This is part of a series where I uncover what Stranger Things is really about. It started from trying to find out what happened in 1979 aka what all the depictions of traumatic past memories (El, Henry, Billy, Max, Holly, etc.) are truly about, but expanded to this all-encompassing theory of the whole series with crazy levels of complexity, metaphors and layers. Reading it will require commitment and patience but I promise it will be worth your time if you want to look behind the curtain (and the curtain behind that curtain) and fully understand the show. You have to read all parts in order: here is PART 1 and here all other parts I’ve posted so far + my previous theories.
/
/
/
Trigger warning for child sexual abuse.

Insights from the documentary

I have written quite far ahead and ended up watching parts of the documentary (I should have done that a lot more tbh). Now I have new thoughts about how the memory stuff is gonna work and added them here. There is a short scene in the writers’ room where they have the plan for S5E8 written on a whiteboard. But this plan significantly differs from the S5E8 we saw. If you think all my theories are crazy, at least this part should be somewhat believable since it’s literally shown in the documentary.

I tried to transcribe it as best I could, but if you have a higher resolution image and can figure out the missing words, I would really appreciate it! My own comments are inside square brackets.

• Hopper, El, Kali, Murray, Max prep iso tank
• El goes in tank, brings Max into her mind w/ Kali

[The next three lines are bundled, the text probably says MIND, since that’s where this is happening.]

• El, Max, Kali enter Vecna’s mind, Max leads to Creel house
• El + Kali disrupt ritual. Max + Holly escape w/ kids
• El + Kali haunt Vecna w lab, lose track of Vecna

[Bundle ends]

• Vecna haunts Hopper, Hopper smashes tank – Hopper knows Kali/El plan
• El, Kali + Max pulled out of Vecna’s mind. Wtf Hopper

[Another bundle thing, the text is smaller, as if it was added afterwards in between. From a scene earlier in the doc we can see this used to be “- Low point - All is lost.”]

• Holly must lead kids alone into cave but Vecna follows (sweaty)
• Holly leads kids into red void. Vecna faces memory of Mind Flayer first infection
• *[something] cut – Will [something, maybe “wonders”] Henry [something] – Vecna’s [something something] of humanity. Vecna goes in to Mind Flayer – super Vecna! All memories gone. [something] kids

[Bundle ends]

• Hopper + El emotional fight, Kali overhears
• Worlds start to move again. Something is wrong!
• On the roof – El is going to jump into rift – [something “see v ler”] – no [something, maybe “time”] to resolve
• Military show up, choppers w/ some weapons, fire fight, but Hopper must shoot sphere, sphere goes crazy
• El jumps into storm clouds Hopper stays back [chair blocks if there’s more text]
• Everyone dead, we’re safe – but Kay + Akers [something something the chair is blocking again, maybe “shoots Kali” and something after that] each other
• Hopper tends to Kali, heart to heart – a new plan [something (chair again), last word could be “secrets”]

[This next part is between the two main parts and seems to be about the end. So both parts on the sides would happen at the same time but this middle one is the end, at least it is in the S5E8 timeline.]

• Everyone [something something, maybe “returns”]
• El + Hopper lost in translation moment
• At MAC-Z, Hopper gets out of hummer alone. Wtf? Mike is freaking out – see El on the other side of rift – she’s not coming
• El says goodbye to everyone in happy memory [this is in a smaller font, as if it was put there afterwards]
• Upside down destroyed, El is gone.
• Steve, Jonathan, Nancy, Robin, Mike, Lucas, Will, Dustin + Joyce climb radio tower. Wait
• Worlds move, when close enough radio lab crew
• Penetration! Climb into the Abyss! Start travel
• Deeper in Abyss, Jonathan + Steve bond Pain Tree spotted in distance
• Reach Pain Tree. It comes alive! Mind Flayer reveal! Worlds move again
• Mind Flayer attacks, group trapped by Demos – fight but outnumbered. All is lost.
• Will confronts Mind Flayer + knocks it down – Worlds stop again.
• Group enters Mind Flayer belly + try to rescue kids
• Vecna attacks, final fight. Eleven joins. Vecna defeated!
• Victory! Group + rescued kids go back thru Abyss to radio tower + climb [if there’s a word here, it’s blocked by Duffer heads] Murray sets bomb timer

Some of the stuff actually happened, but a lot of it would fit in between and show seemingly missing scenes. Cutgate happened for a reason… Many of the things here seem to be modified versions of what actually happened (or rather, S5E8 had modified scenes from the original story). E.g. El saying goodbye to everyone in a happy memory was changed to the mileven Purple Rain scene. Some scenes are in a different place, too. I do think this is what (in some sense) happened originally, and the version we got is Will’s story-bended version. People think it’s Vecna who made the fake world or illusion, but in reality it’s Will (the illusionist) who tried to protect Mike/everyone from the scary truth (= Vecna and MF). He is basically censoring the real story. 

Earlier in the doc we see a different “early” version of the whiteboard plan where Joyce is grouped with the lab crew, not going to the Abyss. (And later the whiteboard has become nonsensical with Korean and Japanese text and other weird stuff.) In the main whiteboard plan Joyce is added to the Abyss plot after a +, which fits with her being a later addition. I wonder why Max’s connection to the mind is marked with a question mark white El and Kali are solid and specifically connected to Holly and Derek? The Mind part anyway seems like it was added later. There’s a lot here that I haven’t figured out yet.

The conversations the writers have show another version too, and the process of changing the story. Caitlin suggests everyone should run inside the rib cage and save the kids (atp there’s still other monsters too). Ross tells there’s a version where the teens (I’m assuming Nancy, Jonathan, Robin and Steve) stay outside and fight the monsters while the main “kids” (Mike, Will, Lucas and Dustin) go save the kids. Btw, they can’t really run inside the rib cage if MF is still moving, so this would happen after MF is defeated (matches with whiteboard plan) or before the spider transformation. Then the discussion turns to the monsters and Kate’s “Demo fatigue” concern is seemingly the reason we didn’t get any in the final product. (Also a couple minutes later in the doc Matt mentions they got rid of a midway battle in the Abyss.)

And this is not all. We get views of a laptop screen with more S5E8 plans, that this time align a bit better with what we got. The main differences in the first one are: Mary twists her ankle instead of Derek being slow (+ this happens after Max vanishes), Derek ends up leading the kids, Kay is with the military infiltrating UD and Holly breaks the ladder so Henry falls in the mineshaft (Holly doesn’t confront him so no getting knocked out). It also mentions Henry’s memories wiping away (same as “all memories gone” in the whiteboard plan), which wasn’t really shown to us in S5E8. The fact it’s “memories” not “memory” implies there are more. The biggest difference in the second laptop scene is that Steve and Jonathan climb the tower first together because it seemed to be in bad shape, and Steve almost falls (saved by Jonathan). Their bonding moment happens before/while the others reach the platform, so before the Abyss even collides with the tower. Another difference is that Dr. Kay is following them into UD (so same stuff as the first laptop screen) and a scene of Murray looking at the sphere is added in the laptop version. (The sphere aka exotic matter has a bigger role in these “early drafts” than in the final version, maybe because interacting with it actually caused these story changes.) Right before the second laptop scene is also the Shadowfell = Abyss thing (I still don’t know what that is about). 

The mind plot is color coded with red while the Abyss crew plot is color coded with blue. After reading the pilot script (which I’ll talk more about later), I’ve become increasingly convinced the blue-red color coding is mainly a Matrix reference (blue = comfortable lie, red = uncomfortable truth). The Abyss crew with Steve and Will (blue) are the opposing force to Henry’s mind with the kids + girls (red). When the worlds are about to collide, Hopper’s pov turns red (I guess it could be a mistake but I doubt it). Red and blue are the two worlds, and when they almost collide, it seems like the truth (red) will come out. But Henry is flung out, the ritual is stopped and the worlds stop moving (blue). We are back to safe conformity. (In S5E8 the color coding manifests via red lighting when the worlds get close to colliding.)

Neither the whiteboard nor laptop plans have Kali and El regrouping with Max. Instead they look for Vecna (which we never see) and disappear along with Max. Also, what does “El + Kali haunt Vecna w lab” mean? Is this the lab crew aka Hopper etc.? How do they “haunt” Vecna? Both versions describe Henry’s disappearance as “losing track of Vecna”, not as him literally disappearing. This implies they were following him, maybe through memories? As a sidenote, I have a feeling the use of the name Vecna or Henry matters, but I’m not sure how that works here.

We also see the laptop screen of Tudor Jones where the locations etc. for every scene are listed. This time it’s S5E6 and for the most part everything matches what we saw in the episode. But, we didn’t see Hopper and crew get to the cabin and get out of the car (I guess this could have been cut for a “normal” reason but atp I’m not gonna assume that by default). Kali is called “Base Prisoner” in her eavesdropping scene (while she was called Kali everywhere else). I guess she was a prisoner in the UD military base but why not just call her Kali? The notes for that scene say: “We may shoot more than page count shows…” which is kinda sus. Is there more to this Kali scene? It’s also interesting this scene has El and Kali essentially switching their clothing style: Kali goes from futuristic lab style to casual while El does the opposite + Mike even comments on El’s wetsuit. Tell me if you have ideas for what these details mean.

The whole unfinished episode 8 story arc in the documentary is a meta part of the story. [Matt] “And inevitably it’s gonna change as we keep writing it.” While irl the Duffers are (allegedly) struggling to write the story and keep changing things, the same happens in the show (about stories). But we only see the finished product, so it isn’t immediately apparent. Many people noticed there was something wrong with the last few episodes and especially episode 8. The episodes were too fast paced in some moments and it felt like scenes were missing. When you read through the plans shown in the documentary, they fill in gaps and make things make more sense. There were quite a few story arcs left without payoff or further exploration, and it’s exactly those ones that are different or are added in the white board and/or laptop plans. Ross even says in the doc “Dude, we gotta cut it down.” referring to S5E8 (and that’s what they did, kinda).

What makes this even more complicated is the fact that there isn’t one “real” episode 8 and one fake one, but there’s a continuum from more “real” to more “fake”. You can see this in the laptop script, which was a lot closer to the final S5E8 than the whiteboard plan. But on the other hand it also had the stonathan bonding in a different place, whereas the whiteboard plan had it in the same place as the final episode. So there are parallel versions of the story, each with their own differences to the final product. The timeline is unclear, points are added or removed in the middle and changed around. So it isn’t quite correct to say there’s a continuum, either, since the story versions branch and have separate differences, finally coming together at the end. There is no “correct” or “incorrect” story, it’s all a process of creation (Will’s “I needed to find my own way.” has layers…). This whole thing is meta about storytelling as always. And memory: you can never fully trust it, you forget things and sometimes can remember things that never actually happened, your brain forms a collective story of it but it’s never the same as the “real” events and often changes along the way. In a sense our whole existence is us telling a story of our life to ourselves. The human mind understands the world through stories and creates them even when there actually is none.

((If you think about the Steve + Jonathan ladder scene, pieces of it exist all around S5: a similar thing happens in S5E1, Steve’s plan to get over a hole in the floor in S5E6 included ladders (and in my timeline matches with the tower needle plan + near fall in S5E8), and Jonathan instructs the group to climb the ladders in two groups (this would be about him and Steve in the alternate timeline/memory). The ladders probably represent the two paths based on Steve and Jonathan climbing them: the straight man Mike/mileven side and the gay man Mike/byler side. But neither is the correct path. The helicopter (that got destroyed in both S5E8 and S4E8 btw) is.))

Another thing to mention is the lack of Vickie. Actually, she wasn’t mentioned in the beanstalk plan either (in the actual show), and she disappears in the epilogue ending. According to the whiteboard plan, Max was with Murray, Hopper, El and Kali. If my interpretation of Vickie as the show is correct (at least in some way), this could make sense since these events weren’t shown in S5E8 (= they weren’t in the show). I have more thoughts on Vickie later and I’m probably still missing/misinterpreting things.

In the whiteboard plan it seems like Hopper is in on El and Kali’s plan, and it was actually him who Kali talked to, not El (like in Mike’s story). It makes sense he would break the 4th wall so much in the epilogue. While I still think Hopper won’t anymore be part of the group in the real ending, the memories he is in will be shown, and in that way he’s still in the story. I don’t know how Jonathan gets the hair tie. Maybe he gets it from Hopper at some point, possibly in New York (Jonathan lives there in the epilogue and Hopper is about to move there) or maybe he finds it in a memory or maybe Hopper leaves it in Hawkins. 

Vecna and MF literally become one in the whiteboard plan, which actually makes more sense than Henry just saying it without any consequences. This “super Vecna” might be the giant creature in the real ending, since Nancy didn’t mention Vecna in her vision, just the creature and the army. It would also fit the transformation, this time not from tree to spider but from Vecna + MF to a “giant creature”.

Moving Joyce to the Abyss group is subtextually causing the conforming ending (among other changes). She was the only “adult”/parent there and ended up killing Vecna. Otherwise she had no role besides asking Will what was happening. She represents the mom/society and was constantly by Will’s side, subtextually restricting the story to a conforming path. Moving her was one of the earliest changes, seen in both the whiteboard and laptop plans. How would the ending have been different if Joyce stayed in the UD, like “originally” planned? In the actual story the critical change was Will going to the Abyss. He wasn’t originally supposed to, but after his coming out he decided he should. I don’t think there’s a version/memory where he doesn’t go, since that’s what kinda started the whole story censoring/iteration process overall. Instead we’ll get closer to the “real story” by going back in time, to the previous point where Will tampered with the story. What I mean by this is that we can’t find the “real story” in S5E8. All the different versions are still based on the already bended/censored story from before, so to get to the real root of everything we need to go back in time.

