#ninaproject

One moment they were still there and a few second later they were just - gone. Same for the fire and smoke in the back. Just the most normal stuff to happen.

so how can we be sure that this date is correct?

Video tapes were important in two contexts during season 4 - in the Nina Project and during the rink scene.

For the Nina Project Brenner used VHS tapes to visualize El's memories from the lab. Just that we can't trust the dates of said tapes. An untrustworthy process and all of it centered around El.

Centered around El - just like the video from the rink. So maybe it wasn't about Will's birthday being forgotten, but about the date being wrong - proven by the fact that it was not his birthday.

El couldn't remember the things that happened 1979 at all until after she hit Angela in the face - at the rink!

The finale of season 4 and 5 parallel each other in ways that are just extreme, at least if you time it correctly. They are literally the same episode and give us so much information. No way in the world that that’s a coincidence! Take a look yourself, you can watch them side-by-side here:

(I left the other parts out of the video btw and I recommend skipping to 02:30 since the Russian subtitles aren’t working in the first scene).

I'll give you detailed analysis soon, but for now these are the main facts I could figure out:

“The Piggyback” and “The Rightside Up” happen at the same time, on the same day in some kind of way. (meaning the time travel already happened - we did it by going back to season 4)

“The Rightside Up” is the movie Max and Lucas wanted to watch. (explains why the episode was shown in theaters and why there were no names in the intro)

They open the water tank in the Upside Down just as Jonathan starts to stir the water in the freezer to prepare it for El. The Upside Down has no water, so what if they were never there?

The heart-to-heart talk between Will and Jonathan is also fitting for El and Hopper, who have their heart-to-heart moment in silence.

The “best friends” tower scene was between Mike and El, not Will. It was Mike saying sorry to El for everything that happened. (Mike’s equals the pineapple pizza).

Around the time El is searching Max in her mind in season 4, El and Kali greet her in the black void in season 5. That was the real piggyback. (explains why Max was confused about being in El’s mind and not Vecna’s - she never knew about their plan; also Max’ outfit is very similar)

In season 4 Max thinks about good memories, the words here are: “turn around, look at what you see” - which is exactly what the characters at the Squawk tower are doing. And then it's just “Hi” when Mike looks at Will for a second.

The Squawk tower colliding with the Abyss (and the beat of the drums in the play) align perfectly with Eddie’s concert. Dustin wears the same outfit in both; rhythm, lights and words are fitting. (really can recommend watching this one!)

The particles are “the Shadow” that went into the kids. That’s why they disappeared suddenly, but it also means that chopping “Vecna’s” head off did no harm to it.

Children are somehow connected to the origin of the demogorgons. Either the demo’s final form is really human or it’s the other way around - the demo’s are created out of children. The Shadow was also in Will and he was like a host for Dustin’s pet, so maybe the other children are hosts, too. I can be wrong about this, but the escaping children and escaping demos parallel too much for meaning nothing in my opinion.

When Max in Camazotz says Vecna went back to the real world, Jason appears behind Lucas in the attic. (maybe Lucas was having a vision here too) During their fight Vecna was attacking Hopper in the Upside Down.

Joyce wouldn’t let El die.

Before Vecna connected with Henry he was the stone in the suitcase in the cave and connected to the scientist there in some way. Vecna was also close to dying here. (Henry is highly paralleling El in this)

Vecna does not want you to remember traumatic events in your past, the word “doctor” is important. (Doctor Brenner wanted to restore El’s traumatic memories and help Henry)

It was always Vecna, never Henry. (You can read more about the last 3 points here.)

El fighting Vecna in her mind from the pizza store and El fighting Vecna in the Abyss are the same scene, the same fight. Yes, she had to hear Mike’s “love confession” during that shitty final battle, it can’t get worse at this point. (During his own speech the season 5 Mike said that hurting the mindflayer hurts Vecna, so maybe he was hurting someone connected to the mindflayer on purpose here? maybe wishful thinking, maybe not...)

When El and Mike were talking in the black void at the end of season 5, El was directly referring to his speech, it was her first chance to talk to him after. He was touching her arm at the pizza store, that’s why they were able to talk at all. El was leaving to save Max. We never saw her wake up. (El vanishing in season 5 equals the “Leaving Hawkins” sign in season 4; I also think that was the Mileven breakup)

Since both fights were the same, that means they killed Vecna only once. (this has a lot of visual parallels like double-sided nosebleed, Vecna falling, flamethrowers, ...)

