#this one?

The Vanishing of Will Byers: Time Travel and Dimension X

First of all, let's deal with the obvious. The Upside Down, aka Dimension X, is a dimension that is stuck in the past. This is tied directly to Will Byers, given that it exists perpetually as the date he vanished. Therefore, entering the Upside Down is a form of interdimensional time travel.

To me, this could work in one of three ways, although a combination of these factors could also be at play here.

First, the UD could be a fixed point in time. A place where time doesn't work. It acts as a set piece, where characters can move around and exist within, but otherwise, it remains the same. In this case, it is quite literally frozen from the moment Will is taken. However, there are some things in the UD that do change. The weather, for example. Or vines that move and grow. So it's really hard to say how the fixedness would work. Perhaps, if this is the case, time is fixed and frozen, even non-existent, but space isn’t.

Second, is the idea that the Upside Down exists as a time loop. How long the loop would be, we don't know for sure. All we know is that the UD is stuck, somehow, on November 6, 1983. Maybe the loop is a single day long. Maybe it goes on for the entire duration of Will being missing. Either way, the time loop is certainly a plausible theory for how time operates in the UD.

Another important thing to consider is S5's use of A Wrinkle in Time as a source for inspiration, which brings me to the third way that time could operate in the Upside Down. Now, it has been awhile since I read AWIT, but there's an important concept in that novel called a tesseract. This is basically a way of travelling through time and space, to a fourth dimension. Looking at ST, this seems like a likely culprit for what's going on with the UD, which would be a sort of fourth dimension in this case. Vecna as much as says the UD is a fourth dimension himself:

"I became an explorer. An explorer of a realm unspoiled by mankind. I saw so many things, and one day, I found the most extraordinary thing of all."

But Vecna isn’t the only one to explicitly refer to the Upside Down as another dimension/realm. The government call it “Dimension X,” and the Party refer to it as the “Shadow Realm” pretty early on, an analogy to D&D’s location of the same name.

Now, I went googling for a description of the Shadow Realm, and I found this one that is very telling: “The Shadow realm is a realm caught between the realms of the living and the dead, a place where the boundaries of time and reality blur.” [link to article]

Looking at the UD, this absolutely makes sense as the location of choice that the Party (aka, the writers) chose to compare it to. As we’ve discussed, time does blur in the UD, and things don’t always happen as they would in Hawkins (there are strange storms, cosmic horror style monsters, etc.). Perhaps, in this realm, time itself doesn't even exist in a way that makes sense to us.

Now, going back to Vecna, we see that this sort of fourth dimension where time doesn’t exist as it should is exactly what he wishes to achieve.

On his motivations, Henry Creel says this: "Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Days. Weeks. Months. Years. Decades. Each life a faded lesser copy of the one before. Wake up. Eat. Work. Sleep. Reproduce. And die."

Clearly, he feels burdened by the limitations of how time functions in the real-world. This is why, he explains, "I became an explorer."

Now, the Upside Down we see him enter is very different from the one that Will is taken to, and the one we see from S1 onwards. There are two people we know that may be responsible for this change in appearance. Either Vecna shaped the world to his liking, or Will did.

Maybe it's a both/and situation. After all, we know Vecna has powers and has been communicating with the Mind Flayer (who seems to be a sort of eldritch/cosmic god/force of the UD) for years. However, it is Will's vanishing that shapes the "time" of the Upside Down.

Will vanished on November 6, 1983, which is the same day that the UD is stuck on. This means that the Upside Down is inexplicably tied to him. Why it's tied to him is hard to say. He's the first kid Vecna kidnapped, and it is very interesting that he didn't just kill Will like he does his other victims: there's something different about Will.

I'll get into that later, but for now, what does this mean for Hawkins, where the UD is beginning to leak out of the gates?

As I mentioned previously, it's clear that one of Vecna's goals is to create a world that is "unburdened" by time's constraints. As the gates open up, we see a clock turning backwards (see: gif above), which may represent how time is slowing down or ceasing to exist the same way it always has.

