Life finds a Way

Ignoring all the other noise?

The story of Stranger Things is NOT finished.

The Lab and the Military story is left completely hanging.

Dr. Brenner -we never find out what the hell that man was really up to. Ever. He's messing with kids. He's using Henry's blood to make them. And yes in TFS we know his father came back from the Philadelphia experiment with issues and he's obsessed with the MF and that alternate dimension but... it never comes together in a remotely cohesive way IN THE SHOW. In the show? This man is still a complete mystery. Especially when you throw in his sudden interest in exotic matter and wormholes at the eleventh hour.

Dr. Owens-the good cop to Brenner's bad, he obviously knows all about Henry and he's got a mysterious son named Peter who gets his room ransacked by the military-Why exactly?

He helps Hopper adopt Jane. Helps Jane hide in California. Argues with the scientists that are cool with letting Will die. He brings in the military at the mall. So he's a good guy right? But we NEVER find out what his part in all of this was. Is he acting on a guilty conscience? And we know he's not dead at the end of 4, so where tf is he throughout season 5? Is he still trying to help? Does Dr. Kay have him locked up in a room in the lab too? Where did this man who was pivotal from 2-4 go? They didn't even mention his NAME in 5. Like he never existed.

Dr. Kay -Sullivan would have made sense in this role, since he was the only face of the military we saw in 4 coming after El. But no. We add Dr. Kay and Akers, make Sullivan a kind of pointless character, and then NEVER REALLY EXPLAIN wtf they have a lab in the UD for if their entire focus is supposed to be on El. And we only have Kali's word for it on what they were doing there. There is actually zero explanation here on both the battle between the lab military and the pentagon military, and the ultimate goal for, well, either of them.

Dr Kay, Dr. Owens, Dr. Brenner? None of them explained anything. And then we jump ahead in time and they all just...disappeared? What?

They spent 5 seasons making them a scary mystery. Shouldn't they have solved some of it instead of making it more confusing? Even Scooby Doo gives more answers than this show.

Vecna's Evil Plan makes no sense

All the little things he did up to season 5 made sense if we were leading up to a fantastic reveal.

However after 4 ominous chimes, 4 deaths and 4 gates, we suddenly get an entirely new style of kidnapping. We have 12 children kidnapped which, sure, the man's obsessed with clocks and time. We have them put into a sweet illusion while being attached to his organic machine instead of just traumatized. Poor Will (unless coming back to Hawkins was his illusion, but that's pure conjecture) We have the suddenly kind and sneaky Mr. Whatsit instead of scary Vecna and we have....NO F-ing CLUE what's going on because suddenly, instead of being about time it's about space. Instead of being a horror of the mind and picking people with shame and secrets, he's just using imaginative kids like batteries to move a whole ass planet down a fleshy-egg-sac style wormhole.

And why is he merging worlds, you ask? For the MF? Where is the MF? It's not that spider monster, that's for sure. It had no apparent sentience or special abilities. It was just reacting to an attack. Like an alarm system outside of a building where Vecna was holding the kids.

All Henry's time references, and showing Nancy the future and those scenes with him spinning back a clock with his mind don't matter at all. 12 kids? That number was arbitrary. A wormhole with no side effects? Perfectly normal.

We're just making slots and fitting planet A into planet B like Lego's. That's the whole plan.

This only makes sense if its an illusion, because it doesn't connect or conclude the story we were watching until the end of season 4. There's no "Look back, it all makes sense now" revelations. Just absolute confusion.

Mike, Will and El are left in the 2nd act

I've mentioned this several times, but it bears repeating. These are the big 3 connected to both the lab and the supernatural/sci fi story line. Will is taken and changed. El is changed and escapes. Mike is connected to them both, and integral to their choices. His inability to deal with his feelings about either of them is, in my mind, one of the main reasons the show isn't finished.

Not a single one of them had a completed ending. They said bittersweet. They didn't say incomplete.

Will got no epilogue, his coming out due to Vecna didn't actually matter in the end, and his mom killed the bad guy for him. El left for a stupid reason that even the show undermines the importance of with "I believe." Mike was never brave or honest and, at the end, looks like he's about to jump off the quarry again.

