#rainbowshipgate

A kid going missing isn't the strangest thing that happens on November 6 - curiously, there is another major incident at the Lab the same day.

When it becomes apparent that the two events are in fact connected, damage control is necessary. If local law enforcement is allowed to continue to search for the boy, the investigation could lead back to the Lab, attracting an undesirable level of public attention.

A fake body is created with very convincing attention to detail using surveillance obtained the morning of the boy's disappearance.

With the search over, the Lab should now be at its leisure to investigate Will Byers' whereabouts on its own terms. If the boy merely dies, irretrievable, at least the security threat is neutralized; if he can be privately recovered for study, all the better.

Unfortunately not visible in those surveillance photos of a long-sleeved Will Byers on a November morning: the birthmark on his right arm.

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ok I'm not entirely seriously proposing that this happened, but hear me out anyway about a few things

That fake body.

to know what Will was wearing on the day he went missing, they had to have seen him wearing it. how then, unless they were already watching him? why would the Lab be watching some random child?

Some lab kids are wild-caught, like Kali.

In order to merit being taken for the program, must they not first do something to attract the Lab's interest - display some curious behavior, some sign of potential psychic ability?

Will loves medieval fantasy.

DnD and Lord of the Rings. he's always drawing things like battles and knights and dragons and wizards. his life, his friends, but through a lens of medieval type fantasy. so when Joyce tells the story of little Will drawing a spaceship, it bothers me. a spaceship, even a whimsical one, is such a conspicuous break from Will's usual genre.

Kids draw from a variety of inspirations.

Sometimes they draw from their imagination or their feelings.

Sometimes they draw exactly what they see in reality.

And sometimes they draw what they see somewhere in between. Without really even knowing what it is they're drawing.

What if little Will saw the rainbow spaceship in his mind, but not in his imagination.

So, what am I saying, Will had a vision of a spaceship? The upside down is another planet and the demogorgon is an alien? No.

(Haha,)

But really, no, Stranger Things isn't that genre.

So whose spaceship is it? Is Hawkins Lab building a spaceship? No. The lab's interest is in the human mind, not the space race.

I don't think there is a spaceship. But there could be something within Hawkins Lab (or somewhere similarly top secret) that a kid with a vague vision and a box of crayons might interpret as looking like a spaceship.

Just, I don't know, some kind of big metal Thing.

I'm not saying it would have been NINA or equivalent, but I'm saying there could be a Thing that could look like a spaceship out of context. In perhaps a vision, an accidental remote-view, a now-memory.

why would a Thing at Hawkins Lab have a rainbow on it? idk, it's not like they have a history of that.

Plot twists require hints.

Big reveals are no fun if there wasn't a clue in plain view the whole time. We have few flashbacks and anecdotes about Will's past, and if we're due some revelation in s5 about him either having powers or having more of a history with HNL or Henry than we thought, that is where a clue would be.

Joyce's rainbow ship story is littered with details that bother me.

Do you know what March 22nd is? It's your birthday. Your birthday. When you turned eight, I gave you that huge box of crayons. Do you remember that? It was 120 colors. And all your friends, they got you Star Wars toys, but all you wanted to do was draw with all your new colors. And you drew this big spaceship, but it wasn't from a movie. It was your spaceship. A rainbow ship is what you called it. And you must have used every color in the box. I took that with me to Melvald's and I put it up and I told everyone who came in, "My son drew this." And you were so embarrassed. But I was so proud. I was so, so proud.

Will being 8 may matter because he turned 8 in 1979. idk, of all ages to attach to this story why the one in the landmark year of 1979? his eighth would be his last birthday before the lab massacre (Sept 8, 1979). this scenario might not work with Will any older - perhaps whatever the "spaceship" was was eliminated post-massacre. or there's something to Will being the same age as El. I'll get back to you on this one

drawing with crayons on ST is so often associated with something not simply seen or imagined, but perceived in some strange way:

Will drawing his vision of the Mind Flayer in black/red crayon

Will scribbling the nowmemory tunnels feverishly with whole crayons

these aren't the only times he uses crayon, but contrast some of his noteworthy "normal imagination" drawings - Will the Wise, Zombie Boy - done in pencil instead, as are a lot of his other misc filler drawings. (when Will's fireball/cabbage drawing where crayons are prominently mentioned turns out to be a vision of season 5 I'll get back to you)

Joyce grabs crayons to trace the Mind Flayer off the TV

Nancy writes the decoded CLOSEGATE in crayon

Ten's lessons at the lab consist of remotely viewing Brenner's bad crayon drawings

Henry's drawing of the spider is in pencil, and the Mind Flayer in charcoal, but when he's drawing with crayons I don't know what he's drawing but the lights flicker

when Max draws her vision of the Creel house, she calls attention in the dialogue to Holly letting her borrow her crayons

Will lacking interest in his new Star Wars toys makes sure we know, in case we don't remember all the Will art we've seen, that he isn't especially interested in space.

Joyce even says it with this little eyeroll like "these punk ass kids think MY son is a space nerd? please. I know the Castle Byers password and it's a LOTR reference"

which is what makes this so conspicuous - why in the same breath as establishing Will isn't very interested in space stuff does she say Will drew a spaceship and emphasize that it isn't something he saw in a movie. that it came from his imagination. like.. yeah, isn't everything he draws? why was a spaceship on Will's mind if he isn't interested in space? am I wrong that we've never seen one single other drawing of space stuff among all his artwork?

finally, Joyce not only put this drawing up in public but told all her customers about it. this is the only anecdote of Will's pre-vanishing history I can think of that could suggest any adult outsiders (so potentially the Lab) taking notice of something he did.