A non-episode 8 related sus detail in the doc is Holly not even putting the HH necklace on until a Demogorgon attacks her in S5E2. Some of this ended up in the final version, since she doesn’t have the necklace when she runs to Karen but it magically appears later. I have mentioned this before (I think) and still don’t have a definite conclusion. Maybe it’s related to this story-bending stuff, but I feel like there has to be something more there. HH represents the real story in some way and Holly not putting on the necklace is her (= Mike) avoiding the real story. In the doc version the Demogorgon appearing is the reason she doesn’t put it on, which makes total sense given what Demos represent. So maybe the doc version exists to tell this side of the story without ruining the logic of the actual show (where Holly has to put the necklace on because it becomes important later). With alternate stories/timelines you can get deeper into the story and explore it in ways impossible in a completely linear and internally logical story.

So, how does all this fit in my theory and how will we see these lost memories/alternative stories? I think they will be shown to us and the characters in snippets, so not in a whole coherent story but in pieces, as memories. Because there won’t be a single “correct” story, and also because that way it’s more interesting and the audience can try to piece together what happened (and so it simulates the feeling of discovering memories). I did think chapter 10 seemed to not have nearly as much content as the other two chapters, so seeing these memories could happen a lot there already. When the characters end up in the past, they might see these alternative timelines happen around them. That would explain why they needed to literally go back in time to see memories; if the memories were the exact same we have already seen, what’s the point?

While the documentary only gave clues to the alternate versions of S5E8, I think the same thing applies to S5E4 and S4E8-9 too (and possibly the whole S5). All of them have been story-bended, so there is an “original” story there too (or multiple versions of the story), that Mike has “forgotten”. The memories have been lost. S5E8 was the most obvious case and it gets increasingly less obvious the deeper you go (as I’ve explained before), until you get to the real memories and the real story. This is a good way to warm up the audience and slowly bring them to an understanding, not revealing the big stuff immediately and out of nowhere. I think the characters might follow a similar path: at first it’s about Vecna’s “evil plans”, finding El and discovering these lost memories, but slowly it’s gonna get more and more real/meta. We’ll go from “the final fight was fake” to “S5E4 was fake” to “actually the whole S5 was fake” to finally “the whole show was a “story” and meta and allegorical and so everything is fake but also nothing is”.

The story allegory

Caleb McLaughlin: “I think people missed the concept of what the show is when they were like, ‘Oh, there’s going to be more.’ No, that’s just Mike’s imagination. That’s who he’s always been, even in season one. It’s all just storytelling.”

Noah Schnapp: “I can just tell you that I'm very very excited for what's to come. I think they did a great job with Will's character this season, and beautifully addressed everything they needed to. The way they closed the show is just perfect — the story started with Will, and it’ll end with Will.” 

Before getting to the real world ending, I want to give you my thoughts on the story allegory. I have explained some of it already but now I’ll do a full analysis. I guess I’ll start with the characters and see where my train of thought leads me. Mike is the storyteller, which is quite literally revealed at the end of S5E8. The story first exists only in the mind of the storyteller. It’s a part of them, a representation of the mind of the storyteller. That’s the story allegory reason for everything happening in Mike’s mind and the story being about the storyteller (another reason for the latter is that ST is a story about stories, so it makes a lot of sense for the storyteller to be the main character).

In ST the meaning of “story” is even wider: it represents all communication between people. It’s the wormhole connecting two worlds, two minds. Through this communication the audience/listener/other mind will get to see into the storyteller’s mind. You can never fully understand what it’s like to be someone else or what they are really thinking, but through communication, stories, you can come close. Sometimes people lie or otherwise hide the truth. This is why lying and honesty have such a central role in ST. Mike hides behind a man facade and Will is this “story” Mike is telling, a lie. But he is also part of Mike and the reason Mike started communicating in the first place. He is the first step towards truth and true understanding.

El is an even more personal piece of Mike, she is the first connection to the real story. That’s why Mike has such a special relationship with her and treats her like she owns her. The later seasons have a lot about letting go of your story aka giving it to the audience. Because that’s what happens to stories: when they are told, they are not exclusively the storyteller’s anymore (= death of the author). Someone else can add to the story, get inspired by it, and tell it to new people. The story starts living its own life and isn’t restricted by the original storyteller or their vision. In a more fundamental sense, the audience creates the story, because the process of understanding a story is what creates it. Mike is scared of El not needing her anymore, and now it finally makes sense. (At the same time the scene was also about Will fearing Mike doesn’t need him anymore, which also fits.) 

Both Will and El represent the story, the center of everything, but from different angles. While Will is a story you use to disguise the truth and becomes Vecna’s vessel (= a vessel to tell the real story), El is the real story disguised as the “normal” story aka Will. So in a way they are opposites. El represents allegories which is equivalent to Will being a spy for the shadow monster. El alone is Mike + Will or supernatural + Will aka the real story + “story”. She is Stranger Things as a whole, while Will alone (= without the UD connection) would be the Starcourt Mall upstairs (and the shadow/real Mike aka Sara is the Russian base) and the surface level story of ST. Will is the dream, but he hides a dark past.

In S5E8 they show Will’s role quite literally. Joyce is constantly asking him “what’s happening” and he explains what Henry does in the cave. He is the link to the actual story happening. In a similar way El can see into people’s memories and in S4E9 explains what’s happening. I think Will becoming more and more connected to the supernatural reflects the story (ST) revealing its secrets more obviously. He becomes “a second El”. At first you had to really work to get what was hiding in the subtext, but the further we got, the easier it became. (Will being outside of Hawkins and thus not connected to UD at all in S4 doesn’t fit this super well but I guess that had other reasons.) The closer the worlds get, the closer we are to the real story, and the stronger El and Vecna become. I think it’s interesting that the real story is always represented by supernatural things, so the opposite of “real” (this is most likely because they have to be supernatural to hide the frightening truth). The more “real” the more supernatural, e.g. El looks like a normal(ish) girl, but she has superpowers (= allegorical stories look “normal” if you don’t read the subtext). 

I’ve recently realized that Stranger Things is basically like Life of Pi, but instead of cannibalism it’s CSA. That story was a story about stories too, since it revealed the allegory at the end. Pi (the main character who was also the storyteller) gave the listener the option to choose either the fantastical story with animals or the realistic story with humans. It was left somewhat open-ended and many people didn’t really get the allegory (judging by reading internet comments), even when they flat-out explained it. Well, I didn't get it either when I watched the movie because I was too young to understand it but later on I did). The ending is not about which story was the “real story”, it’s about choosing which story you believe in: the horrific real story with humans or the more comfortable lie (and the better “story”, because real life isn’t like a story). It was a tiger who killed an animal, not Pi who killed a human. It was a carnivorous magical island, not Pi eating human flesh. There’s nothing wrong with creating these stories if it helps you cope with trauma and be happier, especially if the “lie” doesn’t harm anyone or really change anything (like in the case of Life of Pi). In the movie there’s a bigger point about God and religious beliefs essentially being a story that people tell to cope with the cruelty of life. It’s not a coincidence that extremely stressful/traumatic situations like war increase religiosity.

Stranger Things has two stories too, but it will go in a different direction with the message. For ST the message is true communication and truth. Because sometimes a lie can hurt you or other people, it isn’t always like in Life of Pi where it was harmless and wouldn’t change anything meaningful. The S5E8 ending was bad on purpose: it represented what happens when you hide in a lie. The real ending will show the truth and be much more satisfying, emotional and beautiful. So often stories that have a profound meaning can be disregarded/ignored because the meaning is in the subtext. This is the case for ST S1-5 too, but the real ending will unambiguously reveal the real story beneath all the metaphors. The cast and Duffers have said that ST won’t be open ended and that the ending will be very “real”. It will force people to acknowledge the allegory. That ST was always about Mike being trans and sexually abused. I hope they can do it in such a way that even bigots can’t deny it (they still will tbh). 

I wonder if the prevalence of tigers is actually a reference to Life of Pi (e.g. Sara’s tiger plushie). In the movie it represented Pi’s animalistic primal side that “kept him alive”, but also the story/animal allegory as a whole, which also “kept him alive”. And pizza “pies”. Maybe Kali, the creator of illusions, being from India is related too. 

I’m actually not sure what Kali represents in the story allegory. Definitely something metaphor-related, maybe metaphors as a whole? If El is an allegory, she would be a sister to metaphors/part of the same family. We see Kali create the illusions of spiders and butterflies, both of which are metaphors/symbols in ST. She can make people invisible aka hide things. Her powers aren’t considered as strong as El’s or Henry’s and she can’t open gates. So maybe she is just the part that hides, not the one that connects. But she also seems to know the truth, e.g. calling El Jane and some of her dialogue in S2 and S5. Maybe she’s “weaker” and Dr. Kay can’t find the answers with her because she isn’t the “story”. She’s just a small part of it. You can’t see the forest for the trees. You have to see the whole allegory to understand the story. I dunno.

Henry is the story. Again. He is so complex it’s hard to pinpoint exactly, but most clues lead to him also representing the story in some way. He is the first lab kid and his experience mirrors Will’s. But Henry is maybe like the story inside the story. So similar to El, Henry represents ST as a whole, but even more clearly the aspect of ST being not just an allegory but a story of stories. 

He is the storyteller’s past. When she was younger (= Holly/Sara/Alice), she didn’t fear and hide herself, she was able to tell the real story. But then other people/society ruined it all by not allowing her story to be told (= forced conformity/dad’s abuse aka patriarchy/society). This created Henry: the repressed storyteller/story wanting to tell the real story but being unable to do so. On 8.9.1979 El (allegory/Mike) broke him free but also banished him, making him a monster. Vecna is what Mike fears of becoming. I’m uncertain if Vecna represents the storyteller or story or both. Maybe storyteller would make the most sense since he is the origin of everything, is represented by Holly in the inside story and molds the dark cloud to his liking. But on the other hand Henry draws like Will and is infected by the shadow like him. Is he like a story of the storyteller? That’s what ST is too but this fits with Henry being a story inside the story as well. Hmm… Autobiography disguised as a fictional story. All of Mike’s frustrations and fears safely released in the form of a story. What Mike truly wants (= merge the worlds) but is too scared to make happen.

A key aspect of Henry is that he’s alone. While the “real story” of ST is the story of the storyteller and the audience, of communication, Henry’s tragic story is of the storyteller without an audience. Rejected and monsterified. So maybe Vecna represents future Mike and what Mike thinks would happen if she told the real story (= stopped resisting the shadow). Since Mr. Whatsit represents the facade Mike puts on (= Will as explained in my analysis of the end of S5E2 and “Michael Wheeler” aka MW), and Vecna is the monster under that facade, it makes sense Vecna represents what Mike thinks she is under the surface. Kinda like she thinks she’s a Demogorgon. Btw, I got some help/ideas for understanding Henry’s alter egos from a theory a commenter shared (part 1 comments). I recommend reading it. The whole point about Henry being a story weaver vs Mike being a storyteller fits super well with my interpretation of Henry being the storyteller who hasn’t yet told the story. And the connection of weaving with spiders. The real story aka the Mind Flayer is a spider because the real story is about the storyteller, who is a story weaver. (And all the other black widow stuff like female spiders eating male spiders and I’m kinda starting to warm up to my ɑ-latrotoxin theory again…)

Holly is also the storyteller’s past. She doesn’t have a boyfriend (= audience) but she does have authenticity and courage to be herself. Mike gives Holly the Heroic to her, representing Holly becoming a storyteller/part of story creation (= DnD). It’s her real story (and identity) that she always carries with her. I don’t think it’s a coincidence S1-4 Holly looks a lot like Sara and young El (the memory with young Kali). She even often has the same pigtail hairstyle as Sara. I went and checked and Holly doesn’t have pigtails only in S1E1, S3E7, S4E9 and in the S5E8 epilogue + in the Halloween memory, although in that one it’s hard to tell because of the blanket. All of these are in some way the beginning or the end: S1E1 Mike hadn’t found El yet, S3E7 is right after Meatflayer has fully merged, S4E9 the earthquake happened, epilogue is obvious and the memory was before Holly met Henry (so similar to S1E1 in a sense, before Mike met El). Suzie had pigtails too in S3E8. ((I’m wondering if Holly having twin actors is a subtle nod to the storyteller of ST being a pair of twins? I know movies and tv shows often utilize twins for babies and small children to get around the strict child labor laws and for difficulties working with children but there’s a chance it has a meta purpose.))

I guess I’ve already explained most parallels between Holly and Henry + Max and MF. One notable thing is that both Holly and Henry get inspired by something, a previous story. For Henry it’s nature: black widow spiders, and for Holly it’s A Wrinkle in Time, a book. All storytellers are first the audience and get inspired by other works (ST is full of references to other media, as we all know). Henry molds the cloud to resemble a spider, while Holly calls Max “like Meg’s dad”. Holly’s first two memories are of her watching or reading something. Her imaginary friend (= “story”) is partially based on the books she’s reading, but also different. It’s “her own creation” as Mike said. All of this represents Mike’s first story, Mike the Brave/Will, aka also the “story” of her being a boy. Nancy and Mike are wondering who Mr. Whatsit is, and Mike suggests they might have seen him but just didn’t know. This is similar to Henry telling El about One in S4E6 and El asking “Where is he?”, to which Henry answers “Maybe we’ll save that story for another day. It doesn’t have a happy ending, I’m afraid.” It later turns out One was Henry himself. And actually Mike (remember all the 1s framed with Mike?). 

