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it's still strange and frightening a will byers showtunes playlist

spotify link

SIDE A

ACT I (note to self, don't be gay in indiana / byers family dynamics)

THE PROM just breathe | FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE superman / sidekick | KERRIGAN & LOWDERMILK the fathers ran away | THE OUTSIDERS runs in the family | DEAR EVAN HANSEN so big / so small | STEREOPHONIC bright (take 22)

ACT II (zombie boy / into and out of the underworld)

BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY missing | ALICE BY HEART winter blooms | GHOST QUARTET i don't know | SPRING AWAKENING whispering | JOE ICONIS the goodbye song | HADESTOWN wait for me (reprise)

ACT III (tfw you are gay and you have powers)

FROZEN 2 into the unknown | BILLY ELLIOT: THE MUSICAL electricity | LEMPICKA woman is | CHILDREN OF EDEN the spark of creation

ACT IV (season 5 / a child's voice. singing a familiar song)

ANASTASIA journey to the past | FUN HOME maps | THREE HOUSES haze | AMERICAN PSYCHO everybody wants to rule the world | JONATHAN REID GELT quiet | WARRIORS sick of runnin' | THE LORD OF THE RINGS now and for always | BARE: A POP OPERA bare | FUN HOME flying away (finale) | NATASHA, PIERRE, AND THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 epilogue

SIDE B, a mix to blast while painting and yearning (i'm not going to fall in love /  i think there is someone he likes)

LES MISERABLES on my own | WICKED i'm not that girl | A CHORUS LINE what i did for love | CAROUSEL if i loved you | CABARET maybe this time | THE MUSIC MAN goodnight my someone | HEATHERS seventeen | COMPANY being alive | THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE gimme gimme | LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS suddenly seymour | MOULIN ROUGE elephant love medley

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If s4 was El's Empire Strikes Back, what does s5/her Return of the Jedi look like?

ST4's ending evoking the end of The Empire Strikes Back that has been stated explicitly by the Duffers in relation to s4. and in terms of in what ways specifically, well. you tell me...

this reference is so obvious it can be seen even if we were on Endor's forest moon looking at the Death Star II or some less labored analogy, but it is of course a remix. Yoda is a way chiller and less emotionally laden mentor to bounce from for Luke than Brenner is for El.

I rewatched Return of the Jedi with this beat in mind recently and I was surprised at how much I had projected more stoicism/"I have to take on this threat alone" onto Luke in my mostly kid memories of the film. I think it's that he shows up in the opening sequency so suddenly and dramatically Jedi Master(TM) in all black and acting enigmatically in a way that the movie is using as a misdirect.

but he doesn't really have that vibe for the rest of the movie. his post-ESB fallout arc is largely about trying to make sense of the "Luke, I am your father" revelation, and what that means about his identity and what has to be done to take down the Empire.

all of this also has been muddled by decades of additional canon and endless nerd discourse about every aspect of this universe. so just to disclaim as we move forward in this convo, I am trying to take the OT on its own in this regard, especially when it comes to emotion/attachment.

Luke's compassion - and the belief in the possibility of his father's redemption that allows him to have - act as his most exploitable weakness, and his key strength in the final battle.

El tries to make this kind of appeal to Henry in "The Piggyback" and fails. but I don't think a different version of the same is off the table if armed with more information in our heroes' real final hour. while El knows about Henry's time at the Lab, there is still what happened in Nevada to wrestle with...

but I realized additionally that the "stoically taking on responsibility for everything alone post-ESB style failure" that I was projecting on Luke maybe actually came from another TV show who pulled the exact same ESB parallel that ST4 does with its bald superpowered hero prematurely exiting their training after seeing a vision of their friend(s) in danger, against the recommendation of their mentor.

this choice to leave his training at the end of s2 does not go well for Aang, and s3 of Avatar: The Last Airbender opens with him and his team forced into hiding. he is upset by that idea (the world NEEDS the Avatar) and convinced he bears the burden of the blame and how they have to move forward in the wake of the monumental failure of their previous outing.

he is talked out of the most self destructive throes of that angst spiral at the end of the season opener, but by the precipice of the mid-season finale (when they're due to take on their big bad) Aang is still wracked with anxiety and refuses to stop training to rest.

obviously this is a coming of age action adventure cartoon (complimentary), neither of these responses are the correct way to proceed. (though tbf in the end he does take on the Fire Lord in one-on-one combat with his team deployed strategically elsewhere. but he ends that confrontation on his terms, just like Luke)

like Luke and Aang after the darker penultimate installments of their series, El is taking on an outsized slice of the responsibility for how the end of s4 shook out. Aang in "Nightmare and Daydreams" brings to mind what we know about El in s5, which includes junkyard training sessions...

