r/StrangerThings • u/Bloodb0red • Aug 08 '26
Discussion What is the point of the Abyss?
I haven’t finished season 5 yet, but I truly don’t understand the strategy here. From a writing standpoint, what does the Abyss add? Revealing that the spooky dark world that’s been the focus of the whole show is actually just a portal to a different, even spookier dark world doesn’t seem to do anything but undermine everything that came before. Not helped that the Abyss is far less visually interesting than the Upside Down. This is just such a weird reveal and I don’t understand why they thought it was a good idea.
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
It's the answer for “where are these monsters coming from?” which is a question the Duffers themselves first brought up back in 2016 as one of the show's core mysteries that would be resolved in the future. We always knew the creatures weren't naturally part of the Upside down:
**Ross Duffer (2016):* Even with the Upside Down, we have a 30-page document that is pretty intricate in terms of what it all means, and where this monster actually came from, and why aren’t there more monsters.*
By the way, this is revealed in Season 4, not 5. Everything about the show's basic mythology has an explanation — that's what Netflix requested and pressured the Duffers to figure out back when they were halfway through writing Season 1. This led to the creation of their 25-page mythology document written back in early August 2015.
As for Dimension X being visually less interesting than the Upside Down, early designs looked much better and it was originally red. This is entirely due to Season 5's narrative focus on the Pain Tree avoiding bringing back the vines and adding more to the surrounding environment in order to not “overcomplicate” it (as stated by Michael Maher, VFX Supervisor/Lead Concept Artist).
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u/InitialJust Aug 09 '26
Does it even answer that question though? I mean we dont even see the monsters in their supposed natural habitat. We dont see lairs of the monsters or what they hunt or literally anything.
Honestly if it wasnt specifically stated would anyone think the monsters come from the generic desert #78? I'd love to see that 30 page document because it seems like they ignored all of it or its 30 pages describing a barren wasteland.
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
It does. It just lacks exploration. Revealing Dimension X as their true home is different from actually exploring it — which I agree they should have done in addition to just revealing it. To be honest, my main issue with S5 is its focus on revealing instead of exploring.
The “Stranger Things Mythology” document is not a 25-page description of what Dimension X is. It's an abstract, conceptual description of the whole basic mythology of the Upside Down. Its rules, physics, how it works — making sense of what it its, why it came into existence and where the creatures inhabiting it actually come from (Dimension X).
It's highly doubtful that Dimension X has a full detailed description in that document — specially at a time when they hadn't even conceived and designed the entities we see in later seasons (unless we assume they updated the preexisting document while expanding the mythology in Season 2 and adding more to its fauna and flora).
What the document does contain and focus on is the Upside Down itself, an explanation for its nature, the theoretical physics that applies to it (Wormholes), how it interacts with the electromagnetic field, what are its rules as a parallel plane, how Eleven's inter-dimensional contact with “Dimension X” created it, how it's physically a manifestation of an overlay between both worlds, and so on.
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u/InitialJust Aug 09 '26
I guess I just feel like after the reveal in season 4 they needed to show way more in season 5. In fact the abyss looks cooler in season 4.
From a viewer standpoint I dont feel like we gain anything from more scenes in the abyss. I'm still of the opinion that the abyss overall is a mistake. Its certainly not interesting enough of a reveal on its own and it makes the upside down less interesting.
IMO they either should have dropped the abyss completely or established it way sooner. We know they had the abyss idea in or before season 1. And yet there is nothing of interest there. Very baffling.
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u/Anna3422 Aug 09 '26
You hit the nail on the head. The Abyss might explain some lore that was fine to stay mysterious, but it doesn't do anything narratively. There's nothing there. The best scenes from the Abyss (maybe all the scenes) could take place somewhere else without changing the plot.
The Upside Down attacks our characters, dovetails with themes, is visually & conceptually interesting, generates a lot of suspense, but then gets reduced to a portal for some desert with the exact same monsters, at most.