Episode 8 left those characters in the black moment before the ending. Before Mike looks at the painting and realizes this isn't reality. Before El wakes up in The Nina. Before we find out Will made this entire illusion because he's trying to protect his friends. Those are just examples, but you know what I'm talking about. It feels like that moment before the other shoe drops, right up until the credits roll.

They left the 3 main characters in the 2nd Act, pretending it was the 3rd. All of them unhappy. All of them unfulfilled. All of them unfinished.

So the human villains have an incomplete story. The supernatural villains have an incomplete story. And the 3 main characters connected to the first two have an incomplete story.

I believe wholeheartedly that the entirety of season 5 is off. That they're already in a loop of wrong, illusion and/or warped memories are at play, and there is a lot of evidence to back it up.

But the hardest part of this for me has always been that none of the characters ever seemed to catch the glitches. Lucas does wonder momentarily if they're being messed with, but he's quickly distracted from that with news that Max might be returning to her body.

What I'm talking about is Neo and the cat in the Matrix. The Truman Show with a falling spotlight. Dark City where the hero watches the buildings change shape. The Freddy/Inception signs that you're in a dream of it all.

You see where I'm going with this? No member of the party is the mythological Cassandra telling them something is wrong and not being believed.

Joyce, who notices magnets and follows up on unusual hunches, never seems to figure it out. Hopper the investigator and Murray and Nancy the journalists never figure it out. Jonathon the observant photographer never figures it out. Dustin the genius gets it all wrong. Mr. Clarke doesn't even flinch at the UD trip or the bad wormhole explanation and beanstalk plan. We've got a lot of smart people there who don't seem to notice that anything is wrong with their story at all--even when it is staring them right in the face.

The audience can see the signs. The character changes. The color changes. The fake monster battle and disturbing ending. There is absolutely something going on. But when the basement door closes at the end of episode 8, no other shoe has dropped, and we're left with ambiguity and confusion. For months. A confusion that wasn't cleared up with Tales at all. Only emphasized.

We do have at least 5 of them saying something doesn't make any sense multiple times, but they never follow up on that, and choose to believe the easiest conclusions they are given. (Holly does scream none of this is real, but that is in Henry's mind, so...)

Nancy in particular surprises me by not thinking for herself. She agrees and follows up on something Mike or Dustin says. On something Steve says. She remembers the UD lab for El and dresses like a candy striper to talk to her mom, but that and shooting things are all we get of her old intelligent and curious character. She and Joyce were the main go-tos for discovering the truth, but they are both pretty distracted and emotionally compromised, so we got nothing from them.

We have a few subtle signs that are never followed through on. El looks momentarily confused when she hops from her mindscape to the middle of the road while looking for Holly. She looks down at Kali's reflection in the mindscape and makes a subtle face that could be some sort of realization. She almost has a real moment with Hopper but then a roaring sound that is never explained draws them back into the action.

Mike seems distracted and makes a lot of his famous figuring something out faces, but other than some seriously odd behavior, particularly after shock jock, we don't have any idea what he's actually thinking or feeling.

Robin, the solver of the most puzzles through this series, is put directly in the visual path of the dial color change and the tower color change, both objects she should be extremely familiar with due to her job, and she doesn't react to either.

Murray's entire character is literally brilliant, paranoid, overly suspicious conspiracy theorist and he spends the entire season just smiling goofily and delivering things to the party. He barely reacts to Joyce's insane plan that makes no sense, except to mention they need some snacks. It's very out of character for him to be that oblivious.

Will's mysterious experience with Vecna changed him, but we have no idea what he saw so we can't establish the true reasons for his reactions. Was he shown the truth and warned of the outcome if he didn't follow the script? We don't know.

And that is the most frustrating part of this. I know it's true, I even believe there will be more content, BUT I can see why it might be difficult for others.

Because no character had a deja vu cat moment. No one noticed that the people behind him were on a loop. No one noticed the fifty million exit signs that kept appearing everywhere, or all The Wall references. No one even wondered why the military had a lab in the UD that kept needing to be restocked when they didn't seem to know about Vecna. It was just there because?

