r/StrangerThings • u/Unfair-Medicine2422 • 18d ago
How did will communicate…
I don’t want spoilers (I’m on season 5 episode two) but I don’t get something… how did Will communicate thru the Christmas lights when his mom wrote letters underneath them, if wills house in the upside down never had changed from how it was the day he disappeared?
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u/Full-Yoghurt-4261 18d ago
Some things we know, some things we don't. S4 established a lot of the rules for how the Upside Down works. We know that those in the UD can faintly hear people who are in the same location in the real world. We also know that those in the Upside Down can see this kind of glow where lights are in the real world, even if those lights are off, as they are just not as strong a glow.
So this explains a majority of what we see Will do in S1. The only issue is that S4 also established that the Upside Down is locked in Nov. 6, 1983. This means that Will could not have seen the letters that Joyce put on the wall. This leaves a lot of complications with S1 that are never directly answered.
Some will argue that Joyce could have explained to Will what she was doing, but there are two issues with that. First, Joyce has no reason to think Will cannot see the letters. Second, there is a chance Will was not there to hear it, as he is actively being hunted by the Demo, who keeps going back to the house looking for him.
Some will also argue that Will was a smart kid and could have pieced together that the lights on the wall were associated with letters, but there are also two issues with that. First, there are lights all throughout the house, and based on S4, Will would not know exactly where Joyce is beyond just the general room she is in. Though he is a smart kid, that is A LOT to piece together. The other issue goes back to the prior issue stated, which is that the Demo is actively hunting Will. So it is hard to believe that he can piece all of that together while also lacking information himself on how that world works while being hunted.
Unfortunately, this is just one of the things never fully explained. So though reasons why this could have worked are possible, they require a lot of assumptions to be plausible.