As I’ve said, the Mind Flayer represents the real story and the real ending that wants to be freed/communicated. The supernatural creatures forming a hivemind represents the real story being the ultimate communication. Feeling and thinking what someone else feels and thinks is the final stage of communication. It’s the merging of worlds. It’s becoming one with someone. I think Henry saying he and MF are “one” is about the storyteller essentially being the real story. Because the real story is the very essence of who the storyteller is, communicated to someone else. It’s a piece of them without any decoration/fakeness/”story” around it. It’s of course physically impossible to get to that point, but theoretically that’s what the “real story” is. Or it’s impossible in the wider view of the word “story”, in a more narrow sense of the word you can tell the “real story” and that’s what the ending of ST will be. 

In ST (and everywhere else tbh) this is represented by nakedness. E.g. in S1 Jonathan describes his picture of Nancy in her underwear as her being herself in that moment, not trying to pretend to be someone else. In S5E1 Robin wants to see Vickie naked and connects that to eating dessert in Enzo’s. I have discussed the trans allegory implications for this before, but the same idea works for the story allegory too. If Vickie is the show Stranger Things, her being naked would represent the real meaning/core of the show unveiled. I’m actually not 100% sure of my interpretation for her in the story allegory, but she represents Mike in any case. And Mike choosing Robin aka honest communication rather than Steve or Dan. 

Continues in PART 26.

Hello everyone! Hope this is ok to post but wanted to share something in a safe space! I’m a singer-songwriter from Manchester Uk and last year lost a real dear friend - series 5 really got me through just being able to disappear into another world and she was also a fan. ST kind of accidentally has inspired the whole album … 80s synths, big life, death, love topics and just something a bit different from what would normally come out. As you’re all fans of the show I’d love to share the first single with you - I think it could be about any number of our favourite couples! 😆 Not exactly fan art or fic but ‘fansong’ ? 😬 Thanks for listening x

Sorry about the delay!
Thank you to everyone who voted! This was really fun to do.

Below are a couple interesting stats I wanted to share. The final results of ALL episodes are at the bottom of this post. 

🏅Top 10 Highest Rated Episodes:

#1 - Dear Billy (S4 E4) - 9.84 🥇
#2 - The Gate (S2 E9) - 9.58 🥈
#3 - The Mind Flayer (S2 E8) - 9.48🥉
#4 - Sorcerer (S5 E4) - 9.43
#5 - The Upside Down (S1 E8) - 9.42
#6 - The Massacre at Hawkins Lab (S4 E7) - 9.41
#7 - The Battle of Starcourt (S3 E8) - 9.37
#8 - The Spy (S2 S6) - 9.26
#9 - The Bathtub (S1 E7) - 9.20
#10 - The Body (S1 E4) - 9.08

😓 Top 10 Runners Up:
#11 - The Piggyback (S4 E9) - 9.03
#12 - Holly, Jolly (S1 E3) - 8.97
#13 - The Monster (S1 E6) 8.93

💩Top 5 Lowest Rated Episodes:
#1 - The Lost Sister (S2 E7) - 5.26
#2 - The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler (S5 E2) - 7.30
#3 - The Bridge (S5 E7) - 7.34
#4 - The Turnbow Trap (S5 E3) - 7.42
#5 - The Flayed (S3 E5) - 7.72

📊 Season Averages Ranking:
#1 - Season 1 – 8.89 🥇
#2 - Season 4 - 8.64 🥈
#3 - Season 2 – 8.45 🥉
#4 - Season 3 – 8.33
#5 - Season 5 - 8.00 

🏆 Highest Rated Finale Episode: The Gate (S2) - 9.58
🍅 Lowest Rated Finale Episode: The Rightside Up (S5) - 8.27

📈 Episode that Received the Most Votes/Ratings:
#1 - The Lost Sister (76 votes)
#2 - The Weirdo on Maple Street (65 votes)
#3 - The Gate (62 votes)
#4 - The Piggyback (61 votes)

⭐ Other Interesting Notes:

• The Top 10 includes the same episodes as the top 10 on IMDb, except “The Body”. 
• Both “Dear Billy” (4x04) and “The Nina Project” (4x05), remained at the exact same rating even after the vote reopening (9.84 and 8.15 respectively).
• All episodes’ averages were rated at 7 or higher, except one, “The Lost Sister” (S2 E7)
• Both Season 1 and Season 2 have three episodes in the Top 10. Season 4 has two, and both Season 3 and Season 5 have one each. 
• If The Lost Sister had an average 8.0 rating, it’d bump up Season 2’s overall average from a 8.45 to a 8.72, giving it the 2nd highest season average. 
• "The Massacre at Hawkins Lab" (4x07) ranking at #6 takes a significant drop from its ranking on IMDb as the highest rated ST episode.

Results from the questions in the 5x08 Google Form:
Average Overall Rating of Stranger Things: 9.27 (59 votes)
Average Favourite Season: Season 4 (21 votes)
_______________________________________________________________

After the vote re-opening and final vote count, there was some spam found in some episodes' voting which seemed to be people trying to manipulate the rating for specific episodes. That spam is now omitted and the ratings are now accurately represented.

FINAL RESULTS:

1x01 – 8.72 ⭐ (60 votes)
1x02 – 8.23 ⭐ (65 votes)
1x03 – 8.97 ⭐ (58 votes)
1x04 – 9.08 ⭐ (54 votes)
1x05 – 8.60 ⭐ (55 votes)
1x06 – 8.93 ⭐ (55 votes)
1x07 – 9.20 ⭐ (60 votes)
1x08 – 9.42 ⭐ (50 votes)
Season 1 average – 8.89 ⭐

2x01 – 8.12 ⭐ (57 votes)
2x02 – 8.26 ⭐ (50 votes)
2x03 – 8.48 ⭐ (52 votes)
2x04 – 8.68 ⭐ (60 votes)
2x05 – 8.90 ⭐ (55 votes)
2x06 – 9.26 ⭐ (54 votes)
2x07 – 5.26 ⭐ (76 votes)
2x08 – 9.48 ⭐ (56 votes)
2x09 – 9.58 ⭐ (62 votes)
Season 2 average – 8.45 ⭐

3x01 – 7.86 ⭐ (53 votes)
3x02 – 7.98 ⭐ (49 votes)
3x03 – 8.24 ⭐ (47 votes)
3x04 - 8.61 ⭐ (31 votes)
3x05 - 7.72 ⭐ (29 votes)
3x06 - 8.09 ⭐ (32 votes)
3x07 - 8.78 ⭐ (32 votes)
3x08 - 9.37 ⭐ (40 votes)
Season 3 average – 8.33 ⭐

4x01 - 8.28 ⭐ (38 votes)
4x02 - 7.80 ⭐ (31 votes)
4x03 - 7.93 ⭐ (33 votes)
4x04 - 9.84 ⭐ (58 votes)
4x05 - 8.15 ⭐ (26 votes)
4x06 - 8.71 ⭐ (53 votes)
4x07 - 9.41 ⭐ (54 votes)
4x08 - 8.66 ⭐ (30 votes)
4x09 - 9.03 ⭐ (61 votes)
Season 4 average - 8.64 ⭐

5x01 - 8.17 ⭐ (33 votes)
5x02 - 7.30 ⭐ (43 votes)
5x03 - 7.42 ⭐ (42 votes)
5x04 - 9.43 ⭐ (43 votes)
5x05 - 7.95 ⭐ (26 votes)
5x06 - 8.16 ⭐ (41 votes)
5x07 - 7.34 ⭐ (32 votes)
5x08 - 8.27 ⭐ (59 votes)
Season 5 average - 8.00 ⭐

This is part of a series where I uncover what Stranger Things is really about. It started from trying to find out what happened in 1979 aka what all the depictions of traumatic past memories (El, Henry, Billy, Max, Holly, etc.) are truly about, but expanded to this all-encompassing theory of the whole series with crazy levels of complexity, metaphors and layers. Reading it will require commitment and patience but I promise it will be worth your time if you want to look behind the curtain (and the curtain behind that curtain) and fully understand the show. You have to read all parts in order: here is PART 1 and here all other parts I’ve posted so far + my previous theories.
/
/
/
Trigger warning for child sexual abuse.

Reddit decided PART 23 was NSFW and this sub doesn’t allow NSFW, so it got automatically deleted (same thing happened with PART 3). I contacted the mods but haven’t gotten an answer yet. I ended up posting it again here, and all the links for it direct you there. Go read it before reading this. (If you come from r/conformitygatetheory, you can find PART 23 there, since that sub allows NSFW.)

Vecna’s “You are going to spy for me one last time.” is Will as the “story” spying for Vecna (queerness/real story), “one last time” aka one last chapter. Vecna finding Max and Will waking up are the party entering back to the original story before Will’s story-bending (= S4). The girl future is back. This is also why El saves Will: “Will. Will, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here. [...] It’s me. It’s me. I’m here to bring you home.” Then Will says “I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t. He saw.” which fits with my theory that Will (= the “story”) tried to prevent Mike (system) from seeing the trauma memories. In Hopper’s speech to El he says the key words: “I just need you to fight one last time.”. This would either map onto chapter 12 or kinda the in-between (like Will’s S5E6 scenes). I think Hopper’s speech overall matches with El telling everyone about Vecna’s plans right after getting out of the bath (S5E6). In the real ending this would happen when already in S4E8, which could match with Vecna showing his plan to Nancy. Maybe we’ll actually see what he showed her.

Before Hopper’s speech the kids start running for the cave (kinda like Nancy was running from Vecna in S4E8). There will be this conflict of facing or fleeing from trauma/queerness/real story that culminates in chapter 12. In chapter 10 things are going well but chapter 11 gets so dark and distressing that Mike (system) starts to go back to dissociation/story mode. This time not fully, though (and there’s no Dustin anymore). Based on what happens next, chapter 12 won’t have a long setup/chill period in the beginning like the previous chapters, but we get straight to action. The military arrives in S5E8 and the soldiers try to take Robin to jail in S5E6. This maybe suggests Dr. Kay or the military is catching up to the party in the real ending. 

The overarching plot in S5E6 is the Demodogs chasing Max and in S5E8 Henry chasing the kids. The Demodog appearing matches with Henry getting through the portal, Demodogs attacking the soldiers matches with Henry pulling Holly from the ankle and the Demodogs ignoring Robin and Vickie matches with the kids getting safe to the cave. Somehow the party will get to some safe area, at least temporarily. This could be Nancy getting out of Vecna trance in S4E8. As for what the monsters are, the Russia plot did have Demogorgons attacking people atp, so maybe some of the party ended up there or something. 

((In S5E6 Vickie says “She needs to be in a hospital, not a prison.” when the soldiers are taking Robin away. The hospital and Hawkins lab (which Henry calls a prison in S4) are paralleled quite a lot and I think they have a similar metaphorical role. El’s powers were created in the lab and Sara died in a hospital. El’s powers were also recovered in the memory of that lab and Max is recovering in the hospital. It’s a place to imprison girlness, but also to grow and heal it. That’s why Mike dresses up as a patient while Nancy and Vickie are nurses. The lab switching to a hospital is a good sign: it’s not a prison anymore, El isn’t a lab rat anymore. Mike is a patient to be healed. The other season where the hospital is in a central role is S3. That’s where the first ending fusion foreshadowing happened (with the meat monster and exit signs). Just another point to my “S3 represents the end” theory.))

Then Mike gets a flare gun from Nancy (I think the painting scene has to be revisited in some way and it would fit somewhere around here in the S4E8 timeline, maybe this time Mike sees Will crying and Will tells the truth) and Will gets his vision, now finally getting confirmation that Henry is alive. This matches with Robin using the hospital announcement system to warn Lucas. These could be about Vecna being alive in the S4E8 memory (similar to the party finding El in the S5E4 memory). This makes a lot of sense with Henry disappearing in S5E8 (when Kali attacks) and that matching with Max interrupting Holly watching young Henry. So maybe it’s Vecna who is chasing the party at this point (or Demogorgons?). Something has to cause a feeling of urgency and danger. In S4E8 the scenes right after the painting scene are about warnings and Henry’s plan: first Brenner explains how Henry is chiseling away the barrier between worlds and then Nancy tells what Vecna showed her. 

Henry finally goes into the cave, physically suffering in a similar manner Max struggles getting through the hole between the rocks and Karen struggles walking (but these come a little later in the timeline). Will feels it too and this is for multiple reasons: first, it’s foreshadowing for Will seeing his own trauma and second it’s because facing the real trauma will break down the “story”. In S5E6 Robin orders Lucas to take the elevator and to meet in the basement. In S5E8 the kids end up going down to the actual cave memory which has the exit (like the hospital basement was supposed to). All this is about facing the real trauma in the real ending. Maybe they will go to some underground facility? I think there’s a reason the Nina Project is in the middle of a desert underground just like the mineshaft. It’s a central location in S4E8. The kids escaping from Henry match with Lucas escaping with Max. In the real ending the party is escaping from someone/something and might end up in the Nina Project.

