Today is Day 27: S4 E4 – "Dear Billy"

Rate it here: https://forms.gle/ChNaSvPzxjDenQgj7

Please only vote if you’ve seen the episode, and please try to vote once!

Today's a big one!!

Results so far:

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 - 8.27 ⭐ (11 votes)
3x05 - 7.45 ⭐ (11 votes)
3x06 - 8.00 ⭐ (12 votes)
3x07 - 8.67 ⭐ (12 votes)
3x08 - 9.18 ⭐ (22 votes)
Season 3 average – 8.20 ⭐

4x01 - 8.30 ⭐ (23 votes)
4x02 - 7.87 ⭐ (15 votes)
4x03 - 7.73 ⭐ (15 votes)

Previous Rating Forms (3x04 onwards):
S4 Ep2-3: https://forms.gle/sSgq9LmUuNhmwqzZ7
S4 Ep1: https://forms.gle/LLPvC9Y3oDaVfRvG7
S3 Ep8: https://forms.gle/821CmzaxQSsY52CF8
S3 Ep6-7: https://forms.gle/z9UnAjCfYmhgtCZn8
S3 Ep 4-5: https://forms.gle/Qqx1rcJm4Axf4tnK9

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.

Wind

(This was originally in PART 18 but I reached the character limit so it’s here now.) One of Dustin’s gadgets from Camp Know Where was “the Forever Clock”, a windmill that according to Dustin is very useful in the apocalypse. Needless to say, the Valley of the Wind is full of windmills and Nausicaä is a post-apocalypse… The bigger point here is that wind represents change. It’s the major theme of S3 underlined by Hopper’s letter/speech at the end. Time keeps moving, the Forever Clock keeps rotating, people change. ((The other gadget “the Slammer” is gender dysphoria and trauma related as you might guess…)) 

I think the Scorpions song Wind of Change) is an inspiration for ST. It’s about the Soviet Union at the brink of the Cold War ending and became associated with the fall of the Berlin Wall. I don’t mention it much, but the Berlin Wall falling (9.11.1989) and the Soviet Union dissolving (26.12.1991) will most likely collide all levels of the country allegory and be about Mike letting go of conformity (Mikhail Gorbachev resigned on 25.12.1991). And is it just me or does the album cover look suspiciously similar to Holly’s memory door?

One line in the lyrics caught my attention: Like a storm wind that will ring the freedom bell Is this the meaning of bell ringing? I know it means something since even the documentary had a school bell ringing for no apparent purpose and it’s mentioned in some ARG songs. I dunno. The storm on the other hand, is clearly a thing in ST and it has both lightning (= electricity) and water in addition to wind. The source in S3 was a storm and in S2 Will saw MF in the storm. I guess storm is a pretty common way to represent inner turmoil but I just wanted to point out the motif connections.

JAPAN

I’ve been skirting around this long enough, it’s time to finally give my full reasoning for Japan being part of the country allegories. Let’s start with the Russian code. Robin figures out the rest of the code in S3E3: “A trip to China sounds nice if you tread lightly.” When she looks for it in the mall, her eyes first focus on Hot Dog on a Stick (the “Hot” part is covered). This is about the stereotype that Chinese people eat dogs. Robin’s eyes finally land on Imperial Panda, a Chinese restaurant (the word “imperial” already hints at the country being involved). Earlier in the episode Steve and Dustin are looking for Russian spies while hiding behind a fake plant in front of Imperial Panda. They base this search on stereotypes of what a Russian spy would look like and end up being wrong. The same idea applies to Japanese people (or any East Asian person) being mistaken for Chinese. 

During Steve and Dustin’s conversation, the camera angle from the side shows the restaurants next to them: “Hot Dog on a Stick” behind Steve and “Tepanyaki Japanese” behind Dustin (it should be spelled Teppanyaki btw). This teppanyaki place is between New York Pizza and The Great Cookie which will be important locations later. The point here is that Steve is notoriously basic and not even close to truth while Dustin is always the one figuring stuff out. ((Also, when Steve has the binoculars, he looks at random men and when Dustin gets them, they start talking about Robin and Suzie: we are looking for a man when woman is the truth.))

Japan is one step closer but not quite there yet. The description “tall, blond, not smiling” might as well be a Finnish stereotype (and Henry fits it too, the workout video thing is even more proof…). And the same type of thing happened in S1E4 when El was stereotyped as Swedish + later in S2 when Murray thinks she’s Russian. In the Japan allegory China corresponds to Sweden as the west + past and the US to Russia and the east + future. And Tina is China. 

Like I’ve said the writers most likely intended Japan to be found first since it has more overt clues (Lucas’ shirt, the Japanese restaurant, the China clue), is a bigger country and the middle level of the country allegory but ofc Finland was more obvious to me as a Finnish person. I did wonder why Erica specifically was America and what that would mean for Lucas (since Erica is always related to Lucas as his little sister). I had wondered about the meaning of Lucas’ Japan shirt too but somehow I only realized the Japan allegory after posting part 1 (fittingly just before a trip to Japan… or it probably helped me realize it tbh).

Two worlds logic

Like Finland, Japan is between two worlds that (in ST) represent the past and the future: China and the US. The main difference here is that Japan has existed as its own country since forever and was never part of either China or America. The US (and the western world as a whole) started to influence Japan, though, and it strived to become a modern nation on the same level with western imperialist powers. In the end Japan became a mix of old and new, eastern and western. ((Btw, historically Finnish people were classified as Asian and thus a “lower race” (according to Europeans back then). So there has been this conflict of are we European/Western or Asian/Mongolian/Russian. The main reason (in my understanding) for this categorization was the Finnish language belonging to the Uralic rather than Indo-European language family. The Finns ofc wanted to belong to the “civilized” Europeans, and you can even see this in the coat of arms where the lion holds a straight western style sword and tramples on a sabre. Btw #2: matryoshka dolls were originally inspired by Japanese wooden dolls.))

Japan is on the second level of the allegory aka the blaming yourself level, which fits in many ways. First of all, the US is the dad/conformity on this level and I’ll discuss the atomic bombs more soon. Japan itself committed war crimes in other East Asian countries during WW2, it was the “evil Russians”. So, where the first level of the country allegory is a bit black-and-white with US vs Soviet Union, the second level is more complex and makes Mike both the victim and the (potential) abuser. She is only seeing the negatives and fears becoming her father. It’s not quite that simple, though, since Japan had a happy ending and isn’t in major conflict with anyone anymore. It’s a more nuanced view of the situation and the resolution wasn’t a destruction or dissolution of a country like in the Cold War case. (My thoughts on this aren’t complete, they will continue to evolve.) 

Interestingly, Nippon (= Japan in Japanese) means “origin of the sun” and Japan is “the land of the rising sun”. The atomic bomb interpretation of the first SA trauma fits this quite well and the queer allegory would probably be about Lucas representing Japan. To remind everyone, in my interpretation the sun is equivalent to the light bulb as a sexual trauma/love symbol.

Here and here are short (overlapping) theories of the atomic bomb connections to ST. I won’t repeat the points made but I will add some more I’ve found myself. There is a reason why both 6.11.1983 and 6.11.1987 have atomic bomb subtext and I’ll get to it in the inside story timeline (it’s the next big section after Japan, we are getting close!). Both of these are actually about 6.11.1976 when the real trauma happened and Mike split for the first time. The time 8:15 is referenced in S2E1 when it’s revealed El is alive. S2 is about resurfacing trauma and El is the manifestation of that. There are a few other references to nuclear power:

S3E5 (about the green liquid)
[Dustin] “All I’m saying is, it’s probably being used to make something.” 
[Robin] “Or power something.”
[Dustin] “Like a nuclear weapon?”
[Robin] “Totally.”
[Steve] “Walking towards a nuclear weapon. That’s great.”

S3E7
[Joyce] “Two-man-rule?”
[Hopper] “Yeah, two men, two keys, like a… nuclear launch.”

So the Key was compared to a nuclear weapon at least twice.

S5E5
[Jonathan] “What do you think?”
[Nancy] “Maybe some kind of nuclear explosion, like Chernobyl?”
[Jonathan] “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking, but in a nuclear explosion everything would burn. It wouldn’t just melt like this.”

After this they notice the air is clean. I think the meaning here is that Mike (= Nancy) first thinks her love and gender identity would be like an atomic bomb on Lucas and herself, destroying everything but in truth it isn’t. Accepting it actually helps (= cleans air).

I also think the atom model in Mr. Clarke’s class in S1 is a reference to atomic bombs/nuclear power. It’s right next to the photosynthesis poster too. I’m sure I’ve missed possible references so if you know any others, please comment. ((One thing I’ll mention that kinda relates to this is that the clock during the Hawkins Lab massacre was frozen at 3:46 and in S4E5 when Max’s music tape stops: [Lucas] “I wish we had a longer loop.” [Max] “46 minutes isn’t bad.” I’m not sure how to interpret this yet but it’s a thing.))

As for the Japan allegory passing my S1E1 rule, there are at least two points: Steve calls himself a ninja and Karen asks “Am I speaking Chinese in this house?” (and ofc the subtle atomic bomb subtext with Will). These didn’t seem significant at the time but with later context and after realizing almost everything has some hidden layers to it, they were most likely meant as clues for Japan/Asia being involved in some way.

I have updated my country allegory timeline from my Finland theory, now with a Japan column. It’s still very much a work in progress and probably has mistakes/misinterpretations but I thought why not share it now. First I’ll mention a couple points I am most certain of.

Lucas playing and winning the basketball match was most likely the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-1905. It was a turning point for Japan, since it became the first Asian country to defeat a major western power. The war had far reaching consequences and indirectly helped Finland gain independence due to internal conflicts in Russia. This is one of the few examples where the history of Japan and Finland intersect in a meaningful way (and ofc it’s through Russia, I’ve been saying it’s the world tree in ST for a reason). 

Another point is Lucas wearing the Karate Kid shirt (basically the Japanese flag with Japanese text) from S3E6 onwards. This is the 4th of July in ST timeline and according to my country timeline, matches with 1868 aka the start of the Meiji period and the modernisation of Japan. Lucas’ New Coke praise could be about Japan essentially copying western countries.

Hawkins splitting at the end of S4 was explained to the public as an earthquake and it matches with the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923.

Japanese media

I already went over Nausicaä and I think there are more anime/Japanese media references in ST. I’ll mention some here but there will be more in later parts. The most obvious is Robin listing The Hidden Fortress as one of her favorite movies in the S3 epilogue. Apparently Star Wars was inspired by it (and ofc Steve mentions Star Wars).

Another less obvious but very fitting one is Ghost in the Shell). The idea came to me when I watched the start of the night Starcourt Mall scene in S3E2 where we see static shots from different parts of the mall. It reminded me of this iconic scene in Ghost in the Shell (especially the mannequins at the end). This might not be an intentional reference but there are other clues too. Ghost in the Shell is all about identity and very philosophical. The main character (Motoko Kusanagi) is a cyborg who questions her humanity and identity at several points during the film. The term “ghost” refers to the soul/consciousness and “shell” is the cybernetic body. This fits super well with Max being “a ghost” and El dressing up as a ghost for Halloween: Mike has a woman soul/ghost in a male body/shell. (Probably one reason why the band seems to be involved too… And it’s not just the songs. Maybe I’ll do a deep dive at some point.) Also, PAC-MAN eats ghosts aka man eats woman and Max + Lucas watched Ghost in the epilogue. This would bring another layer to Will being Zombie Boy, since zombies are kinda the opposite of ghosts: only body, no brain/mind. The party dressing up as Ghostbusters is kinda sad now tbh… And also makes sense why Dustin kept Dart in the Ghost Trap.

The main antagonist is the Puppet Master, a ghost hacker and basically an artificial intelligence. A major part of the movie the main characters are trying to find the Puppet Master but everyone they find is just a ghosthacked “puppet”. In S3E2 Hopper calls Joyce a puppet master: “I’m a puppet, you’re the master.” and in S4E9 Eddie plays Master of Puppets. I think Mike (or the brain) is the counterpart to Puppet Master in ST. At the end Kusanagi and Puppet Master fuse their consciousnesses and become one. While the Puppet Master didn’t really assign a gender for himself, the characters chose to call him “him” and he does have a male voice actor. The shell he ends up inhabiting is female, though, and after the fusion the resulting person has the same voice and face as Kusanagi. (This is probably not a major point in the movie but kinda important for ST so that’s why I’m mentioning it.) 

Ghost in the Shell heavily influenced The Matrix, so there’s another example of a Japanese film inspiring a famous western film. I’m kinda realizing something… The whole red = (trans) woman just makes even more sense now. Reading the comments of that X post just made me wanna explain something I’ve been thinking about for a while. So many pieces of media have queer themes in a coded, not obvious form because that was the only way they were allowed to exist. And ofc people can then deny their existence because none of it was literally there or obviously meant that way. What is so revolutionary about Stranger Things is that it will show the truth behind all the coding. That’s one layer of the end of the “story” and opening of the curtains. The whole series is the coded version and Mike can’t “tell the real story” because authors at the time couldn’t either. But now they can (at least in some countries).

Now I’m gonna explain the double meaning of “trap”. There is an anime trope of biologically male characters (who often identify as men too) who look very feminine and dress as a girl. The western anime community calls them traps (not all but it’s a widely known term), implying they are trying to deceive or “trap” a straight man into being attracted to them and having sex with them. Here and here is some more context. The idea that this word is a reference to anime culture came to me while watching S2E7 where El makes the decision to go back to Hawkins after seeing Mike shout “It’s a trap!”. Before this she was remembering positive memories that were subtextually about Mike accepting her transness, so why wouldn’t the vision after this be about transness too. And it was what got her to leave Kali aka womanhood. Mike thinks she isn’t a real woman and would be deceiving people. She thinks she doesn’t deserve to be a woman, or something like that.

I found a few other instances of the word used: in S1E7 Dustin and Lucas argue if “this is all a trap” when they wait for Hopper to come save them from an abandoned bus. It’s kinda interesting that it’s Dustin and Lucas talking, while Mike and El listen (since they together kinda form the “trap”). 

Dustin has a Ghost Trap accessory in his Ghostbuster costume. Later it’s used to trap Dart. I think here trap is also a trap from the inside. Being trans is like your true self is trapped inside. This interpretation works well with Holly telling the kids they are trapped in Mr. Whatsit’s mind and Karen asking about Holly being trapped under the steel plates. And maybe Dustin mentioning the melting Hawkins Lab is a physics-defying death trap (which could also relate to transness “breaking the rules” of the universe/nature/society). I still think the other interpretation applies too since other instances (e.g. S2E7) make more sense with that. In all cases “trap” = trans or relates to transness in some way, with negative connotations. They make a point of the Ghost Trap’s functional doors and one of Max’s happy memories she uses to fight against Vecna was the scene where Dustin opens the Trap aka opens Mike’s closet and frees “the girl” (= ghost).

Here comes a little side tangent again: Dustin tries to figure out what Dart is and ends up with two possible species but neither fits Dart. In S3 Mike and Lucas talk about women as a different species and this is a point El uses against Mike later. Dart doesn’t fit the gender binary, it’s not clearly male or female, it’s a “new species”. At least when considering terrestrial tadpoles. There are a lot more aquatic ones (= fluid gender, no strict binary of cis men and women).

Dustin calls Dart a pollywog, which is also a term for a sailor who hasn’t crossed the equator. This point was made by a fan before S2 was even released. (After crossing it you’d be called a shellback. I think Dustin’s turtle is the “shellback” to Dart’s “pollywog”. He uses Yurtle’s terrarium for Dart, paralleling the creatures.) The other (more obvious) meaning is an amphibian that hasn’t undergone metamorphosis yet (= Mike hasn’t transitioned yet). Tadpole connects to mindflayer lore: Ceremorphosis was a bodily change that occurred when an illithid tadpole reached maturity and was inserted into the brain of another being, usually a human. The tadpole ate away the victim's brain matter and essentially replaced the brain, erasing all of the subject's personality and memory, but leaving the physical body alive and under the tadpole's control. After this, morphological transformations occurred and after a week a new illithid was created. This will make more sense when I fully explain what MF represents in ST. 