If we want to get metaphorical about how time functions in Hawkins vs. the Upside Down and Vecna's mind lair, just look at the first sign of someone's Vecna vision, which is represented by a chime of the Creel house clock. For Vecna's targets, time is literally running out. Not only because they're about to die in Hawkins, but because they're about to enter a dimension where the passage of time does not exist.

"We Are All Time Travellers": Emotions Alter Time

Let's back things up a little bit.

Last spring, I was rewatching S4 to look for any references to time travel (turns out there's a lot of them when you go looking for them). It didn't take long for me to get a reference. In fact, there's one in El's opening monologue, as part of her letter to Mike.

"Dear Mike. Today is day 185. Feels more like ten years. Joyce says time is funny like that. Emotions can make it speed up or slow down. We are all time travellers, if you think about it. For example, this week is going very fast because I am so busy..."

In one sense, El's line here is describing how time can literally feel fast or slow depending on how we feel. For example, if we're busy and happy, time often goes by fast, but it we're upset, time can feel slow. Of course, I believe this line also has a deeper meaning that foreshadows what we later learn about the Upside Down being tied to Will’s vanishing.

It's no coincidence that in the season whose villain is represented by clocks, who is tied to a dimension where time is wonky, and who feels burdened by the existence of time, this opening scene mentions time travel directly. It's also important that El says this line. She's the one who opened the gate in the very first scene of the season, after all. She's also the one who goes through the NINA program, which is essentially sending her back into time (through her memories) to access her powers again. Isn’t it interesting that revisiting her traumatic experiences is what restores her powers?

If we take what El says literally, emotions actually have the power to speed up or slow down time, and not just our perception of it, depending on which emotions are felt. This bit about emotions is vital. As we know, the UD is shaped around Will's vanishing, which is a traumatic experience that he continues to deal with for years after it has occurred.

Now, this begs the question: did time in the UD slow down because Will left an emotional imprint on the landscape via his childhood trauma?

Again, it isn't a coincidence that Will's vanishing is the day that the Upside Down is stuck on. The "demogorgon"—which is pretty obviously going to be revealed to be Vecna—took Will into this fourth dimension, traumatizing him in the process.

All of Vecna's victims in the 80s timeline are also victims of trauma and/or abuse in their childhoods. Chrissy and Patrick have an abusive parent, and Fred has trauma from the car accident. Max has mental health issues and a complicated family life that we see in detail—an abusive brother whose death she blames herself for, suicidal ideation, a dad who isn't in the picture, a mom who becomes an alcoholic, and that's not to mention the inherent traumatizing circumstance of living in poverty. Will is also implied to have been abused by Lonnie, who called him homophobic slurs and turned into an awful deadbeat who doesn’t accept that his son doesn’t follow traditional masculine gender norms; he's also bullied at school for being different.

Each of these victims of abuse and/or trauma are all targets by Vecna. They have that in common. And we know that Vecna is targeting these kids on purpose because we see him sifting through his mind lair to select his next candidate. How does he do this? By looking at these kids' experiences and selecting someone vulnerable.

After Patrick is killed, Lucas and Max say as much when they discuss Vecna's motivations. To them, to be hurt us to be haunted:

Lucas: "It's like everyone Vecna targets has something in their life...something that's—"

Max: "Hurting them. Haunting them."

With this in mind, it begins to look as if Vecna is using the trauma and hurt of these kids because their emotions are strong enough to create gates, and therefore to alter—or even slow down—time.

Interestingly, the psionic powers of the lab kids seem to be impacted by their emotions as well.

Dr. Brenner tells the kids in the NINA memory to not use their emotions, but it’s One’s advice to El—to focus on something that makes her angry and sad—that helps her win the battle against Two. Brenner is so angry at One’s interference here that he tortures him for it. We know that Henry Creel was the original kid with telepathic powers who was experimented on. Somehow, Dr. Brenner learned to develop powers in these other kids, but it’s Henry/One who first received his powers from the Mind Flayer. Even as a kid, he understands that channeling negative feelings makes his powers grow stronger.

