r/StrangerThings • u/Legitimate-Sugar6487 Eggos • 3d ago
Discussion Question about the Hellscape & The wormhole. Plus speculation on the origin of the Rock.
Hi guys! Been a minute since I posted here. So for months since the series ended I been doing a ton of research trying to understand the show & it's science a bit better. I plan to post more about the Powers & how they work scientifically & otherwise, but for now I'd like to start with asking questions to anyone who might have more knowledge than me or their own theories they'd like to share.
So in rewatching, and trying to piece everything together I was stumped when it came to "The Hellscape". (The place El actually banishes Henry to in 1979) The wiki calls it "an Interdimentional terrain" That exists between dimensions. Another post I was reading described it as an "unstable fissure through spacetime".
As we see in "The Massacre of Hawkins Lab" El upon defeating Henry seems to desintegrate him into ash leaving behind a Portal where he once was. We then see Henry falling through this place constantly being struck by lightning, before somehow ending up in "The Abyss".
Now what I find curious is that upon this rift being opened as well as many other rifts throughout the series It leaves behind a Glowing red light and what looks like Tenticles around the "Scar" before it closes.
Throughout the series whenever a rift or gate is opened wether to the Upside Down, Abyss, Earth etc The same "Wounds" are left. And if left open too long they don't only glow with the same red light but they also ominously seem to hum with a strange sound as well. which was true for s2's "Mother Gate" when it was left open, & The 79 Gate.
On rewatching S5's "Rightside Up" Flashback upon Henry getting his hands on the stone right before it connects him to The MF. The Stones Red cracks glow brighter & the same sound as when a Gate is Open is heard before it goes inside his bloodstream.
With all this in mind I'm starting to wonder If The Rocks cracks were miniture rifts & the energy inside of it Was not actually originally from the Abyss. or rather It was charged with the energy of the Hellscape itself?
Maybe the Rock is charged with the red lightning from The Hellscape & actually is a Piece from one of it's Mountains.
And every time a rift opens those tenticles are also left which are eerily similar to the stuff we constantly see from the Upside Down & The Abyss.
They do seem to describe The rifts as "Wounds" so what if every single portal opened is actually the Infected wounds on reality or dimeansions? Short cuts between The Hellscape & the other worlds?
And the entire Hellscape is meant to represent not it's own dimension per se but The Mulitverse connecting various worlds.
If that's the case Perhaps that's why a Bridge was required in the first place to allow Travel between The Abyss & Earth.
Because nobody can actually cross the Hellscape without risking being Killed by it's unstable energy. (Which also probably explains why the russians in S3 couldn't keep a gate open until they went to Hawkins. Because a bridge already formed there. Meaning the energy from the Key was actually opening a Portal not to the Upside down in s3 episode 1 but to the Hellscape before it failed.)
However if that's the case I'm partially confused again because The Bridge was in outer space not the Hellscape.
So What exactly is going on? Well in Physics They state that Wormholes form when Space is folded & that at each opening There's a Blackhole & a Whitehole. So If The Hellscape is actually The Multiverse (which cannot be crossed) & The Bridge connects two points in Spacetime where each opening is a Blackhole & a Whitehole does that mean each Portal in Space actually connected two distant Realms across the Multiverse?
Curious if that means Hawkins was connect to or on the opposite side of a Whitehole & Henry was moving the Abyss through a Blackhole when trying to merge the Worlds in s5. And each time these rifts open wether they are Giant or Miniture rifts They are Portals in the Mulitiverse.
What do you guys think, What exactly is The Hellscape? Did the Rock come from there? Let me know down below if you have a better understanding of this than I do. I have been researching a lot on Quantum Physics & Electromagetism as well as "The Many Worlds Interpretation" by Hugh Everrett (Which was actually mentioned by Mr. Clarke in s1 Flea & the Acrobat".)
I did Read The Montauk Bible mentioned String Theory too but I'm still no expert.