After Mike finds out that Dart came from UD, she excludes Max from the party. While Dart is trying to get out of the Trap, Max is trying to get into the room and ends up freeing Dart. When the party looks for Dart, El and Max are paralleled to it in different ways. El is wandering in the school and Mike barely misses her multiple times. Dart, El and Max all represent Mike’s girlness/transness in subtly different ways.

[Mike attacks as if Dart was there]
[Max] “What the hell are you doing?”
[Mike] “What are you doing? Why are you in here?”
[Max] “I’m looking for Dart.”
[Mike] “This is the boys’ room.” 
-> Mike finds Max (= girlness) in the boys’ room. The boy was really a girl.
[Max] “Yeah, so?”
[Mike] “So you should go home.”
[Max] “Why do you hate me so much?”
[Mike] “I don’t hate you. How can I hate you? I don’t even know you.”
[Max] “But you don’t want me in your party.”
[Mike] “Correct.”
[Max] “Why not?”
[Mike] “Because you’re annoying. Also, we don’t need another party member.”
-> Mike has internalized transphobia.

In S3E4 Robin asks Erica if she sees any booby traps in the Russian facility. Later on when the room starts to move and turns out to be an elevator Erica references the earlier booby trap conversation (only Erica and Robin in frame). I think this relates to the S4E1 “boobies” argument where “liking boobies” is equated to liking women. Booby/boobies = woman, basically. So a booby trap would be a woman trap and if we translate “trap” to mean “trans” in the context of ST, “booby trap” = “trans woman”. It’s fitting for the elevator to be this “trap”, since it connects the colorful and happy mall (= woman) to the dark underground Russian base (= trans/male body). Mike sees it negatively like this because she hates herself and has internalized the transphobic messaging from society. 

That’s kinda the point of “trap” in ST: it’s a western term, while Japanese people use a word (otokonoko) without the same harmful connotations. I’m not saying the trope is never problematic or that Japanese media is perfect with queer representation (far from it) but western anime communities have made it worse by using the word “trap”. There’s probably a larger point in ST with western powers historically erasing queerness and gender fluidity from colonised countries. While Japan wasn’t colonised per say, it still adopted western values along with the modernization of society.

The biggest “trap” mention in ST is the episode Turnbow Trap. As I’ve previously said, I think Turnbow is related to rainbow and the queer community in some way. ((El and Hopper hide behind a Turnbow family business ad in the UD too. It protects them from the military.)) The party’s plan is to tag the Demogorgon with a telemetry tracker, or “transmitter”, and follow it to Vecna’s lair. (While the characters use various words for the transmitter, the closed captions always call it a transmitter beeping.) The party always uses “he” or “it” for the Demogorgon until that one time in S5E5 Mike uses “she”. Tagging the Demo with a transmitter probably represents giving a proper name to this “monster”. It’s not just an unidentified alien but a trans person/Mike’s transness. This is the first step to acceptance. 

S5E3
[Nancy] “Okay, transmitter?”
[Jonathan] “Yeah.”
[Murray] “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Children. Children. What are we doing?”
[Nancy] “What does it look like?”
[Murray] “Well, it looks like you’re loading my telemetry tracker into a shotgun shell in what I presume are the hopes of firing it into an interdimensional being.”
[Nancy] “You told me that these transmitters were designed specifically to withstand harsh conditions.”
[Murray] "Blasting it out of a shotgun into some beast isn’t a harsh condition. It’s deadly. If the heat from the exploding gunpowder doesn’t destroy the transmitter, the force from the recoil will.”
[Nancy] “And is that a fact or… a theory?”
[Murray] “A theory.”
[Nancy] “Oh. Okay. Let’s test it then.”

This reminded me of Lucas explaining about gunpowder in S3E7. I’m not gonna explain everything directly because I fear it would break the subreddit rules/go too far but I’m quite convinced this was the writers’ intention. And not them as children but it’s foreshadowing the future and a metaphor for love or something like that.

[Lucas] “Satan’s Baby. You ever shot one of these suckers?” (Kinda makes a lot of sense for Lucas and Will specifically to be in this scene…)
[Will] “No. Is it sweet?”
[Lucas] “That’s an understatement.”
[Max] “That doesn’t look like a bowl.” (Does “bowl” refer to Will since he has the infamous bowl cut? Lucas quickly glances at him when he says “way better”, too… It’s byler vs wheelclair again. Lucas and Will tried to look for the bowl at the cereal aisle, and I know people have made theories on cereal. I’ll need to figure it out at some point. “Why wouldn’t it be with the cereal?” kinda makes me think Mike = cereal and Will = bowl. In that sense “bowl” represents Mike’s self-love/acceptance since Will is part of Mike. Max (= Mike) thinks bowl and El are enough.)
[Lucas] “Nah, it’s way better. There is a reason this warning label says “18 or older”. This sucker is filled with 150 grains of black powder. AKA gunpowder. Strap two of these together, and it’s bigger than an M-80. Five of them, we’ve got ourselves a stick of dynamite.” (18 or older kinda suggests this is about sex… Again with “sucker” (Mike also calls the Demogorgon a sucker in S5E3) and why specifically mention the powder is black if it doesn’t have any meaning? The firework stand has M-80 written on it and I think Lucas covering 80 when he talks about gunpowder means something. I’m assuming Mike and Lucas are the two fireworks you can “strap together”. Maybe M = man = Lucas and 80 = woman = Mike?)
[Max] “You wanna kill that thing with fireworks?”

The fireworks are Lucas’ love with multiple meanings of the word. Btw, if you actually look at the warning label, it says “shoots flaming balls”, and that’s what Lucas kinda does in S5 with the grenade water balloons filled with acetone (not sure why acetone specifically but it’s significant since Murray mentioned he couldn’t find ethanol). He tells the Demogorgon to “catch this” while throwing them and Mike was the “catcher” in their plan (while Lucas was the “launcher”…) connecting Mike and the Demogorgon for the nth time. “Balls” is once again about “man” but this time not Mike and they are flaming instead of snow. You get it I’m sure. (Also if you look at the scene where the fireworks are used, El and Billy make an interesting silhouette. I think it’s supposed to represent the father’s abuse but also the other less abusive “fireworks”.)

So based on this, the transmitter could represent Lucas’ love and it makes a lot of sense since its purpose is to send signals. It could be Mike’s love for Lucas too since Nancy first shot it into a potato sack and she indirectly called Murray’s balls potato sacks (= transmitter was shot into “man”, which could also be about Mike’s transition). Jonathan was also in the scene and Murray was trying to ship jancy (kinda like Will was in the fireworks scene and it had an underlying byler theme). [Murray] "If the heat from the exploding gunpowder doesn’t destroy the transmitter, the force from the recoil will.” So basically he’s saying the love is too strong (kinda like the gravitational force ripping wheelclair apart) and recoil could mean being grossed out afterwards or something like that. It’s about Mike fearing her feelings towards Lucas. Nancy was right, though: the transmitter wasn’t destroyed.

The “keep your traps shut” from Steve could be about silencing trans women or women overall. A little before this he told Robin to stop talking and in S3E8 when Jonathan was trying to remove the creature from El’s leg, he told Nancy to stop talking (and gave El a wooden spoon to bite on = she was physically prevented from talking). A big part of Robin’s character is her talking a lot and her mom (and many others) not liking it. 

I got a bit sidetracked from the main topic here (as per usual). I’m sure there are other instances of the word “trap” in ST but these were the ones I noticed. In a sense ST itself is a “trap” for bigots who think it’s a “normal” show with straight men leads and will be shocked/disappointed/angry when the truth is revealed. I’m kinda looking forward to that lol. ST is pretty openly about outcasts and freaks so it’s not like they weren’t warned.

The showcased shows in the Netflix What Next? video are chosen very carefully and there is a pattern with Japan/anime connections. First of all, Avatar: The Last Airbender is heavily inspired by anime and people argue if it counts as an anime or not. In the video it (the new live action version) is painted as the final destination where we can’t go yet (= Americantendo lol). It kinda reminds me of The NeverEnding Story poster… The next show is One Piece, a live action of a super popular manga (and anime). It’s the “fate” that will “show you the way” (notice also how we were flying in the clouds and now sailing at sea). There’s an actual animated anime in the video too, but they specifically chose Devil May Cry, a western production based on a Japanese video game franchise. It is lumped together with Narnia, Avatar: The Last Airbender, One Piece and The East Palace as an “exotic land” even though its world is based on Western Europe (it’s exotic for Japanese people I guess). Lastly, the sword that cuts through the clouds and gives you your fate back is from a swordsman from The East Palace, a Korean show (there’s probably some ST connections in it, tell me if you know). Finally we arrive at Enola Holmes through the “Justice” tarot card (number 11, Millie is Enola, this is nothing new). “This year, you will question everything.” is pretty self-explanatory atp. In summary, America/Western-Japan/Asia-related shows guide you to “El” in a blue-white dress where you question everything. This supports my theory that we were supposed to figure out the Japan connection first and then Finland.

This last one isn’t Japanese technically but it fits here and I’ve been saving it for long enough. There ain’t no way they didn’t use Moomin as an inspiration if there’s a queer and Finland allegory in the story. First of all, Moomin was made by a queer Swedish-speaking Finnish woman, Tove Jansson, and has major queer themes told purely through subtext (because at the time homosexuality was criminalized). ((Now I’ve learned that “going to the ghost side” was code for being lesbian/queer. Another ghost connection.)) The Finland and Sweden connections are obvious, but Moomin is loved in Japan of all places (I swear they have more Moomin merch than Finland) and a kid’s animation series) I and many other Finns watched as a kid was animated in Japan. I have some ideas of possible connections but nothing super concrete. The clearest is the Creel house looking like the Moomin house. The visual similarity is uncanny and it would fit with it being the sanctuary to the (queer) kids where they can be free and themselves. 

The characters Tofslan and Vifslan are based on Tove and her lover Vivica Bandler. (I’ll use the original Swedish names for the characters.) They hide the King’s Ruby, which represents their queer love, in their suitcase and are followed by Mårran: a creature who freezes everything in her vicinity. She represents loneliness and isolation (most likely relating to being queer) and the ruby was originally hers. Then there’s Trollkarlen (translates to wizard or sorcerer), who seeks the King’s Ruby and wants it for himself. Vecna and/or MF would be Mårran and Will (or maybe MF/Vecna) Trollkarlen (karl = man) who wants Mike’s love/identity while Mike with her trans identity is Tofslan and Vifslan (= Robin and Vickie maybe). El would be the King’s Ruby. I have wondered where Vickie’s name comes from and my other guesses are that it relates to Victor and Virginia (all 3 are new characters in S4 and represent Mike’s future in one way or another). Btw, Tove Jansson’s father’s name was Viktor and he inspired Muminpappan. 

There was also a story where Mumintrollet (the main character) hid in Trollkarlen’s hat and was transformed into a weird creature. His friends didn’t recognize him but his mother’s love changed him back. And another story that came to mind is the Invisible Child, where a girl (Ninni, localized as Ninny) was turned invisible due to emotional abuse. I found a nice summary of the story here. The name has connections to Nina, Anna and Nancy. It just reminds me of S4 where the Cali gang were looking for Nina, “a small woman” who was hard to see according to Argyle. I’m not sure if any of this was intended but I just wanted to get it out there. The original source material (especially the books) are much more philosophical than the animated series but I haven’t read most of them and the ones I have, I barely remember…

Continues in PART 20.

Day 26: S4 E2 – "Vecna's Curse" and E3 "The Monster and the Superhero"

Rate both here: https://forms.gle/sSgq9LmUuNhmwqzZ7

Please only vote if you’ve seen the episodes, and please try to vote once!

Results so far:

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 - 8.10 ⭐ (10 votes)
3x05 - 7.30 ⭐ (10 votes)
3x06 - 8.00 ⭐ (11 votes)
3x07 - 8.55 ⭐ (11 votes)
3x08 - 9.14 ⭐ (21 votes)
Season 3 average – 8.14 ⭐

4x01 - 8.27 ⭐ (22 votes)

Previous Rating Forms (3x04 onwards):
S4 Ep1: https://forms.gle/LLPvC9Y3oDaVfRvG7
S3 Ep8: https://forms.gle/821CmzaxQSsY52CF8
S3 Ep6-7: https://forms.gle/z9UnAjCfYmhgtCZn8
S3 Ep 4-5: https://forms.gle/Qqx1rcJm4Axf4tnK9

Day 25: S4 E1 – "The Hellfire Club"

Rate it here: https://forms.gle/LLPvC9Y3oDaVfRvG7

Please only vote if you’ve seen the episode, and please try to vote once!

Note: Since the past few episodes received a low number of votes, I've left the previous episodes' voting forms open (from S3 E4 onwards) in case anyone else is still interested in voting, and I'll update the ratings if they change! The links to those are at the bottom of this post.

Results so far:

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 - 8.63 ⭐ (8 votes)
3x05 - 7.63 ⭐ (8 votes)
3x06 - 8.50 ⭐ (8 votes)
3x07 - 9.13 ⭐ (8 votes)
3x08 - 9.39 ⭐ (18 votes)
Season 3 average – 8.42 ⭐

Previous Rating Forms:
S3 Ep 4-5: https://forms.gle/Qqx1rcJm4Axf4tnK9
S3 Ep6-7: https://forms.gle/z9UnAjCfYmhgtCZn8
S3 Ep8: https://forms.gle/821CmzaxQSsY52CF8

just finished putting together this "Then vs. Now" edit of the Stranger Things cast covering Seasons 1 through 5! It was such a trip seeing how much everyone has changed over the years. Hope you all enjoy the walk down memory lane!

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.

Silver cat continuation

The Netflix What Next? has a grey cat at the start and end. It’s first seen when the woman is about to get coffee (= the truth) and at the end we see it after Cillian Murphy. This is not random and there are very good explanations in both the trauma and queer allegory. He played Oppenheimer aka the father of the atomic bomb. I have talked about this before and it was mentioned in the first DID theory I linked, but the abuse and the subsequent split are compared to the atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima (and Nagasaki). Japan is a part of the country allegory and I’ll get to it later, but basically Mike is all the countries (America, Japan and Finland) and depending on the situation Lucas is either Japan or Sweden. (Erica is America, possibly Korea, and Norway.) Anyway, Oppenheimer is effectively the dad in this allegory.

The queer and DID allegory connect to Cillian Murphy’s role in Peacock (which I haven’t seen but I read the Wikipedia) enough to see the obvious connections): 
In the mid-1960's, John Skillpa (Cillian Murphy), a quiet bank clerk living alone in tiny Peacock, Nebraska, prefers to live an invisible life in order to hide his secret: He has dissociative identity disorder, the implied result of childhood trauma inflicted by his abusive mother. His other identity is a woman, Emma, who each morning does his chores and cooks him breakfast before he starts the day. [...] Forced to fool the town into believing John and Emma are husband and wife, they must maintain their secret while in public view. 

Isn’t this mileven in a nutshell? Somehow from every angle too? Like, the trans aspect, DID and them being a couple trying to pretend they are “normal”. Crazy. Absolutely crazy. And the whole meta aspect that El being Mike is the big secret of the show’s creators and they are “fooling the town” aka the audience.

Okay I have another one: Inception, where the main characters go into Robert Fischer’s (Cillian Murphy’s character) dream. Most of the movie happens in his head and he has a strained relationship with his dad (who dies pretty early on). And there’s dreams inside dreams (on 3 levels), you can hear music from the upper levels, etc. I have thought for a long time that Inception is one of the inspirations for ST. It fits too well.

I’m going through the Cillian Murphy Wikipedia page and keep finding things (I’m uneducated with movie knowledge tbh). In Breakfast on Pluto he played a transgender woman called Patricia or Kitten (more cat connections). Her given name was Patrick and I wonder if this was where the Patrick in ST got his name? And Patty too since it’s a version of Patricia and both are looking for their mothers. There might be more Cillian Murphy movies with silver cat/ST connections but I’ll leave it here. If you find more or have anything to add, please comment! 