Before we look at why I believe Will is the only one truly capable of restoring the Upside Down to the way it was before, aka Dimension X, I want to dive a little bit deeper into Vecna’s targets themselves.

The Trauma of Vecna's Targets

There isn't a single main character in this show who isn't traumatized, hurting, haunted, or a victim of various societal pressures and/or forms of oppression. This isn't an accident. These themes are built into the show on purpose. Sometimes they aren't handled as well as they could or should be, but they're certainly present.

When we look at Vecna's victims, the reason they were his "perfect" targets is because of their vulnerability.

Lucas suspected Patrick was dealing with abuse at home, but Patrick never talked about it with anyone. Same with Fred's guilt about the hit-and-run. He's terrified of the idea that he'll be found out, so he never tells anyone about his visions. In the case of Chrissy, her own boyfriend has no idea about what she's going through, and she turns to drugs for an escape from her pain. If Max hadn't confided in her friends about her visions, equipped with her knowledge of Vecna and the Upside Down, then she would have had the same fate as them.

So, not only are Vecna's victims people who have something in their life that is hurting or haunting them (trauma, abuse, mental health issues, etc.), but they are also actively repressing these emotions. With this, I think the writers are trying to say that opening up about what you're going through with other people who care about you is vital to your survival and well-being.

Healing from trauma requires you to confront the emotions and/or experiences many people would rather suppress. I think El is a good case study for this. She is very clearly a traumatized character who is a victim of child abuse. Much of it is stuff she doesn’t actively remember, because she has repressed it, as we see in the NINA project. But despite her repression, the trauma, those memories, are still with her. She believes she's a monster, and she carries this guilt around with her for years. But El is also very resilient.

In fact, she confronts her trauma head-on in the NINA project. She relives her abusive childhood, the bullying she experienced, and the massacre, and she comes out of it a stronger person—even though she doesn't beat Vecna this time around, because she’ll require the help of someone else who is deeply tied to the UD if she wants to beat him.

Looking back at what Henry Creel knew from a young age, that his pain and experiences could be a source of his power, it becomes clear why he’s killing all of these traumatized kids. He’s doing so to harness the power in those experiences, perhaps because their emotions will affect the UD and cause time to slow down.

However, when El talks about emotions as a way to time travel in the beginning of S4, she isn’t just referring to negative emotions like boredom or sadness, etc. She also refers to positive emotions which make time move faster. If Vecna used his targets’ trauma to slow down time—originating with Will’s arrival in the UD—then maybe it is positive emotions, like love, acceptance, and healing, that will undo the changes Vecna has made in the UD.

Will The Wise: Why Will Byers is the Antidote

Will's connections to the UD are my main reason for believing he is the key to defeating Vecna. It began with Will, and it will end with him, too.

This is also supported in the text.

D&D always forms a direct analogy to the events that happen in any given season of Stranger Things, and it's through the lens of D&D that the Party describe the happenings in the Upside Down. For example, Will rolls a 7 in the first episode of the show, and tells Mike that "it [the demogorgon] got me." Later, the creature we're told is a demogorgon does get Will.

So, that's why the D&D campaign run by Eddie in S4 is very interesting, as it serves as foreshadowing for the rest of the season. An 11 is rolled first. This is a miss. It isn't until Erica—who is an unlikely hero in this campaign—rolls a 20 that Vecna is defeated.

It's crazy foreshadowing that an 11 is rolled, which isn't enough to defeat Vecna, in the season where Eleven is not able to defeat Vecna on her own, despite her powers being stronger than they've ever been. That's because power isn't the only thing at play, here. And we don't know yet who will be the Erica in this story, the underdog who will swoop in and join the fight, being the unlikely hero to defeat Vecna, but I think the missing piece will be Will.

