I’m so tired of people saying: “nooo the stranger things kids are too old now they took too long to film the season they look way older than they should be” Literally SHUT THE FUCK UP as if y’all didn’t eat euphoria up EVERY WEEK with people in their mid twenties and older playing teenagers wearing clothes that no teenager in HS would ever wear! LIKE WE GET IT, this joke has stopped being funny 5 years ago stop you’re becoming repetitive
i’m not sure if people have pointed this out before (they probably have), but there are more moments than i thought that refer to feeling “old” or “young” when it comes to romance.
in the famous “blank makes you crazy” scene (s3e8), mike is trying to confess to eleven. he tells her that “old people say it sometimes”, referring to the phrase “i love you”. as we know, a big theme for mike in s3 was growing up and moving on from childhood, and in his eyes, a part of growing up is getting a girlfriend. he associates childhood with his feelings for will, d&d, his basement, etc. he associates adulthood (growing old) with being more “masculine” and dating girls, whether he likes it or not.
however, there are multiple examples of real love being associated with youth and childhood.
for example, in s2e1, bob and joyce make out in the storage room of melvald’s. bob says, “i can’t stop thinking about you. it’s crazy. i feel like a teenager.” first of all, he uses the word crazy (crazy together). second, he says he feels like a teenager, associating his love for joyce with youth. and as we know, joyce and bob were genuinely in love. (boyce 4ever )
another example is in s2e2, when joyce and hopper are smoking at joyce’s kitchen table. they reminisce about high school, talking about sharing cigarettes between fifth and sixth period. he even says it “brings [him] back to old times.” there’s even a callback to them sharing cigarettes when they were teenagers at the end of s2e9. joyce and hopper also have a slowburn romance (at least, that’s the direction it’s going).
and finally, we get to byler. we have the “we’re not kids anymore”, “what did you think, really, that we were never gonna get girlfriends?”, and the “play games for the rest of our lives?”. we also have the “what if you want to join another party?” and the “not possible”. and finally, when mike is talking to el in will’s empty room during s3e8, he gets excited about presents before quickly apologizing, saying it makes him “sound like a seven year old”.
in conclusion, true love reminds characters of youth and teenage/childhood while fake love reminds them of getting old/what you’re supposed to do as you mature. thank you and good night.
the next stranger things comic will be a prequel following Francine, aka number 6. according to sources she is a child with the power of precognition that her family take advantage of, eventually drawing the attention of Dr Brenner.
The mini series is coming out in may, so we got quite the wait ahead of us. After that we got the hopper prequel story in June then the promised time of July 4th when season 3 hits netflix.
there is one issue i have with this announced comic though. Francine looks like shes in her early teens but according to the Terry Ives prequel novel she finds a cabinet with a list of experiments 1-10, and the oldest being 6yrs old (Kali herself is 5). so when exactly does this comic take place? the ages have to add up as Francine can only be a year older than Kali and have been at the lab before her, and Kali was taken to Hawkins when she was 5yrs old. does anyone know what age Kali was when she escaped? im just a little concerned that whilst were getting all this cool material that there will be inconsistencies between show, books & comics that will render the whole book/comic pointless as it cannot be considered canon.
but either way im excited for more stranger things content.
I know I’m late posting theories but its been hard getting time to write them down. So here goes.