...and a scenario where she seems to get stuck in this training get-up until episode 6 or later, and Hopper maybe goes after her considering his own outfit change situation when they're together midseason (going off alone to take on a threat, or at least being reckless and ending up in a bad spot?)

if she was most concerned about being what it would mean if she were "the monster" last season, maybe s5 is wrestling with the other aspect of that dichotomy. a classic superhero pitfall is the idea that they need to do everything by themselves, after all.

I'm stealing this insight from a reddit user (ty <3) but her s5 outfit is, troublingly, giving Superman with its blue and red color blocking.

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El and Will: mirrored emotional journeys from opposite starting points

I keep seeing the idea invoked that either El or Will's arc is ultimately about independence. and while it's certainly true that the show includes both of their coming of ages so independence will be involved, I think it's more nuanced than that. and the overlap in how it's nuanced for their characters is another way Will and El are mirrors.

because of where they're each coming from, Will and El's "coming into their own" means that, yes, they will stand up to the supernatural threats they're facing (and the character development/thematic elements those supernatural threats are stand-ins for) - but also just as important is that they will actively seek out help and receive support from their friends and family along the way

Will hasn't had the opportunity to fight his own battles because the narrative consistently places him in a position where that's not possible for him. When the supernatural plotline in s1 and s2 hinges on him as the victim, he is rendered without real recourse or incapacitated pretty quickly. that means his friends and family have to step up and fight for him.

throughout s2-s4, you can see how the fact that he repeatedly has been placed in that disempowered position (which includes growing up in an abusive home pre-canon) has led to a pattern of behavior where Will almost always freezes or flees, and doesn’t fight.

that's understandable, and sometimes what he has to do to survive, but it means that even at points when he could have brought his problems to the group at an earlier point so they could work together to solve them, he pushes them down and avoids them (flees, hides, makes himself smaller).

El has similar issues accepting help, but it's coming from the opposite direction. the narrative places her in a position where she has the most power to counteract the supernatural threats faced by the group, so she takes on the most (or even sole) responsibility. (also a dynamic that started for her pre-canon, in the abusive environment she grew up in)

there's a reason El and Will are the two characters the Hawkins team in s4 specifically calls out as vital missing pieces...

...but even though El and Will are key players, if there's one thing Stranger Things values, it's working together as a team.

also realized for the first time El and Will are the only two characters mentioned by name here, okay then

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hi I made this blog bc the account I made for st5 spec had been shadowbanned! but miraculously I have been let out of shadowban jail so I do not need this space anymore (knock on wood).

follow me at @toseesoclearly if you are still interested in what I've got to say. good tiding to all <3

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ID'ed one of my white whales, the magazine here from the yearbooks BTS:

LIFE Magazine, June 30, 1972

the cover story is about Explo '72. I think the three person "human tower" (piggyback-esque) is probably what's meaningful if anything, but definitely an interesting event considering all our churches/do not overcome evil but overcome evil with good next season.

I also got this guy, so it definitely seems like production bought a lot of 1972 LIFE magazines. we should have more than a few characters undercover this season tho

LIFE Magazine, August 4, 1972

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Escape from [New York/L.A./Camazotz]

I think the "Camazotz" in s05e06 "Escape from Camazotz" preoccupied us all enough that we haven't really reckoned with in addition to being a reference to A Wrinkle in Time, that episode title is probably also invoking Escape from New York/Escape from L.A.

John Carpenter is obviously already extremely part of the Stranger Things DNA, and this movie, while existing in a much more heightened reality than ST, is certainly a Duffers source text.

We have a nail bat.

An apocalyptic station wagon.

Literally utilizing a deep cut from the movie's score in the show.

So I really don't see a world where they're not paying homage to at least the first movie with "Escape from Camazotz."

but if there is more to glean from this for what's going on in Stranger Things s5e06, what would it be?

Escape from New York is a rescue mission (from a walled-in prison), in response to a hostage situation.

