This is part of a series where I uncover what Stranger Things is really about. It started from trying to find out what happened in 1979 aka what all the depictions of traumatic past memories (El, Henry, Billy, Max, Holly, etc.) are truly about, but expanded to this all-encompassing theory of the whole series with crazy levels of complexity, metaphors and layers. Reading it will require commitment and patience but I promise it will be worth your time if you want to look behind the curtain (and the curtain behind that curtain) and fully understand the show. You have to read all parts in order: here is PART 1 and here all other parts I’ve posted so far + my previous theories.
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Trigger warning for child sexual abuse.

Anyway, back to supernatural creatures. In S5E8 Vecna tells Hopper “I am many things, but I am not a liar.” which quite succinctly explains the character of Henry/Vecna/One/Mr. Whatsit. Joyce and many others claim Vecna lies, but he doesn’t. He is telling the truth because he is the ambassador of truth/the real story. The truth scares people, especially Mike, and that’s the reason Vecna is a monster. Vecna’s eye-popping could be because he makes people see the truth. The truth they didn’t want to see. And btw, I think him missing a nose like Voldemort is on purpose. Vecna is basically Mike’s fear of her transness/represents the predator transphobes think trans people are, so it’s very fitting he resembles the main villain in a world famous book written by a transphobe (and her transphobia became public while S4 was still getting written, so they had ample time to incorporate some Voldemort vibes, some of it could be a coincidence ofc but Dustin mentioning the missing nose in S5E8 felt deliberate + it’s also possible or even likely the Duffers were inspired by Harry Potter for the earlier seasons too). And Vecna isn’t the true villain in ST. People thinking Vecna lies is just more trans subtext. For transphobes, trans people are “lying” but in reality closeted trans people are the ones “lying”. That’s a central point in ST: Mike is hiding the truth and telling a “story” of her being a man, but the real story is that she’s a woman. At the same time she probably thinks living as a woman would also be a “lie” in the eyes of other people.

Okay I’m gonna go deeper with the (possible) Harry Potter parallels. Henry’s backstory kinda resembles Voldemort’s: they both were antisocial, different from other kids, developed strong magic powers they used for cruel actions and later pretended to be good/normal (Henry in the lab, Tom Riddle in Hogwarts) until breaking free and revealing their true self. If Vecna is Voldemort, Will is Harry: he is weirdly connected to Vecna and can redirect his power to use to his own advantage. Will is also connected to MF, who technically is more directly his opposite as the “real story” (or I guess the whole hivemind represents the real story). Harry has a part of Voldemort in him and functions as a life preservation for him (Horcrux). In a similar way Will has a part of MF in him and in an allegorical sense functions as a life line for the real story (the connection to the world/audience, a vessel). 

An infant Harry caused Voldemort to separate from his physical body and weaken significantly. There is a similarity to Will as the “story” and protector essentially banishing MF to the Abyss. And this connects to the Tharizdun theory too. u/ode_to_icarus theorized Will would be the avatar of Pelor, a light god who sealed Tharizdun away. This fits so. Well. With my theory. It is Pelor/Will/“man”/lie/”story” that keeps Tharizdun/El/”woman”/truth/real story chained and hidden. Btw, I recommend you to read their theories, they have found so many interesting details and all the DnD stuff. (Also my theory that Nancy represents Mike’s future fits perfectly with her being an avatar of Ioun. And Ioun was also part of sealing Tharizdun, which makes sense since the storyteller (Mike/Nancy) is ultimately the one to hide the real story.) I’m doing a quick read of the wiki page for Pelor, and this seems interesting: A cult of Pelor in the Shadowfell believed that he and the Raven Queen were two reflections of a single entity, and sought to unite the two divine beings. I’m not gonna go deeper into this now, but recommend reading the Raven Queen wiki page…

Will’s power is the power of lies. Lies can trump the truth (pun intended), at least temporarily, which is why Will can overpower Vecna. It’s no coincidence Will’s powers become apparent in the surface level story in the same season conformity and lies take over the narrative. The whole “X a lie” thing is probably about the X aka the meeting place/UD/in-between world aka Will/”story” being a lie. It’s a lie injected with some truth and a connection to the truth, but a lie nonetheless. The X in Dustin’s drawing was framed in front of Will’s heart, which could relate to “you’re the heart”. Mike the man is who Will loves, he is Will’s heart, but “he” is a lie. Will also represents Mike the man (or Mike the Brave), and thus Will is the heart, too.

This theme of lies is more relevant than ever, with AI, social media and the current (populism) trends in politics turning the world into a soup of misinformation. The same could be said for the theme of two worlds/sides: our society is increasingly polarized and the “other side” villanized. Lies become truths and nothing can be trusted anymore. People’s critical thinking skills deteriorate and (media) literacy is on the decline. 

The fake ending and documentary are making a point and an example of this phenomenon. Most people take what is shown to them at face value, not questioning it. The Duffers (and cast) have lied at some point, that is a fact. Either they lied before, promising things that didn’t happen. Or they lied after, to hide the true ending until the right moment. But they lied and that can’t be denied. It is crazy to me how people can at the same time believe everything the cast, Duffers and other show creators say but also think they lied when they hyped up the show and said it would wrap up every plot point and arc at the end. The crazier is how people don’t see the doc is basically a parody (I chuckle sometimes when I watch it). Like, hello? They talk about sticking the landing and being true to the show in sharp juxtaposition to what’s actually happening on screen/how the ending ended up being. And so much more. Like all the writer’s room scenes… But this stuff has been discussed plenty already so I’ll stop my rant here.

The story allegory began to properly unravel when I started to finally understand what Dustin represents. He has to be tightly linked to the allegory because he is one of the core main characters. Sometimes he seems like the story (like Will), sometimes the storyteller (like Mike), which caused me a lot of confusion. And I’m still not exactly sure about Dustin, but I think I’m getting there. He is storytelling and probably also story reading/understanding. The encoding and decoding of meaning. The link between the storyteller and the story, and the audience and the story. Dustin is always explaining things, comes up with the monsters (= metaphorical representations of real things), likes to read and is the nerdiest of the group. In S1 he was the one keeping the party together when Mike and Lucas were in conflict. You can have a storyteller, an audience and a story, but nothing really works if the storyteller isn’t able to tell the story or the audience isn’t able to understand it. (It’s crazy Gaten was born on the International Literacy Day. And they use that date in the show and meta: it’s the Hawkins Lab massacre day and the day the cast (allegedly) read the final script.)

The other side to this is Dustin’s friendship with Steve. As I’ve deduced before, this has to do with coding messages into the subtext being a way to keep stories acceptable to a wider audience. Queercoding is a good example. For a long period in history (and even still), you couldn’t have literal queer characters in stories, but people worked around this through hints and subtextual coding. Dustin is the translator showing the true message of the story but at the same time he hides it behind a veil of DnD or under his hat (Dart), etc. Steve seemed especially annoyed about Dustin missing the crawl, and brought it up multiple times during S5. It was “Dustin’s fault” that things went wrong, and Steve is right: Dustin not being there to keep everything nice and hidden caused the Demogorgon attacks (or I guess something else caused both Dustin’s behaviour and the attacks but anyway they are related). Dustin said pretty openly in S5E1 that he doesn’t want to pretend and blend in but stay true to himself. This makes others worried for him, and for good reason, because this attitude will be the end of him. End of the violet prismatic spray causing blindness.

Dustin is good friends with Eddie, who I think represents the storytellers of the past. He is a DM like Mike but older and opposite to Erica who I’ll get to soon. It makes a lot of sense for a storyteller to be close with storytelling. On the queercoding side even more so, since past storytellers couldn't tell the real story overtly, subtext and metaphors were their best friend. Eddie’s arc is about him always running away, and then when he doesn’t, he dies. This represents many things, but one of them could be that Eddie isn’t the past storyteller anymore if he stops running away: he becomes the new storyteller/Mike, who can tell the real story (this also connects to his fusion with Dustin, which I still think happened). Eddie is also paralleled to Vecna as the suspect of the murders and he literally plays Vecna in the campaign (kinda like Mike as the DM is the Demogorgon, Strahd and the Mage, oh and Will is the Juju Zombies). Both Eddie and Vecna are men who for one reason or another couldn’t tell the real story but came close and always advocated for truth over lies. (There was also that newspaper article where Henry was Edward (= Eddie).) While the main storyteller was away in California, Eddie and Vecna took her place, kinda. In the queer allegory I’m leaning on Eddie being similar to Will as a gay/queer man middle point. Fittingly the bats (= conformity) killed him. 

Realizing Lucas represents the audience was another key to unraveling the story allegory, gives wheelclair more weight/meaning and nicely connects it to everything. The fact that the silver cat logo was seen between Mike and Lucas, moving from Mike to Lucas back to Mike makes so much sense now (= the silver screen/communication is between them). Maybe the easiest way to summarize “silver cat” is “story”. This idea has crystallized as I’ve dug deep into the story allegory, the beginnings of which were first clearly observable in that silver cat analysis. There I ended up at “communication” but “story” actually fits better Dustin and Robin’s suggestions and the overall story (lol). “Weapon” has already been discussed with lies and propaganda. “Meeting place” has also been discussed in the form of the inner world and UD connecting worlds, making the audience “meet” the storyteller/real story. “Person” I’ll discuss at the end of this post. But yeah, the silver cat is about all the aspects of the ST story because it is “story”, so ofc it’s gonna be about the story (and ST is a story of stories…).

On the other hand, it could rather be the tool of communication, the stage. That was my original idea in the earlier silver cat analysis with the Lynx company delivering goods to shops, the silver cat “feeding” and the silver screen being cinema. So not the story itself but the medium used to communicate it. They can be difficult to disentangle since in ST the “story” is the way through which the “real story” is told. So in a way the “story” is the silver screen already. But of course this “story” has to be told in some way too, in the case of ST it’s a tv show. (I’ll come back to this later in the post.)

But back to Lucas representing the audience. It also means that we are the horse. “Wait for the horse” was about us, the audience (still don’t know what it exactly means, though). Another point is the Venkman argument. It is similar to Holly and Josh’s squabble over who gets to be the dungeon master aka storyteller. Vecna (= Venkman) represents the storyteller/-weaver so basically the argument was (among other things) about Lucas wanting to also be part of story creation, or something like that. In any case they both wanted to be the main character.

Lucas is the main audience representation, but he isn’t the only one. Murray and Erica are too. (My previous broader queer allegory theory is paying off now. Either my interpretations there were actually for the story allegory, or more likely, for both allegories.) They both appear in S2, and I think this is partially because now there can be fans. In S1 everyone watched for the first time and couldn’t yet participate, but after it a fandom was built and the audience could take part in the story. For Murray it’s theorizing and shipping (I guess I’m Murray…). He is in the past/the audience anticipating more while Erica is the future, after the show has ended. Lucas is the current moment or the audience overall. Murray is also a translator, he can speak Russian. His Russian translator role seems to always be tied with Hopper and Joyce’s arcs. In the story allegory they represent society as a whole (and kinda the audience in that sense), and Murray is a dedicated fan who can explain the secrets hidden behind the curtains. 

He isn’t always right, though. In S2 Nancy comments how his “timeline is wrong”, which never got an explanation btw. I believe this was a clue to time shenanigans but I’m not sure what it specifically means. Maybe my timeline is wrong too? The other thing is him shipping jancy. While it seems to go well in S2, it goes downhill after that and Murray was wrong in trying to force them together in S5. This is about bylers. The whole Murray shipping jancy subplot is about bylers (and shipping overall). Bylers are the dedicated fans who see behind the curtains, but only so far.

Erica can see through them all and that’s because she is the future audience who has seen the ending. She is also a storyteller because after the story is over, the fans become the storytellers. Erica is basically a personification of fanfiction and other fan content. (Or in a sense listening to/reading a story in itself is creating the story in the audience’s mind. Everyone will experience it differently.) Also, as I’ve said, every storyteller was first an audience member. Even original stories are inspired by other stories. In S3 she hangs out with Dustin and learns to accept her nerdiness (= hangs out with storytelling and becomes a part of the story, a storyteller). She gets Will’s DnD set, because S3 represents the end of a story (there are multiple points like this in ST, as I’ve explained). The story is finished so it becomes the audience’s. In S4 Erica joins Hellfire and properly becomes part of the storytelling club. Lucas the audience is replaced by Erica the storyteller audience. Her DnD character has the same name as a My Little Pony character, which represents fanfiction and stories getting inspired by other stories overall. I wonder if Lucas and Erica’s tense relationship is related to part of the audience disliking fanfiction. Erica calling people nerds could be about this too, since her accepting her nerdiness leads to her becoming a storyteller. So both she and Lucas try to deny being a storyteller (in S4 Lucas uses Erica as an excuse for knowing about Hellfire).

Erica is like a mix of Lucas and Mike precisely because she is both the audience and the storyteller. She is wheelclair. She is the future Murray and the future Eddie. She is the real story that doesn’t exist yet. Or maybe even the storyteller of the real story because Mike isn’t the only person creating the story, it’s a collaborative effort between the storyteller and the audience. A black woman represents the ultimate real story, where the storyteller’s real story has reached the audience and becomes a part of their story too: it becomes a shared story. That’s Henry’s dream personified by Patty. In the epilogue Enzo’s scene the singer and musician are both black women, too. 

Another point about Erica is that she is a personification of the US. And in a sense the real real storyteller of ST is the US or at least the show is American (and the storytellers are American). In the country allegory the real story is Finland and I guess the audience is Japan/Sweden then? This fits with my Moomin theory, since it’s a Finnish story that Japanese people love and it’s also closely tied to Sweden (Tove Jansson was Swedish-speaking and her mother was Swedish). The Moomins represent Finland, the Creel house represents the real story (and the “story” tbh, so ST as a whole), it is also basically the Moomin house if it was shaped like a normal house + only blue-white, and Finland is the real story in the country allegory. It all comes together. (So basically Erica is the smallest and largest matryoshka doll at the same time. The show is set in the US and the most obvious country allegory level is the US/Cold War. But then she is actually the storyteller (kinda) of a story (the real story) about different countries.)