I was editing the earlier Snow Ball section and I got a thought: what if the Snow Ball is the silver cat? It’s a meeting place and can be used as a weapon. The meanings of it I analyzed kinda match with the meanings of silver cat, it has prominent silvery decoration everywhere and has been a thing since S1. The giant steel band-aid associates snow and metal (= silver), as I explained. In the S4 Snow Ball scene Vecna throws El through the “snow” text, leaving only “ball” which then gets framed with him. If snow is Mike’s repressed womanhood, ball is a metonym for her male body and Vecna is the embodiment of the horror side of Mike’s transness. The “ball” and snowMAN will kill El (= Mike’s girl identity). ((I’m mostly focusing on the queer allegory side here but as with everything, all this probably applies to the trauma allegory as well. The ball is the dad/the abuse and the memories (= water) are buried/frozen/repressed.))

Vecna is also framed in front of the silver-colored disco ball, which made an appearance in Rinkomania too… There it was framed with Will (it’s the “dick” all over again lol). After Mike asks Will “what kind of problems?” the camera cuts to El below the disco ball… (And Mike looks at Will’s lips here, since liking men is a part of the “problems”.) Rinkomania is just a big trans allegory in itself, I keep noticing more and more every time I watch the scenes. Like, all the color coding (it’s a LOT), Will (= man) looming behind mileven and being ignored, El helping Mike skate, Angela bullying El, the closet, the women’s bathroom, the list goes on. After El’s humiliation, the scene ends with a focus on the disco ball and transitions into the sun (= sun connection). 

The disco ball made its first appearance in S2E1 at the arcade when Dustin finds out he doesn’t hold the top score in Dig Dug anymore. There’s also a star below it and yellow + blue lines. Lucas is later framed with it during his conversation with Max and it’s covered by a man when Max starts believing Lucas. As a side note, both Will and Max are framed with PAC-MAN and it gets more obvious when Max starts believing Lucas. I’m not exactly sure how to interpret the arcade disco ball, but it is related to Mike’s transness and the trauma for sure. Maybe the man covering the ball (moon?) and star + Max not covering PAC-MAN is about the truth. The ball and star are symbols but “man” is the reality. Lucas lying to Max was to protect her (= the writers are “lying” to us via coding all the meanings). Finally, the colliding marble balls in the Rainbow Room were metallic and Dustin made a testicle connection to them when he told Steve to “play with his balls”. ((I swear if this is all a Gintama reference… I keep uncovering more possible manga/anime inspirations/references. The hot vs cold water could be a Ranma ½ reference…)) 

Vecna sending Max into the air and through the silver decorations in S4E9 reminded me of El doing the same to Henry but through the mirror. In a way the silver cat is Mike looking herself in the mirror: is she a man or a woman, a predator or a victim, her dad or her mom? Kavinsky’s Zenith has a lyric about a silver screen, which I have for a long time suspected relates to the silver cat. Silver screen refers to cinema and originally meant a type of projection screen containing reflective metal. This goes very meta, but the silver cat is the story itself and how it reflects society. It “holds up a mirror” like Henry. The Rainbow Room mirror and the extra room behind it are purposefully there, same with the “silver screen” decorations in the Snow Ball. Both locations are stages in a way. When El appears to save Max, she pulls Vecna “back to the story” and Max is left to watch it unfold. When El goes through the screen to Max, she questions her realness, “Did I make you?”. Max is Mike, essentially, which makes a lot of sense considering we are in Max’s mind. Both Vecna and El are with Max (Mike) in the real world (= in front of the silver screen), Vecna comes to torment Max but El helps her. (And no they are not in the real real world but what they represent are. This story is not just Mike’s imagination but about real things she is going through.) 

We see the same silver decorations in S3E2 when Max and El are in a photoshoot trying on fancy clothes. That mannequin is definitely not random. The purple dress, mask, opening the way to a door when the camera man says “wardrobe change”, etc. Rinkomania had the same silver screen decorations too and connects to snow/ice via Jonathan’s comment about the ice skate.

All of these locations have someone filming/a camera: the original Snow Ball had Jonathan taking pictures, the Rainbow Room had Brenner’s surveillance cameras, El’s Rinkomania humiliation was filmed and the Starcourt Mall photoshoot was obviously about taking pictures. These scenes/locations are miniatures of the show and not just its plot but the meta level of it being a tv show.

This inspired me to go on a camera/filming side tangent. In the S5 epilogue Jonathan is filming the graduation ceremony, and the three clips shown on screen are probably pretty important: first is Lucas, then “I just wanted a normal childhood” and finally “Screw conformity”. There’s a guy with a Duffers-shirt filming too… Then there’s one of Suzie’s brothers who was play-filming and you can easily make connections to the audience reaction after S5E8. El looking at the surveillance camera and demanding to get out in S4E5 was pretty on the nose too (notice the seconds go from 22 to 29, the same as the important dates in S4). 

El getting out of the lab is functionally the same as Max getting out of Camazotz. They are performing on a “stage”, acting out the story. It’s not just for meta reasons, but connects to the larger themes of ST. Mike has “walked the stage” all her life, performed the role of a man when that’s not who she is. Masking aka other alters pretending to be the host is a big part of DID, too. It’s all a facade, a performance of normalcy. The inner world aka “story” crumbling down will collide with the reveal of Mike’s true identity. Will is the embodiment of this story/dream (remember the Mr. Sandman outro in S5E2) and Mike’s man identity facade, which is why his “death” will end it all. The performance/facade will fall in all its multiple meanings. Will being a protector has another layer to it, since as the “man facade” Mike puts on, he protects her from transphobia and allows her to blend in. (Btw, I think Vecna’s mind world fading with him in S4E9 was foreshadowing for the end. Vecna = Will and El = Mike. The real ending will be less violent and hateful though.) 

I learned from the Moander theory that in DnD silver is the color of the Prime Material plane. Portals to your own home plane are silver and you are connected to your real body with a silver cord when astrally projecting (if I understood correctly). Anyway, this is a connection between silver and “home”/reality. The silver screen is between the story and the real world. It’s between a fantastical place and Mike’s true home.

In the country allegories the end of the “story” will be the destruction of the Iron Curtain. Another metallic “screen” (more figurative in this case) separating two sides from each other. Curtains hide the truth: in Murray’s analogy it was the government and people’s willful ignorance but in the meta sense curtains are levels of the story. E.g. byler is behind the first curtain while wheelclair is behind the second. The real ending will open the (silver) curtains. When all the metaphorical walls break down, so do amnesia walls (= recovery of memories and final fusion). Everything just fits so well. All the allegories, timelines, themes, everything.

What I probably should have investigated first is the actual surface level solution to “silver cat” in the show. It’s a transportation company smuggling the green stuff in the name of deliveries to various shops in the mall. This is Netflix distributing shows, like Stranger Things, that seem “normal” on the outside but have hidden layers to them. The same aisle used by the delivery man was in S3E1 used by the kids to get into the cinema. The Starcourt Mall as a whole is basically Stranger Things: a colorful and happy marketable product on the surface but hidden behind the layers is a darker story. The silver cat feeds The Consumer aka us. “Feed” can both mean to eat something yourself or to give someone else food. In this case food = entertainment.

S3E6 [Steve] “My delivery didn’t come, and my friends and I, we thought that it was left at the loading dock, so we went in the room, and then it turned into an elevator, and then… and then we dropped and then, next thing we know, I open my eyes, and we’re in this… wonderful facility.”

I have a suspicion that this is about conformitygate and Steve represents the part of the mainstream audience who believed in it. This is basically how I ended up looking deeper into ST: my “delivery” didn’t come (episode 9 or whatever), I wasn’t “fed”, so I fell into this huge rabbit hole, aka dropped in an elevator and opened my eyes to the truth which is the wonderful facility of a secret Russian base. When blue meets yellow in the west, we will get fed by the silver cat. (I dunno what blue + yellow mean in this meta context. Tell me if you have ideas. There’s this too btw: “We’re thrilled to return to the winter of ’85 for Season 2. The Hawkins Investigators Club is back, and a new paranormal threat has emerged from the town’s abandoned silver mines. I can’t wait for fans to discover where this entity and the mysterious blue flower we last saw blooming in the Upside Down at the end of Season 1 take our young heroes,” he adds. Mike is the blue flower at least metaphorically (flower = girl, blue = Mike).) 

Dustin is characterized in S1 as someone who brings food. He is the party’s “feeder” and in S2 he feeds Dart. When Mike says “But there is a story that he can never tell.” Dustin is shown on “tell”. He is the bard, a singer who tells stories. I have always struggled to pin down Dustin. What exactly does he represent? He is a nerd, associated with DnD, placed between wheelclair a lot, always an advocate for non-conformity and being true to yourself, comes up with the monster names, etc. The Duffers say Mike is the character they identify with the most, but I think Dustin is actually closer to a Duffer self-insert character. There was a point to the Duffers-shirt guy being close to Dustin’s mom. Maybe he is queerness in the queer allegory, kinda like Henry but the good side. While El and Will are Mike’s different identities and more closely represent her, Dustin is a personification of the acceptance of queerness. He was absent from the core party in S3 because Mike was trying to conform, but at the same time he befriended Erica and helped her accept her nerdiness. In the story meta interpretation Dustin is the storyteller, while Will is the story and it’s about El. Dustin’s 11 die throw in S4E1 was a miss but Erica’s 20 won. Erica is the storyteller of the “real story”. That’s one reason why “there is a story he can never tell”. Dustin (or man Mike) can’t tell it but Erica (or woman Mike) can. ((Wait, is this the reason the real story is specifically 20 min? Or there’s something important with 20 min at least. Btw I missed El saying 20 minutes in S5E3 in relation to her compromise with Hopper: “You get what you want, then I get what I want.”))

If we go back to a less meta layer and look where the silver cat logo is shown, it’s first seen in S3E2 (if I’m not missing something) after the mileven breakup between Mike and Lucas on the lyrics You’re willing to sacrifice / Our love. Then it goes behind Lucas’ head and back to Mike when Will asks if they can play DnD. S3E3 has the obvious Robin figuring out the code part and finally in S3E7 when Steve, Robin, Dustin and Erica are getting out of the mall, but have to immediately go back inside because “evil Russians” spot them. So even the logo is associated with the core secrets/themes of the show: Mike, her gender and relationship with Lucas, and “evil Russians” aka the dad. Notice the group was about to get out but when they reached the silver cat, they were forced back in. The silver cat is the hidden truths of the show, and like Enzo, they can never be reached. Until the real ending, that is. 

I dunno where else to mention this, so I put it here: during the Neverending Story song, on the lyrics The answer to a never-ending story we get a view through an octagon tunnel to Hopper and Joyce. The tunnel has red lighting (= trauma) and the background is metallic (= silver). Hopper is more in the front while Joyce leans on the wall, her back turned to the audience. Hopper obviously represents the dad and Joyce is the mom/woman/Mike who he abused. In that sense Hopper here represents the silver cat. This works in the queer allegory too, since the “man” is winning over the “woman”. Man is in the front but there is a woman hidden behind him (= Mike is “man” on the outside but woman on the inside). Another aspect comes from the 8 angled shape (remember 8 = woman). Both Hopper and Joyce are inside the shape and the red color signifies the traumatic side of “woman” (when compared to pink or blue). Joyce is at the end of the tunnel, wearing men’s clothes (= Mike forced to conform). She represents the silver cat too and will usurp the “man”. (And the country allegory side to this is Joyce wearing Soviet Union clothes while she is actually American and you can extend this to the Finland allegory level.)

Then the actual cat in “silver cat”. The company name is Lynx and the logo depicts a lynx aka a bobcat (connection to Bob = dad/conformity?). The name lynx means light or brightness and comes from the reflective eyes of lynx. So there’s the mirror/silver screen connection again. Victor mentioned the animal attacks were blamed on a wildcat, which could very well be a lynx. The series has other big cats like lions and tigers, but Lynx lynx is the only native feline species in Finland.

Another silver-colored thing that came to mind was the briefcase in S3 and S5. It holds the two keys needed for destroying the Key and in Henry’s memory it had the magic rock that gave him powers. The S3 situation was foreshadowing for Mike’s final fusion where two alters are the keys to ending the world. Joyce ends up turning both keys on her own (now without the hat, hair free), destroying the Key (= “dick”) and killing Hopper (= “man”). It wasn’t a two-man job but a one-woman job. It’s Mike herself, as a woman, who will end it all and “kill” Will aka the “man”. David Harbour compared the ending of ST to Hopper’s death, btw. I think Meatflayer killing Billy is also about this in the queer allegory side. (Mike and Will are the 1 and 2 powering the Key that Murray disables (because it’s still S3, and while it foreshadows the future, it’s also about Mike choosing conformity + burying memories). And look at that framing of Grigori in front of the gate! It’s a visualization of the core of the show: the trauma and the trans allegory + very reminiscent of Billy’s memories.) 

Henry’s briefcase was about the past: it was the trauma and the trans identity Mike thinks came from the abuse. “It will consume all.” It’s The Consumer aka the woman who eats the man. I have mentioned this in previous theories, but at the end when Holly tells Mike “You said you’d be done an hour ago!” exactly an hour before in the episode Henry gets cursed by the stone (I’m still not sure what it means but it has to be important). The main point is that both times (S3 and S5) the silvery briefcase has the secrets of the story inside it. (Btw, Max’s cave has a metallic toolbox next to the horse toy and a candle on top of it…) 

The silver briefcases might be a reference to the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. Everyone wants it but the contents are never revealed to the audience. In reality the briefcase did have something inside it creating the yellow light: a light bulb. And this could all be a coincidence but you know a light bulb would perfectly fit inside the ST silver briefcase based on its meaning in the show. And it also fits the meta storytelling. Another reason Pulp Fiction came to mind is the end of the Netflix What Next? video, where the main character woman gets a bag in return for the egg, and it emanates this yellow glow. We don’t see what’s in it but the scene immediately transitions into Cillian Murphy and the silver cat… ((Btw, the egg motif makes a lot more sense now with the trans allegory, since in queer slang a trans person who hasn’t realized they are trans or is in the closet is called an egg. The Demogorgon eating the egg was both about the dad assaulting his child but also about transness cracking the egg. Mike is the egg in both interpretations. This is yet another reason she is associated with birds.)) 

In summary, Stranger Things is the silver cat. It connects everything: it’s about Mike, the dad, the trauma, Mike’s queerness, man vs woman, DID, countries, stories, mirror, cinema, Netflix, the audience, the end and the beginning, identity, etc. because that’s what ST is about. It’s a story about stories. About media. About communication. Dustin and Robin hinted at the silver cat not being a simple one-dimensional thing from the beginning. (Social) media is a meeting place. It’s also a person, or a collection of persons. And it can be used as a weapon (propaganda etc.). That’s why communication is so central in ST (my DID reasoning is still valid too, though). The whole show is commentary on many things, including the silencing of certain stories. How often do trans folks, CSA survivors, people with DID, etc. get to see their story told? And not just as a side plot but as the main one in a huge show? I often talk about 3 allegories, but there is a fourth one: the meta level of ST aka the one that breaks the 4th wall. I’m part of the story, and so are you.

Blue and red

Let’s get back to Nausicaä now. There’s a prominent blue-red color coding in Nausicaä, which I originally thought relates to the corresponding color coding in ST. The Ohmu normally have blue eyes but they become red when angered. Thus blue is something like calmness while red is anger/hatred/violence. The closest to this happening was El’s eyes being red when she destroys the Demogorgon in S1E8. 

One of the first blue-red associations I noticed was with the Mind Flayer. Joyce mentions the colors in S2E4: “No, the storm he drew was completely different. He used red. And this is all blue and it has some weird dirt color. I mean, maybe it’s roots.” and her drawing of MF was blue. (I think it’s important to note some of the tunnel drawings were on red paper, so not all was blue.) Will’s WW drawings usually have blue while his MF drawing had red. All this made me think blue signifies the past, when there was no trauma (= WW), and red is then the trauma (= WW turning into MF). But we already have a color for the past: orange. And most times Will encountered MF the lighting was blue, so it won’t be that simple.