The rescue mission has a very explicit time limit.

According to those who are making the deal to our protagonist, Snake Plissken (who is a definite Steve hair antecedent imo): “Once you’re inside, you’re on your own” (but Snake does communicate with them via radio, and is being tracked)

The MacGuffin they're chasing turns out to be a tape with classified information about nuclear fusion, which is intended to be part some kind of entreaty (for peace?) by the U.S. at the "Hartford Summit". There's a switcheroo and the end of the movie where Snake, disillusioned by how those in power are treating the people on the ground, replaces the nuclear fusion tape with a "Bandstand Boogie" recording.

Escape from L.A. has a lot of culture war stuff going on, the president is a fundamentalist theocrat. L.A. is now an island bc of an apocalyptic earthquake and functions as the "deportation center for anyone found undesirable or unfit to live in the new, moral America"

In L.A., the president's daughter is manipulated via a political insurgent sending her "visions" through some kind of in-universe virtual reality technology to steal a key piece of technology.

The above technology will fry all electronic devices via an electromagnetic pulse, either in a targeted area or worldwide.

L.A. has the countdown to a specific deadline thing going on but instead of the "micro-explosives" he's injected with in the first movie, Snake is infected with an illness that they tell him will kill him if he doesn't get the cure by the allotted time. he gets more ill (coughing, feverish) throughout the course of the film.

both movies end with a live TV broadcast by the president. sequel also involves some hologram stuff

L.A. also has...a submarine sequence, and also surfing and hang gliding??? it is a delirious movie. but yeah re: st5, hey, you never know

(I do think the rescue mission thing is the most likely meaning)

I mean yes, I'm thinking about the Meat Wall

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What’s on Your Mind (Pure Energy)

I feel like ST fandom on here has converged on a couple primary theories about Will’s powers: creation/manifestation powers (see @/pinkeoni here) and electricity powers (see @/threemanoperation here and @/mIchaelwheeler here).

(ofc there are more than these but these are what’s relevant to this post)

It is emphasized repeatedly throughout the show that the opening of a gate requires an enormous amount of energy.

According to the show’s telling to this point, the s1 gate opened because of the “psychic contact” between El and the Demogorgon. and the mechanic by which Vecna opened his curse gates in s4 also involved psychic contact between him and his victims.

El has made "psychic contact" with others at various points throughout the show without either unleashing a huge surge of energy or opening a gate. Maybe one party involved in the “contact” has to be in another dimension, or part of the Hive Mind?

Or...maybe the "energy" came from another source? (Dustin does say "somehow" there...)

if we're framing this in the context of Will having energy powers (yes, that's what this post is actually about, thank you for taking that walk with me), this would bring us to something more time-bending going on there. Dustin also does say "time and space," after all. I would point to a timey-wimey scenario possibly involving 1983 Will, who we know we're revisiting in s5, see @/willbyersabyss for some exploration of that possibility

tbh I don't expect this logic to end up all lining up with perfect internal coherence but just thinking through possibilities

the most exciting contemporary energy sources (light, fire, electricity) are associated with “the spark of creation” throughout our full range of canons: lightning/electricity is what animates the monster in Frankenstein*; “Let there be light” is God’s first command in the Genesis creation story; in some versions of Greek myth, fire-stealing Prometheus also was the one to mold mankind out of clay.

*I know this actually comes from the movies/pop culture images of Frankenstein, but there is some connection with the original text just roll with it ty

"The Spark of Creation" is also the best song Stephen Schwartz has ever written from one of his weird bible musicals <3 sorry wicked ily2

That final image brings us to atomic energy, which has lurked throughout the show bc of Cold War set dressing and Russians. but I think we're queuing up for a bigger presence on that front both thematically and plot-wise considering our narrative origin point is now Nevada in the '50s, per The First Shadow.

In the US nuclear program, the launch of nuclear missiles and submarines requires two keys (we know this, the Soviet Key machine under Starcourt functions according to the same principles).

these are on the same keyring bc they are souvenirs but choosing as my illustration here bc there is a Minuteman Missile NHS Easter Egg in the WSQK bunker

For Alexei and his team, the two "keys" were energy and location. for Mothergate were the two keys El's psionic portal opening ability and someone else [Will]'s energy generation ability?