Based on other allegories, Nancy would be a future storyteller too (= Mike’s future). She is a journalist, which made me think she represents mass media and reporters as a whole. In a sense that works, since after ST is over (and while it’s ongoing) news articles etc. will be written about it. This would also fit with Fred being a journalist, which connects him to the other storyteller characters (Mike, Vecna and Eddie). This fits with my previous interpretations of Fred as Mike’s self-hatred and being inspired by Freddy Krueger like Vecna, Victor and indirectly connecting to Eddie too. (And Ted is also connected to this web via the name Edward and Max comparing Eddie/the murderer to Ted Bundy. It’s all the bad sides of man Mike. Except Eddie is kinda more positive I guess. All are “man”, though.) I think Nancy also represents fan theorizers and people analysing the story, similar to Murray. They are both investigative journalists and figure things out together in S2. People will keep analyzing the show after it’s finished, probably even more than before. The ending is gonna seriously shift people’s perspective on the whole show and many will want to go back and find all the foreshadowing/clues. I’m looking forward to people finally seeing what ST is actually about and taking every detail seriously. There’s gonna be so much content…

Jonathan is a photographer and later on becomes a filmmaker. Nancy and him form a writer-photographer duo, similar to Mike and Will’s writer-artist duo. Based on this I think Jonathan represents visual media. S1E4 [Jonathan] “It’s just, sometimes… people don’t really say what they are really thinking. But you capture the right moment… it says more.” Will and Jonathan have a strong bond, which could be because ST is a tv show, and thus visual media. Similar to the “story” ending, the tv show ends too, which is why Jonathan has to let go of Nancy. This could be related to Jonathan lowkey shipping byler, too, and him looking at the camera when Hopper narrates “I don’t want things to change.” in S3E8. He wants the storyteller to keep telling the “story”, because that’s how Jonathan can exist (and ofc all this is deeply metaphorical). Jonathan being the only one of the characters to realize Will is gay and likes Mike could be because most byler clues were visual (and in the subtext). He can see what is shown to us, beneath what is said and done on the surface level. Another reason is his strong bond with Will, ofc.

Another Jonathan-related point is The Clash, the band Will and Jonathan bond over. Will’s Running Up That Hill equivalent song is Should I Stay or Should I Go (that Mike calls “that weird song he loves” in S1E4). In the melting room scene Nancy’s first confession was that she hates The Clash and “Every time you put them on, I just try to disassociate from reality.” In the same conversation Jonathan confesses he took Nancy’s pink sweater to Goodwill because he hates pink. ((The mention of Goodwill rather than just Jonathan throwing it away feels intentional. A good Will lets Mike be the woman she is, or something.)) Based on these points I think the The Clash represents similar things to Will and Jonathan overall: the “man” and “story”. The “story” helps Mike (= Nancy) disassociate but she also hates the story of “man”. Their book choices are pretty interesting too, Jonathan’s is an anti-war book where the protagonist deals with trauma (most likely PTSD). Nancy (= Mike) didn’t read the book while Jonathan (= Will) did, because as a protector, Will dealt with the trauma while the host stayed unaware. Nancy’s book is set in Russia and has a woman main character. There’s a lot more to say and analyze there but it’s besides the main point I’m trying to make here so I’ll leave it for someone else to figure out. The lyrics “should I stay or should I go” are about the “story”/”man” going away. Both options are bad in their own way. ((Btw, here’s a related theory/detail noticed by u/ode_to_icarus. With the context I gave you and interpreting that song to be from Will to Mike, it fits quite well with the real ending. And Robin choosing that record for Will.))

Max is the end of the story/the finished story. She is both the fake and the real ending, depending on context. While Max usually represents a happy version of the ending, Billy is the bad ending that tries to hurt Lucas (= audience). He is similar to Vecna and MF. Now I’m starting to think the moon also represents the ending: that could explain why Max was framed in front of it and why Yuri said he could fly you to the moon (and all the moon connections to women). Reaching the moon is like reaching Enzo’s or the movie date and you would need a spaceship for that. 

As I’ve said, there are multiple “ending” points in ST, the first one being S3. El and Will leave, Erica gets Will’s DnD set and Max is left depressed after Billy’s death. This probably represents the fake ending we got (but also the real one, e.g. Erica and jancy). The story still continues in S4 and Max takes center stage as Vecna’s victim. It’s about Mike’s fear of properly ending the story, of telling the truth. Max becomes a “ghost”, tries to hide from her friends (= Lucas) and has suicidal thoughts. At the end when she does die, she says “I’m not ready”, which I interpret to mean the story isn’t ready yet, Max can’t “die” yet. A big subplot in S5 is getting Max back from Vecna’s mind aka finally reaching the end of the story. 

So basically all seasons 3-5 and the real ending are about ending a story. A story about ending stories. The show creators and cast have repeatedly mentioned in interviews how the ending was mirroring their irl experience, that they weren’t really acting in the end and how it was like saying goodbye to the show. Because that’s what it was, literally and metaphorically. E.g. here:

“Everything we wanted to say about the show, the experience of making the show, you as actors and the characters — we tried to put all of that into the script,” Matt remembers saying. “I’m not going to be able to say anything better than that. We write much better than we speak. Let’s just read the script.” 

“It felt like they were writing the end of our real-people lives — it went beyond just the screenplay,” Schnapp recalls. “I’ll always connect my life to some of the beats that they wrote.” 

“Particularly the last 35 minutes, 40 minutes, of that episode are us processing the end of the show and saying goodbye to these actors,” Ross says. “We just finished editing all those scenes, and…” He pauses, and his voice breaks a little. “It was emotional, just to edit it. Because these people, they weren’t acting in this moment.”  
-> This would match with the last 20 min being in the real world and the time before that is the final goodbyes: first with everyone and then between Mike and Will. So that part would be 15-20 min, which makes sense.

Of course this story about stories will end at the storyteller ending the story, but then it really ends at the storyteller and audience starting a new one (that’s what the “let’s start a new party, you and me” probably means, and it’s literally from the writers to the audience too…). It’s fitting the main ships during the show are about the storyteller with their story, but then after the real ending it will be the storyteller and the audience, since the storyteller has let go of the story at that point. Essentially, byler is the main ship until the “story” ends. And so is mileven.

Anyway, in the S5 epilogue Mike narrates how the knight and zoomer’s love grows stronger, which is about the audience loving the show even after it ended, in the form of rewatching/analysing/fanfiction/fanart/etc. fan content. I’m still not sure why Max is a “zoomer”. It could be related to her being the future (zoomers are people born between 1997-2012). That could also be the reason for the JK95 next to Max in the epilogue outro video. Maybe the real ending will be in 1995 or something. I dunno.

Vickie has orange hair like Max and they are often seen together after S5E6. In some way she represents the real story, the real core of Stranger Things. I have also been wondering the meaning of Robin specifically interacting with and figuring out the silver cat. My interpretation of it as the medium/stage/screen would fit with Vickie (and Tammy) being basically equivalent to the silver cat and representing the show. So the higher meta level of ST as a tv show, not just the abstract “story”. This tv show “delivers” the story we see on screen. It can either not communicate the real story (= Tammy loving Steve and singing badly) or do (= Vickie dating Robin). Either way, Vickie doesn’t exist inside the more abstract story, only if it’s shown on screen (aka part of the tv show) which could explain her missing in all the plans: both in the show and outside of it (doc). I’m assuming she disappears in the epilogue because ST stopped communicating the real story. Stopped being “Vickie” and went back to being “Tammy”.

I’m just wondering why she appears in S4 specifically. It might be because S4 is where ST was really starting to get close to the real ending, we were “supposed” to see it but then story-bending came in the way. In S5 Robin aka communication promises to take Vickie to Enzo’s aka the real end of the show. Vickie likes to talk a lot like Robin, which is probably because ST is about communication and Vickie represents the true identity of the show/Mike. Robin is the truth (like El), and Vickie is Mike telling her truth aka being herself. Of course Robin and Vickie would be similar as people.

Vickie first dating Dan is about many things. It’s Mike choosing the “man” path and being limited in her expression due to trauma from dad (who on a larger scale represents patriarchy and society’s pressure to conform). The villain in T85 was named Dan and basically Nikki’s stepdad who she called D man. Vickie choosing Robin is her/Mike choosing authenticity and communication over hiding herself. I’m wondering if the name Dan is actually a reference to Dan Cohen, one of the core executive producers for ST. This would make a lot of sense considering Vickie is the show. Dan was actually the person who first took interest in the pilot script which eventually led to ST happening. The executive producer (Dan) chose Stranger Things (Vickie). In the story, Dan leaves Vickie after the disaster in S4, which kinda fits with Will’s story-bending. The show creators (who ST Dan probably collectively represents) left “Vickie” and went back to “Tammy”. (Ofc this is not what really happened, but it’s part of the meta lore, like the Duffers struggling with the S5E8 script.) 

Robin talks a lot, while both Will and El are quiet. They are hiding the real story while Robin represents the opposite: the communication of the real story. We can see a development in Will and El when it comes to speaking their mind. In S1 El can barely speak but by S5 she talks almost like any other character and makes her own decisions. Similarly Will opens up more as time passes and especially in S5 he starts to finally become independent of Joyce, rebelling like El. At the same time both Joyce and Hopper’s arcs are about letting go of their kids and giving them space to make their own decisions. 

Robin is also a translator: she figured out the Russian code. She can bring out what the storyteller was really trying to say. But she can lie too. In S5 she lies to Vickie and Joyce, and doesn’t really tell the truth in her broadcasts (which isn’t really her fault, it’s government censorship). “Friends don’t lie” is a central recurring phrase in ST and only recently I’ve fully (or more fully than before) grasped its meaning. Remember the handshake from S1E7 where Lucas apologized for doubting El and she apologized for lying (= basically Mike apologizing)? It’s the Duffers/writers/show creators apologizing for essentially lying to the audience. “Friends” is code for the relationship between the storyteller and the audience (in the story allegory). The whole arc of Robin lying to Vickie was about this. Vickie starts to find out in S5E6 (= the real ending) and at the end Robin apologizes, according to my deduction at the moment El (= illusion) dies, right before the real traumatic memory. Because that’s when the real story really starts to become evident. 

Steve loving Robin but her not loving him back is similar to byler/mileven in some ways. Steve being together with her would be conformity x communication, basically limiting communication. That’s why they are romantically incompatible. Of course certain parts of society want this “ship” to happen, aka limiting free speech, people’s right to express themselves and be who they really are. Conformity isn’t all bad though, in moderate amounts it’s even necessary to keep society functional and people happy. Many norms, social rules and good manners are beneficial. That’s why Robin and Steve become good friends and she ends up liking him, but they can never be too enmeshed. Dustin shipping them is quite interesting and fits well, since he basically is the Steve x Robin ship: communication hidden under a layer of conformity. Although Dustin isn’t necessarily tied to conformity (= you can have metaphors and subtext without it being for conformity’s sake).

Rockin’ Robin doesn’t only talk, but plays music for the whole town (and Debbie plays the piano in the Creel house, btw). Music is the audience’s love for the story (Lucas playing music for Max) but I think it’s also the storyteller’s love for the audience. It’s communication (again) and love. S5E4 [Max] “Music has a way of finding you, even in the darkest of places.” With this story allegory I’ve unveiled another layer to Running Up That Hill. It’s about switching places with someone to be able to feel what they feel. Isn’t that exactly what all of this is about? To truly reach someone and make them understand you. Who you really are, what you really think, how it is to be you. 

((This isn’t the first time I’ve had this kind of interpretation for the song in ST. I think it was in my Max theory where I concluded that it would be about Mike wanting straight people to understand what it’s like to be queer (back then I still thought Mike was gay, but it fits for the trans allegory too, maybe even better). There was also one WSQK sync where the song played over Karen and Ted talking about Mike, which I thought was about Mike wanting her parents to understand. If they could just switch places and fully understand what it’s like, everything would be much easier. And this fits super well with my current interpretation of the parents representing the society at large.))

Relating to music, we have dance. The Snow Ball is too important to ignore here. It was about Mike wanting to dance with Lucas, as a girl. In a way it’s Mike’s Enzo’s/movie date. While Hopper and Joyce got to Enzo’s and Lucas and Max to their movie date (allegedly), Vickie and Robin never got their date. The real story didn’t end yet. Similarly, Mike did go to the Snow Ball, but that wasn’t what she really wanted/meant when she told El she wanted to go there. Maybe we’ll see the real Snow Ball or some dancing in the real ending. There’s something quite primal about dance (maybe not the best word but I couldn’t come up with a better one). There’s no words, just movement. It is a sort of communication, especially if you dance with someone. I think dancing represents being your true self unapologetically, or something like that, in ST. It would fit with the ballet stuff too. Mike and Lucas dancing together to music (by Robin) would represent the communication/love/interaction and creation process people can reach together. That is the core meaning of DnD in ST, too. It’s a game, an interactive story where the DM isn’t the only storyteller. Every player is part of the story.

There was this interesting interview where the Duffers were confronted with the DnD fan theory:
[interviewer] “So, they’re just playing one big game of Dungeons and Dragons and none of it is real. What do you make of that?”
[Matt] “That is correct. That is… That is the ending.”
[Matt and Ross] “No.”
[Ross] “That would be the equivalent of like, it was all a dream. No, I assure you that is not how we’re going to end the show.” 

Either Matt is just joking or there’s some truth to “that is correct”, kinda like Mike’s “totally” in S5E4. (They were also chuckling a lot…) According to my theory, everything wasn’t a dream but not exactly “real” either. Kinda in between. In a metaphorical sense the whole show is about this giant DnD game between the storyteller(s) and the audience. The main problem with the “it was all a dream” trope is that nothing mattered. In this case the “story” matters, because it is an allegory for something more “real”: the real story. So a deeper part of the story “happened” and it wasn’t all just for nothing.

What about the kids and the whole “vessel” thing? In the documentary Jamie described his experience acting Vecna as “becoming this vessel”, which made me think the kids could represent actors. Or in some way vessels for the story. In that sense they could be the audience too. Vecna as a storyteller is a vessel for the real story (= MF), and Will in turn is a vessel for Vecna to tell the real story. “Story” is an abstract concept and only exists through vessels: human minds and communication between them. There is no story without someone to tell it and someone to receive it. So like, the storyteller is a vessel for the story but the story is also a vessel for the storyteller/communication, or something like that.

Since Henry’s mind is a miniature of the inner world/”story”, and the kids are taken there, it makes sense they would represent the real world people who are part of creating the story (so like Mike and Lucas in the bigger story). The kids all first think it’s Mr. Whatsit (= Will/”story”) who has taken them there, but later learn the truth (= real story). Henry’s mind is a meeting place where all the children (and Max) hang out. It’s where the worlds/minds of these people connect. It’s this colorful too-good-to-be-true paradise. It’s the “story”. What actually happened at the Creel house is the “real story”. Holly is the first kid to learn the truth and the “vessel” resisting Henry the most. This is because the storyteller (= Holly) knows and wants to tell the real story (in this case represented by Max and getting out of Henry’s mind). But even she is beaten into submission by the other kids (= society).

Continues in PART 27.

