#murray'd

El: does a simulation, check on "video games"

Jonathan and Argyle: purple palm tree delight, check on "ganja"

Mike and Will:.............

On the way to Alaska he says, "I'm not exactly an expert in parenting but for what little it's worth, I think you did the right thing. The responsible thing. Your children, Bless their mischievous souls, they like to get involved. This way, what? They play too much Nintendo, eat too much junk food, smoke some ganja, pound some beers, experiment sexually. I mean really, what's the worst that can happen."

It's very interesting that he said this because these are all things that mostly the boys on the show have canonically done (with some exceptions)

- Your children like to get involved?? Yes that's literally why anyone is still alive lmao

-Play too much video games? Not specifically Nintendo but s2 opens with Mike literally stealing money from Nancy to go to the arcade. Plus, the series opened with them playing a game that took ten hours and Mike still begged for more time.

-Eat too much junkfood? When El spies on Mike after their break up, there is a table full of junkfood trash beside them, and Mike is chowing down on some Doritos.

-Smoke some ganja? Johnathan and Argyle are stoned out of their wits and barely hold a conversation so that's already going on and usually it isn't long until younger siblings partake too.

-pound some beers? Nancy did that at this age, Lucas did that the episode before (I think)

-Experiment sexually? I was floored that he said this because the only time I've ever heard it was when someone refered to queerness and usually just as innocent as kissing. And I find it interesting that he said it because they left before Mike even tried to make up with El and the last thing they saw was her storming to her room, that only seems to point to Mike and Will since Johnathan and Argyle were almost too stoned to function.

Murray had Will on his investigation board so I can only assume that he looked into their lives quite a bit, at least enough to draw the conclusion that it was a possibility that Will could've been hate-crimed. And for this man, who was previously a total recluse that held nearly everyone that stepped on his doorstep at gunpoint to zoom over to California asap when there is just the mere idea that Hopper might still be alive and Joyce needs his help, means that he's developed an emotional closeness with Joyce. At least. Especially since he's willing to be on the phone with her for a long period of time and yell in a panic when she gets quiet. Which means, there is a possibility that he could know. He knew about J4ncy and J0pper, be probably picked up on Byler immediately but this is just a theory.

I won't even get into my biased perspective that Murray feels queercoded and seems to have no interest in women but russian men and that alone would be enough for him to know about Byler since it would be an experience he would have had as a gay man.

woke: byler getting dustin'd

"I want byler to be murray'd"

These "landing the plane" comments keep being said over and over; meanwhile, Jane/El can fly and she's compared to Superman, who is mistaken for a plane. But if she were a plane, they'd be calling it a kamikaze. It's a business term, devoid of love, which is a slightly odd thing for a creative to keep calling their creation in fan interviews, but they're producers too.

Remember that thing about "repeating a lie often enough it becomes the truth"? This is a message they want you to accept. The take-off was creating the false narrative, cruising at an altitude was repeating it across platforms exploiting the illusionary truth effect, and landing the plane is when the public stops questioning why the phrase is being repeated. They accept it as normal, truth, or common place.

You only successfully land the "plane" when your target audience has acted on the new belief you gave them. In business, it's having a consumer buy your product.

I'm thinking about the planes we saw landing in the show—the airport arrival, Alaska arrival, Russia crash. The first being the hard launch of byler.

The plane to Alaska was when conspiracy theorist Murray clocked byler ("experiment sexually" "what could go wrong?").

Joyce and Murray become prisoners on a plane to be sold while Yuri doesn't care if he's a sell out (of his morals) advertising his illegal peanut butter. Then they crash.

Yuri (ironic) mentions the KGB, who exploit the illusory truth effect, and they're who the "fragile cargo" would be sold to. Fragile as in weakened minds, cargo as in the characters are packaged goods, and the KGB as in brands—like JIF.

Originally named Big Top (🎪), "JIF" is how you say the animated images file called gif, which is a popular meme format. They're a powerful tool for propaganda, loops which repeat over and over with disarming pop-culture humor—a god send to IP/brands when fans do the work for them, mass producing their property on the social media market.

There's more plane imagery beyond this. Perhaps the most relevant one is in the Rink-O-Mania scene where Jane is side-by-side with a crashed plane (as the ironic Wipeout record played right before).

Other interesting factoids:

In advertising, a "flighting" plan is running a high speed campaign followed by periods of inactivity—a successful flighting plan is the result of a captive audience, using their fandom or lingering interest so advertisers save on spending but increase longevity. This ad strategy is used for shows who have off seasons, or YEARS in between like Stranger Things did.

The perfect "runway" was to create "byler" and hold off on Will's coming out so a dedicated fan group, like shippers, would keep advertising for them, keep the conversation going, get some GA involved over debates on forums. This is why they wouldn't have Mike reject Will after all, leaving their story open-ended. It's because Netflix planned their biggest flighting plan yet—conformitygate.

Moreover, flyers (leaflets) are OG propaganda tools, easier to distribute in the air, and they were dropped from planes using cluster bombs to neutralize or disseminate disinformation during the World Wars. Twitter/X is the modern equivalent. Then, visual planes are the dimensions of a campaign, like billboards. Yeah, linguistics are crazy.

"You'll figure it out, kid" Murray said softly

"I know, I just wish I knew what to say to her" Mike replied quickly