The epilogue has parallels, too, but I wasn't able to gain much information out of it till now. Except - Mike came out to Karen and that's why he ran away, I guess? (he's paralleled to Robin)

I will give you closer details about this as soon as possible, but for now I need people to see this, to look out for connections between episodes. Maybe there are more episodes like this, maybe there are patterns to find them. I found this one by accident, I'm not quite sure if that was supposed to even happen.

And yes, of course there still are scenes that just don't fit, and not everything makes completely, but these are like 2 hours uncut and the parallels won't stop coming. It feels like a new episode, a new truth - and trust me, it still feels wrong for me to say this, but "The Rightside Up" is amazingly well directed.

(Yeah, I did't knew where to include these, but they are too good to not share them.)

And sometimes Papa is lying.

During the massacre El finds Brenner in the lab in exactly the same position she is leaving him to die in the desert later on.

Wait, she did not? Then give me a better explanation for this, I dare you!

No seriously, I don't know why they decided to show another house in both seasons, but then the same room. That could've easily been avoided. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

S3 & S4

BTW, the S4 version is reminding awfully lot of the Wheeler house, with the outer form, windows and brick walls, even when they are obviously not the same.

El couldn't see what Vecna was showing Nancy and Nancy couldn't hear what One was telling El. We've been tricked to believe that it matches each other, but it does not.

Two examples: In the memory Vecna showed Nancy young Henry with black widows in the bathroom. That's exactly what Steve was doing when they've been to the Creel house two episodes earlier. So it was already a reshaped memory.

And for the other one: We hear One (Henry) saying he had

"No choice but to act. Which each life I took, I grew stronger."

We assume young Henry had to act against his parents through killing them because that's what we see. But we know Henry was acting in another kind of way at the same time. In the play from the 'First Shadow.' And yeah, he grew stronger taking lives... of animals. It's all still close to the truth, but his intentions are portrayed way more evil this way.

There wasn't even a scar on his hand from where he's been shot in the cave (in any version).

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We already know that X is a lie, but X does also mean play. One of the official soundtracks is called 'Meet Me At The X,' almost identical to one of Patty's most famous lines from 'The First Shadow': Meet Me At The Play.

I always thought that the change of behavior when we went from 'friendly orderly' to 'One' was quite strange (it wasn't immediately after the soteria was removed). But rewatching the scene in the rainbow room I noticed the blood stain on One's cheek had the form of an X, so I went through the scene shot by shot.

When El entered the room the only blood on One's face was coming from his nose. When he turned around there was more blood all of the sudden.

And only after a while it took the form of an X... just to change into an other form (Y) shortly after. And then it kept switching.

It disappeared when El opened the portal and One(?) was sent through the mirror to dimension X, even his nosebleed was mirrored in the end.

The X only appeared when One was looking at El and not to the mirror. Vecna has truesight, so he can see everything. But you can never see your own face when it's not mirrored or on a picture. My thought is, that the 'friendly orderly' (Henry?) was communicating with El in secret through it, so One wouldn't notice that they were... acting. Or lying at some point.

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The whole fight between One and El was basically just a copy of the fight between El and 002, the episode right before. There were only some tiny changes, like the glass of the window cracking when 002 is crashing into it, but not when One does.

El and 002 were fighting in a game. El and One were not - right?

In another scene El and the friendly orderly were playing a game of chess. The friendly orderly gave El directions not to show any emotions as he speaks and to keep playing the game if she understands. Maybe they were still play-ing the game.

Keeping that thought in the back of your mind the whole arc finale felt like it was happening in a theater with the lighting, staging and the masses of 'continuity errors.' Cuntinuity errors like exchanged children:

During the game of chess he even gave her his keycard with strange dots on the back of it. I'm not really sure what it's supposed to mean, since we get no clear shot of it, but I see chances of it being a pretty badly-shaped X.

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Brenner was talking about the opera Nina at the start of the Nina Project. Nina's lover was killed and she lost her memory and kept returning to the train station.

"To get out you need to leave your train station."

Just that Brenner left out the part, that Nina's lover was still alive and he added the part about the train station, which never appeared in the opera. At the end of "The First Shadow" Henry's lover (Patty) died , at least that's what Henry thinks. They were planning to leave Hawkins with the train, but Henry had to stay at the Nightmare Lab and never knew that Patty took the train to Chicago.

Brenner's message made no sense to El, so it had to be for Henry. Henry needs to remember and leave.

The questions I have now: Was the message coming from the Brenner in the memory or the Brenner from the outer world? Is Henry trapped in the Nina Project like El is? If Brenner was the one to keep Henry trapped in the first place, why is he trying to help him move on now?