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[jackie-says-stuff]

Stranger Things Season 3 Predictions

SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2 LAST WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

Okay, first of all: remember my s1 theoryrant and predictions for s2? This one? I WAS RIGHT!! Ahem. The show doesn't bash you over the head with the concept, Moffat-style, but it's mentioned often enough that the anger and rage in El is what created the Upside-Down and subsequently the Demogorgon in Season One, and now that they've employed the same tactic of riding the 4th wall again in Season Two, I was also right about the kids' complaints about Mike's campaign in the end of S1 foreshadowing what would be important in S2. I was also right about Will being this season's Big Bad. The rot: did you notice when Hopper bites the apple in s2e1 that it's on the verge of getting old and that's why he spits it out? Nice little setup for season two's plot.

Here's my predictions for the upcoming Season 3:

(1) Papa actually is alive again. Sniveling Employee* didn't make that up. Technically, El did.

Remember the flashback scene that shows what happened as soon as El landed in the Upside-Down at the end of season one? There's nothing in there with her, but when she breaks through the conveniently located hole in the wall back to reality, there's a giant blood smear tracking past it - from the group that died, including Papa, to the exit.

It's a repeated theme that "life, uh... life finds a way", (not an accidental Jurassic Park reference, especially considering the way the Demodogs moved like raptors when the lab was closed), and it's also repeated several times that El's unresolved emotions about Papa will fester and grow until she faces them.

When El brought the Demogorgon back into the Upside-Down, part of it escaped through that hole, possessed Papa, and dragged his body outside. Season Three's main Big Bad is going to be Zombie Papa, foreshadowed by Will being called "Zombie Boy" repeatedly, and Dustin's mention of a zombie army being the only thing able to kill a Mind Flayer in D&D.

(2) Speaking of Dustin, he and Hopper are going to be the spies, zombie army generals, or will start to grow rot next season.

Both of them - and only them - were infected by the puffs of what seemed to be seed pods in the tunnels under the pumpkin farm. (Nice reference to Back to the Future there, if you missed it, of them driving over the top of the sign that got run over by a car in the field, btw.)

I think season three will start with someone - probably Steve - having side effects in his ears that he didn't admit to at the time, making him Hear No Evil. Dustin clearly yelled, "it's in my mouth!", making him Speak No Evil, and Hopper will be See No Evil, the guy who’s typically the one person in the show who always sees a way out or path forward. Steve is too well-defined of a character to disappear, and the writers need some way of bringing back Nancy's love triangle struggle, since viewers like that shit, so that's why I say it will be him.

(3) Kali will return, but this won't be a happy reunion. Kali is the Indian goddess of Death, Time, Doomsday, and Destruction - and El broke Kali's heart when she left the way she did. ("Jane", btw, is referencing "Jane Doe", the name given to women victims who can't be identified.)

Kali's power is mental, but I think that also means that's how she can be affected. When they escaped Chicago, El's bag was left behind - likely with some identifying information as to where she came from. Kali will look for El, run into Zombie Papa, feel betrayed that El said he was dead when he "clearly" isn't, get mentally manipulated, and go on a hit mission to get her revenge on El.

Next season will be:

Mike getting used to Redhead Girl* and the schism that comes from her appearance,

El dealing with unresolved (and now both sentient and corporeal) feelings about Papa and her past,

Kali showing up at the wrong time to complicate things just enough to keep you holding your breath for a few episodes before she joins forces with El to defeat Papa,

Hopper, Dustin and Steve being taken over by the Upside-Down,

and Joyce and Hopper finally hooking up.

Now for the wild card: Redneck Asshole Brother*. The racist subplot here was really unnecessary and out of place. I really, really hope they don't pursue that, but his character arc could go a couple of ways. He hooks up with Mike's mom, and she literally becomes Mrs. Robinson. That part is almost guaranteed. It's less certain what happens from here. Mike's parents get divorced, foreshadowed by Max mentioning that her parents are divorced? Mike’s mom and Redneck Asshole Brother become a bigger racist subplot? (Netflix, just don’t.)

Best case scenario: he ends up not actually being an asshole or racist, and breaks his stereotype, (in the same way Steve broke the popular asshole stereotype in season one), when the world is about to end, Hopper/Dustin/Steve are out of commission, and they need someone to show up and help them at Zero Hour, then becomes one of the group through shared trauma.

I think I've typed enough for the moment. I'll write more after a rewatch, or at least after I've had time to think on this more.