Nancy should have wondered about the military during all those crawls, that's all I'm saying. But they were all wearing blinders.

No one questioned the absence of characters--and not just the physical absence but the absence of mention, because no one ever said their names even though it would have fit the story for them to at least get a passing reference. Particularly Owens, Argyle, Suzi, the deputies in every season until 5, and Max's mother.

Don't get me started on the wormhole and those journals.

So yes, the people, the objects, the relationships and the physics of the entire season was completely off and wrong. But no one noticed except the audience. And you only saw it if you were really paying attention or watched it more than once.

And even if you have a 50 page list of things you saw that were wrong on the show (and we do) none of it is conclusive enough to explain what's happening.

Which has left the show open to accusations of queerbaiting, cash-grabbing, bad AI writing, just another big show with a bad ending etc.

The composition is exactly like The Devil Major Arcana card:

The Devil (Card XV) is a Major Arcana card symbolizing bondage, materialism, shadow work, and unhealthy attachments. It reflects situations where you feel trapped by vices, codependency, or toxic dynamics—though it ultimately reminds you that these chains are an illusion, and you hold the power to break free. (Google summary)

S5 ended on this card! They are trapped under an illusion, but they need to find their own way to break free.

And this journey is Will’s journey. Literally, it’s in the official Stranger Things tarot card deck:

Will is the fool starting at 0, and he needs to complete his journey at 21 (The World) which is pretty much the entire arc of Stranger Things:

It’s interesting because 0 is also the 22nd card. It reminds me of this quote we keep hearing: “It starts and ends with Will”. So it’s like a loop.

And I think it starts over if the wrong lessons are learned:

These are the 22 cards listed in order. We are stuck at the Devil card! (highlighted) They still haven’t freed themselves:

Note: The Tower card comes after The Devil, but I don’t think they’ve reached it. The collapsing of The Tower was just an illusion of breaking free. I’ve analysed the Tower in this post, and check out @alexiswrite cool analysis of other cards!

Funny how the Devil card is right after Temperance since we all believe Mike is the most trapped of all by his own restraints:

I think this whole Major Arcana arc was possibly foreshadowed in S4. I knew I heard the number 22 before: (click on video to play)

That statement…expect those numbers to “to rise”. As in the numbers of Mike (14-Temperance) & Will (0-The Fool).

Now the “to rise” context has another layer (other than death). I think it also means to ascend and be brave and face whatever is holding you back - thats the only way to rise to be able reach (21) The World, and finally complete the journey.

It’s up to Mike & Will!

It’s in the goddamn cards, we just haven’t been dealt the whole deck yet, literally.

drunk giles: a progression

in season 4 our characters are assembled in 3 groups, scattered at 3 locations and are living through 3 different movie genres: cali team is on a road trip, prison team is, well, doing their prison break, and hawkins team is struggling in their own 80s horror slasher.

each group has their respective sidekick or tag-along, if you will. let's explore them and their roles further.

argyle is basically a driver. he provides his resources (a van, his time, and his pizza place's kitchen) in order to help mike, will and jonathan to get to hawkins. he helps them get away from the danger, he gets them to suzie, he helps them pick up el, like it's a school bus, and also helps el to "get to hawkins" via pizza freezer. his main purpose in the story is a transporting one. as soon as he gets them to their final destination, he fucks off to the forest to gather mushrooms, and we never see him again. during their adventure together he provides mental support to jonathan while he reflects on his college situation and relationship with nancy, and being the truth conduit disguised as comic relief, he exposes mike's fake facade.

enzo is an inside man. he provides his authority, knowledge and connections in order to help hopper break out of prison and eventually to get to hawkins. he creates a stronger incentive for hopper to break out after revealing to him that the upside down business is not finished, he helps him get out of prison, and persuades yurii to fly them to states. and like argyle, enzo acts as a confidant to hopper as he reflects on his trauma and fears.

let's see what we have here. 2 side-kicks whose narrative role is to get our characters from their respective points A to point Hawkins, right after the gates are opened and before the quarantine is established. they appear as loyal friends, help our characters along the way and vanish from the story as soon as their task is done. but if we believe that hawkins is THE place to get flayed and the end of season 4 is when they fall into a dream/illusion, these helpful companions start looking very suspicious. are they really here to help? if yes, who are they helping? something something papa is moving them like pieces on a board making them do exactly what he wants.

