80smikewheeler:

ApolloandArtemis

Apollo is the Olympian god of the sun and light, music and poetry, healing and plagues, prophecy and knowledge, order and beauty, archery and agriculture. He is harmony, reason and moderation personified, a perfect blend of physical superiority and moral virtue. Artemis is the Olympian Goddess of the Hunt and the moon. She is the daughter of Zeus and twin sister of Apollo. Besides hunting, she ruled over forests and wild beasts, archery and disease.

ApolloandArtemis

Apollo is the Olympian god of the sun and light, music and poetry, healing and plagues, prophecy and knowledge, order and beauty, archery and agriculture. He is harmony, reason and moderation personified, a perfect blend of physical superiority and moral virtue. Artemis is the Olympian Goddess of the Hunt and the moon. She is the daughter of Zeus and twin sister of Apollo. Besides hunting, she ruled over forests and wild beasts, archery and disease.

So… what was this about ?

Almost two or three years (I think ?) since ST4 was officialy announced and one year and a few months since the official marketing campaign started and we still have no idea what this mean.

The previous theories was that Joyce and Will would get 003 and 004 but it turns out, at least on the surface, that it wasn’t about them at all. Or at least there wasn’t any element that could really connect to them apart for the few strong analysis/theories and metas about it.

We had a teaser centered around both Hopper and Eleven, 001 and 002.

003 was about the Creel and no matter the parallels and connections with other characters, there is nothing really concrete that can connect us to one character. Even if the Creel parallel the Byers in a lot of ways.

004 was about the Byers but they were put into the background instead while we were forced to focus on the boring love life of El and Mike and her life and feelings only since she moved to California. (We are four seasons in and I don’t care at this point, if the teaser didn’t make you realise something is wrong with this relationship, I don’t know what can. Next.) With small snippets of some plot including what looks like to be the military and some men we could guess are agents.

The only character that we didn’t see much that had more information about all of these teasers are Jonathan smoking and working at Surfer Pizza Boy where he likely has a new friend called Argyle. We also see Jonathan being very into the action against the military while protecting Mike and Will. Jonathan smoking is also clearly a representation of his mental state. He is clearly in a bad place for multiple reasons, he is far away from the place he really wanted to be and probably has even more responsibilities that are making him anxious.

Mike on the other hand received letters from El, is part of the Hellfire Club and we know he is gonna go to California to join them for whatever reason, probably for Spring Break. But Finn made Mike’s reason to go to California ambiguous while if we just take everything on the surface, there’s not much to be ambiguous about. He is also part of the action against the military from what we’ve seen in the teaser. We also know from Finn, at least from what I’ve heard, it could be not true, that Mike may have a bittersweet ending this season.

(As for Murray, we know he has been on the case of Hopper or some Russian mystery (including that mysterious phone call.)

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Joyce and Will are quite “absent” from the teaser or at least don’t have a lot of information or insight about their feelings or their lives in season 4. Joyce only has one shot in said teaser, and a few other shots in the trailer of things we already knew such as her rescue mission of Hopper and while Will has a bit more in the teaser, he doesn’t do much and nothing really gives us any insight about his situation. Plus he doesn’t really have anything else in terms of what’s in the trailer or stills. Sure, we got some ideas what it is going to be about such as apparently, struggles with his identity and love life but there’s not much from it too, plus every interview seems to contradict itself every time a new one comes out.

It’s quite bizarre because one is played by basically the biggest and most famous actress on the show and the character has been a main character since the beginning and who always play a vital role in the plot.

The other one basically started the story, is always at the center of the supernatural stuff and brings the character together. And was basically the main character of season 2.

The relationship between Joyce and Will has been essential to the show since season 1 particularly in the first two seasons.

And now nothing about their characters has been really revealed and explored since then. To the point that even the actors playing those characters have said they would like for them to come back together and play much more in scenes together.

It’s also frustrating when they’ve been put to the side in season 3 and Noah himself has stated that Will may get his own storyline seperated from the rest of the plot this season yet nothing has been shown of it’s existence. Or he was wrong about what it said, didn’t explain it well or

Either Joyce and Will’s respective storylines are too spoilery and have too many twists for ST4 or they clearly don’t do a lot of stuff in this season, as it seems to be the case.

So… what the f*ck?

THESE three gifs and only a photo for Will remain very cryptic among all the hints about season 4 on Twitter that after many of the teaser became more clear.

But these ones doesn’t seem to be clear, AT ALL.

So let’s analyse them, shall we ?

First let’s look at the order in which they were posted.

1.Will

2.Hopper

3.Joyce

4.El

Interesting order, whether it was intended or not, since Will was posted first, people were led to believe we were going to get a Will centric season this time around. Since season 3 was supposed to be it’s break… and we saw what a break meant for Will Byers in season 3 and that wasn’t pretty.

(Whether we are fools or were fooled remains to be seen though the future is not exactly promising for us right now.)

As for El and Hopper, it wasn’t really a surprise to anyone since they are the most liked and famous characters of the show. And it’s about time we take an interest about their real and more interesting storylines.

Joyce was another story. She seemed to have a pretty big arc in season 3 already and the only thing that everyone assumed she was going to do was trying to save or get to Hopper in Russia. But it seems she will be of a bigger importance in season 4 and that opened a lot of possibility with the new things that were announced later down the line.

So let’s break down each of those posts and see what could be connected between each of them. And what that could mean for Season 4.

1. For Will, it is after he destroyed Castle Byers with a baseball bat, his “safe space” built by him and his brother after their dad left. It comes after his fight between him and Mike which pushed him over the edge. During that same moment, El is investigating with Max, the Heather/Billy mystery who were both flayed at the time. After Flayed Billy gets his reaction when he realises who El is, Will feels the Mind Flayer again and touches his neck and realises that he is indeed back when Mike and Lucas comes to look for him.