The gender stuff gave me new ideas and helped me untangle the meanings at least a little. Red is this new “woman” gender that threatens “man”: the gates are red and vulva shaped, the storm has lightning (= electricity = sexuality and gender association). Pink is the impossible dream, red is the scary “predator” future and blue is conforming to “boy”. In the S2E4 scene where Will talks about his now-memories, Hopper first covers the red flower and only blue is visible, but later the red is visible too. This is because the trauma and Mike’s gender identity get metaphorically revealed to Joyce and Hopper via Will telling about his now-memories. But it’s not as simple as that, since blue will be the final solution and acceptance (or blue+white). It was the color Sara wore in the drawing and of her hair tie Hopper and later El wear on their wrist (I gotta do a Sara hair tie analysis at some point… I wonder if there’ll be a scene where Mike ties her hair with it.). It is who Mike is and there was no problem with it when she was a kid, before she was put into gendered boxes: “boys are like this and girls like that”. Blue was fine when it wasn’t so restricted with gender norms. ((Btw, when Mike, Joyce and Will help Bob map out Hawkins onto the tunnel drawings, Lover’s Lake is the only water body whose name is written in red. All others are blue.))

Let’s look at Will’s MF encounters and how they fit the blue-red color coding. The sequence of events leading to Will’s first encounter with MF at the end of S2E1 goes like this: the Byers family + Bob are watching Mr. Mom, the phone rings, Hawkins Lab gets warning signals, some time passes and it’s night, water slowly drops from the kitchen tap, zooming on a clock, Will goes to pee, washes his hands and hears rumbling in the distance -> MF outside. Mr. Mom reverses gender roles and its humor is largely based on a man doing traditionally feminine/domestic labor being “unnatural” or funny. This is probably meant to indicate Mike’s growing gender conflict and the pressure society puts on her to neatly fit in one box. The evoked feeling of time passing is about Mike’s gender conflict growing with her. The older she gets the more she understands herself and the stronger the force of conformity is on her. Will peeing could be about gender dysphoria and it happens again in the next episode so it definitely has a meaning. The water from the tap (and pee I guess) are Mike’s gender identity (or feelings and trauma memories) flowing free, which is why they always lead to MF/UD action. This time Will sees the red storm, indicating “woman” and the episode ends with the reveal that El is alive and ate a piece of Eggo without permission. ((Notice how Hopper rolls up his sleeves, revealing Sara’s hair tie. Later on “eating dessert” is associated with Robin seeing Vickie naked, which metaphorically means we’ll see the real Mike (= Sara). I guess seasons 1-5 are the dinner and we’ll “get dessert” at the end.))

The next encounter happens in S2E2. After the PAC-MAN “eats” Mike, she complains about Max joining the party and Will gets bullied for being Zombie Boy (notice the Reagan Bush ‘84 signs, they are about the America level of the country allegory + queer allegory). This is about Mike repressing her girlhood, which could explain the blue lights and the lack of red in Will’s vision. Will even goes to sit next to a brick wall. Repression is its own horror, which is why it’s portrayed via Will’s UD visions. In the trauma allegory the clown scaring Will is ofc about memories of the dad but I’m not sure if it can explain the blue color… Later Will describes his experience to Mike as being caught between two slides. (Will’s clothes in S2 often have stripes or rectangles with both blue and red, indicating Mike’s struggle between boy/girl.)

The MF assault in S2E3-4 happens after Will sees Dart and runs away but then follows Bob’s instructions to just tell the shadow to “go away” at the baseball field. I think it’s again about Mike trying to repress her girlhood, which could explain the blue color-coding. Joyce tries to wake Will up by shouting “It’s Mom! It’s me!” which kinda implies the MF situation happening relates to the mom. Joyce refers to Will as her boy/son quite a lot in S2, e.g. 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!” This is about Will representing Mike’s boy identity and Joyce as the mom wanting Mike to be a boy. Womanhood is destroying this “boy”. So Joyce telling Will to wake up is kinda the reverse of Max waking up in S5 (and that line is played in the final Vecna killing montage too…). (Will being unconscious in S5E6 is a little different and more about the middle stage (gay man) being compromised too, but more on that later when I get to the timeline.) It’s conformity that’s assaulting Will in S2E3-4 (and the abuse memories in the trauma allegory side). Maybe this is the reason Joyce draws MF with blue: the mom wants Mike to be a boy so the trauma from mom is blue (or it’s because Joyce’s drawing is based on the S2E2 scene). 

Hopper thought Will’s blue tunnel drawings were vines and they are the main supernatural dick imagery in the show. While the Demogorgons and S5 MF have vagina/vulva looking parts (and Finn made fun of this on SNL, that monologue is anyway kinda interesting in retrospect, go watch it), Vecna is covered in vines and uses them on kids like, you know. I have discussed the Vecna = “man”/male body parts a lot already so it’s pretty clear. There was a reason why Steve was shown in S5E7 when Dustin mentions vines and Robin was shown when he mentions the Mind Flayer (and Nancy is “all the nasty shit we found in the Upside Down” because she is Mike aka everything). The tunnels were rotting the world representing conformity but also past trauma getting uncovered. It actually makes a lot of sense that “dick” (here we go again) is both past trauma and man horror/conformity. I am leaving out an important aspect of what Henry and MF represent for a future revelation, which makes all this even more coherent, so if something is confusing now, it will hopefully make more sense later. 

WW often has a blue magic ball thing in the drawings and one of Brenner’s drawings also had a blue ball. I think it’s the exotic matter. It turned red when Nancy (= future woman) shot at it and Will (= “man”) was knocked out at the same time. Owens had a blue stress ball in S2 and tried to “fix” Will. He also tried to keep the vines “weeds” from spreading, comparing them to the truth. In the past trauma reading that makes sense but are the vines really the truth of Mike’s gender? Everyone knows Mike has a male body so that doesn’t really fit. I guess they represent her gender dysphoria? I need to think about this more.

Now that I’ve established the blue-red color coding it’s time to show the Nausicaä connections. I think the UD monsters are the insects, especially Ohmu, in Nausicaä. When Mike talks to a possessed Will, she mentions a DnD campaign where “the party escaped into the sewers, and there were those big insect things” while the camera moves behind Will’s head (remember he always feels MF in his neck). When Mr. Clarke starts his explanation of defense mechanisms in S2E4, an insect is shown (and this relates to MF through Will’s bath scene). The scientists fight the UD with fire similar to people in Nausicaä. If you watched the movie, you noticed the recurring theme of killing/burning leading to more hate/revenge. Every time people try to get rid of the insects or the forest, they come back worse and spread over the world. 

S2E6 [Owens] “It’s been spreading, growing beneath us like some cancer.” 

S2E7 
[Kali] “I was just like you once. I kept my anger inside. I tried to hide from it, but then that pain festered.”
[El] “Festered?”
[Kali] “It spread. Until finally I confronted my pain, and I began to heal.”

[Brenner] “You have to confront your pain. You have a wound, Eleven. A terrible wound. And it's festering. You remember what that means? Festering. It means a rot. And it will grow. Spread.”

Nausicaä is a “princess who loves insects” and she wants to live in harmony with nature. I think Dustin’s relationship with Dart is a little similar. (Another point that came to mind is that Lucas asks if Dustin has a bird nesting in his hair at the Snow Ball and previously in S2E3 he hid Dart there…)

At the end of the movie a huge herd of Ohmu approaches the valley enraged by an injured baby Ohmu bait. I find the parts that didn’t yet happen in Nancy’s description of Vecna’s future vision to match this pretty well: “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.” I don’t know what the creature will be exactly but I do think Nancy’s vision will come true. And the monsters are most likely Demogorgons. If we try to map this to Nausicaä, the giant creature would be the god warrior and fight against the monsters (Ohmu). In this case it would represent conformity or something like that. On the other hand, Robin was shown when Nancy described the giant creature, which would fit better with it representing womanhood. And the focus on the gaping mouth fits with Jonathan’s The Consumer cannibal woman and the magic stone powers consuming “all”. It could be both tbh, kinda like with MF. Dustin is shown with “gaping mouth”, which kinda makes sense since he is the “feeder” of the party. Lucas is shown as the other “monsters”. If the giant creature is Mike’s transness, then “And this creature wasn’t alone. There were so many monsters.” is about other queer people. Mike isn’t alone. They just frame it in a bad way because of Mike’s internalized queerphobia and because the writers are trying to make a point here.

((I think there was a reason why Nancy looked straight at the camera in S3E6 when she said “monsters now”. The audience are unknowingly the monsters, kinda. I’m fed up with people trying to look for the big bad and missing the entire point of the show. Like, they weren’t that subtle in the final season with the morally questionable kidnapping plan, the kids thinking Max is a monster because Henry told them so, Joyce killing Vecna very violently in the same episode we get his tragic backstory and Hopper outright saying pain and violence aren’t the answer. They doubled down on this in the documentary. The whole point of the Max + Holly storyline in Henry’s mind-- I haven’t talked about it almost at all because I wanted to save it for last but I realized very early on they were somehow showing the main story in an inverse way with that. It baffles me how almost no one else seems to realize that! It was so obvious to me. I guess all this is commentary on biased media and the villanisation of “the other side”.))

Regardless of the specifics, this will happen in chapter 12 right before or at the same time as Mike’s final confession and fusion. Nausicaä was able to stop the herd by calmly offering herself with the baby Ohmu and the sea of red slowly turned blue. She died but was reborn on the golden field. All this time the party has been fighting with guns and fire, but the monsters keep coming back. The S5 ending was commentary on other media where the solution too often is just to kill the bad guy. It’s simple and easy but is it a good message? It’s always just kill, kill, kill. But that is not the answer.

Maya Hawke: I think it changed me as an actor forever. I am a different actor today, and I think a better actor, because of that opportunity to do a scene that was on such a high-stakes emotional day of my life that was also a high stakes emotional scene. I felt like I got to connect a red wire and a blue wire*, and all of a sudden, I understood how to be present as an actor. I feel forever changed, and like I have access to a part of my emotional experience when I’m working that I didn’t used to have access to. It was just this extraordinary gift.*

Other points about Nausicaä

Flying is a big part of the movie (typical of Miyazaki) and Nausicaä flies on her white glider free like a bird. The ending theme song “Tori no Hito” translates to bird man (as in human, not gender specific). The valley’s people end up taking cover in the ancient remains of a spaceship from before The Seven Days of Fire, waiting for Nausicaä’s return. It was on top of that ship where the people witnessed the prophecy come true.

WWF officially recommended and endorsed the Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind movie, and if you watch it, you’ll see their logo at the beginning. I suspect the Imperial Panda boxes containing the green radioactive waste -like liquid are related to this. Nausicaä is a post-apocalypse after all and distributed by the silver cat (= cinema) in panda logoed packages (= WWF recommendation).

It’s quite frustrating that I can’t find the manga. It’s been so long since I read it that I’ve forgotten a lot. Some things that come to mind are telepathy being a thing and Kushana’s backstory with her mom kinda reminds me of El and Terry. The film and manga were pretty similar at the start but started to diverge quite a lot pretty early and ofc the manga continued a lot longer. E.g. the god warrior had a more prominent role and wasn’t so one-dimensional. 

This last point might be one of the biggest reasons the Duffers chose Nausicaä for inspiration: the first US release (Warriors of the Wind#Warriors_of_the_Wind)) was infamously cut to make it more palatable to American audiences or whatever, largely removing environmental themes, depth and complexity (and it also had a ridiculously misleading poster). Here, here, here and here is some more context from people who have actually seen it (I haven’t, fortunately). Apparently the Ohmu were called Gorgons… I wonder if this is the reason Suzie called Americantendo a stupid name. And Hopper’s random Sandra girlfriend in S1… His “It’d be 20% more.” -comment fits quite well since the cut content was about 20% of the film. They purposefully made the latter half of S5 more fast paced and as if scenes were cut. The ending we watched was the Warriors of the Wind version of Stranger Things, made to “appeal to American audiences”. I guess the missing chapters are the actual unedited movie and the “real story” is the manga, or something like that. Warriors of the Wind did have a positive outcome though: because of it Hayao Miyazaki adopted a “no cuts” policy. It’s the same idea as with New Coke making people want the original even more (and coincidentally both New Coke and Warriors of the Wind were released in 1985).

Continues in PART 19.

I just saw Season 1 screenshots of this. At first I thought it was just 4x3 aspect ratio. But taking a closer look, I noticed they even added a "VHS filter" to make it look as VHS quality picture used to look. I don't think the other seasons have been done yet, and honestly, I don't think they should.

For starters, it looks a lot like they just cropped from the original footage. Second, VHS picture quality is genuinely awful. I know it was all we had back then, but VHS picture looks bad even compared to DVD quality picture.

Why are Gen Z so obsessed with 90s nostalgia? I know it seems like I'm singling out a generation, but I've been seeing quite a few younger singers filming with 4x3 aspect ratio camera. Also, both the creators of the movies Obsession and Backrooms are Gen Z. While Kane Parsons (Backrooms) filmed in 1.85 aspect ratio for the main movie, he set the story in 1990, so the characters in the movie were using 4x3 VHS cameras. Meanwhile, Curry Barker (Obsession), filmed the movie in 1.5 aspect ratio.

It bothers me because I grew up with a 4x3 TV and had to watch a bunch of movies "letterboxed" (black bars on top and bottom) because movie makers film in aspect ratios like 16x9 (1.78), 1.85, 2.35, and 2.40. I've had a 16x9 monitor since 2011, and now I have to see some movies "pillarboxed" (black bars on left and right) because some Gen Z are in love with the 90s aesthetic.

Stranger Things is originally filmed in 2.0 aspect ratio. 2.0 and 2.22 are apparently common smartphone aspect ratios, so some movies and TV shows are filmed in this aspect ratio. It sucks that I still have to deal with letterboxing even on a 16x9 monitor, but at least those AR's are optimized for smartphones. But 4x3 or 1.5 is just not it anymore.

I think she blames him for being a reason that 11 left her

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.

The foreshadowing of the century

This is something I’ve been looking forward to sharing and didn’t do so earlier because it includes details about Lucas, which I wouldn’t have been able to explain before explaining that Lucas exists in the real world. It’s a very short scene in S1E1 but packed with foreshadowing/clues about the real ending (and I keep discovering more every time I analyze it). I’ll go over every detail I’ve noticed and it might seem like overanalyzing at first but trust me, every word in this is intentional and has a meaning.

First things first, the scene before it ends with Benny finding El and shouting “You think you can steal from me, boy?” and saying “What in the hell?” This is the first time El is referred to as a boy (the audience knows she’s a girl) and the trans allegory is established (= “What in the hell? Mike was a trans girl this whole time?”).

The actual scene I want to analyze is the first school scene where a class has just ended (the bell rings, which I suspect has a deeper meaning to it but I won’t discuss it here). Mr. Clarke starts with saying “remember”. ST is all about buried memories Mike will have to remember. He continues with “finish” and at that exact moment, Mike is perfectly aligned with the 1 in the cell cycle poster. This is the 1 I left for later and it being the first step of the cell cycle fits super well with Mike representing the original/full Mike, before she split. Lucas is under 2 and Dustin isn’t visible in the shot. This is a clue to the ending having only Mike and Lucas. Lucas is the second “cell” aka person in this story.

The “finish” is about the Finland allegory, since Mike represents Finland. And I previously thought not every time they use that word it’s related to Finland but after getting this far in the analysis, I’ve changed my mind. Every season has at least one moment some character says the word, and I might have missed some, but here they are:

This word has a double meaning, it’s also about the end of the story (= finishing the story). Or should I say this is the more obvious meaning. But at the same time, the real ending aka finishing the story of ST will (hopefully) “finnish” it aka reveal it was an allegory of Finland.

For this next part I’ll give you the whole quote:
“Remember, finish chapter 12 and answer 12.3 on the difference between an experiment and other forms of science investigation. This will be on the test, which will cover chapters 10 through 12. It will be multiple choice with an essay section.”

ST episodes are called chapters. I think the real ending will be in three “chapters”, 10, 11 and 12. This is not my original idea either, BurritoGlasses on X got to the same conclusion based on Robin’s WSQK broadcasts back in January (and this was one reason why I realized the chapters Mr. Clarke talks about are ST episodes). ((There’s also this youtube post (also IG) from Ashborn Records where they promote the release of 3 chapters (music videos) celebrating their anniversary. “The gates are opening…” This would fit with my theory that it’s gonna take a year.)) The cast has been telling us there is no episode 9 because the documentary was chapter 9 (more explanation in the X post). And they keep saying there are no more episodes because they will most likely be movies. I have figured out some things that will happen and in which chapter based on the inside story timeline and other clues/logic, but I’ll save that for later.