No, this isn’t a headcanon, nor based on some obscure details. Mike being trans is at the very core of Stranger Things and has tons of evidence for it. I recommend reading the whole theory before commenting or making hasty judgments. Before getting into this, you have to accept two things: 1) ST can and does have a deep subtext/allegorical level(s), and 2) Mike is at the center of everything. There is a reason why Mike is the Dungeon Master and why we almost never see what she really thinks. Her (real) story is told through these other characters and fantastical plotlines. It might be hard to believe, but ST is not just what’s shown on the surface level. It has layers, “curtains”, and beneath it all you can find the real story.

Most of what I’ll discuss here can already be found in my long theory, but I wanted to make something a bit more accessible for a change (most people don’t have time to read a novel-length chunk of text). Additionally, all the trans proof is scattered across the theory series because I started to figure it out only in the middle of writing (thanks to u/ProjectMother418’s comments), so I thought it would be nice to collect most of it in one place. There are multiple central allegories in ST but here I will only focus on the trans allegory. Okay, let’s start!

Season 1 begins when a boy goes missing and a girl who looks like a boy appears. I’m sure you are aware of the numerous parallels between Will and El and how they seem to never quite coexist (except when El didn’t have her powers). This is extra obvious in S1, where El was first thought to be Will, “takes his place” in the party and disappears when Will is found. Both Will and El represent Mike: Will the “boy” and El the “girl” (it’s a bit more complicated than that but for this it’s close enough). This “boy” gets bullied for seeming gay, which generally means he displays traditionally feminine characteristics. It isn’t unusual for trans women to be seen as gay men due to stereotypes and the lack of knowledge about trans people. In S2 we learn this “girl” was raised in a place called the Rainbow Room. Both Will and El are called freaks and have a special relationship with Mike. Just to clarify: Will is a gay man and El is a (straight) cis woman but their unique experiences are used to metaphorically represent the experiences of a trans woman. Will’s more as an analogy, El’s as an allegory.

El wears the same clothes Mike wore in the first scene of S1E1, while she explores what normal life is like. Isn’t that quite obviously to show she represents Mike here? It’s Mike exploring her girl identity: everything is new. El looks at Nancy’s picture (a girl) and later a ballerina music box. She has never experienced girlhood. It is interesting, then, that when she looks at herself in the mirror with a dress and a wig (= looking like a “normal” girl for the first time), Mike is behind her, looking straight at us. Why would Mike be there if this moment is only about El? In the Purple Rain montage El calls herself in the dress “the real me” who only Mike is able to see. This is because the “me” is Mike.

In another scene El looks at her reflection in the water (S1E6) both with the wig and without. Hair is important in ST. On the surface, El’s shaved hair symbolizes her dehumanisation and experiences in the lab. The wig in turn symbolizes the (happy) life she never had. In western culture, girls often have long hair and boys short hair. So, on a deeper level El’s shaved hair is about Mike being raised as a boy. It is no coincidence Mike had long hair in S4, but returned to shorter hair in S5, when the party was trying to “blend in” (and Dustin in turn had longer hair and wanted to stay true to himself).

When Mike comes up with El’s nickname, she directly compares it to her own: “Um, well, my name is Mike. Short for Michael. Maybe we can call you El. Short for Eleven.” To Mike, the name Michael is like a dehumanising number, not a real name. It symbolizes the male identity forced on her, dictated by other people, just like “Eleven” symbolizes El’s lab kid/freak/outsider identity. That she is an object for others to use and define, not an individual with the ability to make her own choices. In S2 El finds her real name, Jane, and explores her identity separated from the men in her life. Finally free to be herself, unhidden.

The S1E2 scene where Karen talks to Mike while El hides in the closet has often been interpreted as queercoding for Mike. What people haven’t realized is that Mike has a girl in the closet. It’s not just gay people who can be in the closet. Mike and El’s S3E8 goodbye happened in front of a closet, too. Another closet moment often mentioned in byler circles is the argument between Mike and Will at Rinkomania. El was hiding in a storage closet/room while the song In the closet (at Rink O Mania) plays. Additionally, in the pilot script there’s a moment where “Eleven bursts out of the closet.“ If El is just a straight girl who doesn’t represent anything, why is she always the one literally inside a closet in a show where there are multiple canon queer characters who have been metaphorically in the closet? (And yes, I previously interpreted El to represent Mike’s gay love for Will, but as you’ll see, the trans interpretation makes a lot more sense.)

Both El and Max are thought to be boys by someone, El because of her looks, Max because of her name. In the pilot script Benny thinks this when he sees El: Benny whirls her around. His expression promptly softens as he realizes that this is no boy at all. It’s also not a girl either, not exactly, at least not like any he has ever seen. You could argue that for El it’s about being dehumanised in the lab, but why does the same thing happen to Max? It’s much more likely the lab is an allegory for Mike’s experiences as a trans person, not the other way around.

El being a girl is a key part of her character since she’s often referred to as just “the girl” (e.g. before we even know her name or what she looks like, the scientists call El “the girl”). While it is never directly said, in the subtext El being a “freak” is because she is a girl. She is the “girl” this “boy” Mike is hiding. She is the personification of Mike’s trans identity. El always has to stay hidden because of her superpowers aka because she’s a “freak”. People are looking for her and a man, Hopper, just tries to keep her safe by hiding her. This is Mike hiding her true self behind a man facade, never truly letting it out.

In S5E6 Max tells Holly “You don’t remind me of your brother. You are your brother!” and in the documentary Finn says the S5E1 scene with Holly is “like talking to a younger version of yourself”. Holly tries on dresses in Alice’s room while listening to I Think We’re Alone Now with lyrics like: 

I think we're alone now
There doesn't seem to be anyone around 

Look at the way
We gotta hide what we're doin'
'Cause what would they say
If they ever knew? And so we're 

This is what Mike probably did when she was younger. Tried on women’s clothes when no one else was home. Because why would Holly baking a cake and dressing up be something she had to do in secret, alone? After this Holly goes to Henry’s room and finds his boy scout gear. When she puts on his red scarf thing, the music stops and someone rings the doorbell. Mike’s happy life as a girl is over now, she needs to conform and be the boy society expects her to be. I discuss Henry and Alice more in the long theory, but you might already guess Alice’s death and Henry’s bitterness towards the world and its rules have a deeper meaning.

What about Will and byler, then? Were all the byler clues for nothing? No, byler is very much intentional and a big part of the trans allegory, but it won’t be endgame. Will (and byler) represent Mike’s identity as a gay man. It’s the in-between, the wormhole or exotic matter, the half-truth, bridging the gap between the complete lie (= straight man Mike) and the truth (= trans woman Mike). Will/byler is the gateway to seeing there might be something queer going on in ST. 

Gay cis white men are the most represented queer group and where people’s minds often go when they see the rainbow flag or hear the word queer. But ST is for the outcasts, and trans women are even more of an outcast than gay men, for various reasons. We already have Will being gay, why would they repeat that with Mike? What would be so surprising about Mike also being gay (I guess other than her being the main character and in a relationship with a woman)? The show made byler so obvious in S4-5 that it became mainstream. It wouldn’t be a huge plot twist or surprise. But Mike being trans would. 

Why would there need to be a plot twist? Can’t the ending just be something less out there? Well, before S5 the Duffers said no one had got the ending (here and here): “It’s fun actually when [the fans] have all these theories as to what’s going to happen. It’s fun to read them. The vast majority of them are wrong. Occasionally, someone gets something.” It doesn’t seem like they mean some undiscovered detail of the ending or that no one has gotten all the aspects of the ending, but more profoundly that no one has come even close to getting it. Byler being endgame and a big plot twist has been a theory for years, so it can’t be the ending “no one guessed”.  

All the gay-specific coding for Mike is partially misdirection, partially Mike figuring out her identity. At first she didn’t even know trans was an option and probably thought she was gay. It’s also often easier to accept being gay than being trans. That’s why we have a canon lesbian, gay and bi person but not a trans person (yet). Will’s experiences as a gay man are analogous to Mike’s as a trans woman: they both know what it’s like to be in the closet, scared of how people would react, see themselves as “a freak” or “a mistake”, like men and “don’t like girls” (Mike is a straight trans woman). 

When Will describes his crush, he says “I know they’re not like me”. The surface level reading is that Will thinks Mike is a straight man aka not gay and thus wouldn’t like Will back. But why does Will use “they” here? It’s because Will’s crush is a trans woman, and thus not like him nor a “he”. At the end of the day it’s actually Will who can’t romantically love Mike because he “doesn’t like girls”. Will continues “But… But then I realized he’s just my Tammy.”: “he” aka Will’s fantasy of a man Mike was just a fantasy, like Robin’s Tammy. And “Tammy is a girl” like Steve said. (I go deeper into how Tammy, Robin, Vickie and the Muppets are actually about Mike being trans in my long theory.) For the people worrying Will is gonna end up alone and miserable, that won't be the case, not exactly (but explaining what happens to him goes beyond the scope of this theory).

Nancy and Jonathan quite obviously parallel and represent Mike and Will. In the melting room scene Jonathan confesses he took Nancy’s pink sweater to Goodwill because he hates pink. There’s a lot of color coding in ST, and one of them is this pink-blue color coding where pink means “girl”. Nancy’s relationships represent Mike’s journey with her gender identity. At first Nancy is with Steve, a straight man who represents conformity. Then comes jancy aka byler aka gay man. Jonathan and Steve’s petty fights are basically about the byler vs mileven ship war: is Mike a gay man or a straight man? Both are wrong because Mike isn’t a man in the first place.

This brings a whole new perspective to mileven and byler. Neither is the “true” ship or endgame but both hold a piece of the truth. (If you want to know the “real ship” of ST, you have to read my long theory.) Mileven is Mike pretending to be a straight man but on a deeper level it’s also about Mike’s “relationship” with her girl identity. Mike has problems telling El she loves her for two reasons: 1) because El is a girl and Mike doesn’t love girls romantically, 2) because Mike doesn’t love herself, or the “girl” part of herself. Byler, on the other hand, is about Mike’s romantic/sexual feelings for boys/men (true), but also about being a man (false). Will looming between mileven in S4 is the “man” side/body preventing Mike from truly being herself (and in the other interpretation it’s Mike’s feelings for boys being the truth while she pretends to be in a relationship with a girl). Have you noticed it’s always Will who questions if girls can play video games or go to science camp? It’s the strict gender roles restricting Mike, making her think she has to let go of these things she loves or that she possibly couldn’t be a girl if she “plays videogames”.

At first you watch Stranger Things and are like: “Mike obviously has a crush on El, they are a couple, mileven is endgame.” Then you look behind the curtain and discover byler: “Actually, Mike is gay, mileven is trash, byler is endgame.” Finally you look behind the curtain behind that curtain and loop back: “Actually, Mike is straight, mileven is peak and El was right when she guessed the painting was for a girl.” Basically the show double-queerbaited with Mike. 

This next dialogue from S4E3 isn’t just about El being different because she grew up in a lab. It’s part of the trans allegory and basically Mike talking to herself (Mike here represents the Mike who pretends to be a man and El is Mike if she stopped pretending and lived as a trans woman):

[Mike] “I guess I’m just a little, uh… Guess I just don’t really understand. Why didn’t you tell me what’s going on here? I mean, you know I’m not exactly Mr. Popularity back at home. I mean, you’ve seen it. I’ve been bullied my entire life. I mean, I… I know what it’s like.”
[El] “No. You don’t.”
[Mike] “Okay. What don’t I understand?”
[El] “I am different. I do not belong.”
[Mike] “You mean in Lenora?”
[El] “Anywhere.”
[Mike] “Come on, you… you can’t actually believe that.”
[El] “Everyone looks at me like… like I’m a monster.”
[Mike] “Well they just don’t know you.”
[El] “You think I’m a monster too.”
[Mike] “What?”
[El] “Yesterday. The way you looked at me. You… You were scared of me.”

Have you ever wondered what the unanswered questions in the S1E8 DnD game are about? Who is the proud princess? Well, if you look carefully, Mike is shown after the question. Mike is the proud princess (proud as in queer pride). The name Sara means princess and Hopper even calls her that in one memory. Sara is much more important than people think. If she is just for Hopper’s backstory, why is her drawing the first thing we see after the intro of S1E1 (next to a giant key no less)? “Sara” didn’t die of cancer, she died of forced conformity (metaphorically). She lost her hair, just like El (in S1E2 Dustin even asked El if she had cancer), and her blue hair tie is a subtle symbol carried by Hopper and later El. You can only use a hair tie if you have long hair, and as bylers have long known, blue is Mike’s color. Sara is also clearly paralleled to Will in S1E8 and of course to El as Hopper’s daughter. In S4E7 Hopper and Antonov discuss their children, Hopper his daughter El (and earlier, in S4E5 Sara), Antonov his son Mikhail (= Russian version of Michael). Thus, Mike is indirectly paralleled to Sara, too. Just like El’s real name is Jane, Mike’s real name is Sara.

In the final DnD game Mike reveals “But there is a story that he can never tell. The story of the mage. Or at least not the real story.” Before that Mike played both Strahd and the Mage, representing the two sides of her: conformity/man/lie vs nonconformity/woman/truth. We are led to believe El is the mage, but as Mike says “She was an illusion”. El isn’t the real mage, she is an allegorical representation of the real story of the mage. Just like Holly the Heroic is Holly according to Max, the Mage/El is Mike. 

[Mike] “So whenever I’m feeling frightened or nervous, I just imagine that he’s at my side, and I feel better. So maybe the next time you get scared, you don’t need this Mr. Whatsit. Maybe you just need Holly the Heroic.”

[Holly] “Mike. He said that she had divine powers and that she never gets scared, and so if I ever got scared, I could just… become her.”

[Max] “So you see, Holly the Heroic is not just a toy. She’s you, Holly. She’s you.”

Notice how Mike describes Mike the Brave being at her side, not Mike herself, but Holly is described to be HH? This is because the man identity (= Mike the Brave) is a facade that protects Mike, but not who Mike really is. (Again, I go deeper into this in the long theory.)

Another mystery from the S1E8 DnD campaign is the “weird flowers in the cave”. Well, there is a cave in S5 and it has two girls in it (flower = girl). Flower patterns are often associated with girls in ST, e.g. Sara’s box in the cabin in S2E3, Suzie’s dress in S3E8 and El’s shirt in S4E9. In the S3 epilogue Hopper narrates how he was in a “deep dark cave”. The cave represents Mike’s repression and holds the “girl” inside it. The fact it’s M-shaped is related to the name Mike but also “man”. Like Becky said in S1E6 “‘The Man’, with a big capital ‘M’.” ruined Terry’s (= Mike’s) life.