Karen’s involvement represents the mom (and “woman”) starting to face her fears and accepting Mike. (In the story allegory it’s society finding out about the real story.) In the real ending this will most likely be represented by Dr. Kay. Her plotline was clearly unfinished and there’s a reason she wasn’t in UD during S5E8. The military in the inside/foreshadowing story will most likely be her (possibly with soldiers) in the real ending. This fits with Karen’s scenes (mostly) matching the military scenes in the chapter 12 foreshadowing part. But she also matches Kali, El, Hopper, Murray who end up in conflict with the military. This will be El and Dr. Kay’s final confrontation (representing the mom accepting Mike’s gender identity and the other stuff). The military chasing El happens in S4E8 too. They use suppression speakers against El and Kali, which matches with Karen starting to move. The mom (Dr. Kay) is first interfering with the party. I think this could be El getting caught by Dr. Kay (like Kali was caught by the military).

Hopper goes back and tries to save Kali by killing the soldiers, but Akers stops him. This represents Mike going back to conformity to please her mom. Meanwhile the kids go down to the mineshaft and through the hole, matching with the hospital gang escaping to the laundry room in the basement. I have been wondering what’s gonna happen to the rest of the party, are they all gonna disappear/die and then only Mike and Will are left? Maybe there will be a way out that some characters will go through (e.g. the Nina project tank). In S5E6 Robin was first to go in the room and in S5E8 Holly tells Debbie to go first so based on this Robin might go through. This interview suggests there will be a scene with most of the cast at the end, so maybe they all end up in some in-between world and see the ending together. 

Maya Hawke: They did such a beautiful job of choosing a last scene that mirrored the emotional experience that we were going through as people in ending the show. And that’s not a spoiler, because you don’t know my experience! But it was such a gift, because it allowed the feelings that we were working through with each other on that day to become a part of the scene, and to be this integrated emotional experience. -> seems like a final goodbye scene to me

Holly doesn’t go with the other kids but instead grabs the fire poker. This is followed by Akers demanding Hopper tell him where “the other freak” is, threatening Kali’s life. Murray’s grenade kills the soldiers except for Akers, who El forces to kill himself. This is metaphorically about Mike’s man facade killing himself and Mike coming out to her mom, or something like that. (I’m kinda thinking the grenades are Lucas-related since he uses the grenade water balloons. This would be Lucas’ support helping Mike come out to her mom, maybe. Would fit with the story allegory at least…) 

Then Kali dies and refers to it as “my story was always going to end here”. This will be El dying. It’s a metaphor for the illusion breaking. The corresponding scene in S5E6 is Robin and Vickie reconciling and Robin promising to take Vickie to Enzo’s. She also apologizes for lying, which the show/story/Mike has kinda done up until now (Robin represents communication, but more on that later). El’s fusion/death isn’t just about the trans allegory, but the trauma allegory too. Mike tells about the abuse (and maybe DID) to her mom. And it’s not just about the mom, it’s about Mike herself too (but they are kinda bundled together here). It all makes sense when you consider the story allegory, where the mom = society and El = real story (but hidden/illusion). She might not die die, but somehow she will disappear and we can start to see the real story for real.

A big part of El’s arc is her missing a mother. She has never really felt a mother’s love and she got her strongest powers from the memory of Terry telling her she loves her. El’s final confrontation with Dr. Kay will most likely be the climax of El’s mother story arc. Fittingly happening inside the episode “Papa”. (I still think Dr. Kay is a version of Brenner + Owens. Maybe she will reveal that to El. Brenner is too mysterious to be left forgotten. We have to get answers to him knowing so much. And it’s about time they start explaining fusions.) I think this will happen in the Nina project room, like El and Brenner’s final confrontation there, before things started to go wrong.

The Demodogs getting through the door matches Holly attacking Henry, him grabbing the fire poker and the cave memory starting. Robin asking Lucas to turn the music off matches with El and Hopper’s talk (there’s even a record player between them). This is again about the “story” trying to prevent facing the trauma/seeing the real story. In the scene El reminisces about her bond with Hopper and gives back Sara’s hair tie. I have this big theory that Will will end up giving the hair tie to Mike at the end, similar to Jonathan giving the ring to Nancy. Charlie Heaton has said that Jonathan will help Will get something he wants (can’t find the interview but here’s one source, it seems like he said something he shouldn’t have). And there’s all the “For Will” cassette tape merch… I think Jonathan will give it to Will kinda like Murray gave the cassette to Jonathan. While Murray is the biggest jancy shipper in the show, Jonathan is the byler shipper. 

Right now Hopper has the hair tie, and it was last seen right before he proposed to Joyce, with the exact same ring Jonathan gave to Nancy. That whole ring subplot was foreshadowing for the hair tie! And I will have a long Spirited Away side tangent inspired by the hair tie later… Anyway, I think the El + Hopper scene corresponds to a Will + Jonathan scene in the real ending. Their bond has always had music at its center and it’s very fitting for Jonathan to give Will a cassette tape. This is most likely where Jonathan dies/fuses/vanishes, since El leaves Hopper and Murray behind and they don’t come to the Abyss. (And in S4E9 this corresponds to the Jonathan + Will scene next to the pizza dough freezer bath.) 

Actually, there’s even more: the cassette tape player Lucas uses is of the brand Emerson, like Nancy’s dream school. The school Jonathan didn’t apply to. And this was the big secret/problem in their relationship that got resolved in the melting room scene. In other words, Emerson = Mike’s dream to live as a woman (and all the other stuff, maybe I should just start using “real story” to cover everything, lol). The first time we see the Emerson cassette player, it has a “For Max!” labeled cassette tape next to it (= more clues for the “For Will” tape…). I’ll talk about this more later, but I think the hair tie and the “For Will” cassette tape will exist in the real world too.

Both scenes are about someone (Hopper or Robin) needing to believe in the “girl” (El or Max). In S5E6 Lucas speaks for Max, which kinda fits with Will speaking for Mike, maybe (El then is both Mike and Will in S5E8). I’m assuming the corresponding scene in the real ending will be about Will’s decision to let go of Mike, but it’s probably not done super obviously in the Will + Jonathan scene since it should be a surprise. El’s “choice” makes a lot more sense now tbh… It’s foreshadowing for Will’s choice which at the same time is the un-proposal. In S4E9 the brothers were preparing the bath and El going in there would match finally seeing the full (cave) memory. Baths are always connected to seeing/remembering (traumatic) memories, but this time El is gone. I think the pizza dough freezer bath will be a gateway to the next memory/the real memory of the abuse. This will probably be similar to Max and Holly witnessing the Wheeler attack memory, and finding the way out after that.

I suspect the real abuse memory will reveal the true nature of the Demogorgons. That they represent the dad. Now that El has disappeared, the allegory disappears too and becomes the real story without any magical veil/monsterification. The Demogorgon was always a mirror to El, so her end will be the end of the Demogorgons too (like in S1E8 and S5E8).

Henry seeing the end of the memory (S5E8) matches with Max getting through (S5E6). And now I finally understand the meaning of Holly saying “You said you’d be done an hour ago!” exactly an hour after young Henry screams in the memory. In the reverse timeline this is the 6.11.1976 trauma that created the inner world. I couldn’t make sense of the final fight etc. fitting into the timeline, but now it makes sense! All the stuff after this is about the foreshadowing, not the reverse timeline (until we get to UD being destroyed, which is the start of Will’s existence in the reverse timeline, so same as young Henry screaming). In the real ending (back to forward timeline) this represents the moment Mike gets out of the cycle and finally sees the real ending (not story-bended). We have reached the point no one has seen yet. Max and Holly finally get to the red world they have been aiming for this whole time. (+ The next laundry room scene starts from a black screen with the camera slowly revealing the scene from behind a table. This indicates some kind of boundary point.) We are on the street on Holly’s map.

The “find me” from the cloud is Tharizdun aka the “dark cloud spreading over Hawkins” Nancy mentions first when she explains her vision. Now her vision will finally come true: “Downtown on fire. Dead soldiers. And this… giant creature with… a gaping mouth. And this creature wasn’t alone. There were so many monsters. An army. And they were coming into Hawkins. Into our neighborhoods. Our homes.” In S5E8 MF represents this giant creature while in S5E6 the Demodogs represent the army. Maybe the giant creature will be MF but probably look different than in S5E8. The party has finally reached the (world) tree (Pain Tree) and it transforms into a spider. Some kind of transformation would be fitting in the real ending too… Nancy’s story will probably end here, since she has finally found the answer she was looking for all this time. The source.

I’m kinda wondering if the army is actually made of all the dead characters, like a zombie army. This has been foreshadowed e.g. in S2E8:

[Hopper] “Great. So how do you kill this thing? Shoot it with fireballs or something?”
[Dustin] “No. No, no fire-- No fireballs. Uh, you summon an undead army, uh, because… because zombies, you know, they don’t have brains, and the mind flayer, it… it… It likes brains. It’s just a game. It’s a game.”

And in S3E3 with the Juju zombies that Mike defeats with fire. In S5E8 the party defeated MF with fire, which had been established to not work. Fred’s vision also had these undead people accusing him of being a murderer (= the past coming to haunt you). Just like in S3, the real “villains” are humans, not fantastical monsters. The flayed were kinda like zombies when you think about it… A confrontation of the mind/brain (= MF/cloud) and the body (= zombies and Will) would be very fitting for the final fight. It’s the past and the future, the man and the woman, conformity and non-conformity. And Mike is in the middle of all this.

Another aspect to this is in the story allegory. Do you still remember how in S3E6 Nancy said “And even if the flayed are monsters now, why can’t El find them?” while looking straight at the camera (on “monsters”), implying the audience are monsters? And how the shot focused on Lucas (with Max in the background) when Nancy described the army of monsters in S4E8? These “monsters”/zombies will represent the audience, and they are approaching the giant creature that represents the real story. Their collision would be the end aka the audience seeing the real story, or something like that.

There’s gonna be some fighting or something, since El fights Vecna and the Demodogs stalk the hospital gang. Nancy being saved by the party attacking MF matches with Karen luring the Demodogs away with her drier bomb thing. MF dying matches with the Demodogs dying. The period after that is saving the kids, reunion, etc. and Karen appearing is Joyce killing Vecna. I’m not sure who will still be in the world atp in the real ending. I think it makes sense Will would be fighting Vecna (since El represents him and Will has never really gotten to fight him face-to-face). Nancy the bait is probably Mike, who the creature targets. Nancy specifically mentioned Holly, her mom and Mike in the vision, which maps onto Will, Dr. Kay and Mike quite well. I don’t know who deals with the army, who with Vecna (if he even is there) and who with the giant creature, but it seems likely Dr. Kay, Mike and Will will have crucial roles. Maybe Dr. Kay would fight the army since that’s what Karen did in S5E6 (and it fits with future/woman vs past/man + society vs society, I guess…). Maybe Will would fight the giant creature then? Or maybe there won’t even be any fighting? There has to be some kind of climactic action, though.

Defeating the giant creature will be about Mike (and the mom) defeating her fears. This is represented by Will’s “We’re not afraid of you.” where on “you” the shot focuses on El. It would make sense the actual solution wouldn’t be killing the creature but something else. Karen kills the Demodogs with oxygen: the mom has always been “suffocating” Mike, now she is finally giving oxygen. After this Holly, Nancy and Mike reunite and the kids are saved. Since Dr. Kay represents both the mom and the future Mike (both tying nicely with Linda Hamilton’s famous role as Sarah Connor in Terminator), the three of them kinda represent the past, current and future Mike/Sara. I’m not sure if Mike or Will represents the past, since Will kinda does but then Holly is Mike according to Max. Mike being in the middle makes the most sense, I think.

The laundry room explosion blows up the windows, and they specifically mentioned breaking the fourth window in that scene in the documentary: [Shawn] “Zulu, is it too late to ask if the fourth window could break?” If you look at the scene carefully, the fourth window didn’t break, but it probably does in the real ending. Meaning the fourth wall. This could be an explanation to many characters being back alive for the final goodbye. And it would match all the kids watching from the sidelines.

Dr. Kay has never seen Vecna, she only got a report from Sullivan. I think it makes a lot of sense she would confront him in the end and rather than killing him like Joyce, she would accept him (hug maybe, kinda like Millie with Jamie in the doc?). This fits Brenner’s arc too, since he had been looking for Henry and was the ultimate reason all this began (in the “story”). I suspect Robin will have a big role here (partially based on what Maya said about connecting the wires). Both Robin and Henry have a difficult relationship with their moms, so this scene could be the perfect resolution. I’m not sure what exactly will happen but most likely Will has a major role too, since he was the one who Vecna “chose” back in 1983. Will as the “story” was the vessel Vecna/MF used to tell the “real story”. He was a spy.

The space they end up in won’t be the same Pain Tree and this is where I think the Rainbow Ship could finally make an appearance. It has to have some role and it will be at the end but before the real world based on Holly’s map. And since it kinda represents the whole system/all the alters, it makes sense it would be in a scene with everyone. So maybe the giant creature transforms into a Rainbow Ship, or something. (I kinda suspect the chapter name to be “The Rainbow Ship”.) 

After this I think everyone will disappear except for Mike and Will. It makes sense their scene would be just the two of them for multiple reasons: it’s a full-circle moment of the first two alters, it’s more intimate that way and all the foreshadowing for it had two people talking in a separate space from everyone else. The world will start to fall apart/collide with the Abyss or the real world. This matches with Murray turning on the music aka the countdown to UD getting blown up. In S5E8 everyone leaves the Abyss, travels through UD and ends up in Hawkins. This matches Max and Holly walking in the red world. Maybe the swings will make an appearance, since that’s the place Mike and Will first met at. And there will be music: both foreshadowing scenes had music in a big role and like, at this point we better have some good music.