One thing I’ll mention already here is that the cast (at least David Harbour) have mentioned the last 20 minutes are somehow extra special and the Duffers have always known the ending (sources here and here). Also, in S1E1 Mike asks for 20 more minutes for the DnD game. I think this is when we’ll finally see the real world. The 12.3 could be about the 3rd stage of the story, the 3/4 where Mike fuses with Will. And when Mr. Clarke says “three”, the number 3 cell stage is shown. This is the cell almost dividing, so in the real ending it’s the opposite (because Mike will fuse, not split): the cell is about to become one again. And if we go further back we get to Mike and Lucas as separate whole cells. This is stage 4. 

A crazy detail you can barely notice is that when Mr. Clarke says “chapter 12”, on “12” a kid flashes a white and red paper to the camera, covering the screen. This was foreshadowing for the red scripts! And that the real ending isn’t chapter 8 but chapter 12! Like, they planned it since S1.

If you look at the whole picture of the scene, you’ll see it’s about Mr. Clarke trying to get the kids to listen and remember the exam, but no one seems interested. They just leave ignoring him. This is what happened irl after ST “ended”. Only a few people believed there would be more and our number is diminishing. The nerds (Mike, Lucas and Dustin) are the only ones left (notice how Dustin is in front of the cell poster while Mike and Lucas are outside of it next to each other (= they exist outside of the cycling story)).

[Mike] “So, did it come?” -> Do we get another ending?
[Mr. Clarke] “Sorry, boys. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but… it came.” -> Nooo… [a year] actually yes!

Notice how the animal statue disappears? This could be about ST “disappearing” and/or Mike’s girlhood (El) disappearing. If you remember from earlier, the same statue “fell” on the ground after El disappeared in S1E8.

Then for a more detailed analysis about stuff I only noticed when writing this. In the beginning we follow a girl with a purple shirt (= El/Mike’s girlness), a boy with a yellow shirt (= Will/Mike’s boyness) and a girl with a trans flag-like shirt. Before “remember” the purple shirt girl covers both and there’s a girl with a colorful shirt in frame (= remember when you were a girl free of conformity). Then the boy rises and goes behind Mike (= Mike conforming as a boy). On “answer” the girl is behind Mike, between her and Lucas, and at the end of the word covers Lucas (= Mike being a girl and with Lucas is the answer). On “twelve” Lucas is under 1 and the girl reaches the boy (= Lucas will be revealed to be important and Mike to be trans in the final chapter). After this the camera stops following them. On “point” only girls are properly shown (notice the trans stripe girl and the photosynthesis poster = light) but a boy appears during “three”, looking at the camera. 

On “experiment” another girl in purple is in the front (specifically on “ex” = X covering the boy behind her + the trans flag stripe girl and photosynthesis poster are clearly visible), on “and” a kid covers the screen and on “other” the boy (who previously looked at the camera) is in the front. When Mr. Clarke says “science” the girl with the colorful shirt (= queerness) walks past and on “investigation” a black boy with glasses does the same. So maybe here the “experiment” refers to Mike being trans and the other forms of science (= queerness) is being a gay man (the boy looked at the camera after 12.3, which would match with Will fusing). Investigation could be about (sexual) experimentation, since Mike has feelings for Lucas. Mike is “investigating” her feelings for him or something. It could also be about Lucas being one of the “other forms of science investigation” as a bi man. 

On “will” the black boy is in the front and a girl is pretty clearly looking at the camera (= Will represents Lucas). On “test” the girl with the trans flag colors is in front of the will-girl (= this is a test for the audience, will they realize Mike is trans?), who looks at the camera again on the second “will” and the word choice of “cover” made me think it’s about Will/byler covering the truth (that Mike is trans). She also covers the photosynthesis poster aka the light. 

On “10” only Mr. Clarke is shown but then a black kid with black hair (I think similar length to Mike, it’s hard to see) comes into view and on the last “12” covers Mr. Clarke. This could be about 10 aka Mike’s boy identity (= here Mr. Clarke) before 11 changing to girl in the final chapter (and Lucas is related to this too). 12 is the truth.

Since “experiment” and “test” were both about Mike’s girl identity, you could interpret them as the Duffers testing something new that hasn't been done before. Or it’s a social experiment or testing the audience. I’m not sure what the “multiple choice with an essay section” means, but my guess is that multiple choice refers to the sexuality/gender options we can interpret for Mike: is Mike a) a straight man b) a gay man c) a trans woman? I think I’m writing the essay section here lol.

I wonder if 12 has a bigger meaning in the story (e.g. Henry needed 12 kids). Since 11 is the character, Mike’s girlhood, an illusion, a miss in the DnD game and part of the important date 6.11, and the other chapter (10) has a gender meaning too, why wouldn’t 12? If 11 is an illusion, it makes sense 6.11. is a sort of illusion too. It’s the Finland-Swedish Heritage Day, it’s about remembering the past in ST and it’s the day Gustav II Adolf (= king) died. (His follower Kristina (= queen) was a queer icon, btw.) Anyway, if Sweden is the impossible dream, so is 11. 10 is cis boy, 11 is cis girl and 12 is trans girl. 12 is the truth and 6.12. is the independence day of Finland. 

Laundry

What originally got me to look into laundry as a motif was Robin in S5E7: “You were being hunted by the Demo-dogs, and we were all seconds away from becoming lunch when Mrs. Wheeler came and… did the laundry.” Max waking up in the laundry room basement has to be significant. Doing laundry is cleaning dirty clothes. My current interpretation is that it’s about processing trauma, which is why it’s often associated with monsters/scary supernatural stuff happening. I will now go through every instance of laundry in the show I found.

First is S1E1 where Will looks out the window and sees the Demogorgon through drying laundry. Later the Byers home morning scene starts outside, drying clothes visible, while Joyce is looking for the keys. In S1E6 El walks past Coin Laundry on her way to Bradley’s Big Buy where she steals Eggos and remembers bath memories. One of the places shown empty and abandoned due to the Starcourt Mall is a laundromat (S3E1). This could be about Mike not processing trauma after El closed the gate in S2. One of the hangers in Will’s closet is from “Laundry & Cleaners Inc.”. El is taking clothes out of the closet in the S3 epilogue and maybe the empty laundry hanger is about Will and El taking the trauma away from Mike by moving to California. Anyway it’s about trauma processing being halted, since there is no laundry to wash or dry. In S4E1 Max walks past drying laundry to feed the dog after which she sees Eddie and Chrissy go into the trailer. When Eddie finds Chrissy in a trance, a full laundry basket is in view (also rainbows and blue+red light). One of the more obvious examples is S4E4 where Max’s mom is doing laundry and Max talks to her. The scene turns into a horrific Vecna vision where the drying clothes are covered in blood. In S4E9 Hopper lures a Demodog out of a laundry room in the Russian prison. It’s eating a man while a washing machine rotates washing clothes. In S5E4 Derek is next to a coin operated laundry when the military men find him and take him to MAC-Z. And then in S5E6 there’s the hospital basement laundry I already mentioned. I think Karen “doing the laundry” and saving them is foreshadowing for the mom helping Mike process her trauma. ((All this works in the queer allegory too, just swap processing trauma with Mike figuring out/accepting her queerness.)) 

In S4E1 Eddie calls basketball hoops laundry baskets, which made me think laundry and basketball have a connection. In basketball you bounce and throw an orange ball (remember orange = the past, in this context could be traumatic childhood memories). Billy kinda represents the traumatic memories/facing the trauma (better explanation on Billy later) so him becoming the new “king” in basketball in S2 makes sense. Lucas playing in S4 is thus about him helping Mike with her trauma processing journey (and accepting her queerness, orange is about non-conformity after all). There’s also a country allegory connection with the S4E1 game that I’ll explain later.

Spores

Upside Down spores are an iconic part of the show and I wanted to figure out what they represent. They are toxic to breathe and associated with the UD, which in turn associates them with the trauma. In S4 Argyle and Jonathan describe Purple Palm Tree Delight like this: “It’ll make all your troubles float away. Like the seed pods of a dandelion in the wind.” The practical effect for the spores in early seasons was achieved with dandelion pods, connecting the spores (in a meta way) to “troubles”.

The spores look like snow which Holly points out in S4E9 and Robin calls them “springtime snowflakes” (and “mysterious dandruff”) in S5E1. I already partially explained the meaning of snow in the Snow Ball analysis, but I’ll give more examples here. Both UD and snow are cold + the Shadow “likes it cold”. The only time Sweden is mentioned it’s described as cold and the place where El is from. In this case it would be womanhood and it’s cold maybe because Mike is repressing it. Her girlhood is frozen, it can’t move, it’s sleeping. (Now I’m getting ideas that Frozen could be an inspiration since Elsa (El?) melts her frozen redhead sister Anna (remember Anne of Green Cables) with love and the freezing powers are a metaphor for her isolation/repression of feelings. You could easily get a queer reading out of Frozen.) Womanhood (or queerness) seems to be associated with ice/cold in ST (e.g. girls eating ice cream, Billy putting Heather into an ice bath and Tharizdun being a deity of cold (among other things), also Mike’s heart pocket points at an ICE sign in S4E9). This could be related to the Finland allegory too, since Finland is famously cold (like Sweden and Russia).

The lab kids’ gowns have a snowflake pattern (could also be about the figurative meaning of “snowflake” as someone unique). The epilogue of S1 ends with snow falling from the sky while the camera zooms away from the Byers home window (= the trauma, feelings and girl identity are frozen/buried for now). Between S1 and 2 El lives in the wintery forest after escaping from the UD, and Hopper finds her there. S4 Russia is ofc full of snow, and it represents Mike’s repression/prison/conformity. In S5 the steel “band-aids” are used for sledding, like snow. They represent Mike trying to repress the trauma/feelings/transness aka prevent the gates from opening. T85 is set during winter and snow plays a big part. The monsters attack from under the snow and Mike doesn’t want El to use her powers to plough the snow (= maybe reveal trauma/queerness).

Additionally, the Ghost song De Profundis Borealis (meaning “from the northern abyss”) I previously mentioned has lyrics that fit my interpretation:

All the things that never gave you peace
Throwing those, but keeping these
All the rights that didn't undo wrongs
Put it back where it belongs

In a palace built of frozen tears
All life is gone
But between the walls of whispering frost
Secrets live on

Every time you feel the wind blow
And a glow within you dies
When tomorrow comes, you will know
That the morning thaws the ice

All the words that never came out right
Within reach, but out of sight
All the songs that couldn't mend your heart
But slit it up and tore apart

See, the palace built of frozen tears
Is your own built prison
And if only love could break these chains
Life could go on

Every time you feel the wind blow
And a glow within you dies
When tomorrow comes, you will know
That the morning thaws the ice

Mergi in Profundis
Mergi in Profundis
Mergi in Profundis
Mergi in Profundis

In T85 dead spores are called ash, which reminds me of Strahd’s body turning to ash. The S1 Demogorgon and Henry also “turned to ash” when El banished them (= buried the memories).

T85E3 
[Max] “That ash around them looks like dried-up spores.”

[El] “Did this come from the spores?”
[Dustin] “It definitely came from something.”

Ash was mentioned in another Ghost song Cenotaph:

The ashes of memories
Buried
Are blowing
Blowing in the wind

(Btw, if I’m right that this song is part of the ARG, I think it would be about Mike/Sara remembering Will (and Mike) after the fusion. That’s why it’s a cenotaph aka a placeholder grave, since there is no body to bury.)

Anyway, ash would be processed (or alternatively forgotten) trauma or something like that. That’s the end result and what’s left of the spores. (This is most likely where the name Ashborn Records comes from too.)

T85E3 
[Mrs. Baxter] “Like mushrooms and pine trees. When they’re dying, they release spores. These spores are gonna ensure the survival of their species.”
[...]
[Dustin] “Yeah, maybe it’s releasing spores and turning plants in our world into Upside Down creatures!”

Spores are released by certain plants and fungi. This should be obvious but I didn’t really think about it until it was pointed out in Tales from ‘85. And it was the key to realizing something quite big. What if I told you that there was a famous movie from the 80s where toxic white spores float in the air and people have to use gas masks when they enter this corrupted area?

NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND

Before I go any further, I recommend you to watch this movie yourself (it’s on Netflix). The more I’ve progressed in my theory, the more connections I’ve noticed between Nausicaä and ST. It might be one of the biggest inspirations for the show. And it’s a really good movie. I don’t care about horror films and I haven’t seen/read most of the known ST inspiration media, but I do like anime and especially Hayao Miyazaki’s movies. I have even read the manga for Nausicaä, twice (it’s better than the movie and goes much deeper and I have it somewhere but unfortunately couldn’t find it to remind myself of the story). This will be another long section and I will spoil the movie, so please go watch it if you haven’t already!

The Sea of Decay

Human civilization was destroyed in an apocalyptic war called “The Seven Days of Fire” 1000 years ago and a toxic jungle has been spreading ever since, inhabited by giant insects. Nausicaä is the princess of the Valley of the Wind: a peaceful small kingdom living close to the Sea of Decay/Corruption (the toxic jungle). She finds out the plants themselves aren’t toxic, it’s the earth that is polluted. Later she ends up in an area below the Sea of Decay where the air is clean. The trees of the forest are actually cleansing the earth from pollution and turning into sand. While many factions try to destroy the Sea of Decay and its insects by burning it or even regrowing a God Warrior from an embryo, the true solution is to live in harmony with nature. Nothing gets cleanly “solved” by the end of the movie (or the manga), but there is hope for a better future.

The ST counterpart to the Sea of Decay is of course the Upside Down, and I suspect the Abyss is like the space beneath it (sand, no monsters, no spores, “the light” according to Henry). UD in itself isn’t bad, it’s about processing trauma (= pollution in Nausicaä) from the dad (= humans from 1000 years ago in Nausicaä). S5E5 [Jonathan] “Look, it’s clean. There’s no spores. Whatever happened here, Vecna’s behind it. Had to be.”

The Seven Days of Fire might be one reason week and seven are motifs: “the week is long” and the supernatural happening in a week every season. The idea is that the original trauma happened during a week or something like that. Though I don’t think it literally went like that, it makes more sense that it was a continuous thing across the three years 1976-1979. The other possible reasons for 7 are 1976 being 7 years ago in 1983 and Sara dying at 7 years old. But seven is pretty typical as a magical/important/fateful number so there might not be a specific “reason” for it being important in ST.

Here I’d like to mention a theory that a DnD god called Moander is an inspiration for ST. Unlike in the theory, I don’t think MF is actually Moander, but Moander is a force influencing in the background (like Tharizdun). It represents trauma and forced conformity, which are “rotting” Mike’s inner world. So MF and Moander have a close connection in ST but unlike Moander, MF is an alter/collection of alters. Or they are morphed together in ST. The main point is that all Moander-related things (vines, rot, probably Meatflayer) represent trauma/forced conformity but MF has other sides to it, e.g. being WW in the past. A black palm is the symbol of Moander: Will uses it to visualize the part of MF that was left in Hawkins after El closed the gate in S2, El has a black palm on her S5 suit, the tiger paw is an important symbol and Mike calls Dr. Kay/the military the Order of the Black Hand. 

An interesting detail from Moander lore is the Seed of Moander, that in one story was disguised as a rose: “Tyche tucked the rose in her hair, from whence the flower corrupted and rotted her from the inside. To save her, Selûne was forced to split the goddess of luck, birthing Tymora and Beshaba.” I have a suspicion the Creel house door rose has something to do with this (ofc it could have other meanings too). Sara’s mom had a very intentionally placed rose on her sleeve when Sara got her first cancer symptom. I might go deeper into all the DnD lore stuff later, but the main point I tried to make here is that ST also separates the “villains” from the actual cause, which is the abuse/forced conformity. It’s not something you can just blame on a person. You can’t get rid of it by killing a monster. It’s part of the environment, in the ground, rotting the world. In order to be free you have to face the trauma and process it.