Vecna should have had prime opportunity to "steal" the latter even before he had access via the Meat Flayer's bite to get after the former. (I also have so many questions about this mechanic)

I think what I'm arguing basically is: creation and electricity (energy) powers might not necessarily be mutually exclusive in Will's case. generation and amplification, yes?

My vessel, my builder

This broader category of “energy powers” intrigues me for Will bc of potential overlap with being a vessel as a supernatural metaphor. Especially if the flavor of energy powers he has involve him being able to give energy to others (in a manner that might drain him, like perhaps the state we saw him in a certain date announcement teaser teaser).

All of my other vessel reference points in fiction come from Supernatural it's so embarrassing. But in that version of vessel lore, it was all about consent. being a vessel involves opening yourself up to another entity, totally and completely. Will's equivalent supernatural experience was an extremely nonconsensual, invasive experience, and obviously one he carries with him.

Utilizing a version of "energy amplification" or whatever it would end up being would involve Will making himself vulnerable - but a version of vulnerability where he would have to consider his own needs and set boundaries.

in addition to powers metaphorically = queerness, and therefore coming to terms with that metaphorically = self acceptance, a lot of the above sounds directly in response to the patterns of behavior the narrative has set up for Will to overcome. you can't help others (give your narratively positioned psychic twin access to your well of energy augmentation abilities) until you help yourself (make sure you don't overexert yourself and end up with a dead psionic battery), as the saying goes.

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(source)

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starting to wonder if the reason they switched Will's watch hand for season 5 is because something will happen with his left hand. (a possibility floated by @/pinkeoni all the way back in 2022!)

watches are typically worn on the arm opposite of your dominant hand, thus why most Stranger Things characters wear their watches on their left wrist, including Will in previous seasons. (an exception is Dustin bc Gaten is a lefty but they still put Dustin's watch on his left wrist, pretty inconsiderate...also yes, s1-s4 Mike and Max weirdly being right wrist watch wearers, despite I think both being righties)

side note, I think Will may now be sporting the same watch as Hopper (extremely pending a higher res image). I'd float the idea of a hand me down but that watch should be somewhere in Siberia I guess.

The First Shadow establishes that Henry has something weird going on with his left hand in connection to his disappearance on/around his 8th birthday that left him changed/possessed. in West End TFS, he has a scar, which you can see in some of the promo footage:

I believe the scar was scrapped for Broadway, but it's replaced with explicit dialogue about Henry having an unexplained wound (diagnosed as a possible gun shot wound) on his left hand when he shows back up after being missing.

there's a lot going on with the potential of some left hand business connecting Henry and Will in another way: ST Vecna's enlarged left hand, DnD Vecna's missing, mummified left hand, "bend sinisters" and the historical association with the left side being different/wrong/even satanic.

plus we've got our sci-fi/fantasy behandings/befingerings, the two most obvious ones coming from Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings (another Will-Frodo tether...?). Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness is so named to play with that left hand/right hand symbolic duality in a different way:

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this is super cool! neural circuits do have a lot in common visually with root systems, which makes sense because they're both networks composed of branching fractal nodes.

this is especially true of root system images depicted "from below" (so the similarity to the tunnels makes a lot of sense)

source. also I'd put electricity/lightning in this "fractal organic geometry" category too...

The First Shadow presents the Mind Flayer as literally present in Henry's amygdala (and the scene where his possession is discussed in those terms comes with a synapse-y MF projection)

I feel like there's a lot of places to go with this that I haven't fully cracked yet. we have our DnD Elder Brain and Elder Tree. the amygdala, where the Mind Flayer lives, is part of the "old brain" (and so is the brain stem, where Will maybe gets his MF goosebumps) which has a key role in emotional processing, especially processing fear and anxiety, and how emotion connects to memory (all from my extremely non-expert understanding).

it feels like this is circling something about the primordial, so old its unknowable (very Mindflayer), and also then the parts of ourselves that are in line with our "old brain" and frightening in the lack of rationality. It makes me think of the "supernatural cancer" quote from the Montauk bible, and cancer is essentially organic growth gone senseless and unsuppressed. which brings me to my primary "supernatural cancer" touchpoint, Annihilation (which involves an "Area X" hmmm):

Garland’s film is not about anything so ego-driven as suicide; it’s about self-defeat on a molecular level, an entropy of the self. The cancerous cervical cells Lena shows her biology students in an early scene are metaphors of a sort, but as she points out later, all human cells eventually mutate and break down in the process of aging. The ecosystem of the Shimmer speeds this up, warping the women’s minds and bodies, even their own blood cells. There is a lot of space between what rational humans recognize as fully functional, sentient existence and total destruction, and the Shimmer is basically that in-between space, making each woman unrecognizable to herself in different ways before snuffing them out.