now to eddie.

eddie is more nuanced, because he's not leading the group like enzo and he's not physically transporting them like argyle. his group is already in hawkins, so his narrative goal is to get his group to places where they will gain insight in what's going on. basically by fulfilling his role as a victim who needs to be rescued asap, he's providing incentive for our characters to behave recklessly.

in a narrative structure eddie's role is a driver, like argyle, but he's driving the plot instead of the van. and it's interesting that it is eddie the dm who introduces the idea of vecna to dustin, which shapes their whole understanding of what they are dealing with. and again he acts as a confidant and relationship advisor to steve and nancy, which in my opinion is not helpful at all and only makes them more confused.

by the end of the season eddie's role is fulfilled: the group has a new understanding of what's going on, that has nothing to do with the lab — we can blame it all on vecna now. the gates are opened, particles are spreading into hawkins, and eddie dies. his deed is done.

you see i'm arguing that these characters may look like loyal and helpful NPCs, but if we dig deeper, they might be just pieces in somebody's hand, who are there to steer our characters in a specific direction.

i have to tell you, i have in mind the 4th such character, because this season has one more plot line.

nina team is in nevada playing out their sci-fi movie, and who else but dr owens, falls in the same category as eddie, enzo and argyle? owens rescues jane from military, moves her to nina, protects her interests from brenner's influence, provides his companionship while she's going through the path of learning about her past, helps her get her powers back without which she couldn't get to hawkins, and vanishes. his ending is ambiguous — we never find out what happened to him.

yep. somebody really wanted them all to be in hawkins on that day.

Involving the legend himself David Bowie 💫

A clip was posted on David Bowie’s official TikTok channel 2 days ago (the timing of this!). It was from his Berklee Commencement Speech at Berklee College of Music in 1999:

Here’s a short snippet I compiled of 2 clips:

Watch the full speech here

Most interesting CG phrases he used:

“Manipulation of Signs”

“Twist & turn the fabric of pop”

“Producing something extremely beautiful, very powerful, and imbued with strangeness”

Music as “Sublime means of communication when I’ve wanted to touch people”

Music has been “both the doorway of perception and the house I live in” 🚪

BUT THIS ONE👇🏻

Turns the volume dial up to “catch the last note”

Remember the End Credits?? How David Bowie’s “Heroes” didn’t finish through to the last note:

Which is ALSO referenced in The First Shadow:

There’s a tether to Dustin’s speech:

And who else did a Commencement Speech recently??

Duffer Brothers Speech post here

Just a side note:

In "The Piggyback" we see a drawing of two stick figures for two times. Mike and Will are standing behind one of them, the other one's supposed to portray Max and Lucas on a cinema date. They've been to the cinema before in S3, but so did Mike and Will.

Here the stick figures are on the left of El's head. Mike and Will were sitting behind Max on her left side at the cinema. Both El and Max have the same expression.

There's already the theory that Mike and Will were holding hands in this scene because their hands were hidden, which would match Max' drawing. The other person next to Will had popcorn.

And did you notice that the drawing at the hospital is not the same like the one Max made at the Creel house? The hair and the popcorn's different for example.

Huh, these things are goldmines - I'm guessing these haven't gone viral because there aren't any transcripts, so you kind of have to look for and listen to these old podcasts fully, but yeah, they shed A LOT of light on their thinking in the early days.

These are all from the 2017 Nerdist Podcast Episode!

For transparency - I did use a software to generate the transcripts as I don't have time for all dat, and the text below is a blend between the co-host and the Duffers themselves (mostly the Duffers though!). Where they're not speaking directly, they're agreeing with the sentiment at least. I did go back and check that these excerpts are correct though :)

Some ✨sneak peak excerpts✨:

Them speculating about an 'it was all a simulation' GoT finale and joking about enraging fans:

"I still think that the way Game of Thrones should end is that Tyrion Lannister like walks out and gets on the subway at Westworld and find out it was all a robot simulation. Don't give HBO ideas. They're going to want to do that. No, they won't. Because if they did a lot of like the Game of Thrones fan, it would be an apocalypse. Like the Game, Game of Thrones would light the world on fire. The fandom of Game of Thrones. Oh yeah. If they were just like, oh yeah, these are all robots. We were like, what the, you think people get mad about fonts? Like imagine what happened. And that's a pretty good idea. When you start fucking with their fans. That's kind of blowing my mind. Isn't that, wouldn't that be great? There's no reason. Westworld, Westeros, it's our fucking right there. Come on guys. Come on HBO."