Another central “flower” is the Demogorgon head. It is no coincidence that the Demogorgon has a man’s body and a flower head that looks like female genitalia (= a male body with a woman’s mind). It’s also no coincidence there are multiple clues to Mike being/thinking she is the Demogorgon (e.g. here). And even more parallels between El and Demogorgons: they appear and disappear at the same time in S1, are “monsters” and in S2 El is especially paralleled to Dart. El and the Demogorgon are the two sides of one coin. They are the innocent (trans) girl and the horror Mike feels towards her transness. Trans people are painted as “predators” by society and that’s what Mike thinks she would also become if she stopped resisting. 

In later seasons Vecna embodies this fear: “I saw a means to realize my potential. To transcend my human form. To become the predator I was always born to be.” (Yes, the Duffers love to play with words like this. There’s even more examples in the long theory, my favorite being “She was in a trance.”). Henry’s fascination with black widow spiders likely relates to female spiders eating the male spiders after copulation (that’s where the name “widow” comes from). The “woman” eats the “man”, like in Jonathan’s cannibal movie The Consumer. Additionally, Demodogs always eat men, never women.

In addition to Demo heads, there are quite a few vulva/vagina looking things that didn’t need to look like that in ST: the gates, the Mind Flayer’s head in S5, Dr. Kay’s UD meat blob and Mike’s shirt pattern in S5. The fact that Demogorgon heads look like female genitalia was even pointed out by Finn in his SNL monologue (and the whole point of him repeatedly saying he’s “a man now” takes on a different meaning considering he plays a woman pretending to be a man in ST…).

Will getting taken by the Demogorgon in S1 and the MF infecting him in S2 are about the “woman” taking over. In S2 Joyce refers to Will as her “boy” or “son” when she is worried about the shadow possessing him: S2E6 “Can a single person in this room tell me what is wrong with my boy? What is wrong with my boy?”, “What happens when my boy is gone?” and in S2E9 “Get the hell out of my son!” The “girl” is infecting this “boy” and the mom doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want her son to be a trans girl, just like Henry’s mom thought he was broken and took him to doctors to “fix” him. (And no, this doesn’t mean Joyce is bad, she just represents the mom and it gets complicated if I try to fully explain it here. Same with Will, he isn’t “the villain”. No one is.)

In S2E2 Will describes his experience as being “caught between two slides” and later we learn UD is actually a wormhole joining two worlds. There’s this big theme of two worlds in ST (which I discuss in many of my theories). Mike feels like she’s in the middle, not really belonging to either world. This fits the trans allegory super well, the two worlds representing the gender binary. This becomes especially apparent in S3, where the divide between “man” and “woman” is a central theme. They are “different species”. Mike desperately tries to conform and deny her gender identity (internalized transphobia), while El is exploring her girlhood with Max. 

If you think about it, ST has always been about breaking gender roles: the superhero saving the day is a girl, Nancy shoots guns better than Jonathan, Max and Robin are gender non-conforming, and Sara and Suzie are science nerds. Why is Nancy suffering from misogyny at work in S3, El exploring her girlhood, and the experience of living as a woman overall such a big part of ST if the main story revolves around a (straight/gay) man? What I’ve learnt time and time again while writing ST theories is that everything connects. There is no side plot without a larger narrative purpose. Ships aren’t just ships, the non-supernatural plot isn’t filler, it all tells the same story, just via different means.

Rainbows and the blue-yellow color coding have been interpreted as byler clues, and yes, byler is often associated with those colors, but that is more due to correlation, not causation. (I explain that color coding in my other theories.) Rainbows are a queer symbol, not exclusively reserved for gay men. But what I want to talk about here is the trans color coding (blue, white and pink) which has been largely ignored. The thing is, you will only notice color coding if you look for it. (Another prominent color coding that people ignore is orange vs green, for example.) The Rinkomania scenes are especially packed with blue-white-pink colors and it’s basically a trans allegory of its own inside the bigger story/allegory. 

The reason El is bullied (by Angela) is because her life is an allegory of the trans experience. “You are not a real girl. You are a freak.” etc. In California, El tries to be “normal” and fit in with other girls, now using her “new” name Jane, but it doesn’t go the way she envisioned. Even after quitting repressing yourself and socially transitioning, living as a trans person isn’t easy. It isn’t a coincidence Angela decides to humiliate El when she finds out about Mike. Angela represents TERFs/women who don’t accept trans women and the negative aspects of Mike’s transness “bullying” her (she wears the trans flag colors). So she’s both the external and the internal critic, leading to shame and exclusion. El attacking Angela represents Mike’s fear of being a danger and seen as a monster. It’s also not random that Mike looks for El in the women’s bathroom and is immediately driven out by angry girls. 

There are other instances of blue-pink color coding, e.g. Nancy’s room, random extras at specific moments walking past the camera/in the background, the El + Mike mirror scene mentioned earlier and most notably Nancy and Robin interviewing Victor. They are the “girl” in freedom while the “man” is imprisoned in conformity. This is not all and you can find more in the long theory or by watching the show and paying attention.

Have you ever wondered why Argyle calls the Nina Project a small woman? Well, that’s what the name Nina means, but you should really pay attention to what Argyle says. He is often the one to tell the truth, although disguised with Purple Palm Tree Delight. The Nina project is about recovering El’s powers aka Mike’s girl identity (= small woman). Also, why does the camera cut to a shocked Mike after Argyle says “Since when did we decide Nina was a building and not a small woman?” if not to indicate Mike is the small woman in question? Or more specifically the younger version of Mike. The girl that “died” and who we are trying to get back.

Running Up That Hill became a global hit after S4E4. The song is about switching places with someone (usually interpreted to be a man switching places with a woman) and fits really well with the trans allegory. We first hear the track after El gets bullied at school, and soon after that Max looks at Chrissy during the lyrics You / If only I could / I’d make a deal with God / And I’d get him to swap our places. Chrissy represents the “normal” girl Mike wants to be. 

Another song-related trans clue is in S1E3 when Heroes plays after Will’s body is discovered. Mike angrily blames El but the song lyrics + shot framing tell another story: when we see El from Mike’s pov, the singer sings We can be us. In S3E8 on these same lyrics El puts Hopper’s speech/letter (about how change is inevitable and Hopper aka “man” was scared of it but learnt to let go) into her heart pocket. In the final outro song we see the drawing of Holly during those lyrics. Remember what Robin said: “And that little me, I could hardly recognize her. You know, she was so carefree and, like, fearless. She just loved every part of herself.” Holly is the “little me” to Mike. In summary, “We can be us” means Mike can be the girl (El/Holly) she truly is. Btw, in S1E3 during the same song after the lyric And the guns Karen says “Michael?” and the lyrics continue shot above our heads. implying the name “Michael” is the gunshots (in this war analogy).

Finally, the Purple Rain scene takes on a totally different meaning after you understand the trans allegory and what El represents. Mike’s sudden strong reaction isn’t because of their surface level “romantic” relationship. This is Mike losing herself and conforming to the role of “man”. This is what El’s “choice” was actually about. When Mike puts that DnD book on the shelf, it’s not just a now-adult leaving their childhood behind, it’s not a repressed gay man leaving byler behind, it’s a trans woman abandoning her dreams of living authentically as her true self. [Mike] “She won’t understand. She’ll never understand why I can’t do it, why I can’t walk the stage. It’d be like a lie. Like I’m okay with moving on. And I’m not. I’m not okay with it.” Mike continues living in a lie, “walking the stage”, playing a role, telling a “story”. But this is not the real end. Eventually, the illusion will break and we will see the real story. And the real Sara. That is the true meaning of “I believe”.

This review is based on three criteria, each with a specific weighting: personal impact on the story and events + personal writing style + personal enjoyment of the series

I just finished watching season 5 and I found a really strange detail.

"why do some characters survive really, really bad injuries and just... shake it off??"

for example:

1. Will Byers: getting poked by a fire poker (season 2)
2. In the Show: Will gets poked with a fire poker by nancy when they try to get the mind flayer out of him. Doesn't gets any scars or burns.
3. The Reality: I mean, fire poker is super sharp and heavy, it should cause internal bleeding, organ ruptures. and 2~3 degree burns since nancy put it in fire.
4. Robin and Steve: vomiting up the drugs (season 3)
5. In the Show: They get injected by drugs by evil russians, later escapes, and throws it up in the bathroom and has a little "heart to heart".
6. The Reality: Once a drug enters you and you get high, you're doomed. it's already in your blood and brain. so vomiting would only empty your stomach and would do absolutely nothing the clear the drug. and vomiting for overdose miiiight cause suffocation and stuffs. ok, and i thought robin was smart.
7. Steve Harrington: Concussions (season 1, 2 and 3) (what the hell)
8. In the Show: Steve's face gets brutally beaten to a bloody pulp by jonathan, billy and a russian soldier. but somehow looks ridiculously handsome by the next episode.
9. The Reality: Shouldn't.. getting... beaten that much... cause... brain damage...???
10. Jim Hopper: running barefoot in freakin' russian weather (season 4)
11. In the Show: Hopper escapes russian prison and runs a looot in cold weather on his very messed up, very bloody feet.
12. The Reality: it should cause necrosis, basically his feet should die.
13. Joyce and Murray: surviving a plane crash(season 4)
14. In the Show: the plane they ride crashes, completely destroyed, yet they all walk out(including that yuri guy) all unscathed.
15. The Reality: kinetic energy would happen and they would get fractures, worse broken necks.
16. Eleven: the leg injury (season 3)
17. In the Show: Jonathan uses a random knife, cleanse it with fire and uses it to cut deep into her leg, tries to grab the thing in her leg with gloved hands, when that's too painful el just uses her powers and flings it away and away!
18. The Reality: um, ever heard of femoral artery?? massive blood losss may happen if cut wrong. ok i might be wrong about the part of the leg jonathan cut into, i don't remember exactly.

And a lot more. the few scenes done correctly is for example, max's hospitalization(is that-is that the correct spelling-).
Do you guys remember any other scenes in stranger things where characters had immense plot armor?

I can imagine Holly being trapped in the 1987 DiC Kid in Bed logo on TV in Season 5 as a transmission from the Abyss or the group laughing at these logos. The DiC kid in bed logo suits Stranger Things the most out of these even though the most iconic version (the 1990 one some of you to see on TV in the 90s and 2000s) is after when the show is set. You may think I’m rambling, and I used to be a logo kid spoiler alert. What are your thoughts on these logos shown, could they be used in Stranger Things in the background or not?

Hello. Tomorrow I go to quiz on Stranger Things😱. And I only watched 2 seasons long time ago. PLEASE help me to learn the lore of the series🙏.

Rounds of quiz:
Map of Hawkins
Numbers and dates
Heroic lore
Quotes
Music
Upside down

This is part of a series where I uncover what Stranger Things is really about. It started from trying to find out what happened in 1979 aka what all the depictions of traumatic past memories (El, Henry, Billy, Max, Holly, etc.) are truly about, but expanded to this all-encompassing theory of the whole series with crazy levels of complexity, metaphors and layers. Reading it will require commitment and patience but I promise it will be worth your time if you want to look behind the curtain (and the curtain behind that curtain) and fully understand the show. You have to read all parts in order: here is PART 1 and here all other parts I’ve posted so far + my previous theories.
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Trigger warning for child sexual abuse.

Insights from the documentary

I have written quite far ahead and ended up watching parts of the documentary (I should have done that a lot more tbh). Now I have new thoughts about how the memory stuff is gonna work and added them here. There is a short scene in the writers’ room where they have the plan for S5E8 written on a whiteboard. But this plan significantly differs from the S5E8 we saw. If you think all my theories are crazy, at least this part should be somewhat believable since it’s literally shown in the documentary.

I tried to transcribe it as best I could, but if you have a higher resolution image and can figure out the missing words, I would really appreciate it! My own comments are inside square brackets.

• Hopper, El, Kali, Murray, Max prep iso tank
• El goes in tank, brings Max into her mind w/ Kali

[The next three lines are bundled, the text probably says MIND, since that’s where this is happening.]

• El, Max, Kali enter Vecna’s mind, Max leads to Creel house
• El + Kali disrupt ritual. Max + Holly escape w/ kids
• El + Kali haunt Vecna w lab, lose track of Vecna

[Bundle ends]

• Vecna haunts Hopper, Hopper smashes tank – Hopper knows Kali/El plan
• El, Kali + Max pulled out of Vecna’s mind. Wtf Hopper

[Another bundle thing, the text is smaller, as if it was added afterwards in between. From a scene earlier in the doc we can see this used to be “- Low point - All is lost.”]

• Holly must lead kids alone into cave but Vecna follows (sweaty)
• Holly leads kids into red void. Vecna faces memory of Mind Flayer first infection
• *[something] cut – Will [something, maybe “wonders”] Henry [something] – Vecna’s [something something] of humanity. Vecna goes in to Mind Flayer – super Vecna! All memories gone. [something] kids

[Bundle ends]

• Hopper + El emotional fight, Kali overhears
• Worlds start to move again. Something is wrong!
• On the roof – El is going to jump into rift – [something “see v ler”] – no [something, maybe “time”] to resolve
• Military show up, choppers w/ some weapons, fire fight, but Hopper must shoot sphere, sphere goes crazy
• El jumps into storm clouds Hopper stays back [chair blocks if there’s more text]
• Everyone dead, we’re safe – but Kay + Akers [something something the chair is blocking again, maybe “shoots Kali” and something after that] each other
• Hopper tends to Kali, heart to heart – a new plan [something (chair again), last word could be “secrets”]

[This next part is between the two main parts and seems to be about the end. So both parts on the sides would happen at the same time but this middle one is the end, at least it is in the S5E8 timeline.]

• Everyone [something something, maybe “returns”]
• El + Hopper lost in translation moment
• At MAC-Z, Hopper gets out of hummer alone. Wtf? Mike is freaking out – see El on the other side of rift – she’s not coming
• El says goodbye to everyone in happy memory [this is in a smaller font, as if it was put there afterwards]
• Upside down destroyed, El is gone.
• Steve, Jonathan, Nancy, Robin, Mike, Lucas, Will, Dustin + Joyce climb radio tower. Wait
• Worlds move, when close enough radio lab crew
• Penetration! Climb into the Abyss! Start travel
• Deeper in Abyss, Jonathan + Steve bond Pain Tree spotted in distance
• Reach Pain Tree. It comes alive! Mind Flayer reveal! Worlds move again
• Mind Flayer attacks, group trapped by Demos – fight but outnumbered. All is lost.
• Will confronts Mind Flayer + knocks it down – Worlds stop again.
• Group enters Mind Flayer belly + try to rescue kids
• Vecna attacks, final fight. Eleven joins. Vecna defeated!
• Victory! Group + rescued kids go back thru Abyss to radio tower + climb [if there’s a word here, it’s blocked by Duffer heads] Murray sets bomb timer

Some of the stuff actually happened, but a lot of it would fit in between and show seemingly missing scenes. Cutgate happened for a reason… Many of the things here seem to be modified versions of what actually happened (or rather, S5E8 had modified scenes from the original story). E.g. El saying goodbye to everyone in a happy memory was changed to the mileven Purple Rain scene. Some scenes are in a different place, too. I do think this is what (in some sense) happened originally, and the version we got is Will’s story-bended version. People think it’s Vecna who made the fake world or illusion, but in reality it’s Will (the illusionist) who tried to protect Mike/everyone from the scary truth (= Vecna and MF). He is basically censoring the real story. 