I attended a series of lectures on neuroscience these last few days (like, a super basic cliffnotes-esque version of the topic cause medicine/STEM is not my field of work, so apologies for any innacuracies ahead), and when the lecturer brought up the importance of the frontal lobe, she casually alluded to what happened to Phineas P. Gage and-

wbk but also non-accidental split imagery one more time ^

She also briefly touched upon the 'cuts' of the brain (left and right hemispheres, lobes —and primary functions of each—, gray and white matter) and neural processes like synapsis —communication between neurons by chemical and electrical reactions—, but one of the things that stood out to me the most was the creation and reconfiguration/transformation/plasticity of neural circuits.

A neural circuit is a population of neurons interconnected by synapses to carry out a specific function —i.e. processing specific information and sending signals to other parts of the brain and body — when activated.

definition just for context; the point of bringing this up being what these circuits look like:

^^^this is just a guide alluding to the differences in morphology neurons can have, but they kinda giving-

and-

literally when the lecturer first showed what these cells look like I was like "neat, the tree of life. kinda, sorta. out to deliver trauma to the rest of the nervous system :))"

and (to the right, for comparison: what neuron synapses look like)

and of course, not totally accurate comparison ahead, but I couldn't resist the slight visual graphy coinkidink with the letter-assigned grid:

Additionally, zooming out, multiple neural circuits can interconnect with one another to form large scale brain networks, and the one that stood out to me was the default mode network (DMN):

also known as the medial frontoparietal network, it's a large-scale brain network [...] best known for being active when a person is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest, such as during daydreaming and mind-wandering.

Other times that the DMN is active include when the individual is thinking about others, thinking about themselves, remembering the past, and planning for the future. The DMN creates a coherent "internal narrative" control to the construction of a sense of self.

^ smart people, pls do with this info what you must.

the point I think I was trying to make: what if the blue UD we know has blurred the lines between being a representation of will's subconscious mindscape and also a visual abstraction of the biological/neurological state of his brain —as the two, like irl, are so intrinsically connected?

which, fortunately, means hope for will and the UD too (wbk), because by this line of thought/theory of sorts, the capacity neural circuits have to rearrange themselves, even after years and so much pain, can transform the blue UD, will's mind, as we've come to know it (the plasticity I was reffering to at the beginning of the post). However, it's important to note that to learn something new, you have to unlearn other stuff to make room for it.

I'm far from the first to talk about this topic, so check out the following posts! This one by @erikiara80, along the lines of her loop theory, dives into the implications of will's possible injury or death caused by having been hit to the head by a blunt object.

@conflictofthemind also has a great post about the treeflayer (shoutout and tysm to @threemanoperation for telling me about it and for prompting me to post this) with more tree imagery that evokes similar shapes to those of neurons (and it also links to Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan/Neverland parallels).

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oh, I've had some additional thoughts on this since posting - I wonder if this could be about Jonathan and Will's relationship to their "house" (ie their family) in terms of their character arcs?

Jonathan needs to separate himself from his family, break off on his own, and trust that Will and Joyce will be okay without him (a shield with a mark of distinction/difference)

Will needs to accept himself in full (including the parts that are made harder because of the household he grew up in) while being supported by his family (a shield bearing his proper family crest)

Byerses and Bends, Refraction and Distortion

I realized the Byers brothers are wearing shirts in s5 that are potentially in conversation with each other.

Jonathan’s The Fall shirt has a specific album cover on it, Bend Sinister. It’s named for the 1947 Nabokov novel, a dystopian satire about twentieth century totalitarianism along the lines of 1984 (though my impression is that Nabokov didn’t like those comparisons).

The title comes from heraldry (the design of “armorial bearings,” which include shields/coats of arms). In heraldry, a “bend” is a diagonal stripe running from the bearer’s upper right side to the bearer's lower left side. A “bend sinister” is a diagonal stripe that runs the opposite way, so from upper left to lower right.