*I can't be bothered to remember or look up their names at the moment, so this is what I'm going to call them for right now.

Edit: A few additional thoughts after thinking it over a bit more today...

(A) Will is probably going to have a continued amnesia problem in season three. We only see him awake and healthy in the cabin at the end. If the pathways the Mind Flayer dug in Will's mind work in any way like the tunnels under Hawkins, (and there's no reason to think they wouldn't, especially considering the brain scans we saw), it seems like this kid really can't catch a break.

(B) Why do they keep calling Will's shadow possession "a virus"? This is a show for nerds. They science all over the place in common conversation. So... why is a parasitic, symbiotic relationship between Will and the Mind Flayer called anything other than that? It can't be accidental.

(C) Remember when I said during my s1 rewatch last week that this all may be emanating from Mike, and his connection with El, rather than from Will's bad luck? This season has done nothing to convince me otherwise. Have you noticed that basically the only person who can snap Will back to reality... is Mike? And the one person he calls for when he's stuck in the Upside-Down... is Mike?

(D) Hopper didn't have a chance to think it through all the way with Scientist Guy*, but the tunnels under Hawkins that spread out like branches, starting from the "brain", seem to match the pattern of what a shadow from the Mind Flayer would take. When Will looks up and sees it in the sky, it has one central brain, and four appendages that touch down on Hawkins - possibly in the same locations that the tunnels spread out to?

(E) It's probably foreshadowing that Dustin and Lucas got interrupted before they could shake hands and make up, especially since the reason Dustin took in Dart was because he thought it was a friend of his, (because he needs more?), and he offered to let Max (hey, I remembered her name!) take his place in The Party.

(F) How the hell is Scientist Guy still around, anyway? Didn't Nancy blow everyone’s cover with a recording of his confession? These military people kill anyone who gets in their way. Why would Scientist Guy Joe Schmoe be any different?

(G) Where the hell is The Cure? We have an emo-ish dude who’s into dark music in the 80s, pining over some chick he’ll never get for two years straight, and we don’t get to hear the music that’s basically made for that shit?

[jackie-says-stuff]

Stranger Things s1 TheoryRant

​​SPOILERS below:.....

THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING - ...SPOILERS BELOW:......

This is the first time in a long time that I've had a show/movie theory - they don't usually have the same depth as books do - so I hope this show continues with the mindf*ck theory thing as the seasons progress.

So, here goes:

I think El is the monster. Literally: she *is* the Demogorgon. Whenever she goes into the Upside Down, it's a clear room with black reflective/watery floor - nothing in it except what she's looking for. But after the gateway opens, something that she is responsible for doing, suddenly it's the magic decay world - for everyone except El.

Lucas says she's the monster, and she doesn't deny it. When she's with Mike, she tells him, "I am the monster." When she and Lucas make up, she still doesn't deny it, and only says, "friends don't lie". After a beat she says that she created the gate, and the two could be taken together, but I think they're separate sentences/ideas. 

As El becomes more "human", the monster becomes stronger, kills and kidnaps more people, and opens more mini gateways of its own. It could be her growing more socialized, but it's probably that she's been unconsciously feeding it her anger/hate/etc., making it stronger, until it starts acting of its own accord. I seriously doubt it's a coincidence that the day she creates the gate, creeper Papa gives her a potted plant, and the Demogorgon has a plant head. 

I also don't think it's a coincidence that Will survived when the "monster" first showed up. He's a kid, her age, when the Demogorgon is still mostly her. It connects to the most outcast/lonely kid nearby, who likes drawing and lives a lot more in his imagination than others, and it doesn't kill him. She (as the monster) just brings him in, and we see her shortly thereafter. It's only after it grows further apart from her personality that it starts killing people... or does it?

Correct me if I'm wrong here, as I'm trying to remember for certain, but I *think* the only time we ever actually see the Demogorgon _kill_ anything, it's when it's killing her "Papa" at the end. All of the other times, it chases people, or drags people into the Upside Down where people may die there on their own (i.e., Barb), but I don't think we actually see it kill -anyone- else. 

We see it feeding on a deer, which Nancy says looks like it was hit by a car - not that it was attacked by an animal. Barb probably tripped over a root or succumbed to the toxic air. Will had the "breather tube" in, which could just as easily have been trying to revive him (see: Demonreach/Dresden) or acclimate him to the toxic air so he could survive on his own, especially since Will looks more plump/healthy/warm when Joyce and Hopper find him than when he was laying in Castle Byers by himself. 