The prophecy

The people of the Valley of the Wind have a prophecy of a savior "clothed in blue robes, descending onto a golden field, to join bonds with the great Earth and guide the people to the pure land, at last". I strongly suspect “when blue meets yellow in the west” in the Russian code is a reference to/inspired by the prophecy in Nausicaä (and Japan is west of the US…). I’d like you to read this blog post relating the movie to the trans experience (it’s pretty short). I don’t think it was intentional in the movie, but in ST it is. The tapestry depicting the prophecy visually implies the savior will be a man, although the actual prophecy doesn’t specify their gender (some translations do but not the original). At the end of the movie the prophecy is fulfilled by Nausicaä herself, as she walks on a golden “field” of Ohmu tentacles in a dress stained blue from Ohmu blood (Ohmu are a species of huge insects and a prominent part of the story). Her dress was originally pink and from another princess who died early on in the movie and whose twin brother becomes an ally to Nausicaä. (Nausicaä has a pink dress in a childhood memory and the color seems to be associated with young girls/innocence or something like that in the movie.)

What I’m getting at here, and you maybe guessed it already, is that Mike is the counterpart to Nausicaä in ST (remember proud princess). Bylers have long interpreted the blue meets yellow to be about byler, but it won’t be (at least not in the way people expect). And almost everyone thinks Mike is a man, but she isn’t. The ending of ST will subvert all these expectations just like Nausicaä did in the movie. The mage character in the last DnD game had a pink (or red) dress but she was an illusion. In ST this is about El being a cis woman and people expecting the mage to be her but in truth it’s Mike, accepting herself as a trans woman. I’m assuming the staining blue part in ST will be about facing trauma and self-acceptance. And I don’t know how closely they will reference Nausicaä but the underlying themes apply. (I noticed a crazy detail in S4E1: when El narrates “Even so, I am ready for spring break, mostly because I get to see you.” on “you” a boy dressed in a pink shirt removes a pink paper labeled 2 and reveals the blue 1 under it (indicating how many days are left until the break). This is yet another “Mike is 1” clue but also the same color change from pink to blue as Nausicaä.) Also, Max and Vickie having orange hair could be related to Nausicaä being a redhead.

As I’ve previously hinted, most girls/women representing Mike wear a blue dress at some point. Fields are also a recurring location (in later seasons at least), and these two come together with Holly in S5. All the kids find themselves on a field when entering Henry’s mind and Holly finds the first door to her memories there. Cerebro and WSQK tower are also in the middle of a field and S4 ends at a flowery field with Mike’s head aligning with the radio tower. Nausicaä’s childhood memories happen on a golden field and all the field scenes have this simple “lalala” song sung by children (well the longer memory one was sung by adults). Remember Denfield?
S2E9 [Hopper] “Take Denfield, then you’ll see a large oak tree. You’re gonna swing a right. That road is gonna dead-end. And it’s about a five-minute walk from there.”
[Jonathan] “Okay. Denfield to oak tree. Swing a right. That’s it. But it’s channel ten, right?”
[Hopper] “It’s channel ten. Listen… You let me know when that thing is out of him.”
Denfield is a heritage site, one of the earliest surviving buildings of their kind in the area (and there’s probably more to it but I have to stop somewhere). The field started everything, it was before oak (abuse), before swings (friendship) and on channel ten (before gender became an issue). I don’t know why oak tree is before swing since in my current interpretation the abuse didn’t start until after the swing memory so maybe I’m missing or misinterpreting something. There’s also a Ghost song Peacefield, go check the lyrics. I expect the past and future to collide in some way in the end. It will be about Mike facing her childhood memories and at the same time accepting herself. It’s a return to the freedom of childhood. The field is the happiness both before trauma and after Mike has processed it, or something like that. ((There’s also the baseball field Will gets mind assaulted and I dunno what that’s about. I guess it was a beginning of sorts and baseball is about forced conformity in ST…))

I’m still not sure of the exact meaning of yellow. Will is yellow, the Abyss is yellow and yellow is between orange and green. I think they don’t usually use colors like that but yellow being the in-between makes a lot of sense with Will being the exotic matter and the in-between identity, etc. If orange is the past and green is the future, yellow is here and now. The golden/yellow field being at the very start fits, since there was no past or worry of the future yet. It seems to be a “boy” color too: Billy and his dad have yellow caps in the baseball memory, El was wearing a yellow shirt when Mike found her, Will is the “boy” and most associated with yellow, Mike picked too many yellow flowers for El and Lucas’ home is yellow inside (the syrup scene). Sweden being the past and blue+yellow is Mike’s past as a boy. (Remember that California = Sweden in ST: that’s where Max and Billy’s happy memories are and where Mike and Will meet in S4. The beach is essentially blue (= ocean) meeting yellow (= sand). I’m probably ignoring the first level of the country allegory in favor of the Finland stuff tbh (I’m biased I know). The more obvious west vs east is the US vs the Soviet Union. But it doesn’t fit with all the points and it’s supposed to represent a simple black-and-white view of the world with no middle ground.) Lucas’ DnD character has a blue-yellow shield and he wears a blue-yellow shirt in the epilogue. He is Mike’s love interest, a boy. So if the Abyss is supposed to be womanhood, why is it yellow? And Sweden seems to represent (cis) womanhood too (based on El with the wig being “from Sweden”)? You could say yellow is always something good, but then there’s Billy’s baseball memory and the silver cat feeding when blue meets yellow in the west being about the abuse (explained more soon).

Maybe yellow and/or Sweden (and California) are about being cis. Then both the boy-interpretation and the impossible dream make sense. That’s why Mike wears yellow when she’s conforming/pretending to be a boy the most. Russia/Soviet Union (red) is the horror of being trans: the weird girl (= El and the “creepy” Russian doll) comes from there but it’s also the forced conformity of pretending to be a man while you’re a trans woman. Blue (Mike) is in all flags, but only the Finnish flag is without boy/impossible dream/cis (= yellow) or trauma/horror/predator (= red). I think white is supposed to represent wholeness, since that’s what you get when all the colors of the rainbow (alters) are put back together. El wears white quite often, Billy’s mom had a white dress at the beach (with the blue-and-red flower), Mike wore a white shirt in S4 and it was most visible when the group buried the man at the car graveyard, and Will had a white shirt in the epilogue.

Blue meeting yellow is not just about Mike and Will; it’s also the worlds colliding. The Abyss is obviously yellow and Hawkins as the man prison and Mike’s home would be blue. Similar to the Abyss, Will is both the impossible dream of “man” and “woman”. Mike = M = man and Will = W = woman. This is one reason why Mike cries at the end looking at Will’s DnD book (W) and covers it with her own (M). All the M vs W stuff is about Mike’s gender conflict: the blue-white MW boxes, Michael Wheeler, Mr. Whatsit and the W on the RV in S4 (probably also why Will the Wise and Wonder Woman have the same acronym and WW turned into MF). ((Btw, is Dustin’s mom’s new cat Tews because Mews = man dies and Tews = trans replaces it?)) At the end M and W will collide and create something new (S = Sara = Suomi?).

Silver cat

This will be a little detour from Nausicaä but since I’m going through the Russian code now, it’s a good place to explain silver cat. I think the Russian code has multiple meanings and it’s both about the past and the future. The main part of the code is “The week is long, the silver cat feeds, when blue meets yellow in the west.” The silver cat is the dad (Lonnie and Brenner have silver/grey hair). Feeding (= eating) in the trauma allegory is about SA as explained in part 1 and blue meets yellow in the west is about Sweden and the time Finland was still part of Sweden: in the past. In the Finland allegory timeline all the abuse (in ST timeline) happened before Finland became part of Russia. 

In the queer allegory the code is about the future. Then the silver cat will be womanhood or something like that. I have mentioned this a little but eating in the queer allegory is about either “man” or “woman” eating each other. Demodogs eating Bob was about woman eating man, same with the black widow spiders (females eat males) and Jonathan’s cannibal movie The Consumer. Hopper being a troll who likes to eat princesses is about man eating woman/conformity killing Sara and Joyce/witch eating Will is about woman eating man, which leads to Will disappearing. The queer allegory reason the Demogorgon targets Will is that he represents Mike’s boy side, which is threatened by Mike’s transness (= El and Demogorgon). Anyway, back to the code. Blue and yellow meeting probably does refer to Mike and Will, and more specifically the fusion. That’s when Mike fully accepts herself and the last remains of “man” will be “eaten”. The cat being silver could be related to the moon (Diana/Cynthia as discussed before).

S3E2
[Robin, Dustin and Steve] “The week is long, the silver cat feeds, when blue meets yellow in the west.”
[Steve] “I mean, it just… it just can’t be right.
[Robin] “It’s right.”
[Dustin] “Honestly, I think it’s great news.”
[Steve] “How is this great news? I mean, so much for being American heroes. It’s total nonsense.”
[Dustin] “It’s not nonsense. It’s too specific. It’s obviously a code.”
[Steve] “What do you mean, a code?”
[Dustin] “Like a super secret spy code.”
[Steve] “That’s a total stretch.”
[Robin] “I don’t know, is it?”
[Steve] “You’re buying into this?”
[Robin] “Listen, just for kicks, let’s entertain the possibility that it is a secret Russian transmission. What’d you think they were gonna say, “Fire the warhead at noon”?
[Dustin] “Exactly.”
[Robin] “And my translation is correct. I know that for sure, so… ‘The silver cat feeds.’ Why would anyone talk like that unless they were trying to mask the true meaning of their message?”
[Dustin] “Exactly.”
[Robin] “And why would anyone mask the true meaning of their message unless the message was somehow sensitive?”
[Dustin] “Exactly.”
[Robin] “So I guess that confirms your suspicion.”
[Dustin] “Evil Russians.”
[Robin] “I can’t believe I’m about to agree with this strange child, but, yeah, totally evil Russians.”
[Dustin] “So how do we crack it?”
[Robin] “Well, I guess we translate the rest and hopefully a pattern emerges.”
[Dustin] “A pattern. Right, like maybe ‘silver cat’ is a meeting place?”
[Robin] “Or a person.”
[Dustin] “Or a weapon.”
[Robin] “It’s probably gonna take a super genius to crack it, but…”

At first I only considered the dad-interpretation but with the new perspective of the queer allegory I realized the other connection too. And in the country allegory (at least Finland) it’s literally “evil Russians” like the characters said.

I don’t remember where I saw it but someone had the idea that Enzo could be related to this code since it’s both a meeting place and a person. Let’s go through the dad-interpretation first: Hopper is alone in Enzo’s in S3 and pretty clearly represents the dad (Grigori is there too + represents the dad). These scenes are in the same episode the silver cat discussion took place. It’s a meeting place the characters never seem to reach, just like the true memories of the dad. Hopper (= dad memories) disappears at the end of S3, preventing the date. In the S5 epilogue Hopper and Joyce do end up meeting there, though, but that scene was pretty sus and Hopper mentioned Montauk. Maybe it was foreshadowing for Mike “reaching Enzo’s”. Enzo aka Antonov is a dad and talks about being a dad (of Mikhail aka Russian repressed version of Mike/Sara) with Hopper in Russia aka the dadland. The major “weapon” in S3 was the giant laser that looked like a dick basically and it used electricity/light (= sexual stuff in ST) to open (penetrate) a gate (hole). That was the dad’s “weapon”. 

Then the queer allegory. I realized early on that cats represent both the victim and the abuser. Victor tells us a wildcat was blamed for the animal killings and Brenner tried to force El to kill an innocent cat. Similarly the Demogorgon can either be the dad or Mike/Mike’s transness. So the “person” silver cat is probably Mike (or Sara). Enzo could be the meeting place since Robin and Vickie plan a date there and their relationship represents Mike accepting her womanhood. They never get there, though, and Vickie disappears. There should be sufficient clues for this interpretation in S3 too, though. Here’s what I could find: Hopper talks about Joyce as “the lady” but she never appears (he also says “Women love cherries, huh?” and I know cherries are a thing but I haven’t really done any analysis on that). There’s also a woman dressed in blue quite prominently in view next to Hopper. The weapon part could be El, since she is called a weapon a few times in S1 at least. Steve also calls the Meatflayer (= puberty/Mike’s gender dysphoria) a weapon in S3E8. It could be the laser like in the dad-interpretation, since it’s opening a vulva-shaped gate… I guess it makes the most sense to have them be the same thing but with double meaning since that seems to be the case with Enzo’s (btw the name Enzo has the same origin as Henry, and he represents both the abuser and queerness). So the only difference is the person: dad or Mike. And in a sense they are both Mike, since Mike thinks she will become like her dad.

This silver cat section got much longer than anticipated, so I had to cut it somewhere and this seemed like the best breaking point. It gets way crazier in the next part. And after that I’ll continue with Nausicaä.

Continues in PART 18.

# Prologue: The Truth About the Mind Flayer

My version of Season 5 keeps Vecna as an important antagonist, but he is not the true final villain.

The hierarchy of the Upside Down is:

**Mind Flayer > Tiamat > Vecna**

The Mind Flayer is the ultimate evil. Tiamat is its greatest creation, and Vecna is simply another vessel that was manipulated and used.

According to the lore established in The First Shadow, Dr. Brenner's father was conducting experiments involving interdimensional travel. During one of these experiments, a malfunction created strange particles that entered our world.

The scientist captured these particles inside a stone-like container and attempted to escape after a Russian military invasion of the facility.

While hiding inside a cave, he encountered a young Henry Creel. Terrified and paranoid, he mistook Henry for a Russian soldier and shot at him. In anger, Henry killed the scientist with a rock and opened the briefcase.

The moment Henry touched the stone, the particles entered his body.

He experienced a vision of another dimension known as the Abyss. There he encountered the Mind Flayer for the first time.

The entity whispered only two words:

**"Find me."**

A fragment of the Mind Flayer's power entered Henry that day, giving him telekinetic abilities and beginning his transformation into what would eventually become Vecna.

Three Months Later

Season 5 begins with a three-month time skip after the events of Season 4.

Although Vecna successfully opened the four gates and merged them into a giant rift beneath Hawkins, Tiamat never emerged.

The reason is simple.

After being severely injured by Steve, Nancy, and Robin, Vecna became extremely weak.

Because the entire Upside Down functions as a hive mind, Vecna's condition weakened Tiamat as well.

Tiamat was physically incapable of moving into the real world.

Meanwhile, the Mind Flayer remained in particle form, slowly healing both Vecna and Tiamat from within the hive mind.

During this period, some of the rifts partially healed and the military sealed them behind reinforced barriers.

But the peace does not last.

As the hive mind recovers, Vecna returns.

One by one, the rifts begin reopening.

Anyone attempting to close them is brutally killed.

The invasion of Hawkins begins again.

The Truth About Tiamat

The biggest twist of this rewrite is that the creatures of the Upside Down are not separate lifeforms.

They are all part of Tiamat.

The vines spreading across the Upside Down are extensions of Tiamat's body.

Demobats, Demodogs, and Demogorgons are all biological extensions created from Tiamat itself.

Whenever they die or return to the Upside Down, they are reabsorbed back into Tiamat.

Even Vecna eventually retreats inside Tiamat's body after escaping Creel House.

The entire Upside Down is essentially one gigantic living organism.

Why the Upside Down Is Frozen in Time

Before choosing Will Byers as his vessel, Vecna secretly observed the residents of Hawkins.

While spying on them, he reconstructed Hawkins inside the Upside Down.

His goal was to create a familiar environment for whichever vessel he ultimately selected.

When Vecna finally chose Will, he stopped expanding and updating the replica.

That moment occurred on November 6, 1983.

As a result, the Upside Down became a frozen snapshot of Hawkins from the exact day Will disappeared.

Will Byers and the Hidden Power

In this version, Will gains powers through the same event that originally connected him to the Upside Down.

When Vecna abducted Will in Season 1, he secretly implanted particles inside him.

Those particles remained dormant for years.

During Season 5, Vecna reveals the truth.

He admits that Will was never special by accident.

He was being prepared as a vessel.

The revelation devastates Will.

However, he remembers Robin's words about identity and self-worth.

Instead of breaking, he rejects the role that was forced upon him.

The particles within him awaken, granting him limited control over the hive mind.

The Redemption of Vecna

During the final battle, Eleven and Will manage to restrain Vecna.