I have to be honest, I've spent a long time with this quote and I still struggle with the meaning of "an outline broken by refraction" but we are not all Vladimir Nabokov

so a bend is a diagonal stripe...aka what Will has on his chest as part of his s5 midseason outfit.

others have already pointed out how the diagonals also evoke the "rod motif" associated with Will visually throughout the series

but interestingly if this is intentional, Will's "bends" are actually going the "correct" way. I'm encountering conflicting information and I do not have patience to go too deep into heraldry, but it seems like bend sinisters were sometimes added to the coats of arms of illegitimate children of nobles, so it's associated with bastardry or illegitimacy.

obviously potentially something here in terms of identity and integration considering where we’re at in our supernatural coming-of-age tale. there’s maybe something about Will being a “legitimate” heir (to the Upside Down? Or maybe more generally the heir to the cycle that started with Brenner and Henry who will set things “right”?).

I am not well-versed in '80s post-punk at all but my impression is The Fall album is playing a lot more with the totalitarian dystopia of the novel’s premise versus the title itself (also very thematically appropriate for ST s5). but there is some distortion and reflection going on in the album’s cover – as the image of the human face is repeated, it gets larger and more overexposed.

and also interestingly if intentional, that means the Byers brothers have their own shield imagery motif going on. Nancy has to get in on this game.

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Do you know where Joyce and Robin are in the b&w picture posted by Shawn? The radio station?

yep, they should be inside WSQK on the ground floor! the checkered floor matches the photos we got from the pap or urban explorer who apparently was able to break in lol.

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Saw your response and yeah I’m not that worried about his screen time in s5 either bc of press but a part of me is still a little concerned because he has so little compared to everyone else and i think it’s so unfair

In some ways I love it cause of the tension is builds up and I also get he a pretty OP character but this tension isn’t going to mean anything if they don’t let him take up enough space

If they don’t tackle EVERYTHING this emotional arc is gonna fall flat for me and I really want this to be good because I have never seen so much of myself in a character before and I love him so much

(Sorry if my English is bad)

oh absolutely, it honestly took me quite a while too to trust they weren't lying about this being a big Will season because I felt so burned after s4 (honestly my build to that realization is probably why I became so deranged about figuring out s5)

if it's any consolation I really believe Will being sidelined in s3 and s4 happened because he is fundamental to a twist that's part of the show's endgame (which I think is also what you're referring to so apologies if that is a repetitive statement). and the Duffers are both weird in their approach to "twists" and also did a bad job figuring out something to do with him when they had to keep him away from the supernatural plot.

I sincerely hope for both of us and all other members of the Willuminati this read is correct and they finally do right by him <3

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I feel like I’m missing something bc what’s the connection between the hospital scene and El piggybacking Vecna’s mind through Will?

I probably could have made that clearer, I think the relevance is what is implied about the groupings at that point (Will, Mike, and Joyce make sense for a Will who is unconscious/tranced to me, at the hospital or not) and it points to something coming to a head with Max

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Just read your recent theory about them venturing into Wills mind and I love the concept but if they’re gonna put Will unconscious for a full episode or longer I better see at least an hour dedicated just to him in the epilogue cause how else is his character actually going to develop

Or at the very least have Will’s “consciousness” be physically there with them in the mind scape so he’s not completely gone like he was in s2

yeah I think if they do that, he will still be around on the Mindscape side of the action! so he wouldn't vanish for an extended period of time or anything

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I'm starting to think that ep 6 will involve El piggybacking into Vecna's Mindscape via Will's mind.

We know from pap photos/videos that Lucas and Robin speed to the hospital in Joyce's car for a big sequence there that seems to bridge episode 5 and episode 6. The other three major members of their group at this point are Will, Joyce, and Mike, so it makes sense that those three are together - maybe even in an ambulance heading to the hospital as well. (I believe this connection first came from @/pinkeoni and @/finalgirllwillbyers)

This is conspiracy theory brained but Noah is the only member of this midseason group that Shawn Levy (who is directing ep 6) didn't post a photo of in-costume on set, which could be because something spoilery is going on with Will visually in episode 6 (ie, that he's in a hospital gown or otherwise injured/indisposed).

I'm currently a loverslakegate agnostic but I do think signs point to Will having a traumatic experience in a body of water in episode 5. Lucas's pants also get muddy and he changes into the blue WSQK sweatshirt by the time they get to the hospital, and Joyce is the other one with the bonus outfit change somewhere around here.