Since "Papa" basically created who El became - killing machine and all - through at least one generation back of LSD science experiments, it would stand to reason that the Demogorgon would want to kill the one person that caused it (El) so much pain. All of the others seem to be attacking in self-defense or to protect its food, which seems to already have been killed before the monster ever got there.

Back to the duality - 

When El is "killing" the monster, she's reaching her right hand towards it. Mirroring her, it's reaching its right hand towards her - even though it technically shouldn't be able to move at all - in the exact same motion/position that her hand is using. 

When it "dies", it's the decay that starts evaporating off of it, to reveal the same type of material and texture as the mini gate. Then, instead of it just evaporating away, Voldemort style, she's sucked into it, with a cloud of disappearing decay... and instead of her collapsing on the floor, she vanishes into it.

I think it split off from her personality/consciousness while she had her "wizard powers" growing, and started taking on a life of its own. To "kill" it, I think she had to reconcile it with her personality and that she's currently doing that in the Upside Down right now.

I think the box in the woods where Hopper leaves the Eggos in the end is the same place in the real world where he found the Aliens-style hatched egg in the Upside Down. (And, yes, I've noted the similarity between Eggos and The Egg.) Speaking of... 

Hopper, he's way too smart to be sucked in by Evil Big Government and to just be complacently working for them, whether or not he gave his word to do so. I think he's working to destroy them from the inside and to close the gateway for good.

And, in regards to (the number) Eleven, at first I figured that there were ten other mind control kids running around there somewhere, but now I'm seriously doubting it. 

Symbolism: eleven has the significance of being a doubly strong number - it's the prime number one, doubled, doubling the vibration power of the number one. Therefore 11 is twice as strong as 1, as far as numbers go.

El regularly bleeds from her nose when she's doing her "jedi magic", bleeds from her ears when she does more, and bleeds from her eyes when she does even more than that. If any other kid with similar powers had tried doing half the things she did while at the facility, keeping in mind the symbolism of 11 and it meaning that she's probably twice as strong as they were, they probably would have died by now. 

Will's mysterious slug cough - I'm torn here on whether or not he's infected by the Upside Down, (and may potentially be next season's Bad?), or if that was the way "the monster" was acclimating his lungs to the air/environment (see: Hitchhiker/translation fish). I think I'll have to watch it again before I can make a decision on this, and that probably won't happen for at least a few months. I did some googling on this to see if anyone else had the same theory. There was one reddit post briefly touching on it, but the internet (from my quick search this morning) has otherwise been very quiet on the idea of El literally being the Demogorgon/monster.

Terry: I did see a suggestion that El's mother, Terry Ives, is the monster. That's possible, since she's basically a vegetable right now, but I think the symbolism of mother/child is even stronger than that. 

I am still convinced that El is the Demogorgon for all the reasons shown above - there's far more evidence that way than there is for it to be Terry. But I think her mom's mental/life force is what is giving life to the environment in the Upside Down. 

In other words, she's _literally_ the vegetable. Paralleling Terry carrying/feeding and giving birth to "Jane" (El), her mind is helping feed the Upside Down, which gave birth (via egg) to the Demogorgon.

And, all of that being said, if I'm wrong, I'm going to be really disappointed because it could have been so much cooler.

Thoughts during rewatch:

Just restarted Season One to refresh my memory before Season Two drops, and I'd completely forgotten about the part at the beginning where Will admits the Demogorgon gets him.

In the beginning, they're all playing a campaign that *Mike* spent two weeks creating. And the Demogorgon gets *Will*. The Upside-Down seems focused on Will, but did he get taken there by his own bad roll - possibly literally? Eleven does get very close to the group via Mike. Maybe all of this isn't a coincidence due to where Will lives, and maybe it's created directly from Mike somehow?

Final thoughts after rewatch:

Said by the boys during their D&D session at the end of the last episode:

"The campaign was way too short." "It was ten hours!" "But it doesn't make any sense." "It makes sense.." "Uh, no, what about the lost knight?" "And the proud princess?" "And those weird flowers in the cave?" "I don't know..."

Anyone else think this is referencing the loose threads at the end of Season One? Will is the Lost Knight. Eleven is the Proud Princess? And the "weird flowers" is all the weird organic growth in The Upside-Down? Part two here.