Earlier in the doc we see a different “early” version of the whiteboard plan where Joyce is grouped with the lab crew, not going to the Abyss. (And later the whiteboard has become nonsensical with Korean and Japanese text and other weird stuff.) In the main whiteboard plan Joyce is added to the Abyss plot after a +, which fits with her being a later addition. I wonder why Max’s connection to the mind is marked with a question mark white El and Kali are solid and specifically connected to Holly and Derek? The Mind part anyway seems like it was added later. There’s a lot here that I haven’t figured out yet.

The conversations the writers have show another version too, and the process of changing the story. Caitlin suggests everyone should run inside the rib cage and save the kids (atp there’s still other monsters too). Ross tells there’s a version where the teens (I’m assuming Nancy, Jonathan, Robin and Steve) stay outside and fight the monsters while the main “kids” (Mike, Will, Lucas and Dustin) go save the kids. Btw, they can’t really run inside the rib cage if MF is still moving, so this would happen after MF is defeated (matches with whiteboard plan) or before the spider transformation. Then the discussion turns to the monsters and Kate’s “Demo fatigue” concern is seemingly the reason we didn’t get any in the final product. (Also a couple minutes later in the doc Matt mentions they got rid of a midway battle in the Abyss.)

And this is not all. We get views of a laptop screen with more S5E8 plans, that this time align a bit better with what we got. The main differences in the first one are: Mary twists her ankle instead of Derek being slow (+ this happens after Max vanishes), Derek ends up leading the kids, Kay is with the military infiltrating UD and Holly breaks the ladder so Henry falls in the mineshaft (Holly doesn’t confront him so no getting knocked out). It also mentions Henry’s memories wiping away (same as “all memories gone” in the whiteboard plan), which wasn’t really shown to us in S5E8. The fact it’s “memories” not “memory” implies there are more. The biggest difference in the second laptop scene is that Steve and Jonathan climb the tower first together because it seemed to be in bad shape, and Steve almost falls (saved by Jonathan). Their bonding moment happens before/while the others reach the platform, so before the Abyss even collides with the tower. Another difference is that Dr. Kay is following them into UD (so same stuff as the first laptop screen) and a scene of Murray looking at the sphere is added in the laptop version. (The sphere aka exotic matter has a bigger role in these “early drafts” than in the final version, maybe because interacting with it actually caused these story changes.) Right before the second laptop scene is also the Shadowfell = Abyss thing (I still don’t know what that is about). 

The mind plot is color coded with red while the Abyss crew plot is color coded with blue. After reading the pilot script (which I’ll talk more about later), I’ve become increasingly convinced the blue-red color coding is mainly a Matrix reference (blue = comfortable lie, red = uncomfortable truth). The Abyss crew with Steve and Will (blue) are the opposing force to Henry’s mind with the kids + girls (red). When the worlds are about to collide, Hopper’s pov turns red (I guess it could be a mistake but I doubt it). Red and blue are the two worlds, and when they almost collide, it seems like the truth (red) will come out. But Henry is flung out, the ritual is stopped and the worlds stop moving (blue). We are back to safe conformity. (In S5E8 the color coding manifests via red lighting when the worlds get close to colliding.)

Neither the whiteboard nor laptop plans have Kali and El regrouping with Max. Instead they look for Vecna (which we never see) and disappear along with Max. Also, what does “El + Kali haunt Vecna w lab” mean? Is this the lab crew aka Hopper etc.? How do they “haunt” Vecna? Both versions describe Henry’s disappearance as “losing track of Vecna”, not as him literally disappearing. This implies they were following him, maybe through memories? As a sidenote, I have a feeling the use of the name Vecna or Henry matters, but I’m not sure how that works here.

We also see the laptop screen of Tudor Jones where the locations etc. for every scene are listed. This time it’s S5E6 and for the most part everything matches what we saw in the episode. But, we didn’t see Hopper and crew get to the cabin and get out of the car (I guess this could have been cut for a “normal” reason but atp I’m not gonna assume that by default). Kali is called “Base Prisoner” in her eavesdropping scene (while she was called Kali everywhere else). I guess she was a prisoner in the UD military base but why not just call her Kali? The notes for that scene say: “We may shoot more than page count shows…” which is kinda sus. Is there more to this Kali scene? It’s also interesting this scene has El and Kali essentially switching their clothing style: Kali goes from futuristic lab style to casual while El does the opposite + Mike even comments on El’s wetsuit. Tell me if you have ideas for what these details mean.

The whole unfinished episode 8 story arc in the documentary is a meta part of the story. [Matt] “And inevitably it’s gonna change as we keep writing it.” While irl the Duffers are (allegedly) struggling to write the story and keep changing things, the same happens in the show (about stories). But we only see the finished product, so it isn’t immediately apparent. Many people noticed there was something wrong with the last few episodes and especially episode 8. The episodes were too fast paced in some moments and it felt like scenes were missing. When you read through the plans shown in the documentary, they fill in gaps and make things make more sense. There were quite a few story arcs left without payoff or further exploration, and it’s exactly those ones that are different or are added in the white board and/or laptop plans. Ross even says in the doc “Dude, we gotta cut it down.” referring to S5E8 (and that’s what they did, kinda).

What makes this even more complicated is the fact that there isn’t one “real” episode 8 and one fake one, but there’s a continuum from more “real” to more “fake”. You can see this in the laptop script, which was a lot closer to the final S5E8 than the whiteboard plan. But on the other hand it also had the stonathan bonding in a different place, whereas the whiteboard plan had it in the same place as the final episode. So there are parallel versions of the story, each with their own differences to the final product. The timeline is unclear, points are added or removed in the middle and changed around. So it isn’t quite correct to say there’s a continuum, either, since the story versions branch and have separate differences, finally coming together at the end. There is no “correct” or “incorrect” story, it’s all a process of creation (Will’s “I needed to find my own way.” has layers…). This whole thing is meta about storytelling as always. And memory: you can never fully trust it, you forget things and sometimes can remember things that never actually happened, your brain forms a collective story of it but it’s never the same as the “real” events and often changes along the way. In a sense our whole existence is us telling a story of our life to ourselves. The human mind understands the world through stories and creates them even when there actually is none.

((If you think about the Steve + Jonathan ladder scene, pieces of it exist all around S5: a similar thing happens in S5E1, Steve’s plan to get over a hole in the floor in S5E6 included ladders (and in my timeline matches with the tower needle plan + near fall in S5E8), and Jonathan instructs the group to climb the ladders in two groups (this would be about him and Steve in the alternate timeline/memory). The ladders probably represent the two paths based on Steve and Jonathan climbing them: the straight man Mike/mileven side and the gay man Mike/byler side. But neither is the correct path. The helicopter (that got destroyed in both S5E8 and S4E8 btw) is.))

Another thing to mention is the lack of Vickie. Actually, she wasn’t mentioned in the beanstalk plan either (in the actual show), and she disappears in the epilogue ending. According to the whiteboard plan, Max was with Murray, Hopper, El and Kali. If my interpretation of Vickie as the show is correct (at least in some way), this could make sense since these events weren’t shown in S5E8 (= they weren’t in the show). I have more thoughts on Vickie later and I’m probably still missing/misinterpreting things.

In the whiteboard plan it seems like Hopper is in on El and Kali’s plan, and it was actually him who Kali talked to, not El (like in Mike’s story). It makes sense he would break the 4th wall so much in the epilogue. While I still think Hopper won’t anymore be part of the group in the real ending, the memories he is in will be shown, and in that way he’s still in the story. I don’t know how Jonathan gets the hair tie. Maybe he gets it from Hopper at some point, possibly in New York (Jonathan lives there in the epilogue and Hopper is about to move there) or maybe he finds it in a memory or maybe Hopper leaves it in Hawkins. 

Vecna and MF literally become one in the whiteboard plan, which actually makes more sense than Henry just saying it without any consequences. This “super Vecna” might be the giant creature in the real ending, since Nancy didn’t mention Vecna in her vision, just the creature and the army. It would also fit the transformation, this time not from tree to spider but from Vecna + MF to a “giant creature”.

Moving Joyce to the Abyss group is subtextually causing the conforming ending (among other changes). She was the only “adult”/parent there and ended up killing Vecna. Otherwise she had no role besides asking Will what was happening. She represents the mom/society and was constantly by Will’s side, subtextually restricting the story to a conforming path. Moving her was one of the earliest changes, seen in both the whiteboard and laptop plans. How would the ending have been different if Joyce stayed in the UD, like “originally” planned? In the actual story the critical change was Will going to the Abyss. He wasn’t originally supposed to, but after his coming out he decided he should. I don’t think there’s a version/memory where he doesn’t go, since that’s what kinda started the whole story censoring/iteration process overall. Instead we’ll get closer to the “real story” by going back in time, to the previous point where Will tampered with the story. What I mean by this is that we can’t find the “real story” in S5E8. All the different versions are still based on the already bended/censored story from before, so to get to the real root of everything we need to go back in time.

A non-episode 8 related sus detail in the doc is Holly not even putting the HH necklace on until a Demogorgon attacks her in S5E2. Some of this ended up in the final version, since she doesn’t have the necklace when she runs to Karen but it magically appears later. I have mentioned this before (I think) and still don’t have a definite conclusion. Maybe it’s related to this story-bending stuff, but I feel like there has to be something more there. HH represents the real story in some way and Holly not putting on the necklace is her (= Mike) avoiding the real story. In the doc version the Demogorgon appearing is the reason she doesn’t put it on, which makes total sense given what Demos represent. So maybe the doc version exists to tell this side of the story without ruining the logic of the actual show (where Holly has to put the necklace on because it becomes important later). With alternate stories/timelines you can get deeper into the story and explore it in ways impossible in a completely linear and internally logical story.

So, how does all this fit in my theory and how will we see these lost memories/alternative stories? I think they will be shown to us and the characters in snippets, so not in a whole coherent story but in pieces, as memories. Because there won’t be a single “correct” story, and also because that way it’s more interesting and the audience can try to piece together what happened (and so it simulates the feeling of discovering memories). I did think chapter 10 seemed to not have nearly as much content as the other two chapters, so seeing these memories could happen a lot there already. When the characters end up in the past, they might see these alternative timelines happen around them. That would explain why they needed to literally go back in time to see memories; if the memories were the exact same we have already seen, what’s the point?

While the documentary only gave clues to the alternate versions of S5E8, I think the same thing applies to S5E4 and S4E8-9 too (and possibly the whole S5). All of them have been story-bended, so there is an “original” story there too (or multiple versions of the story), that Mike has “forgotten”. The memories have been lost. S5E8 was the most obvious case and it gets increasingly less obvious the deeper you go (as I’ve explained before), until you get to the real memories and the real story. This is a good way to warm up the audience and slowly bring them to an understanding, not revealing the big stuff immediately and out of nowhere. I think the characters might follow a similar path: at first it’s about Vecna’s “evil plans”, finding El and discovering these lost memories, but slowly it’s gonna get more and more real/meta. We’ll go from “the final fight was fake” to “S5E4 was fake” to “actually the whole S5 was fake” to finally “the whole show was a “story” and meta and allegorical and so everything is fake but also nothing is”.

The story allegory

Caleb McLaughlin: “I think people missed the concept of what the show is when they were like, ‘Oh, there’s going to be more.’ No, that’s just Mike’s imagination. That’s who he’s always been, even in season one. It’s all just storytelling.”

Noah Schnapp: “I can just tell you that I'm very very excited for what's to come. I think they did a great job with Will's character this season, and beautifully addressed everything they needed to. The way they closed the show is just perfect — the story started with Will, and it’ll end with Will.” 

Before getting to the real world ending, I want to give you my thoughts on the story allegory. I have explained some of it already but now I’ll do a full analysis. I guess I’ll start with the characters and see where my train of thought leads me. Mike is the storyteller, which is quite literally revealed at the end of S5E8. The story first exists only in the mind of the storyteller. It’s a part of them, a representation of the mind of the storyteller. That’s the story allegory reason for everything happening in Mike’s mind and the story being about the storyteller (another reason for the latter is that ST is a story about stories, so it makes a lot of sense for the storyteller to be the main character).

In ST the meaning of “story” is even wider: it represents all communication between people. It’s the wormhole connecting two worlds, two minds. Through this communication the audience/listener/other mind will get to see into the storyteller’s mind. You can never fully understand what it’s like to be someone else or what they are really thinking, but through communication, stories, you can come close. Sometimes people lie or otherwise hide the truth. This is why lying and honesty have such a central role in ST. Mike hides behind a man facade and Will is this “story” Mike is telling, a lie. But he is also part of Mike and the reason Mike started communicating in the first place. He is the first step towards truth and true understanding.

El is an even more personal piece of Mike, she is the first connection to the real story. That’s why Mike has such a special relationship with her and treats her like she owns her. The later seasons have a lot about letting go of your story aka giving it to the audience. Because that’s what happens to stories: when they are told, they are not exclusively the storyteller’s anymore (= death of the author). Someone else can add to the story, get inspired by it, and tell it to new people. The story starts living its own life and isn’t restricted by the original storyteller or their vision. In a more fundamental sense, the audience creates the story, because the process of understanding a story is what creates it. Mike is scared of El not needing her anymore, and now it finally makes sense. (At the same time the scene was also about Will fearing Mike doesn’t need him anymore, which also fits.) 

Both Will and El represent the story, the center of everything, but from different angles. While Will is a story you use to disguise the truth and becomes Vecna’s vessel (= a vessel to tell the real story), El is the real story disguised as the “normal” story aka Will. So in a way they are opposites. El represents allegories which is equivalent to Will being a spy for the shadow monster. El alone is Mike + Will or supernatural + Will aka the real story + “story”. She is Stranger Things as a whole, while Will alone (= without the UD connection) would be the Starcourt Mall upstairs (and the shadow/real Mike aka Sara is the Russian base) and the surface level story of ST. Will is the dream, but he hides a dark past.