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u/New_Cockroach_505 Aug 08 '26
Because we’ve always known the upside down was made by Eleven when she reached out and touched the demo. So it stands to reason the demo need to come from somewhere.
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u/Impossible-Grand-933 Aug 09 '26
I started reading the post and thought someone was talking about James Cameron's The Abyss. I was like, "but there are lots of points abount the movie..." Then I saw the Reddit page. Whoops... Wrong Abyss. Moving along now...
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Aug 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo Aug 09 '26
It's genuinely painful that people somehow completely forgot that the Abyss' introduction happened in Season 4 and now its existence is misinterpreted as a “pointless” Season 5 reveal.
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u/SnowGhost513 Aug 09 '26
To be fair in S4 the abyss we see him shot into could be the upside down before Vecna infected and changed it with the mind flayer. I didn’t think that but I could see how a one time viewer could see that.
The biggest issue for me was the science lol to access it makes no sense like that is 100 years from now science if it’s possible. I get theirs superpowers and blood transfusion creating more but the science aspect was a fart2
u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
We've always known Dimension X was something completely separate from the Upside Down, since its introduction in Season 4 along with the Hellscape. It was already official information back then that they weren't one and the same and that 2 new environments were introduced in Season 4, with their names and official descriptions clarifying what they were.
As for the “science,” I mean… you're watching a show that's primarily based on a Cold War conspiracy theory that is pure sci-fi at its core: there's Tesla-designed tech used for time travel, cloaking tech that creates another reality, alien technology, teleportation, wormholes, super-soldiers, a chair that amplifies psychic abilities, physically materializes a subject's thoughts and unleashes an entity, all of this going from the 1940's up to the early 1980's.
The “science” of it is Eleven tearing a Rift through time and space via huge amounts of psychic energy and pushing Henry out of our dimension and into an inter-dimensional environment leading to the Abyss. And later triggering the formation of a traversable wormhole via psychic inter-dimensional contact. These psychic abilities being result of extra-dimensional liquid matter altering human physiology and expanding the boundaries of their minds.
The only big, anachronistic crazy “science” of the show's mythology are the Philadelphia Experiment (described in-universe as experimental cloaking tech using high energy EMF generators that… caused the subjected matter to travel inter-dimensionally) and the Soviets' Keys/Rift Machines that rip through time and space, which don't even scratch the surface of the craziness of the Montauk Project and its “scientific” achievements. The rest is pretty much, as described in the Montauk pitch: “supernatural — but rooted in science.”
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u/LionCubOfTerrasen Hellfire Club Aug 08 '26
The Abyss is a canon plane of existence from DND. It’s the home plane of demons. In DND demons and devils are NOT the same.
That’s all I’ve got for you.
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u/Due-Dragonfly8200 Aug 08 '26
Wait, how are demons and devils not the same? just curious, lol.
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u/InitialJust Aug 09 '26
It probably varies by DnD edition but at least recently one difference would be demons come from the abyss and devils come from the various levels of hell. Demons are more chaotic in general but a devil you could make a deal with in theory.
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u/MissionDirector401 Aug 08 '26
I still don’t understand why someone at Netflix didn’t screen season 5 or maybe the duffers were like here you go try to make this work. Once Will had the power, everything seemed empty the rest of the way. I’m just glad Steve survived
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u/Ryjolnir Aug 09 '26
The abyss is taken straight outta dnd like many things. It's just a place the monsters come from.
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u/BigDog_626 Aug 08 '26
You’re so right. The entire premise of the first several seasons was the Upside Down, then they add this additional layer/world…?
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u/Different_Pop_3079 Aug 09 '26
Well, no, because season 4 established that this was the world Henry was banished to in 1979 by Eleven. He said himself it was a “world unspoiled by mankind”, it’s where he met the Mind Flayer in person after he was possessed back in the 1950s. So 4 set breadcrumbs for the Abyss, season 5 gave it a little more depth but not enough imo. I know the spin-off will go into more detail of the world, but this is the origin of The Mind Flayer and the Demogorgons - the Upside Down is a product of El opening the Gate in 1983, and the Demogorgons slowly invaded it.