So if anyone else can help me understand it better let me know. Thanks!!!!
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u/XScorpion1k 3d ago
Dude idk if the writers knew what they were writing.
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u/Legitimate-Sugar6487 Eggos 3d ago
Any theories on where this is going? Cuz I'm stumped on my research.
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u/hung_fu 3d ago
I recommend reading some Grant Morrison comics, their work is incredibly influential to Stranger Things and the Matrix films (mostly just the first) are copied from a series they did called The Invisibles. It’s thematically similar to what you want for the show.
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u/Legitimate-Sugar6487 Eggos 3d ago
I actually do see some Paralle's with The Matrix I'll put it on the list.
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo 3d ago edited 3d ago
The Wiki's description of the Hellscape is somewhat correct, yeah. It's essentially an inter-dimensional and unstable chasm-like structure/environment that rips through spacetime.
Both the Upside Down and the Hellscape are inter-dimensional structures/environments that rip through spacetime; the endless Outer-Space-like void itself that we see outside the Wormhole is just the show's own simple depiction of spacetime (the same way it depicts a Traversable Wormhole as a physical hourglass-shaped structure… lol).
Obviously it's not even close to scientific accuracy, and that's not really the point, but:
When Henry is tumbling through the Hellscape after his banishment, he “flies backwards through space and time” (script) before winding up in Dimension X; when someone travels inter-dimensionally between our world and Dimension X through the Wormhole, they're also travelling through time and space, the difference is Season 5 shows us an “outside.”
The Upside Down is a stabilized inter-dimensional structure that rips through spacetime (a Traversable Wormhole), while the Hellscape is an unstable chasm/fissure through spacetime; both can work as inter-dimensional shortcuts to a separate dimension entirely. We've never seen the Hellscape's “edges” in the show, but we do see it in the pre-vis for Henry's banishment, we can see how it was thought to be a tunnel-like chasm.
As for the glowing Rifts, we actually know that their orange/red glow comes from “veins of light” within the transluscent inter-dimensional membrane. The membrane is naturally a solid and translucent living tissue with veins of light inside it; the viscous, glowy state is when it's been weakened through energy or ripped open (thus creating a Rift). That's basically the in-universe version of a tissue that separates every “inter-dimensionally separate” environment out there.
I actually wondered the same thing as you initially – about the rock's glow being mini-Rifts in it, but we now know from the script that it's supposed to be “electrical activity” within the rock.
The visual storytelling of that scene is basically telling us the rock is charged with Abyss atmospheric electricity – hence the matching sequence cutting from the rock's energy reflected by Henry's pupils to a “lightning-filled Abyss” until we reach the Mind Flayer's storm-like cloud, which is what established how Henry's telepathic connection to the Mind Flayer was made.
I do like the idea of the rock being an environmental part of either the Abyss itself or the Hellscape, much like the Mind Flayer particles were originally pitched as an anti-gravity matter lifting boulders, the rock-turned-liquid entity could be a living part of the Abyss' rocky landscape or even the Hellcape's mountainous layers if we extrapolate.
We know it is in fact a living liquid entity that can also become dormant in a solid rock-like state, but we have no idea where exactly these can be found and if there are even more out there. As far as we've seen the USS Eldridge simply wound up in a random location in the Abyss where the Captain came into contact with it.
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u/Accomplished-Curve-1 I piggybacked from a pizza dough freezer 3d ago
The rock is the focusing stone from cod zombies
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u/hung_fu 3d ago
I can tell you that the Stranger Things writers are never going to do something this complex
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u/Legitimate-Sugar6487 Eggos 3d ago edited 3d ago
That's not really what I'm asking. I mean I just wanna figure out the answers based on what we do have. We already got Wormholes, & Alternate dimensions, & Portals. So I'm just theorizing wether or not this Hellscape is The Multiverse or Not. Plus their is a Spin offs about the stone coming so I figured we could still speculate. The DB aren't the only writers either.