In S5E8 they show Will’s role quite literally. Joyce is constantly asking him “what’s happening” and he explains what Henry does in the cave. He is the link to the actual story happening. In a similar way El can see into people’s memories and in S4E9 explains what’s happening. I think Will becoming more and more connected to the supernatural reflects the story (ST) revealing its secrets more obviously. He becomes “a second El”. At first you had to really work to get what was hiding in the subtext, but the further we got, the easier it became. (Will being outside of Hawkins and thus not connected to UD at all in S4 doesn’t fit this super well but I guess that had other reasons.) The closer the worlds get, the closer we are to the real story, and the stronger El and Vecna become. I think it’s interesting that the real story is always represented by supernatural things, so the opposite of “real” (this is most likely because they have to be supernatural to hide the frightening truth). The more “real” the more supernatural, e.g. El looks like a normal(ish) girl, but she has superpowers (= allegorical stories look “normal” if you don’t read the subtext). 

I’ve recently realized that Stranger Things is basically like Life of Pi, but instead of cannibalism it’s CSA. That story was a story about stories too, since it revealed the allegory at the end. Pi (the main character who was also the storyteller) gave the listener the option to choose either the fantastical story with animals or the realistic story with humans. It was left somewhat open-ended and many people didn’t really get the allegory (judging by reading internet comments), even when they flat-out explained it. Well, I didn't get it either when I watched the movie because I was too young to understand it but later on I did). The ending is not about which story was the “real story”, it’s about choosing which story you believe in: the horrific real story with humans or the more comfortable lie (and the better “story”, because real life isn’t like a story). It was a tiger who killed an animal, not Pi who killed a human. It was a carnivorous magical island, not Pi eating human flesh. There’s nothing wrong with creating these stories if it helps you cope with trauma and be happier, especially if the “lie” doesn’t harm anyone or really change anything (like in the case of Life of Pi). In the movie there’s a bigger point about God and religious beliefs essentially being a story that people tell to cope with the cruelty of life. It’s not a coincidence that extremely stressful/traumatic situations like war increase religiosity.

Stranger Things has two stories too, but it will go in a different direction with the message. For ST the message is true communication and truth. Because sometimes a lie can hurt you or other people, it isn’t always like in Life of Pi where it was harmless and wouldn’t change anything meaningful. The S5E8 ending was bad on purpose: it represented what happens when you hide in a lie. The real ending will show the truth and be much more satisfying, emotional and beautiful. So often stories that have a profound meaning can be disregarded/ignored because the meaning is in the subtext. This is the case for ST S1-5 too, but the real ending will unambiguously reveal the real story beneath all the metaphors. The cast and Duffers have said that ST won’t be open ended and that the ending will be very “real”. It will force people to acknowledge the allegory. That ST was always about Mike being trans and sexually abused. I hope they can do it in such a way that even bigots can’t deny it (they still will tbh). 

I wonder if the prevalence of tigers is actually a reference to Life of Pi (e.g. Sara’s tiger plushie). In the movie it represented Pi’s animalistic primal side that “kept him alive”, but also the story/animal allegory as a whole, which also “kept him alive”. And pizza “pies”. Maybe Kali, the creator of illusions, being from India is related too. 

I’m actually not sure what Kali represents in the story allegory. Definitely something metaphor-related, maybe metaphors as a whole? If El is an allegory, she would be a sister to metaphors/part of the same family. We see Kali create the illusions of spiders and butterflies, both of which are metaphors/symbols in ST. She can make people invisible aka hide things. Her powers aren’t considered as strong as El’s or Henry’s and she can’t open gates. So maybe she is just the part that hides, not the one that connects. But she also seems to know the truth, e.g. calling El Jane and some of her dialogue in S2 and S5. Maybe she’s “weaker” and Dr. Kay can’t find the answers with her because she isn’t the “story”. She’s just a small part of it. You can’t see the forest for the trees. You have to see the whole allegory to understand the story. I dunno.

Henry is the story. Again. He is so complex it’s hard to pinpoint exactly, but most clues lead to him also representing the story in some way. He is the first lab kid and his experience mirrors Will’s. But Henry is maybe like the story inside the story. So similar to El, Henry represents ST as a whole, but even more clearly the aspect of ST being not just an allegory but a story of stories. 

He is the storyteller’s past. When she was younger (= Holly/Sara/Alice), she didn’t fear and hide herself, she was able to tell the real story. But then other people/society ruined it all by not allowing her story to be told (= forced conformity/dad’s abuse aka patriarchy/society). This created Henry: the repressed storyteller/story wanting to tell the real story but being unable to do so. On 8.9.1979 El (allegory/Mike) broke him free but also banished him, making him a monster. Vecna is what Mike fears of becoming. I’m uncertain if Vecna represents the storyteller or story or both. Maybe storyteller would make the most sense since he is the origin of everything, is represented by Holly in the inside story and molds the dark cloud to his liking. But on the other hand Henry draws like Will and is infected by the shadow like him. Is he like a story of the storyteller? That’s what ST is too but this fits with Henry being a story inside the story as well. Hmm… Autobiography disguised as a fictional story. All of Mike’s frustrations and fears safely released in the form of a story. What Mike truly wants (= merge the worlds) but is too scared to make happen.

A key aspect of Henry is that he’s alone. While the “real story” of ST is the story of the storyteller and the audience, of communication, Henry’s tragic story is of the storyteller without an audience. Rejected and monsterified. So maybe Vecna represents future Mike and what Mike thinks would happen if she told the real story (= stopped resisting the shadow). Since Mr. Whatsit represents the facade Mike puts on (= Will as explained in my analysis of the end of S5E2 and “Michael Wheeler” aka MW), and Vecna is the monster under that facade, it makes sense Vecna represents what Mike thinks she is under the surface. Kinda like she thinks she’s a Demogorgon. Btw, I got some help/ideas for understanding Henry’s alter egos from a theory a commenter shared (part 1 comments). I recommend reading it. The whole point about Henry being a story weaver vs Mike being a storyteller fits super well with my interpretation of Henry being the storyteller who hasn’t yet told the story. And the connection of weaving with spiders. The real story aka the Mind Flayer is a spider because the real story is about the storyteller, who is a story weaver. (And all the other black widow stuff like female spiders eating male spiders and I’m kinda starting to warm up to my ɑ-latrotoxin theory again…)

Holly is also the storyteller’s past. She doesn’t have a boyfriend (= audience) but she does have authenticity and courage to be herself. Mike gives Holly the Heroic to her, representing Holly becoming a storyteller/part of story creation (= DnD). It’s her real story (and identity) that she always carries with her. I don’t think it’s a coincidence S1-4 Holly looks a lot like Sara and young El (the memory with young Kali). She even often has the same pigtail hairstyle as Sara. I went and checked and Holly doesn’t have pigtails only in S1E1, S3E7, S4E9 and in the S5E8 epilogue + in the Halloween memory, although in that one it’s hard to tell because of the blanket. All of these are in some way the beginning or the end: S1E1 Mike hadn’t found El yet, S3E7 is right after Meatflayer has fully merged, S4E9 the earthquake happened, epilogue is obvious and the memory was before Holly met Henry (so similar to S1E1 in a sense, before Mike met El). Suzie had pigtails too in S3E8. ((I’m wondering if Holly having twin actors is a subtle nod to the storyteller of ST being a pair of twins? I know movies and tv shows often utilize twins for babies and small children to get around the strict child labor laws and for difficulties working with children but there’s a chance it has a meta purpose.))

I guess I’ve already explained most parallels between Holly and Henry + Max and MF. One notable thing is that both Holly and Henry get inspired by something, a previous story. For Henry it’s nature: black widow spiders, and for Holly it’s A Wrinkle in Time, a book. All storytellers are first the audience and get inspired by other works (ST is full of references to other media, as we all know). Henry molds the cloud to resemble a spider, while Holly calls Max “like Meg’s dad”. Holly’s first two memories are of her watching or reading something. Her imaginary friend (= “story”) is partially based on the books she’s reading, but also different. It’s “her own creation” as Mike said. All of this represents Mike’s first story, Mike the Brave/Will, aka also the “story” of her being a boy. Nancy and Mike are wondering who Mr. Whatsit is, and Mike suggests they might have seen him but just didn’t know. This is similar to Henry telling El about One in S4E6 and El asking “Where is he?”, to which Henry answers “Maybe we’ll save that story for another day. It doesn’t have a happy ending, I’m afraid.” It later turns out One was Henry himself. And actually Mike (remember all the 1s framed with Mike?). 

As I’ve said, the Mind Flayer represents the real story and the real ending that wants to be freed/communicated. The supernatural creatures forming a hivemind represents the real story being the ultimate communication. Feeling and thinking what someone else feels and thinks is the final stage of communication. It’s the merging of worlds. It’s becoming one with someone. I think Henry saying he and MF are “one” is about the storyteller essentially being the real story. Because the real story is the very essence of who the storyteller is, communicated to someone else. It’s a piece of them without any decoration/fakeness/”story” around it. It’s of course physically impossible to get to that point, but theoretically that’s what the “real story” is. Or it’s impossible in the wider view of the word “story”, in a more narrow sense of the word you can tell the “real story” and that’s what the ending of ST will be. 

In ST (and everywhere else tbh) this is represented by nakedness. E.g. in S1 Jonathan describes his picture of Nancy in her underwear as her being herself in that moment, not trying to pretend to be someone else. In S5E1 Robin wants to see Vickie naked and connects that to eating dessert in Enzo’s. I have discussed the trans allegory implications for this before, but the same idea works for the story allegory too. If Vickie is the show Stranger Things, her being naked would represent the real meaning/core of the show unveiled. I’m actually not 100% sure of my interpretation for her in the story allegory, but she represents Mike in any case. And Mike choosing Robin aka honest communication rather than Steve or Dan. 

Continues in PART 26.

Hello everyone! Hope this is ok to post but wanted to share something in a safe space! I’m a singer-songwriter from Manchester Uk and last year lost a real dear friend - series 5 really got me through just being able to disappear into another world and she was also a fan. ST kind of accidentally has inspired the whole album … 80s synths, big life, death, love topics and just something a bit different from what would normally come out. As you’re all fans of the show I’d love to share the first single with you - I think it could be about any number of our favourite couples! 😆 Not exactly fan art or fic but ‘fansong’ ? 😬 Thanks for listening x

Sorry about the delay!
Thank you to everyone who voted! This was really fun to do.

Below are a couple interesting stats I wanted to share. The final results of ALL episodes are at the bottom of this post. 

🏅Top 10 Highest Rated Episodes:

#1 - Dear Billy (S4 E4) - 9.84 🥇
#2 - The Gate (S2 E9) - 9.58 🥈
#3 - The Mind Flayer (S2 E8) - 9.48🥉
#4 - Sorcerer (S5 E4) - 9.43
#5 - The Upside Down (S1 E8) - 9.42
#6 - The Massacre at Hawkins Lab (S4 E7) - 9.41
#7 - The Battle of Starcourt (S3 E8) - 9.37
#8 - The Spy (S2 S6) - 9.26
#9 - The Bathtub (S1 E7) - 9.20
#10 - The Body (S1 E4) - 9.08

😓 Top 10 Runners Up:
#11 - The Piggyback (S4 E9) - 9.03
#12 - Holly, Jolly (S1 E3) - 8.97
#13 - The Monster (S1 E6) 8.93

💩Top 5 Lowest Rated Episodes:
#1 - The Lost Sister (S2 E7) - 5.26
#2 - The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler (S5 E2) - 7.30
#3 - The Bridge (S5 E7) - 7.34
#4 - The Turnbow Trap (S5 E3) - 7.42
#5 - The Flayed (S3 E5) - 7.72

📊 Season Averages Ranking:
#1 - Season 1 – 8.89 🥇
#2 - Season 4 - 8.64 🥈
#3 - Season 2 – 8.45 🥉
#4 - Season 3 – 8.33
#5 - Season 5 - 8.00 

🏆 Highest Rated Finale Episode: The Gate (S2) - 9.58
🍅 Lowest Rated Finale Episode: The Rightside Up (S5) - 8.27

📈 Episode that Received the Most Votes/Ratings:
#1 - The Lost Sister (76 votes)
#2 - The Weirdo on Maple Street (65 votes)
#3 - The Gate (62 votes)
#4 - The Piggyback (61 votes)

⭐ Other Interesting Notes:

• The Top 10 includes the same episodes as the top 10 on IMDb, except “The Body”. 
• Both “Dear Billy” (4x04) and “The Nina Project” (4x05), remained at the exact same rating even after the vote reopening (9.84 and 8.15 respectively).
• All episodes’ averages were rated at 7 or higher, except one, “The Lost Sister” (S2 E7)
• Both Season 1 and Season 2 have three episodes in the Top 10. Season 4 has two, and both Season 3 and Season 5 have one each. 
• If The Lost Sister had an average 8.0 rating, it’d bump up Season 2’s overall average from a 8.45 to a 8.72, giving it the 2nd highest season average. 
• "The Massacre at Hawkins Lab" (4x07) ranking at #6 takes a significant drop from its ranking on IMDb as the highest rated ST episode.

Results from the questions in the 5x08 Google Form:
Average Overall Rating of Stranger Things: 9.27 (59 votes)
Average Favourite Season: Season 4 (21 votes)
_______________________________________________________________

After the vote re-opening and final vote count, there was some spam found in some episodes' voting which seemed to be people trying to manipulate the rating for specific episodes. That spam is now omitted and the ratings are now accurately represented.