2. For Hopper, it is episode 6 of season 2, after the Lab diagnosed, searched and experimented with Will about The Mind Flayer. Hopper contacts El on the radio but she is not there to respond since she left to see her mother and after that Chicago towards Kali. However she hears it in the Void in episode 7. He feels guilty over his fight with her and apologises for it. This also sets up their talk in episode 9 when Hopper talks to her about Sarah.

3. For Joyce, it is in season 1, after they’ve found Will’s body, believing he is not dead, she contacts Will in the Upside Down through the wall but fails to get him back. She then burts a hole through the wall hoping she can open a portal again. Right after that, Lonnie arrives at the Byers house to manipulate Joyce and to make profit off of Will’s death. He gaslights her by saying all of that is happening inside her head and use the example of her family to make a point. Right before that Jonathan arrives to say her mother was right but Lonnie completely refutes and dismisses that claim.

4. For El, it is in the first episode when she meets the boys in Mirkwood who were looking for Will. It is after she escape from Benny’s restaurant who was killed by Connie Frazier. Eleven had to kill two agents to escape from being captured by Brenner and his men. It is also probably the first time El was in the outside world and experienced a semi-“normal” thing. It is also moments after she opens the gate to the Upside Down, unleashing The Demogorgon who will take Will and kill multiple other people.

So let’s get the obvious out of the way:

We know El and Hopper are going to dive into their pasts and uncover things about themselves. This is no surprise to anyone, it’s been know for a long time. (Let’s hope it is well-written and doesn’t create inconsistencies though. ) So where does that leave Joyce and Will ? Will we learn something about their past and them too ? Will being queer is not a surprise to anyone, plus season 4 doesn’t seem to treat it as a big surprise and I don’t think, at least I hope they are just hinting at that.

What strikes me is that these four characters represents the two main parent-child relationships of ST. Will and Joyce, El and Hopper.

Both parents have lost a child, unfortunately by passing away for Sara and are both single parent. There’s many parallels between all these character like the tiger/lion plusieurs they share and of course many others like visual and scene parallels. (And both Joyce and Hopper are crying in these pics about something related to this element of their characters in some way. Which does seem to indicate that their feelings and relationships about their children are going to be important going into Season 4 in some way.)

Will and El both have suffered abuse from their respective ex-father figures and have been at the center or connected to the UD for a long time now. And we have yet to see anything about their relationship and the mysterious connection they have.

Plus the pics chosen here is the both of them being in Mirkwood at night, where it’s raining and where Mike is present. (“LT”, you’ll know what this means. )

So lots of interesting parallels, you can’t miss on them.

Now a quick theory, if Vecna the new baddie is supposed to be, like all the other monsters from previous seasons, some sort of reflection of the protagonists & their struggles.

It’s important to note that this character in D&D shares parallels with Will & even Joyce: wizard, true sight, afraid of growing old (immortality) and knowledge is an important part of that character. But one interesting aspect is that Vecna’s mother (in a version I’ve seen) was a “witch” and died by the hands of government officials of where they used to live. And Joyce calls herself a “witch”…

He also named his finger on his hand “witch” which in this next clip is something that Joyce used to mess with Will when she did her “witch” impression to Will.

Could this imply Joyce might die in that context ? Or have a fake death like Hopper, Will & El ? Because they all “died” and came back to life after that.

She could be targeted by whoever might want El and possibly Will. Would that mean she really dies ? I have no idea. Winona Ryder seems too much of an important actress to die that way and I don’t see the Duffers going that way. Plus it would leave her story to feel unfinished in many aspects.

It could be bold and move the plot but I don’t have any real evidence it may happen or at least clearly really happen in a way that puts a total end to her character. At best it’s just like Will, El and Hopper; she appears to be dead and everyone think she is but she isn’t.

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Now what I think is more likely is that either there are four big scenes in Season 4 that are centered around these four characters and are extremely sad (Noah did say he filmed a sad scene that are on his season 2’s scenes level)…

Or if we continue the plot route, it could be 4 big reveals and twists related to those characters, El seems to obviously be connected to what goes down at HNL & the Rainbow Room storyline and other weird stuff about her too (maybe UD related too, we’ll see); while Hopper seems to about his demons and that resurrection David keeps bringing up. (Vietnam, New York & Sara related too, maybe things about his family too…)

Now as for Joyce and Will, Joyce has the family connection, we thought about the Creel family given the mental health problems that seems to be present in her and how that connects to the whole thematic of Stranger Things 4 plus the Pennhurst Hospital location which could connect with Victor Creel or the Creel storyline. Or given the pic, it could also be related to Lonnie, we haven’t gotten much of their years together and the Byers seems to be the kind of people who prefers to hide their biggest pain and trauma. Plus I have heard the Duffers made her watch some movies that are extremely… weird… if that’s part of her character’s backstory. Outside of that I don’t have much of a clue.

Will on the other hand, well everyone has a club on what I think it might be, at least I hope, there’s many, powers, UD related, El related (possibly Lab related), his role in the overall story of ST and all the mysteries surrounding him… But all of this could come in such various ways that it’s impossible how they will do it or if they will do something about him, I have an idea but that’s for another post and probably something that might probably happen in Vol. 2. I don’t think the storyline he has is just Will is gay & miserable about it, it would reduce his character too much and would just raise eyebrows even more about what the Duffers are doing with him.

Regardless, whether this mean something or anything, we’ll see what all of this is about in a few days and possibly July 1st. If you have any other thoughts, feel free to share.

You know Will…?

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