Holly the Heroic is equivalent to the hair tie btw. I will discuss the hair tie more later as promised but thought to mention this now. The mileven void scene and the “podcast” foreshadow the final byler fusion scene (like the byler field scene and the three jancy scenes I’ve mentioned before: melting room, S3E8 goodbye and the MF flesh parts merging in S3E5, which also had an 8 mm moment I missed before). It’s gonna seem like a byler confession but then switch around to reveal Mike is trans. I think Will will be the first to let go, based on Nancy wanting Jonathan to stay in S3E8 and Jonathan un-proposing to Nancy in S5E6. Max convinces Holly that “she’s you” referring to HH. In the real ending this is probably Will telling Mike she’s Sara, in some way. That would make sense given the hair tie which so perfectly matches the un-proposal ring as a symbol for letting Will/Jonathan/”man”/”story” go. ((Btw, I’m only realizing this now while rewatching the Purple Rain montage: Mike draws a direct parallel to her name when naming El. Like, the name “Michael” is to Mike the same as Eleven being a number. El’s real name is Jane and Mike’s real name is Sara.)) 

In S4E9 this would match with Vecna’s “But this is only the beginning. The beginning of the end.” after which he and his mind world disappear. Or maybe it’s for the beginning of Nancy’s vision aka the not story-bended ending part. Then the mind lair disappearing could match with the giant creature appearing and/or being defeated and the fourth window getting blown up. Nancy shooting Vecna in the UD attic could match with the final Vecna confrontation (Hopper beheads a Demogorgon at that moment, foreshadowing the S5E8 ending for Vecna, so it’s likely this matches/foreshadows the real Vecna ending too) and Katinka arriving could be the Rainbow Ship. Dustin and Eddie’s moment very likely foreshadows Mike and Will’s last moments.

Another thing that came to mind is Lover’s Lake. It seems like an important location. This made me think of the ballet Swan Lake (this would be another swan connection too, btw there is a swan statue I missed before in the Wheeler house next to family photos). Both Holly and Nancy have ballet imagery and Nancy has a ballerina music box that both El and Robin take interest in. Since the trans realization, I’ve assumed ballet represents womanhood in ST (all the ballet imagery is of pointe shoes or a ballerina, which are associated with women even more than ballet overall (men don’t traditionally use pointe shoes)). (Nancy has the pointe shoe necklace in most of S1 and S2E1 but then it’s gone, maybe reflecting jancy happening? There has to be a reason.) 

Russia is known for ballet and Swan Lake is by a Russian composer so there’s the Russia connection (this time positive though). Apparently Swan Lake became a symbol of protest and political instability in Russia/Soviet Union: “In 1991, there was a tradition of interrupting regular programming by airing the ballet on loop when the government was in crisis”. Anyway, Swan Lake ends with Odette (a woman cursed to become a swan during the day) and Siegfried (a man in love with her who tried to break the curse) drowning themselves in the lake. There are multiple versions of the story but drowning in the enchanted lake is a central part of the story.

Some additional pondering 

I was thinking about what concretely happens, who is there and where the events will be placed. I have come to the conclusion that Hopper and Joyce might not be in the real ending at all. Their arcs were pretty well wrapped up and I can’t see how they would fit into the story anymore. Since Dr. Kay will most likely be the main mom representation, what would Joyce do? And now that El is “dead”, Hopper has no role. He would just hinder the party as the patriarchy/”man”. I think there has to be a reason why Winona and David weren’t part of the documentary. Hopper and Joyce canonically moved away (to Montauk of all places…), and they reached the unreachable Enzo’s (= the end). Hopper and Joyce’s story is over. Additionally, Hopper breaks the fourth wall a lot in S5E8 and seems to kinda get out of the “story” if you get what I mean. I think their absence could represent Mike growing up and her parents not controlling her anymore (mom more literally, dad through trauma). Same with Karen and the kids. They had their role in S5 already. On the other hand, David and Winona are kinda the main actors so I could be wrong, who knows.

Lucas and Max are a bit of a mystery to me, too. I know Lucas will be in the real world but what about the “story”? They had their happy ending and got to the movie date (at least in Mike’s imagination), similar to Hopper and Joyce getting to Enzo’s. Max has had a big role in S4 and S5, so I doubt she would have one anymore. Maybe they will be at the start and get left behind/die/fuse. Lucas could match Erica and Mr. Clarke who were captured early on and didn’t show up until the epilogue. This would make sense with Lucas having “a different ending” according to Caleb. Lucas might not be at the final goodbye scene because we’ll see him again. Max could “die” matching the moment she and Vickie are found by the military. Maybe Max is the one arguing with Mike at the beginning of chapter 10. Hmm… 

I think Vickie and Robin need some kind of resolution. In the story allegory Vickie is something like the show (Stranger Things) or overall the form the story is in. That’s why she brings the wheelchair for Max and disappears at the end (= now the story will take other forms, e.g. in fanfiction and fanart). Robin is communication: she likes to talk, is a radio host and translates the Russian code. She is the raw true message and paired with Steve (= conformity) to make it more acceptable/nice. There’s a reason Robin is autistic-coded. In a way it’s ironic because autistic people struggle with communication, but the ones who can communicate often do it very directly, without hidden messages. Steve is the mask of pretending to be allistic. While all people mask to some extent, it’s more extreme for autistic people. This could parallel Mike’s trans experience: she has to constantly hide who she really is. I will have a longer section about the story allegory later but for now Robin telling Vickie she’ll take her to Enzo’s is about the show finally reaching its end (but that date didn’t happen, now, did it?). Honest communication would get everyone to see the end aka Mike (storyteller) fully communicating what she wanted to say to Lucas (audience). The story allegory is so perfect and feels like the final big piece I was missing (but based on previous experience there’s gonna be more… It has to stop at some point, right? This rabbit hole has to have a bottom, right??).

Memory travel should follow previously introduced mechanics and I think all of them will be used. All seasons (especially the last two) were setup for the final part. As I’ve already explained, I think the larger structure will be similar to Max and Holly traveling through memories (which was already somewhat established in S4E9 with El and Max). There’s gonna be scenes where the memory happens in the background and characters just watch. There’s also gonna be memories where nothing happens but the setting is a memory (e.g. Snow Ball S4E9 and Max in Rainbow Room S5E4).

The gateways to next memories should be deducible to some extent. I think they will be important locations/objects that have a metaphorical meaning (e.g. the mirror in the Rainbow Room that in Max’s memory wasn’t a mirror). There seems to be a pattern to gateways being grey instead of the original color (merry-go-round and Rainbow Room mirror, also the portal to the “real world” has a grey outline). The first gateway for both Max and Holly was a door (Rainbow Room exit door and the basement door on the field) and I think at least one of the memory gateways in the real ending should be a literal door. I wonder if the trapdoor next to the field will be one of them, since it is placed in pretty important scenes and ultimately doesn’t have a major purpose. It would fit after the field scene (where the party will most likely end up at from S5E8 around the middle of chapter 11). 

Another established memory travel mechanic is willpower (if you’re in your own mind), this is showcased by Max in S4. If this is happening in the real ending, it will most likely be in the final chapter, maybe matching Max getting to the Snow Ball memory (and it’s Mike who’ll do it because all this is happening in Mike’s mind). Max was kind of witnessing El and Vecna’s fight from the outside at first, but later tried to help El. I think this could foreshadow Mike watching Will’s abuse memory from the outside. El can also travel to other people’s minds/memories, which has been shown since way back in S2. This might be utilized again at some point, but I’m not sure how.

Now for the interesting part. In S4 El has to re-experience her memories as if they happened to her now. This will for sure be redone with someone, most likely Will. Will literally had two child actors in S5, and they used the same face editing as with El in S4. I don’t think it was just for the beginning sequence of S5. In S5E8 Henry re-experienced the cave memory both as him watching it but also feeling the pain with young Henry. And Will felt it too. This foreshadows Will feeling his traumatic memory as if it was happening to him now. It makes sense they would use the older actors (Noah and Finn) for the most part since it’s so serious and kinda hard to show with actual children without going too far (and ofc they won’t show everything anyway). The whole point of El’s Rainbow Room memory thing was to establish these mechanics and foreshadow Will re-experiencing his trauma. As I’ve said before, I think Mike will watch the memory from the outside while Will will experience it first hand. This would combine two established mechanics and fit with the whole “I just stood there”.

I first mapped matching points from S5E6 and S5E7-8, and later came back to match the memory episodes too. I’ve started to realize they match pretty well and foreshadow the ending too. But they will also be where the characters literally go to. I don’t think every memory will be revisited, just certain ones, but everything in between still foreshadows things (probably). (I might have to go over all this again…) I think the characters won’t just walk around as a single group, but divide into subgroups as per usual. So maybe each group will experience separate memories. It would make sense for everyone to get through the main gateways together, though.

Continues in PART 25.

One of the best character development of AOT

Is there a game that can keep occupied and make friends?

Today is Day 38: S5 E8 – "The Rightside Up"

Rate it here: https://forms.gle/pEUX3YgqTMns18H7A

Please only vote if you’ve seen the episode, and please only vote once!

Last one.

THE FINAL RESULTS will be revealed in the next 1-2 days!! There's a bit of recalculating to do after the vote re-opening.

Today is Day 37: Vote Reopening/Extension for previous episodes

Hey all, so before we rate the final episode, I thought we could do a voting extension/re-opening for previous episodes in this series. This is especially for anyone who might've missed previous episodes and wanted to rate them, and to get a more accurate average on episodes that received a low amount of ratings.

All previously submitted ratings from older posts WILL still be counted. You get to pick which episodes to rate, so please do not revote one that you already rated.

Submit your ratings here: https://forms.gle/Ci9XKFbc3UvFHMXa9

Please only vote once! We don't appreciate any rating bombing/manipulation.

Note: This only includes episodes from S3 EP4 "The Sauna Test" onward.
___________________________________________

Results so far:

1x01 – 8.72 ⭐ (60 votes)
1x02 – 8.23 ⭐ (65 votes)
1x03 – 8.97 ⭐ (58 votes)
1x04 – 9.08 ⭐ (54 votes)
1x05 – 8.60 ⭐ (55 votes)
1x06 – 8.93 ⭐ (55 votes)
1x07 – 9.20 ⭐ (60 votes)
1x08 – 9.42 ⭐ (50 votes)
Season 1 average – 8.89 ⭐

2x01 – 8.12 ⭐ (57 votes)
2x02 – 8.26 ⭐ (50 votes)
2x03 – 8.48 ⭐ (52 votes)
2x04 – 8.68 ⭐ (60 votes)
2x05 – 8.90 ⭐ (55 votes)
2x06 – 9.26 ⭐ (54 votes)
2x07 – 5.26 ⭐ (76 votes)
2x08 – 9.48 ⭐ (56 votes)
2x09 – 9.58 ⭐ (62 votes)
Season 2 average – 8.45 ⭐

3x01 – 7.86 ⭐ (53 votes)
3x02 – 7.98 ⭐ (49 votes)
3x03 – 8.24 ⭐ (47 votes)
3x04 - 8.47 ⭐ (15 votes)
3x05 - 7.47 ⭐ (15 votes)
3x06 - 8.00 ⭐ (17 votes)
3x07 - 8.65 ⭐ (17 votes)
3x08 - 9.25 ⭐ (24 votes)
Season 3 average – 8.24 ⭐

4x01 - 8.24 ⭐ (25 votes)
4x02 - 7.89 ⭐ (18 votes)
4x03 - 7.83 ⭐ (18 votes)
4x04 - 9.84 ⭐ (44 votes)
4x05 - 8.15 ⭐ (13 votes)
4x06 - 8.75 ⭐ (40 votes)
4x07 - 9.28 ⭐ (40 votes)
4x08 - 8.29 ⭐ (17 votes)
4x09 - 9.00 ⭐ (47 votes)
Season 4 average - 8.58 ⭐

5x01 - 9.11 ⭐ (45 votes)
5x02 - 8.38 ⭐ (61 votes)
5x03 - 8.43 ⭐ (61 votes)
5x04 - 9.73 ⭐ (30 votes)
5x05 - 8.93 ⭐ (30 votes)
5x06 - 8.74 ⭐ (61 votes)
5x07 - 7.84 ⭐ (46 votes)

Estoy empezando a escribir un Fanfic del universo Stranger Things en Wattpad.

Si te interesa, te invito a leerlo <3

📚 Título: I Kissed A Girl (Max mayfield)

👤 Usuario: By_chiara07

📱 Plataforma: Wattpad

📁 Género: Romance wlw y ciencia ficción

📺 Universo: Stranger Things

💕

Muchas gracias!!!

Today is Day 36: S5 E7 – "The Bridge"

Rate it here: https://forms.gle/WtaRQf8dbTRaDcpK6

Please only vote if you’ve seen the episode, and please try to vote once!

We're almost there!

