byler brainrot

(and this isnt everything, references to ghosts appear in s1 and s2)

max also says to vecna, “you’re not really here.”

and… what if he isn’t. at least, he's not really in the material plane. vecna is a master of lies and secrets. so is it a stretch to say that his only power is controlling people through the lies/secrets they are keeping?

When I first saw mike say this:

 i got a super weird feeling. like it was too much, too laden with significance to just be thrown in here. like it was begging to be looked at a second time. mike's been sitting there with some henry ass smiles on his face, roleplaying a vampire, a term which the party has already used to refer to vecna, saying to will, paraphrased, “I’ve got the rest of your friends”?

and i puzzled over how it could be that will is the only one free of vecna right now, but then i remembered that awful coming out scene. it could be that this scene HAD to be here, to explain from a plot perspective how will could be free from vecna’s influence. he’s already released his lies and secrets.

even nancy said to jonathan, after they confessed to each other, which helped but didn’t fully save them, “Got any more confessions?”

and i think it's likely that all of the characters do have more confessions, more processing of their trauma that they need to do in order to sever vecna’s ties to them.

[and anyway, maybe all they need to do in the real world is go to the creel house and destroy that grandfather clock. vecna's a lich, so ive always thought that his soul was in that damn clock]

This screencap is haunting me.

because ok, we have door number one above Mike, and that’s the one I’m dubbing the “take your own life” door.

There are red traffic lights above it, obviously signaling a problem, which is also confirmed by the text in the radio tower manual:

and door number two, the one above Hopper, is the “accept your fate” door. There are yellow lights, frozen in time.

If you take this door, you end up in a time loop. That could be confirmed by Max’s experience. She took door number two; she stayed in a loop of Henry’s memories.

What I fear is… Mike hasn’t even taken door number two. He’s about to take door number one.

Right after this conversation with Hopper, we cut to the graduation scene. at the end of the graduation scene, we hear an Iron Maiden song. It’s called The Trooper, and the lyrics we specifically hear are:

The bugle sounds, the charge begins But on this battlefield, no one wins The smell of acrid smoke and horse's breath As I plunge on into certain death

As I plunge on into certain death.

Mike has picked, or is going to pick, certain death (metaphorical death, at the very least). as hopper says “you keep going over it and over it in your head, what you could've done differently.”

How else should we understand Mike’s ending? When Will asks what happens to the storyteller, Mike says, “the storyteller keeps telling stories.” In other words…. door number one. He keeps going back over what happened, over and over again, in his stories.

If we continue The Matrix analogy, it’s not as if taking the red pill alone guarantees you success. You can still die/lose even once you're outside of the matrix.

But... you have to at least know that you ARE in a dream world before you can either accept your fate or look for an exit.

What I am proposing, is that right now, Mike is Neo before he ever encounters Morpheus. The choice is still in front of him.

(and I know some of us have not forgotten the white rabbit song from S1. in the matrix, the white rabbit is what leads Neo to begin to question his reality. What will Mike’s white rabbit be? I’m not sure. Maybe it's Will, maybe it's Max (the mad hatter), maybe it's El or maybe it's something else entirely. But it also fits into the extremely obvious, very in-your-face Alice in Wonderland references this season.)

One is this stupid ship. This stupid fucking ship.

WHY is it in Hop’s cabin, pointing to the right ->

AND also somehow in Mike’s basement, but pointing to the left <- There is something rattling around in my head about how Will keeps saying he’s a vessel, the party is on a curiosity voyage, etc. etc.

but also.

The Matrix was listed as an inspiration, right?

The choice that allows you to break out of the Matrix is on the left.

Also, Hopper’s conversation with epilogue Mike was very... strange. He tells Mike that he has 2 choices. He can wallow and waste his life away essentially, or he can accept what happened. And oddly, they each look two different directions as these choices are mentioned. Like, really notably.

When Hopper is finished speaking, the traffic lights behind him turn from green to yellow, and then stay there. Frozen for an additional, uncanny second. You don't see them turn red before the scene changes.

But what I really want to focus on is how this was very reminiscent of another conversation we’ve already heard, with one major difference.

Max says that are three options. Take your own life. Accept your fate. Escape.

If this is Henry’s nightmare, of course he would never offer escape as an option. He’s essentially (via Hopper) offering the first two, modified: Take your own life (kill yourself with regret, misery, etc.) or accept your fate.

And Max, who is so resilient, what did she do?

Mike Wheeler’s nightmare epilogue (which is his literal worst-case scenario — being left behind, alone, no one needing him) is him taking his own door number two.

But Will, who other people have cleverly pointed out has been depicted with a glowing red ‘Exit’ sign… Will is the way he escapes.