El is in Shawn's photos of a confusing cross-section of the different midseason groups at WSQK, so she may be back from her Upside Down side quest by now. but regardless of her exact location, we know she can piggyback remotely.

As has been speculated for a while now, Escape from Camazotz likely refers to the vision that Henry has the kids in at the Creel House. Camazotz makes the most sense in that context since can assume Holly and her classmates call it that since they're reading A Wrinkle in Time in class.

so if that's the case, who is escaping? Max and Holly are our likeliest candidates.

Credits for a New Mexico unit have started to pop up on IMDB episodes 4, 6, and 8, and Sadie was placed in Albuquerque while that was active. It's likely those are Mindscape flashbacks of Henry in Nevada (in particular the incident alluded to in The First Shadow where Henry disappears for 12 hours on/around his 8th birthday in a cave system and comes back changed) and/or desert-y Dimension X. The Upside Down church set probably fits into this too.

basically, all these pieces make me think we could get something like:

Will is unconscious/indisposed by ep 5 into ep 6, maybe in relation to however his connection with Vecna is manifesting this season reaching its peak,

El and/or someone else in the group realizes that connection is an access point for El to get into Vecna's mind (looking to rescue Max and/or Holly),

there is a piggyback scenario where El, Will, Max, and possibly Holly witness some chunk of the big Henry lore reveal we know is coming,

and ultimately El and/or Will manage to free Max and/or Holly.

that would bring some resolution to a couple threads that should drive the first part of the season (finding Max, rescuing Holly from whatever her exact vanishing situation is) and uncover key information to tee up our final act.

I originally felt like Max wouldn't wake up until the very end of the main season plotline just because she'll be pretty physically frail, but her chair is in that photo of a huge group at Hawkins National Lab, which should be after this big hospital sequence chronologically.

hopefully if something like this happens we would get to spend some time in Will's mind too. the Nevada flashbacks also possibly being present in ep 4 maybe connects us to the 1979 flashback we're getting with Will, Mike, and Jonathan/Will's Mindscape generally, "Sorcerer" and all.

also, when they escape Camazotz the first time in A Wrinkle in Time with the missing person they went there to retrieve, they have to leave someone behind...

[soclearlytosee]

Byerses and Bends, Refraction and Distortion

I realized the Byers brothers are wearing shirts in s5 that are potentially in conversation with each other.

Jonathan’s The Fall shirt has a specific album cover on it, Bend Sinister. It’s named for the 1947 Nabokov novel, a dystopian satire about twentieth century totalitarianism along the lines of 1984 (though my impression is that Nabokov didn’t like those comparisons).

The title comes from heraldry (the design of “armorial bearings,” which include shields/coats of arms). In heraldry, a “bend” is a diagonal stripe running from the bearer’s upper right side to the bearer's lower left side. A “bend sinister” is a diagonal stripe that runs the opposite way, so from upper left to lower right.

I have to be honest, I've spent a long time with this quote and I still struggle with the meaning of "an outline broken by refraction" but we are not all Vladimir Nabokov

so a bend is a diagonal stripe...aka what Will has on his chest as part of his s5 midseason outfit.

others have already pointed out how the diagonals also evoke the "rod motif" associated with Will visually throughout the series

but interestingly if this is intentional, Will's "bends" are actually going the "correct" way. I'm encountering conflicting information and I do not have patience to go too deep into heraldry, but it seems like bend sinisters were sometimes added to the coats of arms of illegitimate children of nobles, so it's associated with bastardry or illegitimacy.

obviously potentially something here in terms of identity and integration considering where we’re at in our supernatural coming-of-age tale. there’s maybe something about Will being a “legitimate” heir (to the Upside Down? Or maybe more generally the heir to the cycle that started with Brenner and Henry who will set things “right”?).

I am not well-versed in '80s post-punk at all but my impression is The Fall album is playing a lot more with the totalitarian dystopia of the novel’s premise versus the title itself (also very thematically appropriate for ST s5). but there is some distortion and reflection going on in the album’s cover – as the image of the human face is repeated, it gets larger and more overexposed.

and also interestingly if intentional, that means the Byers brothers have their own shield imagery motif going on. Nancy has to get in on this game.