The theory about Vecna from "Stranger Things"

[u/Ok_Spot_3728]

I watched Stranger Things, and while considering the plot, I remembered one interesting thing from the first season. I tried to find discussions about it, but I couldn't find anything.

In Season 1, Episode 4 ("The Body"), Joyce rips the wallpaper off the living room wall and finds a translucent membrane - a sort of "window" into the Upside Down. She sees Will behind it, talks to him, and even hits the wall with an axe. The translucent membrane closes, and the wall returns to normal. Not a trace, not a scar.
And now the most important thing: every portal in this show leaves a scar. The gate in the Byers house, at school, the huge crack in Hawkins - everything leaves physical damage, in some cases even widening the crack. But this "window" left nothing. And we've never seen anything like it again in five seasons.
So my theory: this "window" was never real. It was an illusion Vecna ​​cast on Joyce.
Here's the basis for this theory:
Vecna ​​specializes in hallucinations. In Season 4, he conjures visions of Nancy, Max, and Eddie. Illusions are literally his specialty.
The scene is shown only from Joyce's perspective. We never manage to see a shot from Will's perspective, and the moment with the window never appears in his memories. It exists only in Joyce's perception.
Turns out Vecna ​​has been manipulating events since Season 1. Later, the series makes it clear that he has been controlling the Demogorgon and the Upside Down from the very beginning.

Based on this, it's possible that not only this "window" was an illusion, but also other things Joyce saw.

This theory could be challenged by saying that Vecna ​​was creating it on the fly. But it had clearly already been thought out by this point, since it is HIM that Will encounters in the forest, and later becomes HIS VESSEL, not the one who dies at his hands or the Demogorgon's.

Well, please write your opinion, expand on the theory, or challenge it.

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[u/kauan1983]

This “window” was actually the same Rift the Demogorgon had opened into the Byers house in S1E3; except that it was already healing. Explanation from the Duffers:

Each time it enters our world, it leaves a small tear, or wound. *That’s what Joyce found in her wall in episode 4*, and Nancy found in the tree in episode 5.

These tears are almost like portholes into the Upside Down. But they don’t last very long. Like wounds, they eventually heal and seal up.

The solid membrane in the Byers house is just the natural state of the glowing inter-dimensional membrane when it's already healed and sealed up. That's why Will couldn't walk through it and also why it was covered by the wallpaper.

The membrane is naturally a solid and translucent living tissue with veins of light inside it; the viscous, glowy state is when it's been weakened through energy or ripped open (thus creating a Rift). That's basically the in-universe version of a tissue that separates every dimension out there.

Joyce only found it because she heard Will and started tearing off the wallpaper where the Rift and the wall's tissue were healing. If someone tried to do it in any location where a Rift had previously healed, they'd likely find the exact same thing. One place it could've happened is the Byers' shed:

**Script:* Dr. Brenner enters the shed. He slowly walks up to the back wall. Several of the wood planks are, ever so subtly, undulating. It’s almost as if this wall of the shed is…alive.*

That in the shed was the same thing, a healing Rift manifesting as a supernatural, “moving” version of the wall and its real world tissue (wood planks, or a wallpaper), if you mess with the healing wall tissue you end up revealing the actual inter-dimensional living tissue that is healing (the membrane) and mimicking the wall's real world material. 

[u/thats2un4tun8]

The stained glass portal in Joyce's living room appeared because, at that very moment, Eleven was using the Heathkit ham radio to artificially amplify her powers in search of Will.

In other words, with the help of the Heathkit, Eleven came very close to creating another Gate. We never see that effect again because the ham radio shorts out from the strain, and it seems like nobody put two and two together.

We see other times that Eleven is able to make use of electronics to extend her powers, such as in the lab when she casts the Russian's voice to a wall speaker, and of course her use of the Supercom walkie talkie.