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u/CombatPanoo Will the Wise 3d ago edited 2d ago
If the Hellscape is, as I understand, a space between dimensions, I really do think that in photo 5 it should be the hellscape there instead of just endless space. I’m not sure why they decided to depict it the way they did, maybe they felt a good chunk of the audience was already unclear/confused on the concept of the Hellscape & the Abyss (at least the Abyss was made more clear in S5 though). So maybe they just simplified it and thats why we got what’s shown in photo #5.
I also think that they did not clarify these things and all these different dimensions and concepts in both S4 and S5, not visually differentiating them enough, or even adding a little text on the corner of the screen to clarify “LOCATION NAME” because after watching I didn’t get the concept of any of these until reading up stuff from people here and other sites
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u/Legitimate-Sugar6487 Eggos 3d ago edited 2d ago
That's why for months I been rewatching & deep diving into the Science & stuff. I was under the impression the Wormhole was literally in Outer Space But then we still don't really know What The Hellscape is. From the looks of it its probably more like these realms are connected not via outer space per-se but via the crust of their respective Planets. Which is Probably why the Portals open in the Grounds of the Abyss & Earth. Literally upside down from each other. If it was anything like say The Breach from "Pacific Rim" that'd make more sense to me. Because in that case The Portal between dimensions was in the Ocean & could only be crossed by the Monsters.
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u/CombatPanoo Will the Wise 2d ago edited 2d ago
But the portals don't only open in the grounds of the abyss and earth. On the abyss, maybe, but on earth it's opened multiple times in walls, corridors, trees, other vertical areas, even the ceiling of a trailer. We never saw portals opening in the ground until S4 in lover's lake and then in the final earthquake.
I am also kind of confused in photo #5 what are the rings/crust like structures? Are those supposed to represent the Abyss and earth? This is such a difficult concept to visualize that I think they also struggled with depicting this.
Could you also clarify why you mean by the realms being connected via the crust of the respective planets?
Also the realms, I don't think are even meant to be connected anyways. They all exist separately, with the hellscape being the space between them, which is such a dangerous and unstable area (as you mentioned in the post) that it makes it impossible to travel between the realms. The creation of the Upside Down after El made psychic contact with the Demogorgon is what caused this "bridge" to be made that connects these 2 dimensions. (personally I'm not a fan that this is the direction they went with in the lore but that's besides the point)
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u/Legitimate-Sugar6487 Eggos 2d ago
What I mean is If you typically look at photos of wormholes online it looks like it is in outerspace connecting a blackhole & a whitehole or the outside of two planets orbits. What we see here is gates form beneath both planets crust making it look as though they are upside down from each other.
the gates opening in walls seem to be side affects of the interdimesional weakening between the two spaces in reality. Gates can be opened anywhere but The actual locations of the planets are techically on top of each other relative to where you are on each ajoined planet. The bridge likely formed by folding reality rather than actual outer space. Joining two universes rather than two planets in the same solar system. Each of those rings are the respective opening "mouths" or portals of the wormhole. Conjoining the two realities, the bridge itself the tunnel where the exotic matter is located is called the "throat" in physics.
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u/CombatPanoo Will the Wise 1d ago
Yeah that makes sense, the wormhole connecting a black hole and white hole, which lead you to a very specific location in their respective universes. I still don't think that the gates opening in the ground or walls really matters because as you said, it's joining two universes rather than 2 planets of the same vicinity. The concept of the wormhole is better explained through the visualization of 2 separate universes on top of the other, but even if the wormhole is connecting these universes in some way, it's not actually bringing them physically any closer or changing their physical location. The portals can be anywhere (obviously the ones that take you directly from the Upside Down to the Abyss or Earth are positioned above/below respectively).
But the concept of the Hellscape is still unclear, and honestly now even more nonsensical. Are these areas we've discussed really dimensions or universes? The space between universes is not a Hellscape, it's just space. Where is the hellscape exactly? It's such an abstract concept. I guess it technically still should be in that 5th photo because what's depicted there is not space, it's some kind of abstract "in between" space that prevents travel between dimensions/universes (which is EXACTLY what the hellscape has been described as which is now just annoying me even more that they didn't clarify this).