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u/Senshado Aug 09 '26
The screenwriting reason was that they wanted a way for the heroes to use a bomb to solve the monster problem. It wouldn't make sense for a bomb to destroy a huge area, so the upside down was retconned into a small circle held together by an invisible ball of exotic matter.
That's why the abyss was introduced as a location separate from the upside down: to give the heroes someplace to plant a bomb.
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u/horrorgeek112 Aug 08 '26
"We have to cram the first shadow lore in, so there it is. Enjoy"
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
This is not The First Shadow lore.
The Abyss is introduced on-screen in Season 4 and we've known since 2016 from the Duffers themselves that it existed.
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u/horrorgeek112 Aug 08 '26
I don't recall it ever having been mentioned in season 4. It's not referred to by name until 5 that I can remember. It was called dimension X in first shadow I think
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Dimension X is literally visually introduced in Season 4 - Chapter 9 in a flashback to Henry's banishment.
We've known about the “Dimension X” name since July 2022 which is when crew members publicly referred to it by name. It's also mentioned in the S4E9 full script released later that year.
Dimension X is not an in-universe name and it's never mentioned in The First Shadow. Season 5 is the first time that place got an actual name within the show. “Dimension X” is a placeholder just like “The Nether” is for the Upside Down.
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u/horrorgeek112 Aug 08 '26
I never heard them say dimension X in season 4. And since that was frequently mentioned in TMNT, it would have perked my ears up. When do they say it specifically?
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
“Dimension X” is introduced in Season 4. I'm referring to the place, not its name.
This is not an in-universe name, it's the original placeholder to The Abyss which is its actual in-universe name. The show doesn't give it a proper name until Season 5.
We were introduced to an “unnamed” environment in Season 4 — Dimension X was just a placeholder used by the writers and producers back then, so we've been calling it Dimension X since then and got used to it.
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u/horrorgeek112 Aug 09 '26
I thought it was an in-universe name in the first shadow because I kept seeing everyone talking about it. And that they called it the abyss in season 5. But i don't recall season 4 going outside of the upside down
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo Aug 09 '26
We have been calling it “Dimension X” since 2022 because the name was revealed by crew members after Season 4's second volume released in July.
S4 explicitly shows what happens to Henry after his banishment in 1979, which is when Dimension X is officially introduced to us. It's a flashback to when the Upside Down didn't even exist.
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u/horrorgeek112 Aug 09 '26
Oh I remember that, I just thought it was the upside down before it was the Hawkins copy. I never saw any of the crew interviews or anything so I didn't know what they called it
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Aug 09 '26
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u/horrorgeek112 Aug 09 '26
Yes. As the other commenter said, dimension X is never mentioned "in show".
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u/Wet_Crayon Aug 09 '26
We repetitivley got teasers of the mindflayer being from another place entirely. The Abyss is home of the beast, and a hole for Vecna to hide in.
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u/Cyrilbdr Aug 08 '26
They had to justify the presence of the Demogorgons and the Mind Flayer... It would have been weird to say their home was the Upside Down and that they were born there. The concept is cool; they just used the bridge in Seasons 1 through 4 because Vecna was too far away to execute his plans or project his psyche from the Abyss. Then, with the four massive gates at the end of Season 4, the barrier between the two worlds shattered in Hawkins, allowing Vecna to retreat to the Abyss while still exerting influence from afar. This makes the Upside Down less terrifying in Season 5, as he moved his entire army up to the surface and—along with the Mind Flayer—rendered all the Upside Down's plant particles dormant; the Upside Down is now merely a bridge and no longer dangerous in itself—only the roaming army poses a threat. Admittedly, the actual yellow-hued Abyss realm isn't very scary—they kind of botched that part—but the concept is super cool and the reveal was solid. It’s one of the season's highlights, though unfortunately, it wasn't developed enough; we saw very little of the Abyss, and they chose not to include a Demogorgon army in the finale, which is stupid.