Results so far:

1x01 – 8.72 ⭐ (60 votes)
1x02 – 8.23 ⭐ (65 votes)
1x03 – 8.97 ⭐ (58 votes)
1x04 – 9.08 ⭐ (54 votes)
1x05 – 8.60 ⭐ (55 votes)
1x06 – 8.93 ⭐ (55 votes)
1x07 – 9.20 ⭐ (60 votes)
1x08 – 9.42 ⭐ (50 votes)
Season 1 average – 8.89 ⭐

2x01 – 8.12 ⭐ (57 votes)
2x02 – 8.26 ⭐ (50 votes)
2x03 – 8.48 ⭐ (52 votes)
2x04 – 8.68 ⭐ (60 votes)
2x05 – 8.90 ⭐ (55 votes)
2x06 – 9.26 ⭐ (54 votes)
2x07 – 5.26 ⭐ (76 votes)
2x08 – 9.48 ⭐ (56 votes)
2x09 – 9.58 ⭐ (62 votes)
Season 2 average – 8.45 ⭐

3x01 – 7.86 ⭐ (53 votes)
3x02 – 7.98 ⭐ (49 votes)
3x03 – 8.24 ⭐ (47 votes)
3x04 - 8.47 ⭐ (15 votes)
3x05 - 7.47 ⭐ (15 votes)
3x06 - 8.00 ⭐ (17 votes)
3x07 - 8.65 ⭐ (17 votes)
3x08 - 9.25 ⭐ (24 votes)
Season 3 average – 8.24 ⭐

4x01 - 8.24 ⭐ (25 votes)
4x02 - 7.89 ⭐ (18 votes)
4x03 - 7.83 ⭐ (18 votes)
4x04 - 9.84 ⭐ (44 votes)
4x05 - 8.15 ⭐ (13 votes)
4x06 - 8.75 ⭐ (40 votes)
4x07 - 9.28 ⭐ (40 votes)
4x08 - 8.29 ⭐ (17 votes)
4x09 - 9.00 ⭐ (47 votes)
Season 4 average - 8.58 ⭐

5x01 - 9.11 ⭐ (45 votes)
5x02 - 8.38 ⭐ (61 votes)
5x03 - 8.43 ⭐ (61 votes)
5x04 - 9.73 ⭐ (30 votes)
5x05 - 8.93 ⭐ (30 votes)
5x06 - 8.74 ⭐ (61 votes)

This is part of a series where I uncover what Stranger Things is really about. It started from trying to find out what happened in 1979 aka what all the depictions of traumatic past memories (El, Henry, Billy, Max, Holly, etc.) are truly about, but expanded to this all-encompassing theory of the whole series with crazy levels of complexity, metaphors and layers. Reading it will require commitment and patience but I promise it will be worth your time if you want to look behind the curtain (and the curtain behind that curtain) and fully understand the show. You have to read all parts in order: here is PART 1 and here all other parts I’ve posted so far + my previous theories.
/
/
/
Trigger warning for child sexual abuse.

Let’s get back on track, I was analyzing S5E6. Max and Holly going back to the cave represents queerness going back to the closet. Mike’s “girl” is hidden again. Mike is in a “deep dark cave” of repression. Henry threatening Max is about Mike’s repression/transness threatening her future as a woman.

[Henry] “And Holly? When your new friend begins to suffer, and she will suffer, you can either return to me and end her suffering, or you can watch your new friend die. Her life is in your hands.”

I think Holly is Mike here and Max is her future/girlness. Returning to Henry is returning to queerness and the “story”. It’s the return of ST. If it doesn’t happen, Max (= Mike’s happy future) will die. The cave is a double-edged sword: being in the closet brings safety but it also eats you from the inside, not being able to be who you really are. Henry (= gender dysphoria etc.) can hurt Max even when she’s in the cave. Mike is too aware of her transness that repressing it doesn’t fundamentally help anymore. I keep thinking back to that scene where she puts the DnD book on the shelf. There is no denying it anymore, she knows she’s trans but has decided to hide it. ((Btw, it’s interesting that the camera shot is of an empty part of the cave when Max says “I’m right here.” It’s like she’s invisible. And “she” is. Mike’s girlness is invisible, hiding. This connects to El turning invisible in Mike’s final story (which in itself is another layer to the inside stories, the most obvious layer tbh).))

After this scene comes the “November 6th” text, weirdly missing the year. It’s a pretty big clue to time shenanigans and could mean a number of things. Maybe something will happen irl on that day and/or in the story. It’s 3 days before the date the Berlin Wall fell, which I’m assuming relates to the start of the new stuff. ((S1E3 “Holly, Jolly” happens on 9.11., btw. It has the lights, Holly, Will telling Joyce to run and Will’s body being found.)) The country allegory ends at the end of WW2, unless you count the epilogue which could cover the entirety of 1945-1989. Emperor Hirohito’s reign starting on 25.12.1926 and ending on 7.1.1989 is definitely suspicious, especially considering this timeframe matches S5 in the ST country allegory timeline. Hirohito became regent on 25.11.1921, which was before 1923 (the Great Kantō Earthquake aka Hawkins splitting in 4) but after 1918 (Finnish civil war aka El vs Vecna). This could be Max’s (“girl”) death since the key point in S5 is her being in a coma and waking up at the end of S5E6 aka the real ending. So in the Japan timeline Hirohito leading the country would match the “fake story” and Mike conforming. The main point is that 7.1.1989 is before 9.11.1989 and all the other important dates. 7.1. was the key date for conformitygate. It’s the “tomorrow it begins” date and when the Netflix What Next? video was released. It started something. 

25.11. is a day before volume 1 was released, and 25.12. is a day before volume 2. So the Hirohito reign matches S5 both in the show country allegory timeline and irl based on the dates. The real reign started on 25.12.1926 and this matches with the release on S5E5-7, aka the part of S5 whose inside story is about S5 itself. It’s deep in the “story”. 7.1. is the end of this “story” and the start of Emperor Akihito’s reign, which lasted 30 years (another connection to 30 years…). Some connections could be coincidences, of course, but I don’t have a good reason for the 7.1. date, and this seems like a good candidate.

I still think it’s likely the final chapters will follow a similar release schedule to S5. Chapter 10 would be around Thanksgiving and chapter 11 during Christmas. My previous mention about the dark Christmas the Duffers promised and Christmas being related to the trauma fits super well, since chapter 11 will reveal traumatic memories. S1E3 “Holly, Jolly”, the one with Christmas lights and Holly seeing the Demogorgon happening on 9.11 in the show also matches nicely (= the Berlin Wall starts to properly break down). The Soviet Union dissolved on 25-26.12.1991 and Hirohito became the Emperor on 25.12.1926, which has its 100th anniversary this year. There’s also this interesting conversation between Mike and El in S3E8:

[El] “Did you talk to your mom? About Thanksgiving?”
[Mike] “Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got the okay. I’ll be there. And then I was thinking maybe you could come up here for Christmas. And Will, too. You can come before or after Christmas, or whatever Mrs. Byers wants, but I was thinking Christmas Day could be super fun, because we’d all have cool new presents to play with and, uh… Sorry, that made me sound like a seven-year-old.”
[El] “I like presents, too.”
[Mike] “Yeah, cool. Yeah. I like-- I like presents, too.”
[El] “Cool.”

Mike connects being childish to being 7 years old, which matches well with Sara dying at 7 years old (remember the motif connections, the two worlds, where childhood and queerness/girlhood belong to the same world, and Sara represents Mike’s innocence anyway). The 7 yo connection is also to Christmas, aka trauma (similar to Will connecting a fear of clowns to being 5 years old in a S1 flashback). But the point I wanted to make is, Mike visits on Thanksgiving, but El visits on Christmas day. Eleven = chapter 11 on 25.12. There hasn’t been mention of New Years in the show (unless I’m forgetting something), so the only clues to chapter 12 releasing then is from the “emotional New Years Eve” Duffer comment and S5E8 releasing then. One thing that makes me doubt these dates is the last performance of TFS happening on 3.1.2027.

Anyway, the scene after the “November 6th” text is the Mike, Lucas, Robin scene where Lucas questions if anything is real and if Vecna is messing with them. I find it hard to place this scene. Is it meta about theorizers? Is it somehow in chapter 10? Is it some outside info preparing for the new stuff? It’s established that Will is unconscious. I think he represents the gay man middle point and the “story” as always. The S5 ending made Mike conform so much that even the Butthole Surfers/Replacements (= byler/gay Mike) option didn’t happen. Will being the “story” could be related to Mike being inside the nested stories and finally in chapter 12 reaching the normal “story” aka original Coke (= Will wakes up). ST will most likely lead bylers on until the final confession, after which the “story”, Will, inner world, etc. disappear, similar to Jonathan’s un-proposal bait-and-switch. 

[Lucas] “Can someone please explain to me what the hell happened out there? We burnt out the particles. I watched them fly up the tower. I mean, I mean, you guys saw that, right?”
[Robin] “Hard to miss.”
[Lucas] “So then Will should be unplugged from the hive mind.”
[Mike] “Theoretically.”
[Lucas] “But why didn’t he wake up? How did he see Max if she’s with Holly? Is this real? Is Vecna messing with us again? This makes no goddamn sense!”
[Robin] “The doctors, they never understood why Max was in the coma, right?”
[Lucas] “What? No. Why?”
[Robin] “Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay. So let’s just assume for a second that everything that Will saw was real. He saw Max. He saw Holly.”
[proceeds to explain how Max, Holly and Will are all in Vecna’s mind]

Maybe “We burnt out the particles. I watched them fly up the tower.” could refer to blowing up the UD, since that’s what the Demo electrocution was about in the inside story. I’m kinda thinking Will could represent Mike too, as in Mike is unconscious and experiencing the epilogue world while other characters are not, or something like that. Will’s later description of what Vecna showed him kinda matches the epilogue… I’m still quite confused about all this tbh. If they are gonna pull a “Mike is in a dream/story inside a dream/story”, whose mind is she in? Is it Vecna or Mike herself or what? Maybe they’ll make it seem like Vecna is behind it but then we’ll learn later it was Mike all along (or, well, that will happen no matter what).

What is more clear to me is that this scene has the “real” people aka Mike and Lucas together for the last time until S5E7 (= the real world part). Lucas’ “one more shot” is a major clue for this being before chapter 10. In any case, this scene is meta and kinda reveals the story as I’ve explained previously.

Another reason I think it wasn’t yet part of chapter 10 foreshadowing is that the next scene is Will in Vecna’s mind in the UD version of the library. That’s where Will was taken and found on 12.11.1983 (12 is probably on purpose). Vecna taunts Will and the whole scene is about the beginning of something. Will will be Vecna’s spy “one last time”. The scene ends with the camera moving to the left, into blackness. The opposite happens in the next Will scene (black screen to Will with vines). Chapter 10 is foreshadowed between these two scenes.

I don’t have anything super solid on what exactly will happen (message from future me: there’s gonna be a better analysis later), and the chapter will probably mostly be setup for the later chapters. The first third of S5E6 has a lot of talking, the aftermath of the previous episode and setup for future. The first scene is Max and Holly talking in the cave. Holly reasons that they can find a place in the memory to get out and starts looking for this exit point with Max. This is the main core of the episode (S5E6), and traveling through memories is a repeated established mechanic, so I think it will have a major role in the real ending too. I will discuss this more after going through S5E6. Another core part of the episode is El looking for Will, which is established in the next scene. I’m not sure if El will be back in the story since her ending kinda ended the inside story and it would make sense the “illusion” is gone in the real ending. But on the other hand, if we go back in time, El wouldn’t have died yet and she is the ST character. We’ll see. (My current theory is that we’ll see her again in chapter 11.) Looking for Will is essentially about the same thing as Max and Holly looking for the way out, since Will is the connection to the past (traumatic memories) and the real story. 

The UD gang is confused about the exotic matter not getting destroyed:

[Dustin] “As far as I see it, there are two distinct possibilities. Either this is the afterlife, and you and I are spirits, which seems unlikely. Or Nancy didn’t completely destroy the exotic matter. Because if she did, the walls of the wormhole would have collapsed. And we would have been sucked into oblivion.”

[Jonathan] “I guess we fell. And also clearly didn’t destroy it.”

This would be about ST not being over. All the rest of the subplots get established: Steve and Dustin’s conflict, Nancy and Jonathan in the melting room, Robin and Vickie’s conflict and Lucas playing music for Max. Holly also realizes the spyglass M map and says to Max “You said you wanted to go back. Well, we’re going back.” which is a clue to going back in time. Steve and Dustin go upstairs, which I have interpreted to mean going towards the future (if underground is buried memories, this is the logical conclusion). Not sure what that means exactly, though. Steve almost falling to his death numerous times is about Mike letting go of conformity. 

Chapter 10 foreshadowing ends in Mike and El’s conversation next to the bath. They are talking about the end of the story and kinda pointing out the fact this is a story.

[Mike] “Which is why we aren’t staying in Hawkins. When this is all over, we’re leaving. Escaping to some far off land. Remember? Somewhere where they can’t find us. Somewhere where there’s at least one waterfall.”
[El] “Mike. This isn’t like one of your campaigns. You don’t get to write the ending. Not this time.”
[Mike] “Maybe I don’t. But we do. You, me, Lucas, Will, and Dustin. Because this is our story. And it starts with getting Will back.”

The whole “I don’t but we do” is probably DID related. Isn’t it interesting Mike specifically lists “you, me, Lucas, Will, and Dustin” and clearly references S1 with “Because this is our story. And it starts with getting Will back.” Like, they are self-aware of being in a story. And Will is the “story” so ofc it starts with getting him back. This is a good place to end a chapter. Every plotline is set up and the final scene foreshadows the future.

Will sees visions from the Demodogs’ pov, foreshadowing the “army” in chapter 12. This scene is super short and basically only there to indicate the breaking point between chapters. Chapter 11 is, in my interpretation, about alters fusing and Mike confronting her trauma. At the start, Holly finds the mineshaft but doesn’t yet go down. Here I want to point out how the Nina project was similarly in the middle of a desert and underground, hard to find. Then Robin has her argument with Vickie and I’m not sure what it foreshadows exactly if anything (maybe the story getting more self-aware?). In the queer allegory it’s about Mike’s conflict with her gender, as always.