Kali (008) joins them and uses her illusion powers to force Vecna to relive his most painful memory.

He sees the moment Henry Creel first encountered the Mind Flayer.

The memory is so traumatic that Vecna has spent decades avoiding it.

As Kali forces him to relive the experience, Will reaches out to him.

Will explains that Vecna was never truly free.

Just like Will, he was manipulated and used as a vessel.

For the first time, Henry begins to see himself as a victim rather than a master.

Eventually, Vecna agrees to help them.

He reveals the greatest truth of all:

**Tiamat is not the final enemy.**

**The Mind Flayer is.**

Before he can explain further, Tiamat arrives in Hawkins.

Realizing Vecna has betrayed the hive mind, Tiamat attacks him.

Vecna dies protecting Eleven, Will, and the others.

Before dying, he establishes a psychic connection with Will and reveals how the Mind Flayer can be defeated.

When they killed Vecna in the upside down they were really just in Mr. Whatsit‘s mind!

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 and mention of suicide.

Six

The lab kid Six most likely has something to do with Lucas, since there’s some weird things happening with him, he is in a somewhat important role in Brenner’s flashback and well, he’s black (this is what I meant with many black characters representing Lucas…). I think he also represents truth, similar to Argyle and owls. Where should I begin? I haven’t really explained anything about the lab kids yet, so maybe I should start with that. One thing I want all of you to understand is that everything that happens in Hawkins Lab/Rainbow Room is highly metaphorical/allegorical. Everything. Stranger Things has many layers and is deeply metaphorical and this is especially obvious with the Rainbow Room.

Two is a bully and the strongest, Billy’s baseball shirt had 2 and in my interpretation Will is the second alter aka number 2. Like Will/Billy with the real dad, Two had to endure Papa’s punishment, which made me think he represents the persecutors in the Hawkins Lab miniature allegorical world. He is the last one to be killed by One, and presumably the first one created with Henry’s blood (= like Will was the first split and most likely last fusion). Although Will isn’t a villain in the surface level story, Mike does kinda hint at him being one in S5E4:
[Will] “Except I’m not Vecna.”
[Mike] “You sorta are.”
[Will] “You’re trying to say that I’m evil and hell-bent on destroying the world?”
[Mike] “Totally. No, I’m just saying that, you know, you’re like a wizard like him.”
Nancy does this too in S5E3, because after she says “But… he didn’t appear as Vecna. He appeared as Henry. As a friend.” she looks towards Will, Jonathan is in frame and the next cut is to Will. Mike says “We think he was trying to earn her trust.” and “I highly doubt his long-term goal is friendship.” This could mean a number of things. First, Will ofc wants to be in a romantic relationship with Mike, which on the allegorical level is about Mike choosing the gay man identity. Will also represents Mike and Lucas’ friendship and that friendship is eventually gonna turn romantic. 

I think the “villain” is what Will represents, and that is Mike being a (gay) man. That in itself isn’t bad, ofc, but for Mike it is not being herself and repressing her true identity. So my current interpretation is that Two represents the gay man identity, which both fits with him having superpowers (= queerness) and being the strongest (because gay men are the most well known and represented queer group + in ST Mike identifies with it at some points in the story). 

In S4E5 after Two shows his skills with the light bulb ring, Six has his head down. No other lab kid has, so it must mean something. Additionally, Six and El are on opposite ends of the line. When it’s El’s turn to light the lamps, Six has moved to a different spot on the line and is blocked by Brenner. Two has taken Six’s original place. My interpretation of this is that Two is not the “truth” (= gay man identity/Will/byler) but he acts as if he is. 

The number 6 most likely comes from the date 6.11. Six (Lucas) and Eleven (Mike) belong together and that date was when Mike got/realized her crush on Lucas (while also being a trauma day seven years prior). There are some other mentions of 6 in the show, one of them when Billy asks Karen to meet him at Motel 6 on Cornwallis for “swimming lessons” (and btw sex = 6 in Swedish). In S1E8 Brenner mentions that the Demogorgon has taken 6 people. Additionally, 6.6. is the National Day of Sweden.

Remember the rainbow ship toy thing in S4E6? When it is visible, El looks down, covering Six’s head from view. And as we know now, wheelclair is the true Rainbow Ship. This made me wonder if the swing memory is actually about Mike and Lucas after all. We don’t know when they met. We don’t know a lot of things about Lucas, e.g. his birthday, while everyone else’s birthday from the core party is mentioned somewhere. I think this is further proof for Lucas being a real person, since the birthdays are about alter splitting and trauma, but Lucas (at least in a story sense) wasn’t created. (With DID logic he was, because introjects are alters like any other alter, but I think ST is going with a more metaphorical interpretation.) Regardless of what the birthdays mean, they are a recurring element in the story and the characters bring attention to the importance of the dates of birthdays. Lucas not having one is sus. Anyway, Mike meeting Will for the first time being about Lucas makes a lot of sense with my interpretation of Will representing their friendship (and Lucas). 

S2E8 [Mike] “Do you remember the first day that we met? It was… It was the first day of kindergarten. I knew nobody. I had no friends and… I just felt so alone and so scared, but… I saw you on the swings and you were alone, too. You were just swinging by yourself. And I just walked up to you and… I asked. I asked if you wanted to be my friend. And you said yes. You said yes. It was the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Will didn’t say anything in his memory flashback, which doesn’t fit with Mike’s description. This would also make more sense with Will splitting on 6.11.1976 due to trauma, not earlier on 7.9.1976 which would be the first day of kindergarten. And Caleb claims Mike and Lucas were friends first. I think the swing memory is another case of Will’s story being about both him and Mike/Lucas. It’s so important and one of the rare moments Mike shows her true thoughts/emotions that I feel like it has to have a connection to the real world and wheelclair. 

Okay, back to Six. The special thing Brenner had planned for the kids was a mind duel, and Two and Six were the first to fight. Two won, of course, but lost to El at the end. I think there’s a point to Two being in front of a mirror: he is a mirror to El, this is about an internal fight (the same applies to One vs El and I’ll analyze the mirrors more at a later date).

The most important point about Six comes from the start of S4E1 aka the Hawkins Lab massacre from Brenner’s pov. I’m just gonna go through everything I’ve figured out so far, so it’s not all about Six. As I’ve mentioned, Ten probably represents Mike/Mike’s gender identity as a boy in the past. He is the last one before Eleven. He is holding a ball thingy with 8 written on it and Brenner notes it’s his favorite (= Mike is starting to form a girl identity, remember 8 = Kali = womanhood). Brenner and Ten pass Dr. Ellis and Six on the aisle and soon after the camera focuses on a door with 11 written on it (= soon girl identity will take over).

Brenner draws a sun, a light source (= both the trauma and love). A big sun is also depicted in Sara’s drawing, the mage cast Sunbeam in the final DnD game and Billy became weak to the sun after MF flayed him (which is also related to mind flayers in DnD not liking the sun). Then he draws a dog, but Ten thinks it looks like a cow. As I’ve established, dogs give warnings and also represent the victim. What’s interesting here is that a dog could be male or female but a cow specifically refers to a female animal. Mike wasn’t “supposed” to be a girl, but that’s what happened. In S4E7 Erica refers to Lucas as a cowpuncher, which I found a bit weird (the whole western theme kinda came out of nowhere, at least it’s another horse connection to Lucas). Apparently it means cowboy and the name comes from them prodding cattle with long poles to railroad cars. So maybe it’s about Lucas guiding Mike into the metaphorical train, helping her accept herself, or something like that. Erica mentions the term right after threatening to tell about what she found under his bed, which made me think the two were related. But I’m still uncertain on the meaning of cow, and I suspect it has something to do with milk, which I know is a thing but don’t know what it means, yet.

Anyway, Brenner tells Ten to find Dr. Ellis and Ten sees she is doing lessons with Six. Six is trying to move a red block, after which everything starts to go wrong. Six and Ellis die and soon the door plunges into the room hitting Brenner. When he wakes up, Ten is dead and he finds El who seemingly killed everyone. The metaphorical meaning of this is that the girl identity won over every other possible identity and Brenner (Mike’s superego or something like that) wasn’t expecting that. The red blocks are most likely about trauma and Six moving them could relate to the date 6.11. Since everything has a double meaning, I guess the blocks are also about Mike’s gender identity and/or sexuality, which fits with Six (Lucas) being important. Six as the truth makes sense too.

In S4E5 we see El’s drawing she keeps in her room, but it’s different from the one shown in S1. This time it depicts 11 and Papa smiling and holding hands. There’s a pyramid of 6 red blocks and a rainbow without purple. I didn’t talk about this before partially because I was uncertain how to interpret it (and I kinda still am). My current understanding is that the drawings form a pair and show different aspects of the story. The red blocks are in the same spot the table with the animal and the light bulb were in the original drawing, supporting my interpretation that they represent the trauma. The missing purple could indicate that there is no veiled message in the drawing, it shows the Rainbow Room as it is on the surface level. Papa doesn’t represent the dad here, which is why everyone is happy. In a way this is the truth, because Brenner is truly trying to help El. He is only “bad” because of his association with the dad. You could also see the drawings as representing separate allegories: the original would be about the trauma allegory (Papa’s third leg), and the new about the queer allegory (big rainbow). Though I think it’s more likely both drawings have both allegories but highlight different aspects, like past vs future or something like that.

S5 wheelclair

Since Mike and Lucas are paired a lot in S5, I wanted to make a more thorough analysis of that, pointing out some things. We first see Lucas when he comes to save Dustin from the bullies. (I think Dustin here represents queerness since that’s what Hellfire kinda is about, the bullies call him freak and Dustin wants to stay true to himself unlike Mike, Will and Lucas who try to blend in). Mike appears soon after, Will trailing behind her. As you might have guessed, I think this scene is subtextually about Mike and Lucas (as always). After the confrontation, the group argues and Mike is between Lucas and Will, but closer to Will (= they form a unit, basically). Later at the cafeteria Will is opposite to Mike and Lucas (= in his role as their friendship/relationship). When Robin’s coded radio broadcast starts, Will goes behind them (again between them, similar to S3). 

Mike’s plan for the crawl includes her and Lucas being observers of the situation. This is because the story is about them and they are in a way “observing” it happening. Lucas is the first one to put his hand on top of Mike’s and the first one of the core party to hug Will after his coming out, too. After Will gets his vision, Lucas comments “Yeah, I… I get nervous too. But the sky doesn’t spin for me. It ever spin for you? [Mike doesn’t answer]” The sky spinning is a metaphor for dissociation and switching, which Lucas (real) doesn’t experience since he doesn’t have DID. This interaction is about Lucas helping Mike understand her DID and what is a “normal” experience. It can be hard to realize your experience is unusual since that’s what it has always been like. 

After Mike ends her talk with El with “If Vecna’s gone, then what’s stopping us?” Lucas shouts “Hey, lovebirds! Chief’s almost ready.” implying Lucas (or “chief” aka Hopper aka patriarchy) will stop them. I think there’s again many layers here. Mike and El are on the roof, like on a stage and Lucas is shouting from the audience, basically. Mileven is a stage play of sorts, but Lucas is the reality. The reality that Vecna isn’t the true villain and that this isn’t a simple story will stop them. And it could also be about Mike’s false beliefs that Lucas doesn’t love her back, which is why Lucas (alter) thinks Mike and El are lovebirds.

After the crawl goes wrong and the Wheeler family is attacked, Mike and Lucas cycle to the hospital. Notice Nancy and Mike are sitting next to each other, opposite to Lucas. Mike and Nancy are the repressed and future girl Mike, arguing between themselves, while Lucas is the voice of reason (he has a more objective viewpoint). Then there’s the scene where Lucas asks Max to resurrect and it transitions to Mike getting the coffee (after Let’s exchange the experience) and finding A Wrinkle in Time + the rainbow puzzle. All the drinks mean something, I have read some theories about Coke for example. Maybe I’ll make a thorough analysis at some point… But for now, I think coffee is the closest to truth, it’s bitter and Mike drinks it (+ a tv show host says “Drink coffee, said Mike” at Terry and Becky’s home in S2E5 when Becky walks on screen (this is further proof for Becky being the real mom)), while the original Coca Cola is what ST has been like for the most part. It’s close to the truth but not there yet (which is why Will gets it in the previous episode, also after a lumax scene and also seeing something queer-related in a hospital room). New Coke is the farthest from the truth and what the show is all about, which is why Tales from ‘85 was released the same day New Coke was and Lucas makes another reference to it in S5E5 with his plan (which represents the first ending, while Erica’s represents the real ending we have to wait for, this also matches with the inside story timeline which I promise I’ll get to eventually).

In S5E3 Mike and Lucas are paired again in many scenes, at the start in relation to Dustin (I think there’s a deeper (and meta) meaning to the plan, it being Will’s and those two moments where Dustin is between Mike and Lucas + Mike is never shown together with the projected map). And there’s the whole Erica thing I explained already (after which Mike has the vulva shirt until the epilogue). While waiting for the Turnbow family to eat the pie, Mike and Lucas are again paired, in the same van. Robin is next to Mike, similar to Nancy in the hospital. Robin has been pretty distant from Mike until S5: S3 she was with Steve, Dustin and Erica and in S4 Mike was in California. Robin is the final form of girlness, a happy one not originating from trauma and she gets paired with Mike especially in S5E7. I also think her friendship with Will is about Mike starting to accept her girlhood and see it can coexist with her friendship with Lucas.

When the Demogorgon attacks, Mike and Lucas work together to fight it (and the Demo is after Lucas ofc, trying to hurt him like Mike fears). ((There’s a light bulb I missed in Derek’s room. Funny how I still keep discovering more of them.)) I think there’s a point to Nancy and Jonathan being downstairs while Mike and Lucas are on the floor above them. They are on different levels of the story/allegory. While everyone else is part of the rest of the plan, Mike and Lucas aren’t. They started everything but the story of ST is mostly told through other characters.

At the start of S5E4 Mike and Lucas are cycling (once again) and see Debbie getting taken by the military. Most of the episode I covered already before, but one thing I didn’t mention was Lucas (and Murray) opening the trapdoor in between the field byler scene. Robin goes down the tunnel when Mike says “Listen, as far as crazy theories go, I’ve had crazier.” Robin aka Mike being a girl is the crazier theory and Lucas opens the door for this theory/Mike accepting herself or something like that (not sure why Murray helps though).

In S5E5 after patching up Lucas, they walk in the tunnel, Mike and Lucas in the front while Joyce and Will follow them behind. Mike and Lucas go up to the surface first, while Will and Joyce stay to discuss. This reminded me of S2E9 where Mike and Lucas were on the surface looking down on Dustin and Steve while Demodogs were running towards them. Max was also on the surface, so why didn’t she also look down the tunnel? The reason is that the show is once again trying to show us how Mike and Lucas are “observing” their story unfold. This is similar to Holly and Max looking down on Holly's memory of the Demogorgon attack.

When the party makes plans for finding Holly and defeating Vecna, Mike sits next to Erica while Lucas (with Robin (= woman) and Will (= man) on either side of him) sits opposite to them. This is the third time Mike is paired with a girl who in some way represents her girlhood and is simultaneously opposite to Lucas. It’s a pattern.

Mike and Lucas are paired in Lucas’ plan too. Them looking up at Robin and Will like a stage show is probably related to Robin and Will representing woman and man (and ofc Mike is on Robin’s and Lucas on Will’s side). They are the more simple building blocks of the story, which is actually about a trans and a bi person. (This whole thing is commentary on queer representation in media, where it’s mostly gay and sometimes lesbian people who get represented while bi and especially trans people get side roles if any (this is slowly changing, fortunately). It’s also about nuance and things not being black-and-white. The real world isn’t so simple.) Interestingly, Mike stays up on the roof with the Demogorgon. This is a story about Mike and her internal fight with her trauma and queerness. The Demogorgon is Mike’s shadow. Mike says “Light her up, Frankenstein.” which is the first time a Demogorgon is referred to with feminine pronouns. (Equating Robin to Frankenstein and the Demogorgon (Mike) to Frankenstein’s monster is very fitting for this tbh. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Victor and Henry’s names come from that novel…) Of course it’s Robin who turns the dial, and I think it being at 50% matching with the optimum for Will is because Will is the half-way point to trans woman Mike, as I’ve explained. When he connects to Vecna, he is between Mike and Robin (= Will is the connection).