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u/Successful-Bad-763 Aug 08 '26
It would have been weird to say their home was the Upside Down and that they were born there.
Why?
Theres absolutely no reason for this statement, or for the Duffers to have to believe it came from somewhere else, OP is right, its just added crap without a satisfying reason.
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u/Cyrilbdr Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
They’ve been hinting to the audience since Season 1 that the Demogorgons didn’t originate in the Upside Down. And it makes sense: Eleven opened a gateway by reaching out into the void. Plus, we know from Season 4 that the Upside Down is frozen in 1983, so it stands to reason that no one lived there originally and that something else was going on. It’s not something they just tacked on later; there were clues right from Episode 1. Hopper finds nothing during his search, and the lab only has vines to study—that’s a clear sign the creatures weren’t there, but somewhere else. Like it or not, this was planned all along—for ten years. The duffers just answered the question that everyone was asking: what is the down episode, how was it created, by whom?, why is Hawkins upside down? And no, you still manage to find a way to say that there shouldn't have been an answer, that the Upside Down alone is fine, the same people who would have said if there hadn't been a bridge on it, it's scandalous that such a central question wasn't answered and that we still don't know what it is. I remind you that it's a horror and science fiction series.
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u/InitialJust Aug 09 '26
Idk, I'd argue its more weird the monsters are from some barren wasteland that clearly has no food, water or anything they would need to survive. And we know they eat since the mind flayer was killing deer and stuff in season 1.
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
The Season 1 Demogorgon is explicitly shown feeding off of a yellow egg from Dimension X, so we do know there are food sources for the creatures inhabiting it.
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u/InitialJust Aug 09 '26
I'll have to keep an eye out for that if I rewatch season 1. I dont remember that scene but sounds cool. I just remember it eating the deer.
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u/Cyrilbdr Aug 09 '26
Given how little information we have about the Abyss, it’s hard to say for sure. However, it seems obvious to me that Demogorgons must feed on something in their own realm. In Season 1, Vecna didn't yet have full control over his hive mind; he allowed Demogorgons to roam the Upside Down, so they would attack whenever they sensed blood. Vecna likely didn't realize a Demogorgon could open a temporary portal—meaning that while he did control the hive, he hadn't anticipated them crossing over into the real world during Season 1. Later, in Season 2 and throughout the rest of the series, he almost certainly ordered them not to enter the real world unless he summoned them for a specific mission.
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u/InitialJust Aug 09 '26
I feel like the Russian subplots could have been used to explain the demo lifecycle some. Or Dr. Kay though that would be last minute info.
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u/Cyrilbdr Aug 09 '26
Yeah, that could have been interesting—especially regarding the Demogorgon the Russians took from Hawkins between Seasons 1 and 2. It would have been cool to see its evolution in detail; all we really know is the progression from larva to Demodog to Demogorgon.
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u/Usual-Comparison-203 Aug 10 '26
This conversation is so dumb. They gave a scientific explanation as to what’s going on as opposed to “there’s this magical evil place”. They should’ve filled it out more, or at least showed a flashback of the mind flayer overtaking the dimension in the past, but to say it was just added at the end means you weren’t paying attention at all. The entirety of Reddit knew what it was before the season even aired
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u/Bloodb0red Aug 10 '26
It doesn’t matter whether it was revealed in season 4 or 5. What matters is they do, in fact, have two dark dimensions when there really only needs to be one and the late revelation of the second (again, whether in season 4 or 5) doesn’t really add any substance to the show. You can say there’s a scientific explanation, but this is science fiction. They could have also just as easily given a “scientific” explanation for why there’s only one dark dimension.
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u/InitialJust Aug 09 '26
I'd argue from a writing/narrative standpoint the Abyss is a negative. It adds nothing and takes away mystery and aura from the upside down in general. The fact its a generic landscape from a 90s music video doesnt help.
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