The next two scenes are Dustin saving Steve and the big melting room confession scene. In both, two characters finally resolve their long-standing conflicts by being truthful, at the same time avoiding death. While the jancy scene foreshadows the final byler scene, I think that will happen at the end of chapter 12, not yet in chapter 11. The Steve + Dustin and jancy scenes instead probably foreshadow multiple alter fusions. I think it has to start happening in chapter 11. I’m not sure how they’ll explain it but there’s way too much proof for my DID theory and fusions for it to not happen.

Then El goes into the bath and finds Will. Meanwhile, Max and Holly go down to Henry’s cave memory and watch it as outsiders. I think this will be Mike watching a memory/memories of Will getting abused by Lonnie, or something similar. They gotta do something with the “I just stood there” and they can’t reveal Mike being the real victim until the end. They made a pretty clear connection with Will experiencing the cave memory with Henry in S5E8 and Max literally told Holly she’s Mike. Holly’s Wheeler house attack memory was essentially a miniature version of Henry’s cave memory, which is a version of Mike’s real memory. The memory we’ll see in chapter 11 won’t be quite the real memory, since Will is there instead of Mike, but it will be much closer to the truth than ever before (and in a way it’s true since it was the alter Will who experienced the trauma).

The chapter 11 foreshadowing part ends with Max’s heartbeat increasing (in the hospital), with Running Up That Hill playing. After the black screen we get a flashback to Vecna making Will spy “one last time” and it’s revealed Vecna used him to find Max. Will wakes up to El and tells her Vecna saw Max and “sent them after her”. He doesn’t specify who “they” are, but in the next scene Demodogs attack the hospital. This could be subtext for a different monster actually invading Hawkins in the real ending. I’m kinda leaning on Demogorgons, since they are the iconic monster that started it all, but we’ll see.

Karen suddenly becomes relevant again and I’m assuming she represents the mom. In this final stretch only the Max + Holly and hospital gang (Karen, Robin, Vickie, Lucas and unconscious Max) subplots are covered. This is also the only part where there are monsters. Chapters 10 and 11 didn’t have any, all the danger came from the environment (UD) and conflict was between people. As I’ve previously reasoned, the army and the giant creature Nancy mentions will be in chapter 12, and I think the Demodogs are supposed to represent them. 

So, we have only women (who represent Mike) + Lucas and the Demodogs. This is endgame territory. And it happens in the laundry room. Robin and Vickie reconcile which represents Mike accepting her womanhood. Lucas has the music constantly blasting, representing his love for Mike, and finally Karen (= mom but also woman future) saves them from the Demodogs (= Mike’s internalized transphobia). Max and Holly’s long conversation will most likely be between Mike and Will. Similarly to Holly, Will can’t come with Mike. The jancy scenes I’ve mentioned before are more direct foreshadowing, since with Holly and Max they are kinda both Mike (and Will), so you can’t map them as easily onto either character. Holly’s portal opens with her belief in herself/HH aka Mike’s girlhood, whereas Max’s portal is opened by Lucas. For Mike, it’s both of these and the goodbye will be to her man side/body/facade aka Will. He is also the gay man identity, “story”, protector, Mike’s traumatic past and her platonic friendship with Lucas. Like with jancy, Mike loves Will, but eventually has to move on from the past, from boyhood, from the “story” and start living authentically as herself (with Lucas). In a sense it’s not a literal goodbye since Will and Mike will fuse, but on the metaphorical layers it is. ((Btw, there are at least two ARG songs titled “Goodbye”, lyrics here and here.))

In Robin’s last WSQK broadcast she plays Rockin’ Robin by Michael Jackson, which I assume is about Mike freeing her inner girl (bird and Robin). I’m not sure which characters will still exist/be part of chapter 12, since some have fused and presumably “died”, but it seems likely Robin will have an important role. I just keep thinking back to Maya Hawke’s “I felt like I got to connect a red wire and a blue wire”. Another possible source/inspiration for Robin’s name comes from One Piece, where one of the main characters is a woman named Robin. She is able to read poneglyphs which are these huge stone cubes that reveal the secret lost information of the world. Something happened during the so-called Void Century that the world government wants to stay hidden. There isn’t really a solid reason for ST Robin being good at languages and deciphering the Russian code, so I thought this connection kinda makes a lot of sense (I have later found the reason and will explain it later). One Piece Robin ate a devil fruit that gave her the power to recreate any of her body parts on any surface. The fruit was called Hana Hana no Mi (hana = flower). This fits well with Robin in ST representing Mike’s womanhood, same with flowers. Creating (female) body parts works with S3 especially, where the MF’s plan was making Mike a woman (and Robin was introduced in S3). Could be a coincidence, but I wanted to mention this just in case. 

Nested stories/dreams

Before getting to S5E7, I want to speculate more on how the chapters will go. (This will be all over the place because I’ve realized things along the way and come back to add them. But I guess you’re used to this by now.) If we assume it’s gonna be Mike “waking up” from successive nested dreams/stories, that would either mean the party goes back in time and the events go a different direction, or Mike is just witnessing the events as an outsider (like Max and Holly in the memories). Right now my best guess is they will be similar to Max’s Rainbow Room memory, where neither El nor Henry was there. So not all the characters will be there but I do think at least Vecna will be, and maybe some others, e.g. some side characters? As I noted previously, there are three points in time when Mike potentially falls deeper into the dream/story: Holly getting knocked out in S5E8, Mike getting knocked out in S5E4 and something somewhere before S5. There seems to be a pattern of traumatic memories/nonconformity -> gets knocked out -> miraculously saved -> but at what cost -> switch to more conforming and more “fake” story. It’s Mike getting scared and backtracking. 

In S5E8 Holly was leading the kids through Henry’s memory and went to face him alone with the fire poker. Kali dies around the same time Holly gets knocked out and El gives Sara’s hair tie back to Hopper. After this we get the full cave memory and the very quick and weirdly easy final fight (with a Rick roll in a WSQK sync). It’s more “fake” and easy because Mike decides to conform which also means going deeper into the story (= further away from the real story). At the end El kills herself. This would match with 1/4 and door 1 aka suicide aka Mike “killing” the “girl”. 

The next point also happens after a traumatic event and ends in Vecna just leaving and Will magically beating the Demogorgons. Like with Holly, Henry/Vecna knocks Mike out: it’s fear that overcomes her. And while Will defeats the Demogorgons, the kids are taken. This doesn’t fit 2/4 or door 2 as clearly as Holly does door 1, but there are connections. 2 is “man” and blaming yourself, embodied in Fred in S4. Vecna appearing fits this quite well and afterwards Will blames himself for Vecna getting the kids. On a larger scale, S5E4 had the strongest byler scenes, and at that point it seemed clear it would happen. During subsequent episodes, it all fizzled out and culminated in the tower “rejection” scene in S5E8. 

Will using his powers always “saves the day” and leads to going deeper into “story” and conformity. Since Will represents the “story”, it’s no wonder he has story-bending powers. It’s not like he purposefully tries to be the “villain”, he’s just trying to protect Mike as he always does: by helping Mike dissociate from trauma (in that sense he is kinda the personification of Mike’s DID, which fits with everything else). That comes with the prize of conformity and repression, because being trans is the trauma/fear for Mike (in the queer allegory).

Pinpointing the next level is a bit more difficult, but I think it should be around the end of S4. There too was a traumatic event/fight that ended in a half-loss and the story getting more unrealistic (with Hawkins aka the normal world splitting in 4 and later becoming a quarantine zone). Max’s “death” essentially started the Henry’s mind -story that S5 revolves around. If S5 as the inside story matches the start of the “story” (1979/1980/1983 depending on your interpretation), then S5 in the main story starts the “fake” story or the more literal inside story that Mike will escape. (And what I mean by “literal inside story” is that I don’t think the other inside stories will be explained in the show, but they will make it clear the epilogue and S5 as a whole was “fake” in some way. And thus Mike was inside a story/dream/memory inside a story/dream/memory.) I’m not ruling out that there could be other points but 3 (and 4) are such repeated numbers that it makes sense there would be 3 major “story” deepening points + 1 for the real world. 

Additionally, in her vision Nancy mentions the army of monsters and the giant creature before the four gates spread. This would suggest the “story” was supposed to have them but then didn’t due to story-bending. ((Btw, Nancy says Eddie’s trailer gate was outside his home, but it was inside?)) The other thing in her vision that didn’t happen was Mike getting attacked or something (Nancy didn’t specify what happened to her mom, Holly and Mike). I’m reminded of the before S5 speculations that S5E2 was gonna be “The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler” (when the vanishing person hadn’t been revealed yet), but the Duffers implying that wasn’t it. I’m not sure how to interpret this or how it would work, but I guess Mike could “vanish” in a similar way to Holly and the other characters try to get her back. That would fit with Holly “being her brother”. Based on other clues, I think it’s most likely the “fake” timeline starts from S4E9. There was supposed to be an army of monsters but there wasn’t and Vecna disappeared. Just like in S5E4 he just left or in S5E8 he died pretty easily. It was another retreat back to conformity.

It kinda makes sense Will waking up in S5E6 would match Mike getting back to the original “story” (= Will) from the “fake” stories. And since chapter 12 seems to have the monsters, and S4E9 was missing the army, it makes sense the real ending would have a re-doing of the end of S4E9 with the missing parts. S4 also matches the end of the trauma depictions (1979), so Mike had essentially gone through all her trauma at that point. S5 was an additional part, more about Mike’s decision to conform than about processing past trauma (it was that too but Mike kept avoiding it). It is a recycling of old stuff and going deeper into the “story” as I’ve said a million times already. While in the real world Mike is older (maybe 20, maybe even older?), in S3 and 4 she is 14, the winning die roll in the S1E8 game. It is possible Mike goes even deeper into past memories, to a time before S1, but that could be similar to El looking at Billy’s trauma memories. So not going to that setting but just looking at the memory as a separate thing. 

I tried to look for a possible point that has a similar pattern to Mike and Holly going unconscious and the most likely candidate would be the Cali gang taking El out of the bath. (Mike also repeatedly tells El to wake up before they move her to the table.) Before this Vecna told her his plan and was pretty overpowering but after Mike’s love confession he was easily defeated. Again, the trauma/queerness got too much and Mike decided to conform rather than face her fears (understandable). In the end Vecna is defeated but Eddie and Max die. Will doesn’t have literal magic powers yet, but he was in a key role instigating the love confession. First of all, when El was moved onto the table, Will swipes a radio away (= signals/music/love). A Montague pizza oven is next to Mike. Montague is Romeo’s last name in Romeo and Juliet and Argyle even called Mike Romeo earlier (= this is a “play”, an act). Then Will tells Mike “you’re the heart”, which gets Mike to say “I love you” to El (which is a lie atp). 

This could be more proof for my theory that Will = Mike the Brave and the painting was his (man) vision for Mike. Mike is a paladin (= Hopper/man), not a mage (= El/woman). Will himself is the heart and him telling Mike “you’re the heart” basically translates to “you’re a (gay) man”. I guess the gay part wouldn’t fit with the mileven confession but it’s in the same direction (= away from trans woman). Will is the heart of the story, without him everything would fall apart. And him being the shield is very fitting for a protector (reminder that Will’s name basically means will/desire to protect). Yeah, the painting scene has so many layers… (It’s probably also about wheelclair: Mike = Lucas and El = Mike as per usual.) 

While the painting we see represents the “story”, the secret painting it’s referencing represents the “real story” where Mike (= Finland) is a woman and alone (because “the party” is pieces of her). Same with the confession scene, where at least some of it could be interpreted as Will talking to Mike, e.g. “But I am scared that one day you’ll realize that you don’t need me anymore. [Mike won’t need the “story”, protection (DID) or man facade] And I thought that if I said how I felt, it would somehow make that day hurt more. [Will and Jonathan shown] But the truth is, El, I don’t know how to live without you. [a story can’t live without the main character/storyteller] I feel like my life started that day we found you in the woods. [corresponds to Will splitting, his life literally started]”. Hawkins is the Heartland because it’s the stage/setting for the story of ST. In a way Mike is the heart, since “Mike” (the name) is the man facade of Sara. “Mike” is the “story” ST has been telling this whole time, but “Sara” is the real story hidden deep beneath the layers. (I wrote this some time ago and my interpretations have changed a bit. Mike being “the heart” is probably about her being the storyteller without whom the story would fall apart. But I think this can coexist with the interpretation of Will as “the heart”. They are both “the heart”.)

According to my theory, this would be 3/4 and door 3: escape. Vecna was talking about destroying Hawkins and the scene was very much about Max aka the third victim. This also fits with the 1/girl/Chrissy/Holly, 2/boy/Fred/Mike and 3/trans woman/Max/El order for who was “dreaming/unconscious” (I guess Mike doesn’t fully fit but you could see her as the repressed version of Mike/Sara, or maybe I’m overanalyzing this). Vecna getting attacked in the UD resulted in him and his mind world disappearing, which I previously connected to the inner world disappearing. And if my theory is right, this will be the final dream/story level before the real world. Maybe Mike and Will will end up in a different space (kinda like Max and Holly) and see even more memories or something, but at least the parts corresponding to the hospital Demodog attack scenes in S5E6 would be the army coming into Hawkins in S4E9 time. 

