th 1983, the day Will went missing, the day the gate opened. We’re in the past.”  

Nancy Byers, Stranger Things Season 4, Episode 7 ‘The Massacre at Hawkins Lab’

Season 5’s Major Unsolved Mystery

In all the demobat venom-hubbub and gate-discovering excitement, that revelation fell a little by the wayside, more of a ‘huh, add that to the weird list’ than a staggering breakthrough. But in a new spoiler-filled post-Season 4 interview with Deadline, Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers have confirmed that the revelation is much more than just another item for the weird list. The Upside Down being stuck on that particular date is Season 4’s major unsolved mystery and the driving question for the show’s final outing.

Ross Duffer told Deadline: “The biggest [question] being we set up in the Volume One finale how the Upside Down is stuck in time on the day of Will’s disappearance. That’s something we don’t answer in Volume Two, and that is really the key plot point, the key question that is going to drive our final season as we try to wrap up this story and give the rest of the answers out.”

Challenge accepted, Duffers. That noise you can hear? It’s the sound of a million Stranger Things nerds pushing pins into corkboards and connecting their theories up with red string. Why is the Upside Down frozen in time on the day Will was taken?

Theory: Vecna Created Hawkins in the Upside Down

Here’s one theory to stir into the mix: When Eleven first banished Henry Creel to the Upside Down in September 1979, it was a bleak desert-like volcanic landscape. By the time of Will’s abduction in 1983 though, it was a perfect mirror reproduction of Hawkins (albeit dark and threaded with vines and floating motes). Vecna tells Nancy in Season 4 Episode 7 that he’d meant to check in on his father Victor Creel over the years but had been “busy. So very busy.” We know Henry was busy being Dr Brenner’s subject from 1959 – 1979, and he’s been busy trying to get Eleven to open gates to his dimension from 1983 to 1986, but what did he do in the four years before the start of Season 1?

How about: he built the Upside Down version of Hawkins in the same way a spider builds a web with which to catch and keep its prey? Then on November 6th 1983, Eleven opened the gate, and… that’s where your theories come in. Any advance on that?

Stranger Things Seasons 1 – 4 is available to stream on Netflix now.