It's like Dustin said in reference to his drawing skills (interesting, because when Will drew to solve the puzzle before, it was directly related to his connection to the Upside Down): "we need Will."

This brings me back to the main point of this analysis. If emotions alter time—with traumatic memories causing time to slow down, and causing Vecna to gain power—and if the Upside Down is shaped around Will's trauma, then confronting Will's trauma is crucial to Vecna's defeat.

Everything goes back to Will. To the moment he entered the UD on November 6, 1983. The very day the Upside Down is frozen on is the same day that Will's trauma began. By experiencing his trauma and imprinting those emotions onto the dimension, did Will quite literally grind time to a halt in the UD?

I certainly think so. And we've already seen a little bit of how positive memories can be used to fight against Vecna. Music is shown to carry positive memories and emotions, almost forming a shield around a person, as was the case for Max and Will, who were able to fight back through the power of music. If we take this a step further, it makes sense that healing from his Upside Down trauma, would work as a sort of antidote to Vecna, who feeds off of people's trauma. He only targets people, haunts them, if they are hurting. Heal the hurt, and he has no use for you any longer.

Functionally, this could work a number of ways. I think it could work by Will re-entering the UD and bringing positive emotions with him. Maybe the UD would reshape itself again, this time in a more positive way, removing the "rot" that has existed there since Will first entered. After all, Dimension X does not appear to be inherently evil like the Upside Down, it’s only when it begins to shape around trauma that it changes and rots.

Some Final Thoughts

If we consider that it was Vecna who took Will, then it’s clear that Vecna's goal isn't to kill Will. In fact, in S2, Dr. Owens asks Will if the evil wants to kill him, to which Will responds that the Mind Flayer wants to kill "everyone else."

Why? Because Will has powers that Vecna wishes to exploit for his plan. Because, by keeping Will and his strong connection to the Upside Down alive, he caused the Mind Flayer to enter Will, giving him the ability to feel what it feels—and later, in S4, to feel what Vecna feels.

My speculation, given all of the similarities between Will and Henry Creel, is that Vecna hopes Will will come to see his view as the correct one. He recognizes that Will is treated differently, that he’s an outsider, and he wants to exploit this to have Will join his side. Like the Emperor to Anakin, and later Luke, Vecna doesn’t actually care about Will: he’s manipulating his emotions to access his power. He didn’t keep him alive out of the goodness of his heart. He kept him alive because he knows that Will’s emotions have the power to alter time in the UD.

Killing Will simply wouldn’t serve his purpose of using his trauma to keep the UD stuck in time, grinding it to a halt.

Because, if Will’s emotions have the power to imprint on the Upside Down to the degree that he shapes the way an entire dimension appears and operates, everything begins to make sense. That’s why Vecna kept him alive: to continue his plan of removing the burden of time from the world. That’s why the UD is shaped around him. And that’s why Eleven could not defeat Vecna on her own.

Will controls time in the Upside Down. He shapes it through his emotions and experiences. His fear and trauma slowed down the movement of time, so, if Vecna is to be defeated, it only seems plausible that healing from his trauma, learning that he is loved and accepted for who he is—that he’s not a mistake—will have the opposite impact. By doing so, time will speed back up in Dimension X, healing it in the process.

In the end, everything began with Will. It was his vanishing that kicked off the story we’ve followed for what’ll be five seasons. And it’ll be him that brings an end to everything, as well.

Author’s Note

Thank you to everyone who stuck around and read this whopper of a theory/analysis! Writing it has been a long (but very fun) process. I started writing this about three weeks ago, as a rewrite of my old clock theory with more of a focus on how I think the UD functions, but then it grew into a beast of its own. I just couldn’t help it! When I get a meta idea about Will in my head, I can’t not write thousands of words about it lmao.

That said, I always love to read other people’s thoughts on these theories—it’s truly the best part of our little community on here. So please, feel free to add onto this if you have any ideas! :)