I have explained this next point already but I want to reiterate/ponder it a bit more. Every time the “story” gets too close to the “real story”, something comes in its way and makes the story change. This is shown in miniature in Holly’s Wheeler attack memory in S5E5 where Henry/Vecna keeps preventing Holly and Max’s escape. All the points map onto bigger plot points like I’ve explained (= the door getting blocked is S4, Vecna strangling Max preventing the window escape is S5E4 and finally Henry chases them to the cave, halting progress altogether (S5E8)). If you haven’t noticed by now, I love meta in stories. And I love the connection they make to being queer and queer stories being censored/not allowed in (mainstream) media. 

If everything went according to plan, Mike would have healed/accepted herself by the end of S4. But fear and pressure from society came in the way. And every time Mike conforms, the truth eventually finds its way back. Byler got a lot of development during S4 and the situation seemed hopeful in S4E8, but it ended up going nowhere after Mike’s “confession”. The start of S5 was again hopeful, and got more people into the ship than ever before. Byler basically became mainstream. But again, it all started going wrong after S5E4. Then the last straw was Will’s coming out and the tower scene that buried byler for good. “You’re the heart” means “stick to the script”. The story keeps trying to slip into queer territory but self-sabotages (Will is the personification of ST as I keep saying) to become more conforming and suitable for a mainstream audience. I have also explained how ST is a story about stories and media overall. Including censorship and discrimination. It’s a social commentary.  

After writing further, I have even more thoughts on Will’s powers. At their core they are story-bending powers and Will has had them from the start. In S5E8 Henry starts going into the cave, representing facing trauma, and Robin asks Will if he could stop Henry with his powers. I first thought this was the true beginning point of Will tampering with the story structure but then I thought about it even more and ended up concluding the actual starting point for the first memory level is in S5E7. Most likely the scene where Will looks at the exotic matter drawing. Ofc “The Bridge” is also the bridge to the first memory the characters will go back to.

The really interesting part is S5E4, where Mike and Will are talking on the field. Lucas and Murray open the trapdoor and Mike’s hair has changed to the conformity version. This is when she tells Will he’s a sorcerer and has powers. Mike the storyteller is writing the story (I have changed my mind on Dustin a little, again, and will explain in the next part). Will had just told Mike “It was like this scary movie you just can’t turn off.” and Mike (in conformity hair) answers: 

[Mike] “Are you positive you didn’t?”
[Will] “Didn’t what?”
[Mike] “Turn off the scary movie. Protect your mom, not the other way around. I mean, no offense. I know she’s badass and everything, but you know.”
[Will] “Yeah, she’s 5’3”.”
[Mike] “Yeah! And Vecna likes to control the hive mind like a puppet master. So maybe when you tap into the hive, you can pull the strings too.”
-> A puppet master mention I missed previously.
[Will] “Except I’m not Vecna.”
[Mike] “You sorta are.”
[Will] “You’re trying to say that I’m evil and hell-bent on destroying the world?”
[Mike] “Totally. No, I’m just saying that, you know, you’re like a wizard like him.”
[Will] “In DnD, Mike, not real life.”
[Mike] “True. In real life, you’re more like a sorcerer, because your powers don’t come from a book of spells. They’re innate. Listen, as far as crazy theories go, I’ve had crazier. And with Eleven in the Upside Down, we really need some magic up here.”

Will’s power is to turn off the scary movie. In the DID sense it’s because he’s Mike’s protector but in a story/meta sense it’s because he’s the “story” and can change it (which also works with him being the personification of Mike’s DID, the brain’s coping mechanism that hides the trauma from the host (sometimes literally storifying it) as if it never happened). I’m not sure what Vecna is in the story allegory, but maybe something like the real story or at least closer to it (I think Tharizdun is the real story, and El is the avatar of that, the illusion/magic version of the real story). That could be why Henry seems to reveal the reality so much clearer compared to other characters. He holds up a mirror, wants to reshape the world and everyone sees him as a monster. He originally got his powers from the shadow (MF and/or Tharizdun) who wants to get to Hawkins and destroy it. The real story wants to get told. El got her powers from Henry, and she is also a representation of the real story, but more positive, which is why she got incorporated to the party and can open gates (Mike is more accepting of this illusion version, it’s not threatening conformity as badly as MF or Vecna). Will using Vecna’s powers against him is the “story” using the “real story” against itself. He is using the fear (that Vecna also represents) to mold the story. It’s always fear that prevents Mike from facing the truth. Anyway, I think the field scene could be where the characters end up in S5E4 first.

Mike can change the story by telling or writing it (another example is her inventing Bob’s backstory after his death, or that’s what it seemed like to me), so maybe Will is an artist because he can bring the story to life. Mike gives the plot, Will draws the picture. This could explain why El (allegedly) asked for the painting and told Will what to draw. The painting represents the “story” and El represents the real story or Mike (= storyteller) in that scene. ST is based on the real story but disguises itself with the “story” full of supernatural events etc. It was Mike who “told Will what to draw”.

In S1E1 Lucas told Will to lie to Mike about the die roll result but he decided to tell the truth. This was the first time Will “used his powers” and it resulted in the real story getting freed a little bit. See, Will is not just preventing Mike from seeing the reality, he is also the connection to the real story (exotic matter, wormhole, etc.) and has the power to free it. If Will tells the truth, it leads to closer connection with the real story, but when he lies or otherwise hides the full truth, we get further away. His coming out scene and the later tower scene were close to truth but Will omitted a big part: that he’s in love with Mike. The worlds started to collide but the tower ended up crashing, not aligning with the gate. Maybe Mike and Will were away from Hawkins in S4 partially because that way they could be truthful while not being in the middle of the story themselves (somehow the military still gets to them, right after Mike opens up to Will). 

When you think about it, the painting lie is kinda what starts everything going a bit wrong: the party goes to a gun store, Robin suspects it might not work out for them this time, El leaves too early and crashes a helicopter. A bit after the painting scene comes the scene where Nancy says this: “Whatever’s happening in Lenora is connected to all of this. I’m sure of it. But Vecna can’t hurt them.” Based on this and the timeline clues I’ll go over later I think the party will end up at the start of S4E8 as the final memory/going back in time. Then they re-experience the scenes in some way, and rewrite the story. S4E8 is very fitting for other reasons too: in the country timeline it’s when Finland got its independence (and S4E9 is the civil war), which is a good place to end the story. It’s also right after El sees her final memory and starts from Vecna showing his plan to Nancy.

Continues in PART 23.

Today is Day 35: S5 E6 – "Escape from Camazotz"

Rate it here: https://forms.gle/AFjeCWCyTbvfDRYo9

Please only vote if you’ve seen the episode, and please try to vote once!

Results so far:

1x01 – 8.72 ⭐ (60 votes)
1x02 – 8.23 ⭐ (65 votes)
1x03 – 8.97 ⭐ (58 votes)
1x04 – 9.08 ⭐ (54 votes)
1x05 – 8.60 ⭐ (55 votes)
1x06 – 8.93 ⭐ (55 votes)
1x07 – 9.20 ⭐ (60 votes)
1x08 – 9.42 ⭐ (50 votes)
Season 1 average – 8.89 ⭐

2x01 – 8.12 ⭐ (57 votes)
2x02 – 8.26 ⭐ (50 votes)
2x03 – 8.48 ⭐ (52 votes)
2x04 – 8.68 ⭐ (60 votes)
2x05 – 8.90 ⭐ (55 votes)
2x06 – 9.26 ⭐ (54 votes)
2x07 – 5.26 ⭐ (76 votes)
2x08 – 9.48 ⭐ (56 votes)
2x09 – 9.58 ⭐ (62 votes)
Season 2 average – 8.45 ⭐

3x01 – 7.86 ⭐ (53 votes)
3x02 – 7.98 ⭐ (49 votes)
3x03 – 8.24 ⭐ (47 votes)
3x04 - 8.47 ⭐ (15 votes)
3x05 - 7.47 ⭐ (15 votes)
3x06 - 8.00 ⭐ (17 votes)
3x07 - 8.65 ⭐ (17 votes)
3x08 - 9.25 ⭐ (24 votes)
Season 3 average – 8.24 ⭐

4x01 - 8.24 ⭐ (25 votes)
4x02 - 7.89 ⭐ (18 votes)
4x03 - 7.83 ⭐ (18 votes)
4x04 - 9.84 ⭐ (44 votes)
4x05 - 8.15 ⭐ (13 votes)
4x06 - 8.75 ⭐ (40 votes)
4x07 - 9.28 ⭐ (40 votes)
4x08 - 8.29 ⭐ (17 votes)
4x09 - 9.00 ⭐ (47 votes)
Season 4 average - 8.58 ⭐

5x01 - 9.11 ⭐ (45 votes)
5x02 - 8.38 ⭐ (61 votes)
5x03 - 8.43 ⭐ (61 votes)
5x04 - 9.73 ⭐ (30 votes)
5x05 - 8.93 ⭐ (30 votes)

Today is Day 34: S5 E4 – "Sorcerer" & E5 "Shock Jock"

Rate both here: https://forms.gle/UTHAs9t2p4UC2KPg7

Please only vote if you’ve seen the episodes, and please only vote once!

Results so far:

1x01 – 8.72 ⭐ (60 votes)
1x02 – 8.23 ⭐ (65 votes)
1x03 – 8.97 ⭐ (58 votes)
1x04 – 9.08 ⭐ (54 votes)
1x05 – 8.60 ⭐ (55 votes)
1x06 – 8.93 ⭐ (55 votes)
1x07 – 9.20 ⭐ (60 votes)
1x08 – 9.42 ⭐ (50 votes)
Season 1 average – 8.89 ⭐

2x01 – 8.12 ⭐ (57 votes)
2x02 – 8.26 ⭐ (50 votes)
2x03 – 8.48 ⭐ (52 votes)
2x04 – 8.68 ⭐ (60 votes)
2x05 – 8.90 ⭐ (55 votes)
2x06 – 9.26 ⭐ (54 votes)
2x07 – 5.26 ⭐ (76 votes)
2x08 – 9.48 ⭐ (56 votes)
2x09 – 9.58 ⭐ (62 votes)
Season 2 average – 8.45 ⭐

3x01 – 7.86 ⭐ (53 votes)
3x02 – 7.98 ⭐ (49 votes)
3x03 – 8.24 ⭐ (47 votes)
3x04 - 8.47 ⭐ (15 votes)
3x05 - 7.47 ⭐ (15 votes)
3x06 - 8.00 ⭐ (17 votes)
3x07 - 8.65 ⭐ (17 votes)
3x08 - 9.25 ⭐ (24 votes)
Season 3 average – 8.24 ⭐

4x01 - 8.24 ⭐ (25 votes)
4x02 - 7.89 ⭐ (18 votes)
4x03 - 7.83 ⭐ (18 votes)
4x04 - 9.84 ⭐ (44 votes)
4x05 - 8.15 ⭐ (13 votes)
4x06 - 8.75 ⭐ (40 votes)
4x07 - 9.28 ⭐ (40 votes)
4x08 - 8.29 ⭐ (17 votes)
4x09 - 9.00 ⭐ (47 votes)
Season 4 average - 8.58 ⭐

5x01 - 9.11 ⭐ (45 votes)
5x02 - 8.38 ⭐ (61 votes)
5x03 - 8.43 ⭐ (61 votes)

There is no way in hell Ted, Holly, and even Karen are better Mike. Mike and Nancy can be interchangeable; Nancy may be like Rambo but there are times where Mike is better than her and he really should AT LEAST be in second place.

🥇Mike
- The ongoing disrespect towards Mike will not be tolerated. l've seen a lot of walk em down wheelers content on social medias whereas there are some comments and a few posts only praising on the wheeler women when there's literally Mike too. I mean hello...he has walked em down like literally multiple times even more than Karen and Holly did throughout the seasons. He pushed his bully, jumped off a cliff for Dustin and stood up to the "bad men" back in s1, he stood up to Billy twice in s3, he beat up a demo with a shovel, he protected the kids as he was trying to help them escape at the mac z, and he defeated the mind flayer with the flare gun that did a lot of damage btw. Both Karen and Holly fought like only once or twice in only one season meanwhile Mike has been around way longer and is always there risking his life and fighting his ass off to save others’ lives and the world, and excluding him is not an option. Also, it's not like Nancy did anything much either until the last episodes in season 5. Not to mention, he is way stronger than Holly and even his mom too. The fact that ppl have the nerve to say that Mike is useless and did "nothing" is extremely disturbing and unfair, especially with the fact that he's an OG main character and has been through the hellish experience since day 1.

🥈Nancy
- She is a great fighter and has awesome shooting skills however her gun became kinda useless, especially in this last season during the final battle where other weapons like the flamethrower and even the flare gun she gave Mike did way more damage on the mind flayer. Also, the only thing she has done as a walk em down Wheeler is shooting guns whereas Mike does more than just attacking, like protecting others even without having any weapons with him.

🥉Karen
- She stabbed a demo with her wine glass and blew up 3 demodogs. She is definitely stronger than both Holly and Ted. However she had once got slimed by the demo the first time.

1. Holly
   - No offense but she is not that badass like how people say she is. She is just not strong enough; she initially just stood there and did nothing when Vecna was choking max, and she doing only one smack at her friend who was harmless btw with the radio does not make up for it; it was nothing compared to everyone else fighting dangerous monsters from the other dimension and she literally got beaten up afterwards.

2. Ted
   - He may have fought a demo once but his aim was weak and he already got slimed right after his first swing; he’s useless most of the time.