#twingate

I saw someone say that El draws her power from anger and trauma whilst Will draws his from love and self-acceptance. El and Will are ying and yang. Will is the quiet presence in the back and El is the raging presence at the front. Their stories are a direct reversal of each other.

Eleven

Grew up without unconditional familial love

Rage/Active

Receives romantic love

Rescuer

Powerful

Takes up space

Will

Grew up with unconditional familial love

Calm/Passive

Doesn't receive romantic love

The saved

Weak (allegedly)

Doesn't take up space

The middle of the venn diagram here is that they both feel like monsters in different ways. El because of her powers and Will because of his sexuality. They both believe they don't deserve love and both have struggled with self-acceptance of who they are innately.

At the end of Season 4, despite Mike's confession, El still struggles to fight because she still feels like a monster. We have not got a resolution to this. I believe this in part is due to the fact that she believes that her powers are the most important part of her and that without her powers, others won't love her anymore. Consolidated by the fact that Mike called her his superhero.

In season 5 episode 4, we see Will begin to accept and love himself for who he is. He is beginning to realise that he is not a monster and that his love is not a disgusting thing to be hidden, but instead it literally helps those around him. As a result, he learns to take up space and literally moves from the background of the fight to the foreground.

In V2 I believe Will is going to teach Eleven that she doesn't need her powers to be loved and that she is so much more than a weapon to be used. It's okay for her to let go of that responsibility. Her life has value beyond saving the day. On the flipside, El will teach Will that it's okay to be angry and take up space and want revenge for what others have put you through. It's okay to put your feelings first and take the lead.

I predict that the end of season 5 will be a complete reversal of their season 1 positions.

Will has gained powers ← → El will lose her powers

Will becomes the rescuer ← → El becomes the saved

El will be the supporting power ← → Will is going to deliver the final blow

El will lose romantic love with Mike but gain familial love with Hopper and Kali (who directly parallel Joyce and Jonathan), leading to the unconditional love she has always craved

Will is going to be kissed by Mike, leading to the romantic love he has always craved but he will lose familial love because Jonathan will die (I'm so sorry, I hope this is wrong)

@ijustreallywantagrilledcheese more proof you're right

in Terry's c section memory, Terry is covered with a blue sheet, sweaty, disturbed, unable to speak.

in El's birth canal(?) memory, Terry is lucid, smiling, speaking, covered with a white sheet, and has a window right behind her.

"maybe they took the blue sheet off and the white is just her hospital gown" no

"maybe that window isn't the operating/delivery room and the moment of Terry saying I love you isn't at the moment of birth but a little bit later in a different room" also no

the pattern of her gown would be visible even in what little we can see. there's no window at the head of the bed in Terry's hospital room. and this is heavily implied to be El's literal first glimpses as she emerges into the world so this is probably indeed moments after her birth.

and again if you're stealing a baby by trying to make the mom believe the baby died, you wanna let the mom see the baby as little as possible. you don't present the baby to her as the s4 El memory would tend to suggest.

Has anyone talked about the Dark Crystal yet on here and how we see a poster in Mike's bedroom in s1 for it.

So I have a theory that (bearing in mind i'm a lil behind on what theories are out there now) that A) Will definitely has powers, B) Twingate / Twelvegate is plausible and C) The Dark Crystal is a key film plot-wise.

she did see the baby, but it was a woozy glimpse while 90% zonked on anesthesia, and we actually saw the pov shot of exactly what she saw, and the angle didn't reveal anything. surely they didn't bring the baby closer to show terry, or went "congrats, it's a girl! we're stealing her!" I mean if you wanna steal a baby, you want the mom to know as little about it as possible so she doesn't cause trouble. you just whisk the baby away and give mom some more gas. I guess the most likely answer is she just got a better look at the baby somehow than we saw. but. that's a tad weird. are we missing more footage?

note Terry does not actually call the c-section baby by any name or pronouns during the delivery scene. hmmm

in El's birth-canal memory, Terry seems more lucid, and actually acknowledges her personally and calls her Jane and says I love you.

twingate is a half baked hey-what-if I formed in response to @ijustreallywantagrilledcheese's observation about the conflicting memories of El's birth in 2x5 and 4x7 (the original post is a good read!). to reconcile this I said what if Terry Ives didn't know she was actually having twins, the premature c-section baby wasn't El but a twin, and El was born vaginally later on (an extremely rare but documented occurrence).