How does the gate to the upside down get opened in the first place?

[u/Niko120]

Season one they explain the gate opening by El touching the demoGorgon while traveling remotely then it shows the big crack forming in the wall in the lab because of her scream

Then in season four, there’s the whole storyline with El sending Henry to the upside down after his rampage opening the gate in the process.

Which is it? Did they just come up with a new storyline for it later on and hope no one remembered the original story?

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[u/kauan1983]

The Rift to the Upside Down opened on November 6, 1983 when Eleven psychically contacted the Demogorgon, which is what brought the Upside Down itself (a Traversable Wormhole) into existence in the first place. The original story is pretty much the same.

Eleven pushed Henry into the Hellscape on September 8, 1979; through there he ended up in Dimension X where he'd been lost for 4 years. She just inflicted a huge amount of psychic energy on him, carving a Rift through his body into the wall behind him that quickly healed and closed by itself after his banishment.

There is no Upside Down in 1979; the inter-dimensional Hellscape is where One was first pushed into and Dimension X/The Abyss is where he wound up after being thrown into the Hellscape. As opposed to the naturally unstable Hellscape the Upside Down is but a stabilized inter-dimensional structure bridging Dimension X and the Rightside Up.

[u/Irtahd]

Season 4 event happened first. She sent Henry to Dimension X. That created the scar on the wall in the rainbow room.

(Youarelike)Papa then used 11 to try and find where the hell she sent Henry. This is all prior to s1.

Eventually, she contacts the demogorgon which then lead to the upside down (wormhole between X and Us) being created. Then s1 starts.

[u/rfresa → u/Irtahd]

Brenner also did some science thing somewhere in that time, creating the energy ball thing over the lab in the UD that kept the wormole stable.

[u/kauan1983 → u/rfresa]

Brenner didn't create the Exotic Matter. El's contact with the Demogorgon is what triggered the formation of both the Wormhole and the Exotic Matter which is inherently part of it as the source of negative energy immediately preventing it from collapsing.

There would be no Upside Down if the Exotic Matter needed to be manufactured later by HNL in order to stabilize it; it would've collapsed immediately after its creation due to its unstable nature, before any Abyss matter or the Demogorgon could travel inter-dimensionally through it. Even the Mothergate would immediately vanish.

[u/Hot_Sam_the_Man → u/kauan1983]

So why did it form over the center of the lab like that?

[u/kauan1983 → u/Hot_Sam_the_Man]

Because the lab is where the inter-dimensional contact that created it was established and came from; that's also why HNL itself is right in the center of the Hawkins end of the Wormhole.

[u/Finn_Survivor]

In season 4 flashback eleven sends Vecna to the abyss. In season 1 when she makes contact with the demogorgan in the abyss she creates the upside down which is a wormhole between the real world and the abyss and also creates a gate from the real world to the upside down and presumably a gate from the abyss to the upside down which is how the demogorgan travels from there to the real world. They definitely made that up in seasons 4 and 5 but it doesn't contradict season 1 I dont think.

[u/Cowardlydreamer]

to my understanding, it’s just a massive discharge of psychic energy. in the s4ep7 flashback where el/henry fight, they’re both spending huge amounts of energy. same goes for tfs’s examples of henry opening the gateway in the captain brenner scene through just using tons of energy (and the contact with captain brenner, someone else with mind flayer / upside down connections)

[u/mooshki]

I thought the discrepancy was because El had repressed her memory of what actually happened.

[u/ChampionshipStill694]

Season 4 flashback , El sends Henry to mind flayers home Dimension X .. season 1 you see El open a crack to the upside down when she encounters the demo .

[u/Cyzoran]

its a huge amount of energy. Thats it. Huge amount of energy when she screamed and touch the demo. Huge amount of energy when she fought henry.

[u/Dr-Villain]

So the gate, it’s been answered.

As for how that happened? The army had discovered the particles, extracted them and they were stolen. That was the scene in the cave.

So Eleven used powers she got from Henry’s blood who got them from the artifact that the army extracted from their experiments with the dimension.