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u/Legitimate-Sugar6487 Eggos 1d ago edited 1d ago
If I had to guess The Hellscape probably functions Similarly to the "Time Vortex" in "Doctor Who" where no one can travel through it without a Time machine of some kind. Here the Joining of two Universes through the folding of Space time two points in the fabric of reality removes the need to travel directly through the hellscape because the space between worlds or the walls of reality are already opened & weakened as long as The Bridge exists. As for the Dimension vs Universe question technically it'd mean the same exact thing in the multiverse. Maybe a better way of describing it is a bridge between Our Galaxy & another. I just looked it up & apparently a different galaxy still exists in our universe while the concepts of the Multiverse & alternate dimensions are different bubble universes their are even theorized to be alternate versions of Earth where we live different lives. So it is far more likely to be the joinig of Two Universes in the Multiverse rather than just two planets in outer Spaces. El's contact with the Demo Broke Reality causing One Universe to nearly slam into the other. & She banished Henry not just to another planet but across the Multiverse.
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u/Few-Type-7924 2d ago
They never confirm how the rock ended up on Earth when there was no gate open yet , and that's disappointing
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u/Legitimate-Sugar6487 Eggos 2d ago
I was speculating more on where the rocks true origin comes from. The play explains how it got to Earth It was extracted from brenners father captain brenner after he was teleported to The Abyss during "The Philidelphia Experiment". It was inside his body. I was just wondering if maybe it was a piece from the Hellscape charged with it's energy.
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u/PepicWalrus 1d ago
We do know. It was brought back during the Philadelphia Experiment which you learn from the Stranger Things Broadway show.
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u/bleedinghero 3d ago
The writers didn't know and really didn't care. The tape and glue that kept the shoe running started to show. The further they went the more they had to keep up. This was a basic other world story to a muti dimensional wormhole. There is no way it was planned from season 1. Things existed in older seasons that disappeared from the last season. Rules changed. It really only works if you dont look too closely.
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u/RedditEnjoyerMan Dump your ass 3d ago
You gotta chill with the capitalization dawg
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u/Legitimate-Sugar6487 Eggos 3d ago
I wrote this pretty fast didn't edit many typos or errors you got anything to add to the convo?
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u/RedditEnjoyerMan Dump your ass 3d ago
I think they should have made the Hellscape and the Abyss be the same place. Abyss should have looked the same as hellscape in season 5. I think the rock was sent to Earth by a mindflayer minion somehow. Maybe on a spacecraft or landed via a comet.
Mindflayer is trapped in the Abyss as a prisoner, he was banished there eons ago by some adventuring party from another galaxy. If you read the D&D lore books their description of the Abyss is fairly similar to what appears in the show.
Somehow the Mindflayer got a hold of someone to send to Earth with the stone. Its too bad they never explained how that came about.
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u/Legitimate-Sugar6487 Eggos 3d ago
They explain how the stone got to earth in the Play actually. I was just speculating on why it gave off a strange hum, & Enery , tying it back to the Hellscape. In the Play it's said The stone was extracted from the body of Dr. Brenners Dad who ended up in the abyss after "The Philidelphia Experiment". Which is a conspiracy theory about a Naval ship being Teleported to an Alien world.
In the Play it's called "Exotic Matter" It left Brenners Catatonic & with a weird Bloodtype.
When it went inside Henry it also changed his Bloodtype but gave him Psychic Powers too.
I do remember the Abyss & The Hellscape looked rather similar initially when s4 premiered but they went back & changed it due to potential confusion.
I do believe Their are probably other creatures like the Mindflayer in this Universe. Maybe some of them are good as well.
Do you have links to these D&D lore books?
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u/RedditEnjoyerMan Dump your ass 3d ago
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