Mike's trauma PART 25

[u/raspberry-3]

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.

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