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE COMIC & THE TEASE FROM THE COMPANION BOOK FOLLOW
1. The Rats. We all know by this point one of the episodes is titled Mall Rats, and its unlikely the title is talking about kids hanging out at the mall. The poster pretty much confirms this as running towards whatever horror has escaped the upside down are many rats. When Hopper found that large chamber in the tunnels there were multiple piles of bones and furred flesh from the wildlife that had either stumbled into or been dragged into the tunnels to feed the vines and Demodogs. So its possible that some rats may have entered the tunnel, made contact with the upside down atmosphere that could carry the Mindflayers essence/virus/whatever and become infected/possessed like Will was. The only thing that debunks this is that everything connected to the mind flayer supposedly died when the gate closed, which would mean any rats infected should have died as well. Another possibility is that some rats may have made it through the tunnel all the way to the gate and entered into the upside down where they have been corrupted and mutated by the Mindflayer ready for when the gate is reopened. Which comes to my next theory (we’ll come back to the rats later):
2. How the creature(s) crossover. One thing that has never been established is how the original Demogorgon from season 1 opened those mini gates (they don’t have a name so im going with it) whenever it snatched prey and took them to the upside down. I say minigates because unlike THE gate these ones were small and closed themselves after an amount of time. The Demogorgon opened at least 3 in the byers home itself. It also used ones we didn’t see it open like the one it used to catch Barb & the one in the woods with the deer. Janes the one who originally opened the first gate after making contact with it but afterwards it seemed to be able to open any gate it wanted whenever it caught the scent of blood. But then in the comics we see Will finding the mini gate he talks to Joyce through in season 1, though its not fully formed and more like a window. Now it wasn’t till season 2 we learned that the Demogorgon & everything “alive” in the upside down is just a vessel for the mindflayer to control, so did it inherit the ability to open gates or did it lose that ability when that particular Demogorgon was destroyed? In season 2 it already had a stable gate that didn’t close after a while so it may not have seen the need to use it & focused on expanding into Hawkins through its tunnels. On the other hand if it doesn’t have that ability maybe the creature(s) will cross through a random minigate that opens if they do indeed still open. Again what debunks the minigate theory is that everything from the upside down appeared to die when the gate was closed, so if there are minigates to the upside down there should have been a “signal” that would have kept them alive. That being said we never saw what became of that piece of the mindflayer that was exorcised from Will in the cabin. Maybe because it’s a piece of the mind flayer itself it is able to survive the gate closing and took possession of those rats to survive, slowly growing its shadowy essence/virus through them and its goal of the season is to get Jane to reopen the gate.
3. The Poster’s Monster. We can only see what might be part of two arms or legs and its knee’s/elbows. But if you can find a good enough picture you can see all the disgusting detail of what I think it might be made of & what its name might be. Remember the rats running towards it? I think their running to become part of it. Those little thin protrusions running up and down the limbs look very much like tiny ribcages don’t they? Also I cant find a clear enough picture online but someone had a close up pointing to one of the rats on their Instagram story & I swear I can see a rat face near one of its knees/elbows. In the World Turned Upside Down book the sneak peak mentioned that this season would have some disgusting body horror moments reminiscent of The Fly which I took to mean that it would be a human going through a disgusting transformation, but know I wonder if whatever escapes the upside down or has been in hiding since season 2 is slowly building itself a new body out of the rats it has infected. Then as it gets bigger it starts looking for other bodies to assimilate/mutate. This also fits into a real life disgusting phenomenon that is also the name of a Dungeons & Dragons monster: THE RAT KING. In real life a rat king is created when a large swarm of rats is so big that multiple rats end up getting their tails knotted together through having to crawl over & around each other in tight spaces. Google it but be warned its pretty gross since they do not survive as they cannot move and get to food/water whilst stuck & in some cases their feces have glued some of them together. The D&D equivalent doesn’t have a picture but is basically a wererat. Doesn’t match what I’ve just described but since when has any of the creatures from the upside down looked like the D&D monster their named after? Another thing that makes me think it’s a cluster of bodies is from one of the pages of the last issue of the comic series. Its hard to tell if what Will is seeing once he’s connected to the mindflayer via that vine in his mouth (that’s also impregnating him with baby Dart) is real since earlier he was hallucinating that he actually was Will the wise but I cant help but notice how similar the horror he is seeing has a similar look to our mystery monsters limbs. I feel like this whole section is a tease of whats to come & just how many worlds the mindflayer has taken (WTF is that massive jaw bone from?!!)
I have more theories on other stuff but this has taken long enough to write so think I’ll stop there for now. I don’t know which I want more when season 3 hits: for my theories to be true or for them to be something else entirely. I just hope whatever answers are revealed they make sense within the world the Duffers have created.
Hi not to rehash “it was the best thing I’ve ever done” but consider the fact that this was said like 2 hrs after mike could have DIED bc of his proximity to will (demodogs at the lab)
Like historically speaking in the past year of their lives being close to will had not exactly been great for mike’s health. Demogorgons almost ate him like twice and he could have been living in blissful ignorance if they weren’t friends and it was STILL the best thing he’d ever done.
Like he really said “you are worth all the danger and supernatural horrors in the world” with his whole chest
