You didn’t say it. You didn’t have to.

It's just the WSQK van with the antenna (they took it down in 5x03, didn't they?) driving past epilogue-decorated Melvald's.

Otherwise, nothing weird.

"It was intended to play homophobic rather than homoerotic...Jesse is, in the end, finally able to control the monster inside him (his latent homosexuality) with the love of a good woman."- David Chaskin (Freddy's Revenge screenwriter)

"I simply did not have the self-awareness to realize that any of this might be interpreted as gay. I also had not the slightest idea that one of my lead actors was gay."- Jack Sholder (director)

"The Bylers kind of went crazy, when it was obvious that that's not gonna happen...Stranger Things has never even teased the possibility of a relationship beyond friendship between Mike and Will."- Randy Havens (Mr. Clarke)

"It was never, never in the cards."- Matt Duffer

"I always thought that the real villain in my story was David Chaskin, the writer. He insisted for so many years that he hadn't written it as a gay film, but I knew that he had because we had mutual friends. He would always blame it on me, he'd say, 'Well I didn't write it that way, but Mark was just so gay that he made the whole movie gay.'"- Mark Patton (Jesse Walsh)

I was reading Percy Jackson and The Titan’s Curse, when they were talking about the Lotus Hotel and Casino I thought of something.

Lotus Flowers = Upsidedown Spores (?)

Not exactly lotus flowers, but they are spore-y flowers!

For anyone who is confused, I am talking about the lotus flowers from Greek mythology, here what Wikipedia says:

The lotus fruits and flowers were the primary food of the island and were a narcotic, causing the inhabitants to sleep in peaceful apathy. After they ate the lotus, they would forget their home and loved ones and long only to stay with their fellow lotus-eaters. Those who ate the plant never cared to report or return.

You can maybe see where I’m going with this…

In Percy Jackson, the Lotus Hotel and Casino is a building in Las Vegas. The Percy Jackson Wiki tells us more:

The Lotus Hotel and Casino was created by the Lotus Eaters with the intention that anyone entering would never want to leave. The hotel lures kids inside with addictive games, food (in the case of the movie), and other activities, combined with the unlimited money on plastic cards (in the case of the comic book).

Guests seem to never age because time is severely dilated, elapsing at a much slower rate than it passes in the outside world. Known victims of the hotel include Darrin, Nico and Bianca di Angelo, as well as Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase, and Grover Underwood (for a short period of time). In the movie, the cause of guests staying is getting addicted to eating "Lotus Flowers", while in the original book, they stay there because of the addictive games. In the show, they stay because the air is pumped with lotus blossoms.

So I’m thinking…

Lotus Hotel and Casino = Camazotz (?)

So! Hawkins residents breathe in the Upsidedown particles, and get put in a trance/sleep (?) and then they enter Camazotz. Everything is so perfect, season five shows us that! There are no big risks, nobody gets hurt, Vecna is dead, El dies but it’s okay cause everyone moves on happily. How?

The spores mess with their memories, just like the lotuses, making it easier for them to move on from El, or for Will to get over Mike so quickly. Anything out of place or suspicious flys over their heads because the spores (lotus flowers) make them want to stay and forget about their past. Milkshakes at Melvads? Who cares! It’s so peaceful, why would they want anything to change?

WAKE UP HAWKINS!!!

Bonus! Lotus flower looking lights in the Creel House:

Did we look at these close enough...?

- S4 Pizza boxes and a paper that reads "begins", - The backgrounds aren't obscured but almost purposefully in shot, the sign top right in the first pic and the building with the number 9 in the second

Gonna take a trip down memory lane...remember this?

This was one of the first things I noticed along with these:

Well the entire point is that it wasn’t meant to be explicitly revealed yet. Why would they have talked about it before that?