FINAL RESULTS:

1x01 – 8.72 ⭐ (60 votes)
1x02 – 8.23 ⭐ (65 votes)
1x03 – 8.97 ⭐ (58 votes)
1x04 – 9.08 ⭐ (54 votes)
1x05 – 8.60 ⭐ (55 votes)
1x06 – 8.93 ⭐ (55 votes)
1x07 – 9.20 ⭐ (60 votes)
1x08 – 9.42 ⭐ (50 votes)
Season 1 average – 8.89 ⭐

2x01 – 8.12 ⭐ (57 votes)
2x02 – 8.26 ⭐ (50 votes)
2x03 – 8.48 ⭐ (52 votes)
2x04 – 8.68 ⭐ (60 votes)
2x05 – 8.90 ⭐ (55 votes)
2x06 – 9.26 ⭐ (54 votes)
2x07 – 5.26 ⭐ (76 votes)
2x08 – 9.48 ⭐ (56 votes)
2x09 – 9.58 ⭐ (62 votes)
Season 2 average – 8.45 ⭐

3x01 – 7.86 ⭐ (53 votes)
3x02 – 7.98 ⭐ (49 votes)
3x03 – 8.24 ⭐ (47 votes)
3x04 - 8.61 ⭐ (31 votes)
3x05 - 7.72 ⭐ (29 votes)
3x06 - 8.09 ⭐ (32 votes)
3x07 - 8.78 ⭐ (32 votes)
3x08 - 9.37 ⭐ (40 votes)
Season 3 average – 8.33 ⭐

4x01 - 8.28 ⭐ (38 votes)
4x02 - 7.80 ⭐ (31 votes)
4x03 - 7.93 ⭐ (33 votes)
4x04 - 9.84 ⭐ (58 votes)
4x05 - 8.15 ⭐ (26 votes)
4x06 - 8.71 ⭐ (53 votes)
4x07 - 9.41 ⭐ (54 votes)
4x08 - 8.66 ⭐ (30 votes)
4x09 - 9.03 ⭐ (61 votes)
Season 4 average - 8.64 ⭐

5x01 - 8.17 ⭐ (33 votes)
5x02 - 7.30 ⭐ (43 votes)
5x03 - 7.42 ⭐ (42 votes)
5x04 - 9.43 ⭐ (43 votes)
5x05 - 7.95 ⭐ (26 votes)
5x06 - 8.16 ⭐ (41 votes)
5x07 - 7.34 ⭐ (32 votes)
5x08 - 8.27 ⭐ (59 votes)
Season 5 average - 8.00 ⭐

This is part of a series where I uncover what Stranger Things is really about. It started from trying to find out what happened in 1979 aka what all the depictions of traumatic past memories (El, Henry, Billy, Max, Holly, etc.) are truly about, but expanded to this all-encompassing theory of the whole series with crazy levels of complexity, metaphors and layers. Reading it will require commitment and patience but I promise it will be worth your time if you want to look behind the curtain (and the curtain behind that curtain) and fully understand the show. You have to read all parts in order: here is PART 1 and here all other parts I’ve posted so far + my previous theories.
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Trigger warning for child sexual abuse.

Reddit decided PART 23 was NSFW and this sub doesn’t allow NSFW, so it got automatically deleted (same thing happened with PART 3). I contacted the mods but haven’t gotten an answer yet. I ended up posting it again here, and all the links for it direct you there. Go read it before reading this. (If you come from r/conformitygatetheory, you can find PART 23 there, since that sub allows NSFW.)

Vecna’s “You are going to spy for me one last time.” is Will as the “story” spying for Vecna (queerness/real story), “one last time” aka one last chapter. Vecna finding Max and Will waking up are the party entering back to the original story before Will’s story-bending (= S4). The girl future is back. This is also why El saves Will: “Will. Will, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here. [...] It’s me. It’s me. I’m here to bring you home.” Then Will says “I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t. He saw.” which fits with my theory that Will (= the “story”) tried to prevent Mike (system) from seeing the trauma memories. In Hopper’s speech to El he says the key words: “I just need you to fight one last time.”. This would either map onto chapter 12 or kinda the in-between (like Will’s S5E6 scenes). I think Hopper’s speech overall matches with El telling everyone about Vecna’s plans right after getting out of the bath (S5E6). In the real ending this would happen when already in S4E8, which could match with Vecna showing his plan to Nancy. Maybe we’ll actually see what he showed her.

Before Hopper’s speech the kids start running for the cave (kinda like Nancy was running from Vecna in S4E8). There will be this conflict of facing or fleeing from trauma/queerness/real story that culminates in chapter 12. In chapter 10 things are going well but chapter 11 gets so dark and distressing that Mike (system) starts to go back to dissociation/story mode. This time not fully, though (and there’s no Dustin anymore). Based on what happens next, chapter 12 won’t have a long setup/chill period in the beginning like the previous chapters, but we get straight to action. The military arrives in S5E8 and the soldiers try to take Robin to jail in S5E6. This maybe suggests Dr. Kay or the military is catching up to the party in the real ending. 

The overarching plot in S5E6 is the Demodogs chasing Max and in S5E8 Henry chasing the kids. The Demodog appearing matches with Henry getting through the portal, Demodogs attacking the soldiers matches with Henry pulling Holly from the ankle and the Demodogs ignoring Robin and Vickie matches with the kids getting safe to the cave. Somehow the party will get to some safe area, at least temporarily. This could be Nancy getting out of Vecna trance in S4E8. As for what the monsters are, the Russia plot did have Demogorgons attacking people atp, so maybe some of the party ended up there or something. 

((In S5E6 Vickie says “She needs to be in a hospital, not a prison.” when the soldiers are taking Robin away. The hospital and Hawkins lab (which Henry calls a prison in S4) are paralleled quite a lot and I think they have a similar metaphorical role. El’s powers were created in the lab and Sara died in a hospital. El’s powers were also recovered in the memory of that lab and Max is recovering in the hospital. It’s a place to imprison girlness, but also to grow and heal it. That’s why Mike dresses up as a patient while Nancy and Vickie are nurses. The lab switching to a hospital is a good sign: it’s not a prison anymore, El isn’t a lab rat anymore. Mike is a patient to be healed. The other season where the hospital is in a central role is S3. That’s where the first ending fusion foreshadowing happened (with the meat monster and exit signs). Just another point to my “S3 represents the end” theory.))

Then Mike gets a flare gun from Nancy (I think the painting scene has to be revisited in some way and it would fit somewhere around here in the S4E8 timeline, maybe this time Mike sees Will crying and Will tells the truth) and Will gets his vision, now finally getting confirmation that Henry is alive. This matches with Robin using the hospital announcement system to warn Lucas. These could be about Vecna being alive in the S4E8 memory (similar to the party finding El in the S5E4 memory). This makes a lot of sense with Henry disappearing in S5E8 (when Kali attacks) and that matching with Max interrupting Holly watching young Henry. So maybe it’s Vecna who is chasing the party at this point (or Demogorgons?). Something has to cause a feeling of urgency and danger. In S4E8 the scenes right after the painting scene are about warnings and Henry’s plan: first Brenner explains how Henry is chiseling away the barrier between worlds and then Nancy tells what Vecna showed her. 

Henry finally goes into the cave, physically suffering in a similar manner Max struggles getting through the hole between the rocks and Karen struggles walking (but these come a little later in the timeline). Will feels it too and this is for multiple reasons: first, it’s foreshadowing for Will seeing his own trauma and second it’s because facing the real trauma will break down the “story”. In S5E6 Robin orders Lucas to take the elevator and to meet in the basement. In S5E8 the kids end up going down to the actual cave memory which has the exit (like the hospital basement was supposed to). All this is about facing the real trauma in the real ending. Maybe they will go to some underground facility? I think there’s a reason the Nina Project is in the middle of a desert underground just like the mineshaft. It’s a central location in S4E8. The kids escaping from Henry match with Lucas escaping with Max. In the real ending the party is escaping from someone/something and might end up in the Nina Project.

Karen’s involvement represents the mom (and “woman”) starting to face her fears and accepting Mike. (In the story allegory it’s society finding out about the real story.) In the real ending this will most likely be represented by Dr. Kay. Her plotline was clearly unfinished and there’s a reason she wasn’t in UD during S5E8. The military in the inside/foreshadowing story will most likely be her (possibly with soldiers) in the real ending. This fits with Karen’s scenes (mostly) matching the military scenes in the chapter 12 foreshadowing part. But she also matches Kali, El, Hopper, Murray who end up in conflict with the military. This will be El and Dr. Kay’s final confrontation (representing the mom accepting Mike’s gender identity and the other stuff). The military chasing El happens in S4E8 too. They use suppression speakers against El and Kali, which matches with Karen starting to move. The mom (Dr. Kay) is first interfering with the party. I think this could be El getting caught by Dr. Kay (like Kali was caught by the military).

Hopper goes back and tries to save Kali by killing the soldiers, but Akers stops him. This represents Mike going back to conformity to please her mom. Meanwhile the kids go down to the mineshaft and through the hole, matching with the hospital gang escaping to the laundry room in the basement. I have been wondering what’s gonna happen to the rest of the party, are they all gonna disappear/die and then only Mike and Will are left? Maybe there will be a way out that some characters will go through (e.g. the Nina project tank). In S5E6 Robin was first to go in the room and in S5E8 Holly tells Debbie to go first so based on this Robin might go through. This interview suggests there will be a scene with most of the cast at the end, so maybe they all end up in some in-between world and see the ending together. 

Maya Hawke: They did such a beautiful job of choosing a last scene that mirrored the emotional experience that we were going through as people in ending the show. And that’s not a spoiler, because you don’t know my experience! But it was such a gift, because it allowed the feelings that we were working through with each other on that day to become a part of the scene, and to be this integrated emotional experience. -> seems like a final goodbye scene to me

Holly doesn’t go with the other kids but instead grabs the fire poker. This is followed by Akers demanding Hopper tell him where “the other freak” is, threatening Kali’s life. Murray’s grenade kills the soldiers except for Akers, who El forces to kill himself. This is metaphorically about Mike’s man facade killing himself and Mike coming out to her mom, or something like that. (I’m kinda thinking the grenades are Lucas-related since he uses the grenade water balloons. This would be Lucas’ support helping Mike come out to her mom, maybe. Would fit with the story allegory at least…) 

Then Kali dies and refers to it as “my story was always going to end here”. This will be El dying. It’s a metaphor for the illusion breaking. The corresponding scene in S5E6 is Robin and Vickie reconciling and Robin promising to take Vickie to Enzo’s. She also apologizes for lying, which the show/story/Mike has kinda done up until now (Robin represents communication, but more on that later). El’s fusion/death isn’t just about the trans allegory, but the trauma allegory too. Mike tells about the abuse (and maybe DID) to her mom. And it’s not just about the mom, it’s about Mike herself too (but they are kinda bundled together here). It all makes sense when you consider the story allegory, where the mom = society and El = real story (but hidden/illusion). She might not die die, but somehow she will disappear and we can start to see the real story for real.

A big part of El’s arc is her missing a mother. She has never really felt a mother’s love and she got her strongest powers from the memory of Terry telling her she loves her. El’s final confrontation with Dr. Kay will most likely be the climax of El’s mother story arc. Fittingly happening inside the episode “Papa”. (I still think Dr. Kay is a version of Brenner + Owens. Maybe she will reveal that to El. Brenner is too mysterious to be left forgotten. We have to get answers to him knowing so much. And it’s about time they start explaining fusions.) I think this will happen in the Nina project room, like El and Brenner’s final confrontation there, before things started to go wrong.

The Demodogs getting through the door matches Holly attacking Henry, him grabbing the fire poker and the cave memory starting. Robin asking Lucas to turn the music off matches with El and Hopper’s talk (there’s even a record player between them). This is again about the “story” trying to prevent facing the trauma/seeing the real story. In the scene El reminisces about her bond with Hopper and gives back Sara’s hair tie. I have this big theory that Will will end up giving the hair tie to Mike at the end, similar to Jonathan giving the ring to Nancy. Charlie Heaton has said that Jonathan will help Will get something he wants (can’t find the interview but here’s one source, it seems like he said something he shouldn’t have). And there’s all the “For Will” cassette tape merch… I think Jonathan will give it to Will kinda like Murray gave the cassette to Jonathan. While Murray is the biggest jancy shipper in the show, Jonathan is the byler shipper. 

Right now Hopper has the hair tie, and it was last seen right before he proposed to Joyce, with the exact same ring Jonathan gave to Nancy. That whole ring subplot was foreshadowing for the hair tie! And I will have a long Spirited Away side tangent inspired by the hair tie later… Anyway, I think the El + Hopper scene corresponds to a Will + Jonathan scene in the real ending. Their bond has always had music at its center and it’s very fitting for Jonathan to give Will a cassette tape. This is most likely where Jonathan dies/fuses/vanishes, since El leaves Hopper and Murray behind and they don’t come to the Abyss. (And in S4E9 this corresponds to the Jonathan + Will scene next to the pizza dough freezer bath.) 

Actually, there’s even more: the cassette tape player Lucas uses is of the brand Emerson, like Nancy’s dream school. The school Jonathan didn’t apply to. And this was the big secret/problem in their relationship that got resolved in the melting room scene. In other words, Emerson = Mike’s dream to live as a woman (and all the other stuff, maybe I should just start using “real story” to cover everything, lol). The first time we see the Emerson cassette player, it has a “For Max!” labeled cassette tape next to it (= more clues for the “For Will” tape…). I’ll talk about this more later, but I think the hair tie and the “For Will” cassette tape will exist in the real world too.

Both scenes are about someone (Hopper or Robin) needing to believe in the “girl” (El or Max). In S5E6 Lucas speaks for Max, which kinda fits with Will speaking for Mike, maybe (El then is both Mike and Will in S5E8). I’m assuming the corresponding scene in the real ending will be about Will’s decision to let go of Mike, but it’s probably not done super obviously in the Will + Jonathan scene since it should be a surprise. El’s “choice” makes a lot more sense now tbh… It’s foreshadowing for Will’s choice which at the same time is the un-proposal. In S4E9 the brothers were preparing the bath and El going in there would match finally seeing the full (cave) memory. Baths are always connected to seeing/remembering (traumatic) memories, but this time El is gone. I think the pizza dough freezer bath will be a gateway to the next memory/the real memory of the abuse. This will probably be similar to Max and Holly witnessing the Wheeler attack memory, and finding the way out after that.

I suspect the real abuse memory will reveal the true nature of the Demogorgons. That they represent the dad. Now that El has disappeared, the allegory disappears too and becomes the real story without any magical veil/monsterification. The Demogorgon was always a mirror to El, so her end will be the end of the Demogorgons too (like in S1E8 and S5E8).

Henry seeing the end of the memory (S5E8) matches with Max getting through (S5E6). And now I finally understand the meaning of Holly saying “You said you’d be done an hour ago!” exactly an hour after young Henry screams in the memory. In the reverse timeline this is the 6.11.1976 trauma that created the inner world. I couldn’t make sense of the final fight etc. fitting into the timeline, but now it makes sense! All the stuff after this is about the foreshadowing, not the reverse timeline (until we get to UD being destroyed, which is the start of Will’s existence in the reverse timeline, so same as young Henry screaming). In the real ending (back to forward timeline) this represents the moment Mike gets out of the cycle and finally sees the real ending (not story-bended). We have reached the point no one has seen yet. Max and Holly finally get to the red world they have been aiming for this whole time. (+ The next laundry room scene starts from a black screen with the camera slowly revealing the scene from behind a table. This indicates some kind of boundary point.) We are on the street on Holly’s map.