Them shitting on the use of CG:

"I mean, like, I think the perfect is a balance of practical with a little bit of, with a little CG sheen to just, like, smooth out the edges or just add a little bit, you know, like a little bit of animation or something. Yeah, well, I just watched Alien Covenant, and yeah, that's exactly what you don't want. Yeah, it was full, it was full CG. Yeah, it destroys it. It's hard to, because you can't, you don't watch it and you go, you never watch full CG and, I mean, and go, wow, that's amazing, you go, oh, that's all right for CG, you know? We're just not, and there are amazing CG artists out there. I'm not shitting on it as a, as a craft, but it just, the, the, the technology just isn't quite, quite there yet."

Them shitting on convoluted storylines with too many characters:

"Well, in a fucking, like, in a, you know, in a, like, a Justice League world, where it's like, wait, who's this, what are they, how are they, okay, so what's everyone trying to do, you know? It gets very muddled, yeah. It gets very muddled when you're trying to keep track of, like, nine storylines. So, yeah, I think people do appreciate the simplicity of a very simple story. Yeah, I like the simplicity of it combined with these incredible effects."

Them shitting on franchising:

"Well, and now you have those studios that are just announcing, like, hey, there's a thing, you don't exactly know what it is yet, but we're going to make six of them. You're like, well, just make one good, and then we'll see if there should be six of those. Right. That's a mistake. I mean, you know, when it's like Lucas makes Star Wars, he has some dreams of what it could be, but really, he just made one good movie. Yeah. And they've built an entire multi-billion dollar franchise off of that one good movie, but you need that really good base, or it's not going to work."

When asked about the future of Stranger Things:

"Oh my God. No. 13 seasons? No. We always said four or five, you know, it's kind of our, our answer. I think we'll know more because we're starting season three. We'll know if this is the, you know, penultimate or there'll be a couple more after it. And then, so we'll, we'll figure it out sooner rather than later. Cause I do think you need, we know where we're going. We just don't know how, quite how long it's going to take to get there. But I do think you run the risk of, uh, straining credibility a bit with this story and these characters. Right. The minute I don't believe that they're still in this town and dealing with this. I mean, how often can you go? It's like, oh, it's another year. This weird thing's happening again. Well, could it be something supernatural? And then that's like, that's the danger that it gets. So you just have to, we have to figure out a way to make sure the story stays. I believe these characters. That's why it's hard. Like, that's why it's hard for like Buffy season seven. You're like, well, they've already, you're like, well, they just live above hell. All right. You know, it's like, cause you have to up the stakes every season and it always has to be like the worst thing they've ever, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, you just level up like a video game. Exactly. So it's like, it's just boss battle, boss battle, boss battle. At some point it's like, they're fighting God."

Either they've lived long enough to become the villain and turned their back on literally EVERY SINGLE THING THEY STOOD FOR...OR

Conformitygate is real...

Come on! They practically admit to their 'minds being blown' by this idea...

The Alien Covenant that they said was awful? That the CG destroys it? That that's exactly what you don't want?

Well, it looks like this:

Look familiar?

As I mentioned in this post, Will did not get a happy ending. He was, essentially, banished to another realm. One full of fake happiness.

What's interesting is that Mike wrote the ending. It was exactly like "one of his campaigns." He even used DnD terms... very on the nose here guys!

El argues that he does not get to write the ending... then Mike says "Maybe I don't. But we do. You, me, Lucas, Will, and Dustin."

HM this sounds like it's alluding to a re-do? Instead of Mike writing the ending himself, it becomes a collaborative project- as it always should have been.

"And it starts with getting Will back."