#dialgate

the dial haunts many of you, I’m sure. as it haunts me. and I know everyone knows about it, but I believe it’s MUCH more important than we realize.

out of all the pieces of confirmitygate evidence, this one is the most obvious, in my opinion. they want us to notice it. it’s HUGE on the frame. it’s moving; it’s the focus of the shot. the new color is BRIGHT red. and, they point it out to us in various ways:

if it’s just an error… why the hell would they be reminding us of it? telling us in the show to keep an eye on colors that are wrong?

the dial been on my mind for so long. its clearly important here, but the question on my mind is… why? why the dial?

well… first of all,

don’t these shapes look… similar?

the moving, pointy hand at the center? the 12 sections of markings around the perimeter? yeahhh….

so it resembles a clock. cool. awesome. …maybe it’s just a coincidence!

and that’s not even the crazy part.

but before I get into the dial more, I need to explain another theory I have that ties into all of this.

QUANTUM DECOHERENCE AND PARALLEL TIMELINES

I believe that vecna, or the mindflayer, is a being which goes against our character’s quantum reality—and that their mere existence is causing their reality to fall apart because of it.

let’s remember how the brothers emphasized that this is a science fiction show, and they clearly love playing with the quantum world. it’s been included as a plot point since at least season 3! (remember how the key to closing the gates in s3 was planck’s constant?)

(PSA: I’m not an expert, just someone who autistically researches and fixates when something applies to my special interest—so forgive any information that may be wrong. but I tried my best to ensure I explain it as accurately as possible.)

in quantum physics, it’s supposed that there are infinite realities—infinite timelines, alternate universes, etc. you get the idea. this is something that stranger things already explores!

check out this excerpt from a page in will byers secret files:

crazy stuff! (I’m being mean and blacking out the right side because it contains a smoking gun… but I wanna reveal that later)

in quantum physics, in order for parallel realities to exist, our reality needs to go through a process called quantum decoherence.

essentially, it’s a process that prevents us from seeing or interacting with parallel timelines and realities. this process keeps our universe—our reality—in check. it keeps time moving steadily, it keeps everything normal.

so what would happen if this process were to fail?

well…

Clocks would act weird

Colors / status of objects would be wrong

Timelines would be weird

People’s memory would be inconsistent

Age and time weirdness

Overall inconsistency

Everything just being… off. Weird.

HMMMMMM….

it’s almost too convenient how well it explains away all the inconsistencies. but… this is a real element of quantum physics that's inherently tied into the quantum-physics lore they have in the show!

I believe that in s5, and more noticeably from vol 2 -> onwards: parallel, wrong realities started to seep into our characters world. this might be due to the cracks, the upside down seeping into their world more and more, or due to the mind flayer gaining more control as the season goes on.

I wonder if the mind flayer, or vecna, is able to control which parallel realities are at play here? or if this process is what “vecna visions” actually are—our characters viewing alternate realities? just some food for thought.

with all that out of the way, let’s take a look back at that page from earlier:

TURN THE DIAL. AND VISIT PARALLEL REALITIES. OKAY.

THE DIAL IS WHAT CONTROLS THE SPECIFIC REALITY OUR CHARACTERS ARE IN.

(or, with a less literal reading, the changed dial is a direct indicator that the timeline is different)

but I kind of like the literal interpretation—after all, things got especially weird after they turned the dial in shock jock, right?

let’s remember what the dial does for one second:

it controls the voltage of electricity coming off of the WSQK tower. robin turned it up.

vecna and the mind flayer (through "vance" and "mindy") even WARNED US to "don't touch that dial!" constantly throughout the WSQK broadcasts.

(tumblr won't let me attach more than one video but you can find those recordings on my twitter here)

what else did we see happen to the tower in that episode?

no need to go searching I for an in-show screenshot, they conveniently reminds us of it in the poster for the episode!

that's right, the mind flayer particles went up into the tower. the tower that broadcasts electrical signals over the entire town.

they're literally broadcasting the MIND FLAYER PARTICLES all over town. and they turned UP the power.

this is also the episode where nancy shoots the exotic matter.

after both of these things happened, things started to get really weird.

they wanted us to notice the dial, because the dial was the turning point. it's a big part of why everything is weird. different timelines, different, wrong realities started to merge—decoherence started to fail.

(and for the bandersnatchgate truthers out there... maybe an interactive element in new content could literally be us turning the dial to get different timelines/endings?)

anyway, the dial is the key. I rest my case.

I debated whether to post this, bc at one point this felt like immediate change of visual color and i took it as the duffers not decided beforehand how it should look (which is dumb), but with the new book out, there's so many things plainly wrong or different details from the show being put into this book for us to notice, it still made me think smth about this could be on purpose too.. like other editing details

when i was searching more info about those stranger things red vhs tapes, i saw this post on reddit from 4 years ago and it made me pause,

because my computer "remembered" only the red version, i went to "find" and check out the newer version of episode 4x7 and it's true that it's edited to look more yellow/orange.

first release vs edited: it's quite a difference..

The thing is - the Duffers told us they made this change, quite immediately after releasing the vol 1 of season 4. We knew about it, but i just never checked the updated version for myself.. tbh after 4x9 i moved on a bit away from the series

They told us they could edit Will's birthday, but that never happened, but they were changing visual effects, but this point of going from red- to yellow is a lot of change, especially when red is connected with the Upside Down and yellow now with the Abyss (or maybe with Henry's world/illusion in general)

So what does it mean for the story if at first something was one color, and next is in a different color? 👀

why does the upside down in s1 flashes with red, and even every storm is still in red in the Upside Down all the way up to s5, and the way henry has been flung into this landscape has been red too.

but then they decided to change it to yellow, which now coresponds with the same abyss colors in s5..

they used this yellow color flashback to s4 also in s5, talking about henry being banished to the abyss, so the color matches to their intention to show it's (from their hypothesis) the same world as the abyss.

but in that world we saw all the demogorgons and the shadow mindflayer, and those were not there at all in the abyss in s5, which makes me think the abyss could be seen as part of Henry's illusion - a different world other than the place that he got thrown in before, and the shift of the color was to indicate of things being changed, altered memories.

because then there is still Henry's red void home in the other place of his mind, and that's always red.. in s4

and in s5

-

so why change this particular scene about henry falling into some unknown space, if El sent him through a rift with vines around, that's usually connected to the Upside Down, but he ended up somewhere else entirely?