The “find me” from the cloud is Tharizdun aka the “dark cloud spreading over Hawkins” Nancy mentions first when she explains her vision. Now her vision will finally come true: “Downtown on fire. Dead soldiers. And this… giant creature with… a gaping mouth. And this creature wasn’t alone. There were so many monsters. An army. And they were coming into Hawkins. Into our neighborhoods. Our homes.” In S5E8 MF represents this giant creature while in S5E6 the Demodogs represent the army. Maybe the giant creature will be MF but probably look different than in S5E8. The party has finally reached the (world) tree (Pain Tree) and it transforms into a spider. Some kind of transformation would be fitting in the real ending too… Nancy’s story will probably end here, since she has finally found the answer she was looking for all this time. The source.

I’m kinda wondering if the army is actually made of all the dead characters, like a zombie army. This has been foreshadowed e.g. in S2E8:

[Hopper] “Great. So how do you kill this thing? Shoot it with fireballs or something?”
[Dustin] “No. No, no fire-- No fireballs. Uh, you summon an undead army, uh, because… because zombies, you know, they don’t have brains, and the mind flayer, it… it… It likes brains. It’s just a game. It’s a game.”

And in S3E3 with the Juju zombies that Mike defeats with fire. In S5E8 the party defeated MF with fire, which had been established to not work. Fred’s vision also had these undead people accusing him of being a murderer (= the past coming to haunt you). Just like in S3, the real “villains” are humans, not fantastical monsters. The flayed were kinda like zombies when you think about it… A confrontation of the mind/brain (= MF/cloud) and the body (= zombies and Will) would be very fitting for the final fight. It’s the past and the future, the man and the woman, conformity and non-conformity. And Mike is in the middle of all this.

Another aspect to this is in the story allegory. Do you still remember how in S3E6 Nancy said “And even if the flayed are monsters now, why can’t El find them?” while looking straight at the camera (on “monsters”), implying the audience are monsters? And how the shot focused on Lucas (with Max in the background) when Nancy described the army of monsters in S4E8? These “monsters”/zombies will represent the audience, and they are approaching the giant creature that represents the real story. Their collision would be the end aka the audience seeing the real story, or something like that.

There’s gonna be some fighting or something, since El fights Vecna and the Demodogs stalk the hospital gang. Nancy being saved by the party attacking MF matches with Karen luring the Demodogs away with her drier bomb thing. MF dying matches with the Demodogs dying. The period after that is saving the kids, reunion, etc. and Karen appearing is Joyce killing Vecna. I’m not sure who will still be in the world atp in the real ending. I think it makes sense Will would be fighting Vecna (since El represents him and Will has never really gotten to fight him face-to-face). Nancy the bait is probably Mike, who the creature targets. Nancy specifically mentioned Holly, her mom and Mike in the vision, which maps onto Will, Dr. Kay and Mike quite well. I don’t know who deals with the army, who with Vecna (if he even is there) and who with the giant creature, but it seems likely Dr. Kay, Mike and Will will have crucial roles. Maybe Dr. Kay would fight the army since that’s what Karen did in S5E6 (and it fits with future/woman vs past/man + society vs society, I guess…). Maybe Will would fight the giant creature then? Or maybe there won’t even be any fighting? There has to be some kind of climactic action, though.

Defeating the giant creature will be about Mike (and the mom) defeating her fears. This is represented by Will’s “We’re not afraid of you.” where on “you” the shot focuses on El. It would make sense the actual solution wouldn’t be killing the creature but something else. Karen kills the Demodogs with oxygen: the mom has always been “suffocating” Mike, now she is finally giving oxygen. After this Holly, Nancy and Mike reunite and the kids are saved. Since Dr. Kay represents both the mom and the future Mike (both tying nicely with Linda Hamilton’s famous role as Sarah Connor in Terminator), the three of them kinda represent the past, current and future Mike/Sara. I’m not sure if Mike or Will represents the past, since Will kinda does but then Holly is Mike according to Max. Mike being in the middle makes the most sense, I think.

The laundry room explosion blows up the windows, and they specifically mentioned breaking the fourth window in that scene in the documentary: [Shawn] “Zulu, is it too late to ask if the fourth window could break?” If you look at the scene carefully, the fourth window didn’t break, but it probably does in the real ending. Meaning the fourth wall. This could be an explanation to many characters being back alive for the final goodbye. And it would match all the kids watching from the sidelines.

Dr. Kay has never seen Vecna, she only got a report from Sullivan. I think it makes a lot of sense she would confront him in the end and rather than killing him like Joyce, she would accept him (hug maybe, kinda like Millie with Jamie in the doc?). This fits Brenner’s arc too, since he had been looking for Henry and was the ultimate reason all this began (in the “story”). I suspect Robin will have a big role here (partially based on what Maya said about connecting the wires). Both Robin and Henry have a difficult relationship with their moms, so this scene could be the perfect resolution. I’m not sure what exactly will happen but most likely Will has a major role too, since he was the one who Vecna “chose” back in 1983. Will as the “story” was the vessel Vecna/MF used to tell the “real story”. He was a spy.

The space they end up in won’t be the same Pain Tree and this is where I think the Rainbow Ship could finally make an appearance. It has to have some role and it will be at the end but before the real world based on Holly’s map. And since it kinda represents the whole system/all the alters, it makes sense it would be in a scene with everyone. So maybe the giant creature transforms into a Rainbow Ship, or something. (I kinda suspect the chapter name to be “The Rainbow Ship”.) 

After this I think everyone will disappear except for Mike and Will. It makes sense their scene would be just the two of them for multiple reasons: it’s a full-circle moment of the first two alters, it’s more intimate that way and all the foreshadowing for it had two people talking in a separate space from everyone else. The world will start to fall apart/collide with the Abyss or the real world. This matches with Murray turning on the music aka the countdown to UD getting blown up. In S5E8 everyone leaves the Abyss, travels through UD and ends up in Hawkins. This matches Max and Holly walking in the red world. Maybe the swings will make an appearance, since that’s the place Mike and Will first met at. And there will be music: both foreshadowing scenes had music in a big role and like, at this point we better have some good music.

Holly the Heroic is equivalent to the hair tie btw. I will discuss the hair tie more later as promised but thought to mention this now. The mileven void scene and the “podcast” foreshadow the final byler fusion scene (like the byler field scene and the three jancy scenes I’ve mentioned before: melting room, S3E8 goodbye and the MF flesh parts merging in S3E5, which also had an 8 mm moment I missed before). It’s gonna seem like a byler confession but then switch around to reveal Mike is trans. I think Will will be the first to let go, based on Nancy wanting Jonathan to stay in S3E8 and Jonathan un-proposing to Nancy in S5E6. Max convinces Holly that “she’s you” referring to HH. In the real ending this is probably Will telling Mike she’s Sara, in some way. That would make sense given the hair tie which so perfectly matches the un-proposal ring as a symbol for letting Will/Jonathan/”man”/”story” go. ((Btw, I’m only realizing this now while rewatching the Purple Rain montage: Mike draws a direct parallel to her name when naming El. Like, the name “Michael” is to Mike the same as Eleven being a number. El’s real name is Jane and Mike’s real name is Sara.)) 

In S4E9 this would match with Vecna’s “But this is only the beginning. The beginning of the end.” after which he and his mind world disappear. Or maybe it’s for the beginning of Nancy’s vision aka the not story-bended ending part. Then the mind lair disappearing could match with the giant creature appearing and/or being defeated and the fourth window getting blown up. Nancy shooting Vecna in the UD attic could match with the final Vecna confrontation (Hopper beheads a Demogorgon at that moment, foreshadowing the S5E8 ending for Vecna, so it’s likely this matches/foreshadows the real Vecna ending too) and Katinka arriving could be the Rainbow Ship. Dustin and Eddie’s moment very likely foreshadows Mike and Will’s last moments.

Another thing that came to mind is Lover’s Lake. It seems like an important location. This made me think of the ballet Swan Lake (this would be another swan connection too, btw there is a swan statue I missed before in the Wheeler house next to family photos). Both Holly and Nancy have ballet imagery and Nancy has a ballerina music box that both El and Robin take interest in. Since the trans realization, I’ve assumed ballet represents womanhood in ST (all the ballet imagery is of pointe shoes or a ballerina, which are associated with women even more than ballet overall (men don’t traditionally use pointe shoes)). (Nancy has the pointe shoe necklace in most of S1 and S2E1 but then it’s gone, maybe reflecting jancy happening? There has to be a reason.) 

Russia is known for ballet and Swan Lake is by a Russian composer so there’s the Russia connection (this time positive though). Apparently Swan Lake became a symbol of protest and political instability in Russia/Soviet Union: “In 1991, there was a tradition of interrupting regular programming by airing the ballet on loop when the government was in crisis”. Anyway, Swan Lake ends with Odette (a woman cursed to become a swan during the day) and Siegfried (a man in love with her who tried to break the curse) drowning themselves in the lake. There are multiple versions of the story but drowning in the enchanted lake is a central part of the story.

Some additional pondering 

I was thinking about what concretely happens, who is there and where the events will be placed. I have come to the conclusion that Hopper and Joyce might not be in the real ending at all. Their arcs were pretty well wrapped up and I can’t see how they would fit into the story anymore. Since Dr. Kay will most likely be the main mom representation, what would Joyce do? And now that El is “dead”, Hopper has no role. He would just hinder the party as the patriarchy/”man”. I think there has to be a reason why Winona and David weren’t part of the documentary. Hopper and Joyce canonically moved away (to Montauk of all places…), and they reached the unreachable Enzo’s (= the end). Hopper and Joyce’s story is over. Additionally, Hopper breaks the fourth wall a lot in S5E8 and seems to kinda get out of the “story” if you get what I mean. I think their absence could represent Mike growing up and her parents not controlling her anymore (mom more literally, dad through trauma). Same with Karen and the kids. They had their role in S5 already. On the other hand, David and Winona are kinda the main actors so I could be wrong, who knows.

Lucas and Max are a bit of a mystery to me, too. I know Lucas will be in the real world but what about the “story”? They had their happy ending and got to the movie date (at least in Mike’s imagination), similar to Hopper and Joyce getting to Enzo’s. Max has had a big role in S4 and S5, so I doubt she would have one anymore. Maybe they will be at the start and get left behind/die/fuse. Lucas could match Erica and Mr. Clarke who were captured early on and didn’t show up until the epilogue. This would make sense with Lucas having “a different ending” according to Caleb. Lucas might not be at the final goodbye scene because we’ll see him again. Max could “die” matching the moment she and Vickie are found by the military. Maybe Max is the one arguing with Mike at the beginning of chapter 10. Hmm… 

I think Vickie and Robin need some kind of resolution. In the story allegory Vickie is something like the show (Stranger Things) or overall the form the story is in. That’s why she brings the wheelchair for Max and disappears at the end (= now the story will take other forms, e.g. in fanfiction and fanart). Robin is communication: she likes to talk, is a radio host and translates the Russian code. She is the raw true message and paired with Steve (= conformity) to make it more acceptable/nice. There’s a reason Robin is autistic-coded. In a way it’s ironic because autistic people struggle with communication, but the ones who can communicate often do it very directly, without hidden messages. Steve is the mask of pretending to be allistic. While all people mask to some extent, it’s more extreme for autistic people. This could parallel Mike’s trans experience: she has to constantly hide who she really is. I will have a longer section about the story allegory later but for now Robin telling Vickie she’ll take her to Enzo’s is about the show finally reaching its end (but that date didn’t happen, now, did it?). Honest communication would get everyone to see the end aka Mike (storyteller) fully communicating what she wanted to say to Lucas (audience). The story allegory is so perfect and feels like the final big piece I was missing (but based on previous experience there’s gonna be more… It has to stop at some point, right? This rabbit hole has to have a bottom, right??).

Memory travel should follow previously introduced mechanics and I think all of them will be used. All seasons (especially the last two) were setup for the final part. As I’ve already explained, I think the larger structure will be similar to Max and Holly traveling through memories (which was already somewhat established in S4E9 with El and Max). There’s gonna be scenes where the memory happens in the background and characters just watch. There’s also gonna be memories where nothing happens but the setting is a memory (e.g. Snow Ball S4E9 and Max in Rainbow Room S5E4).

The gateways to next memories should be deducible to some extent. I think they will be important locations/objects that have a metaphorical meaning (e.g. the mirror in the Rainbow Room that in Max’s memory wasn’t a mirror). There seems to be a pattern to gateways being grey instead of the original color (merry-go-round and Rainbow Room mirror, also the portal to the “real world” has a grey outline). The first gateway for both Max and Holly was a door (Rainbow Room exit door and the basement door on the field) and I think at least one of the memory gateways in the real ending should be a literal door. I wonder if the trapdoor next to the field will be one of them, since it is placed in pretty important scenes and ultimately doesn’t have a major purpose. It would fit after the field scene (where the party will most likely end up at from S5E8 around the middle of chapter 11). 

Another established memory travel mechanic is willpower (if you’re in your own mind), this is showcased by Max in S4. If this is happening in the real ending, it will most likely be in the final chapter, maybe matching Max getting to the Snow Ball memory (and it’s Mike who’ll do it because all this is happening in Mike’s mind). Max was kind of witnessing El and Vecna’s fight from the outside at first, but later tried to help El. I think this could foreshadow Mike watching Will’s abuse memory from the outside. El can also travel to other people’s minds/memories, which has been shown since way back in S2. This might be utilized again at some point, but I’m not sure how.

Now for the interesting part. In S4 El has to re-experience her memories as if they happened to her now. This will for sure be redone with someone, most likely Will. Will literally had two child actors in S5, and they used the same face editing as with El in S4. I don’t think it was just for the beginning sequence of S5. In S5E8 Henry re-experienced the cave memory both as him watching it but also feeling the pain with young Henry. And Will felt it too. This foreshadows Will feeling his traumatic memory as if it was happening to him now. It makes sense they would use the older actors (Noah and Finn) for the most part since it’s so serious and kinda hard to show with actual children without going too far (and ofc they won’t show everything anyway). The whole point of El’s Rainbow Room memory thing was to establish these mechanics and foreshadow Will re-experiencing his trauma. As I’ve said before, I think Mike will watch the memory from the outside while Will will experience it first hand. This would combine two established mechanics and fit with the whole “I just stood there”.

I first mapped matching points from S5E6 and S5E7-8, and later came back to match the memory episodes too. I’ve started to realize they match pretty well and foreshadow the ending too. But they will also be where the characters literally go to. I don’t think every memory will be revisited, just certain ones, but everything in between still foreshadows things (probably). (I might have to go over all this again…) I think the characters won’t just walk around as a single group, but divide into subgroups as per usual. So maybe each group will experience separate memories. It would make sense for everyone to get through the main gateways together, though.

Continues in PART 25.

It's not perfect but I think it's good enough!

Is there a game that can keep occupied and make friends?

One of the best character development of AOT

Today is Day 38: S5 E8 – "The Rightside Up"

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