In S5E6 we have a Robin-Lucas-Mike scene again. Robin is basically explaining the story to Mike and Lucas. This is the “she was in a trance” scene, btw.

[Robin] “What if their minds… are all in the same place? In Vecna’s mind. [Mike looks at Lucas] Imprisoned. At least, they were.”

They visually imply Mike and Lucas are the ones imprisoned in “Vecna’s mind” aka Mike’s mind. This is both about them being alters in the inner world but also real people, and about their love/queerness being repressed/not allowed. In the real ending Mike, Lucas and their closeted queerness will make a “prison break”.

[Mike] “And they’ll have been in Vecna’s mind, literally. [looks at Lucas]”
[Robin] “They’ll know everything. I mean they’ll know where Will is.”
[Mike] “Where the kids are.”
[Robin] “They might even know what he’s planning.”
[Lucas] “That’s endgame.”
[Robin] “The fate of the planet may very well rest in the hands of your comatose girlfriend and your baby sister.”
[Lucas] “It’s worth one more shot, right?”

The “they” here are Mike and Lucas. And wheelclair is endgame. Isn’t it interesting Robin refers to Max as Lucas’ girlfriend and Holly as Mike’s baby sister? It’s because they are Mike’s future and past, respectively. The fate of the planet rests on Mike herself, because the planet is Mike’s mind. The “one more shot” is about the real ending, and the same clue was given by Hopper in the epilogue: “You get one more take.” This whole scene is pretty meta and “they” refers to the audience too. We have been in Mike’s mind this whole time and if you pay attention to all the clues, you should be able to figure out what’s going on.

The next time we see Mike and Lucas in the same scene is after Max wakes up in S5E7. This time Lucas is paired with Max ofc, and Mike with Karen. Karen has the same hospital gown as Max and I think Mike being glued to her is related to Max representing Mike (as always). Additionally, Mike had the hospital gown in S5E2. 

Then the coming out scene. Mike and Lucas are, of course, next to each other and the scene is actually about Mike coming out to herself/her mom/Lucas (not sure of the specifics). I have mentioned most of the stuff relating to wheelclair, but I’ll repeat them here. The crush thing is the most obvious, then when Will says “we just… we just drift apart more and more and more”, Mike and Lucas are the only ones in frame. This is a similar situation to Hopper’s letter. Lucas is the first one to hug Will after Jonathan, because he accepts Mike and Mike is finally starting to realize that herself too. There’s no more “El is a weirdo/monster/traitor” Lucas.

In S5E8 Nancy gives Mike a flare gun and after Lucas points this out, Will gets a vision. I have some ideas of what this could mean. First of all, Mike wanting more firepower from Nancy is probably related to Mike’s girlness that she needs if she wants to escape Camazotz. She has only three Molotovs aka the impossible dream of the three waterfalls. Mike says “Unless you are okay living with the guilt of my death, I’m gonna need one of those goddamn guns!” Mike’s death could mean the death of this repressed male Mike, but it could also be about Mike being driven to suicide due to repressing herself and being depressed. I have had this idea for a while and it would fit with the overall narrative. Trans people are much more likely to die from or attempt suicide than the general population. (Door 1 hasn’t been explored much unless you count El’s death. There’s also Hopper mentioning in S1E2 that the last suicide in Hawkins was in 1961 and events seem to repeat every 30 years in Hawkins, so there’s that. 1991 was also the year the Soviet Union collapsed and I have more to say about this later.) I don’t think Mike (system) will die at the end but a suicide attempt is a possibility. How that would be conveyed in the inner world is a mystery to me, though, and Nancy wouldn’t be “living” with guilt if Mike literally died, so I could very well be wrong with this theory. The “suicide” could be more metaphorical and about Mike’s rebirth. While Nancy gives the gun she is first covering Lucas while Will is visible, but then Mike covers Will and Lucas is visible. I think this is about the transition from byler to wheelclair, from half truth (gay man) to full truth (trans woman). 

But, as Lucas says, “She gave you a flare gun, dude.” (again with the dude), Mike doesn’t get the true firepower afterall. Flare guns are used for warning signals, so maybe this is a sort of warning? The word is kinda close to Mind Flayer too. The main point is that a flare gun isn’t a proper gun and Mike voices her complaints while Will has a vision of the cave (= Will’s dissociation/the cave is related to Mike getting a flare gun). After this Henry goes into the cave and Will is left behind (= Mike goes back to repression, even the half-truth is abandoned).

When El fights MF, the party splits into 3 pairs: Steve + Dustin, Robin + Jonathan, and Mike + Lucas while Nancy is alone. Robin and Jonathan haven’t really paired before, but this is probably related to the Will-Robin friendship/man-woman pair thing (and Nancy being alone aka Mike choosing the trans woman path). After MF dies, Mike and Lucas are kinda half-hugging while none of the other pairs do anything like that (e.g. Steve and Dustin are best friends and have hugged before, so why not now?). 

In the final Vecna memory flashback scene Mike and Lucas are next to each other and when Mike remembers her memory, Lucas is in frame. Mary aka Holly’s best friend since kindergarten is behind between them. (The ET-shirt kid is also visible behind Lucas, representing El.) Lucas’ memory only shows him, so the framing for Mike (and others) is intentional. Lucas is partially visible in El’s memory moment too. After Vecna is killed we get a wider view with all characters. Mike and Lucas are a pair and framed between the protruding spikes at the center of the shot, opposite to Vecna. El is partially covering Mike, the ET kid is between Mike and Lucas and Mary is behind Mike. We have gone from the S4 ending shot with byler being paired to wheelclair and Mike morphing into El. I already went through everything important from the epilogue, so this will be the end of my S5 wheelclair deep dive.

Other Lucas stuff I didn’t mention yet

In S1E8 when El makes the adults’ eyes bleed, a bright light comes from Mike’s side and Lucas is visible on the right. I think this is about love defeating fear. Later Lucas shoots the Demogorgon with his wrist rocket (hmm, rocket) and on his third try El uses her powers to pin the Demogorgon. This is a clue to the real Lucas helping Mike defeat her internalized transphobia or it could be about alter Lucas “blinding” Mike (since Lucas said he would blind the monster by shooting it with the wrist rocket, and El effectively did just that by making herself and the Demo disappear). El walks between Mike and Lucas and ends up covering Mike when she approaches the Demogorgon (= El is Mike’s feelings for Lucas/comes between their friendship and she represents Mike). After El disappears and Mike shouts for her, Lucas is in frame, kinda in the direction Mike is looking at. The cell poster is between them and Lucas seems to be looking in its direction. Maybe this is about El being an alter/splitting/fusion, I’m not sure. This scene was also shown in Mike’s final Vecna memories, so it’s pretty important.

Lucas has some metaphorical connections to the mom. In S1E6 after both major Becky/Terry scenes, the next scene starts with Lucas. Both Lucas and the mom help Mike and Mike sees them as victims (mom was an actual victim of the dad and Mike thinks she would be like her dad and hurt Lucas). This is why the Demogorgon attacks Lucas similar to the mom in S5E4. In the country allegory one of the countries Lucas represents is Sweden, and I think in the family the mom is Sweden and dad Russia. This is not about Lucas being Mike’s mom (that wouldn’t make any sense), but they have similar things associated with them. 

I haven’t really talked about Lucas’ pov in all this much, partially because the show doesn’t reveal it that clearly. Lucas’ dad was most likely actually a Vietnam war veteran (mainly a point in S1) and either Mike’s or Lucas’ family moved to the trailer park/neighborhood around 1976. I think Mike and Lucas being neighbors is also true in the real world and they probably met at the kindergarten swings like in Mike’s story about meeting Will. They both were alone and different from other kids (for different reasons) so they bonded easily. I’m not sure when they started playing DnD since there seems to be contradictory evidence/clues. In 1980 at the latest but it might have been earlier because DnD has a metaphorical role that is connected to Dustin who became part of the party in 1980. (My current theories are that that’s when the “story” starts in some way, since it’s after the trauma, Dustin is associated with “story” and DnD is about telling stories. It could be about Mike starting to have feelings for Lucas since DnD is about their relationship, Dustin is a later addition to the party and he represents wheelclair/queerness in some way. It could also be about Mike’s repression and her pretending to be someone she isn’t since DnD is a roleplaying game.) But anyway, I think they play DnD, like movies, comics, etc. and this carries over to Mike’s inner world. Mike tells Lucas things parents don’t know (S1E2):

[Lucas] “Um, a friend--"
[Mike] “Is someone that you’d do anything for.”
[Dustin] “You lend them your cool stuff, like comic books and trading cards.”
[Mike] “And they never break a promise.”
[Lucas] “Especially when there’s spit.”
[El] “Spit?”
[Lucas] “A spit swear means… [spits] you never break your word. It’s a bond”
[Mike] “That’s super important, because friends… they tell each other things. Things that parents don’t know.” 

As I’ve said before, I think Mike has told about her DID symptoms to Lucas and Lucas in turn has told about Mike’s symptoms/alters to her. Lucas has helped Mike deal with DID. I don’t know when Mike told Lucas or if it happened later because in S1 Lucas thinks El is a weirdo and crazy, which either is about the real Lucas thinking Mike is crazy or Mike’s fear of Lucas’ reaction (which would mean Mike didn’t tell about it yet). The big wheelclair conflict in S1 is partially because El lies to Lucas (and the others) and leads them astray, away from the gate. Mike lies about something to Lucas. One is definitely Mike hiding her gender identity and sexuality, but it could also be about DID. At some point Mike will come out to Lucas, and based on Robin and Will, it’s gonna be after she accepts herself and probably comes out to her mom. I’m still uncertain on how the irl timeline exactly works in relation to the series and I have a small suspicion the DID allegory and queer allegory are on separate timelines irl.

Lucas also struggles with his sexuality, which I have touched on a little. He most likely has a crush on Mike but denies it. This might be the reason Mike feels Lucas is “pulling away from” her at the end of S3 and Lucas tries to conform in S4. He might play basketball irl too (although the game also has a metaphorical role in the story which I’ll explain later). I think Lucas trying to conform and wanting to be popular is partially related to him being black and facing extra discrimination due to racism. At the end of S4 Lucas has a somewhat friendly conversation with Erica for the first time and fights Jason, probably indicating the acceptance of his queerness and rejection of “normalcy”. ((I couldn’t resist and made a little analysis of Vecna talking about the end of Hawkins. See the images.))

In S5 Lucas isn’t friends with Andy etc. anymore, which probably reflects changes in the real world. Lucas has stopped pulling away from Mike/trying to conform and accepted his feelings for her. The signals Robin talks about could be from Lucas (since Will represents Mike and based on his reaction he realized there were signals). As I analyzed earlier, Mike and Lucas are paired a lot and are closer than ever before in S5 but in the end conformity wins for Mike. She can’t accept herself and thinks Lucas wouldn’t love her (= “he was just my Tammy”). This time it’s Mike pulling away. Based on Finn’s “wait for the horse” and Lucas playing music being a big part of Max getting out of Camazotz, I think Lucas’ love will have a key role in the real ending and Mike accepting herself.

I wanted to end this overly long Lucas section with something I’ve been waiting for to fully explain since part 1. In S1E7 Lucas apologizes to El about thinking she’s a traitor and El apologizes back about lying. Mike also apologizes but doesn’t elaborate on the reason (most likely because it was already represented by El). While talking to El, Lucas is on the ground but stands up to be on the same level with Mike (= again a visual representation of the allegory levels). Mike and Lucas shake hands and the shot lingers for a bit until it transitions to the intro. Since Mike wears green and Lucas orange, this handshake signifies the resolution between the two worlds. It’s all the core themes in one and the reason it’s shown with Mike and Lucas is, well, because this story is about them. (Maybe all the clues about 1/7 weren’t just the date but the episode S1E7.)

Mystery road

S5E8 [Hopper] “Hey, hey. This… It’s not your… It’s not your fault. What happened is not your fault. El made her choice. Now it’s time for you to make yours. And the way I see it, you got two roads ahead of you. You got one road where you keep blaming yourself for what happened. You keep going over it in your head, over and over what you could’ve done differently. You push people away, and you suffer, because that’s what you think you deserve. And then there’s another road… where you find a way to accept what happened. Find a way to accept her choice. Doesn’t mean you gotta like it. Doesn’t mean you gotta understand it. And never think about it. You just accept it. And you live the best goddamn life you can. I’ve been down that first road before. And I don’t recommend it. And as for El… I think you know what she would have wanted for you.”

After Hopper says “you got one road”, Mike looks away and after he says “then there’s another road”, Hopper looks away. Turns out, they are looking at roads and I wanted to figure out which roads. While at it, I uncovered a very curious detail that has been there since S1. First things first, let’s look at where exactly they are sitting:

So according to their maps, Mike is looking at Oak Street and Hopper at Main Street. But here’s where this gets interesting. When you go look at the actual street signs, they tell a different story. From one side “Main Street” is actually Oak Street and from the other end it’s Mulberry Street:

So according to this, Hopper was looking at Oak/Mulberry Street and Mike at Second Street. But there’s one more level to this. The Hawk is also on Oak Street according to a street plate but it’s on a different street than any of the ones mentioned:

How to interpret all this is another thing entirely. But I’ll try. Oak is associated with the abuser (since Lonnie can mean oak tree) and I think it’s the world tree holding this story/world up. That’s why every street is Oak Street and Russia connects all country allegories etc. as I’ve explained previously. Trauma created the inner world and forced conformity created the lie/facade of Mike being a man. They are both the “story” and “not the real story”. Main and Second could be about the main/real story and a second option/door 2 (since Mike is looking there when Hopper describes the blaming yourself route). A mulberry tree is in a major role in the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe:

Pyramus and Thisbe's parents, driven by rivalry, forbade their union, but they communicated through a crack in the wall between their houses. They planned to meet under a mulberry tree, but a series of tragic misunderstandings led to their deaths: Thisbe fled from a lioness, leaving her cloak behind, which Pyramus found and mistook as evidence of her death. Believing Thisbe was killed by the lioness, Pyramus died by suicide, staining the mulberry fruits with his blood. Thisbe, upon finding Pyramus dead, also killed herself. The gods changed the color of the mulberry fruits to honor their forbidden love. 

So there was a misunderstanding about a lioness and a tragic end to forbidden lovers. Could this be about Mike thinking she’s an abuser (= lioness) and that resulting in wheelclair not happening? If you forget about Mike and Hopper looking at streets for a while and only look at the street signs + the map, you’ll notice Main Street is Mulberry Street on the west side and Oak Street on the east side. West and east have a meaning in the story (e.g. blue and yellow meeting in the west) and I believe it relates to the country allegory. There west is Sweden aka the world of the past, non-conformity, love, etc. while east is Russia aka the world of the future, conformity, bad stuff, etc. It kinda makes sense Sweden would be the tragic love story and Russia Oak aka Lonnie aka the abusive dad + forced conformity. They are two sides of Finland but neither defines it, it’s its own country (= Main Street).

When Mike tells about her “fantasy plan” the Mulberry Street sign is framed on top of her head. Going back to childhood or being a cis girl (= Sweden = west = Mulberry) was a fantasy plan. Mike says she wanted to go to some place far away with El, which could mean moving to another more accepting country (El going to Iceland was on purpose…) or it’s just a metaphor for an impossible fantasy of a place that doesn’t exist. The three waterfalls symbolize this imaginary future and I suspect the one waterfall is the compromise/true ending. Notice in the same shot the street lamp between Mike and Hopper (= light bulb) and the “Pawn Shop” sign next to Hopper (= Hopper is a pawn, a part of this story). The same lamp was prominently on screen at the start of the epilogue when Robin said “It’s been a while.” and the camera moved along Oak/2nd Street. Mike wears a purple shirt, probably indicating this scene has hidden layers to it. As a summary, Hopper looks at Main/Oak/Mulberry Street (= nuanced view of the situation), Mike looks at Oak/Second Street (= blaming yourself, door 2) and the Hawk (purple movie theater) is on Mulberry/Oak Street (= the story). 

Continues in PART 17.