I'm sure that once we see the real ending, everything will make sense. The parallels and connections between the characters, the inconsistencies, the mentions of people swapping places, and being stuck in a cycle/nightmare.
The writers said that the best (and their favorite) plot twists are the ones that you should've seen coming, and I agree.
So, there's something that I keep thinking about. Hopper's curse and what they told us about it.
The effects of Agent Orange remind of how Vecna kills his victims.
In S5, a big surprise. The doctors thought that Sara was gonna make it.
That makes the scene in S1, when Sara's heart stops and Hopper restarts Will's, even more interesting.
Hopper says that he saw and heard his daughter, but thought that it was all in his mind, and the next morning, Joyce sees Will.
Hopper cries for his dying daughter, and in the same place he tells Owens that El is alive.
But we see another person there, Bob. With a gun. Imo, an important detail.
If you follow my blog, you know that one of my theories is that in the past someone was shot, Hopper was involved, and that's part of his real "curse".
I think it's all connected. Terry shoots a guard in the lab (hospital, says Brenner), and before they drug (and "kidnap") Will, Bob says this
Then in S5, we see in Henry's memory that he was shot, and Will feels it, as though he was shot, and in a vision, Sara tells Hop that he will kill El just like he killed her, and Vecna makes him believe that shot El.
There are other hints, like Will holding a shotgun before he vanishes, Jon saying that his father made him shoot a rabbit the day of his 10th birthday, Alexei being shot after they show a girl who resembles Sara, or Nancy saying that she knows where she hides her guns because there's a six year old child in the house.
All this makes me wonder if Hopper's curse is really about him being responsible for the death of a daughter that we've only seen in flashbacks and visions, a tragic death that has no connection to the lab and everything that happened since the experiments started, or if whatever this father did, it changed the lives of many people, and what we see in the show is all part of Hopper's curse.
If memories have been manipulated, if there are "missing tapes" that we haven't seen yet, can we be sure that Hopper's memories haven't been altered? Is the girl in the flashbacks really his daughter, or maybe he remembers someone else's past, for example Terry's?
Is his kid still alive? And is the daughter actually a son? There are hints for that plot twist too.
I love Hopper being El's adoptive father, but the theory of him being the father of one of the kids, and the story being about the consequences of the actions or mistakes of a parent (or parents), is one of my favorites.
Another subtle but, imo, important clue. When Henry says that the Mind Flayer showed him that the world is broken and we see the vision of the baby dying, we actually hear two babies: the one in the vision, screaming, and the baby crying in the memory of Jane's birth.
A child dies, another lives, Hopper choosing to sell El to save Will... Maybe these are hints that something similar happened in the past. And maybe other kids' lives were changed too (the Wheelers).
I think that in the past a choice was made, maybe to find or protect a child, maybe to save their lives, but whatever happened, it's haunting these families.
At this point, Hop and El believe that Dr Kay has Vecna, but they actually have Number Eight, the illusionist