#I used to think the mike creating el theory was silly

[shippingfangirl013]

Stranger Things S5 Conglomerate Twelvegate Theory (Part 1):

Because I have no clue what to call this and it’s basically a massive convergence of all the gates/theories into one?

@chirpsythismorning and I had to solve Twelvegate to figure out the rest and… I think we stumbled across the answer just off of rambling… and playing ping-pong with ideas…

This also heavily pulls from Stranger Things parallels to Back to The Future Parts I & II (because re-watching my favorite trilogy helped me to figure out the timeline for Stranger Things).

If you do NOT want spoilers for S5, I suggest you do not read any further.

Because… this is… a doozy. And likely has some MAJOR spoilers, we’re just good at playing detective and dedicating a little too much time to this show.

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First, we have to go back to season 1. . .

So, when we first meet the original four kids in the Party, they’re playing D&D. Will knows that he has to roll a 13 or higher here. Will is under the steps, crawling to find the d20.

This is the ORIGINAL timeline. We don’t know much more about the timeline other than seeing 2 minutes into the show. Will is still 12 years old and has a watch on, but we never get a close-up of the watch.

We’ve got a pizza one box, and two regular Coca-Cola cans… okay? Keep that in mind, it’s important later on.

When the Tv flickers, that’s Vecna using his power, likely to alter memories or the timeline/reality itself.

Right after this instance?

We get this scene:

Now, why would Will go from knowing that a 13 counts and is high enough to take out the Demogorgon, to asking if a 7 is high enough? If a 7 counts, right after the TV flickers?

Also, notice that Will is standing framed with the two coke cans and pizza one box behind him. That yellow and blue pen is important too.

(I play D&D, most times, anything below a 13 or 14 is a bad roll and you take a lot of damage. It all depends on if your Dungeon Master wants to be forgiving or not. )

So, the first 3 minutes of season 1, is the original timeline (Timeline A) differentiating/being altered; I say this because, we don’t know anything about that point in time aside from our main Party playing D&D in Mike’s basement.

A key factor here that Jo mentioned while we were talking, is that we don’t see Hopper, Joyce, Lonnie, or Jonathan during the scene in Mike’s basement. We only see Will, Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and briefly, Karen.

Timeline A is altered at 8:15 pm on November 6, 1983.

Each point after the TV flickers is a part of Timeline B. But I think Will actually cast protection on the extended party; El, Max, Lucas, Dustin, Mike, Jonathan, Joyce, Hopper, possibly Murray, and maybe on the others’ families.

But Timeline B was Henry altering the timeline, creating a new reality for our cast of characters. (Putting them in a silly little play, perhaps?) Henry stole Will's powers when Will was kidnapped; but what powers could Will have that Henry needs to re-shape the world?

Time-altering powers and creation powers.

Here's the thing, Henry can manipulate what others see, he can manipulate and alter memories, and it is very likely he was able to take Will's time-altering powers while Will was trapped in the Upside Down. Henry is easily able to use time travel powers to his advantage.

But. . . Henry CAN'T create something out of nothing; as evidenced by his using others' memories to make them see what they fear. He can re-shape the particles that made up the Mind Flayer, however, Henry cannot create to the extent that Will (an artist!) is able to. This is how Will is able to do things like cast Fog Cloud in S2. In S1, Will's True Sight is used.

(I'll come back to this later, because this is literally going to be like a 10-part theory, which may literally just be 100% spoilers)

Timeline B is an altered reality; Henry gave our cast of characters new roles to play. Not just anyone though, primarily: Joyce, Jonathan, Will, El, Hopper, Terry, Sarah, and Diane.

(You may be wondering why I mentioned Sarah, Diane, and Terry; I'll get to that in a bit, if not in this one, then in part 2.)

Joyce is the ex-wife of Lonnie Byers and she is Will and Jonathan's mom. Hopper is the small-town police chief who moved back to Hawkins after his divorce from Diane, and the loss of his daughter Sarah. Terry Ives is El's mama, and Eleven is the girl with powers that escaped from Hawkins Lab. Basically, the events of S1 equate to an altered timeline, or therefore, are the repercussions of an altered timeline.

Timeline A still exists after the original event that alters Timeline A to create the altered reality in Timeline B.

The event that alters Timeline A is an occurrence on the day of Will and El's birth. Henry swaps the families of Joyce and Hopper's twins.

Henry went back in time after taking Will's powers in S1, to alter the timeline, by swapping El and Will at birth in the hospital, so that Will and El (011 & 012) grew up together in the lab, never knowing that they are twins. Will grows up with Lonnie Byers as his father, El grows up in the lab, and Hopper lives in New York for seven years and has a family with Diane. Henry alters Terry Ives' memories and scrambles the signals in her brain via Brenner.

In this altered timeline that is Timeline B, El was taken by the lab at birth, and El's Mama is Terry Ives. Will's mom stays the same, but his father (and Jonathan's father) is changed to Lonnie Byers.

In Timeline A, El was kidnapped first in 1976, and Will was taken second in 1978.

In 1976, there was a drowning at Sattler's Quarry. Seven years prior to 1983; now, for a while, I thought that might be Will, but that didn't add up.

El was taken first at five years old, by the lab. . . on her first day of kindergarten. . . which is why Mike found Will alone and scared on the swing set. El's disappearance was covered up as a drowning in the quarry in 1976. This is why El is paralleled with Maria from Frankenstein (1931) in season 1, with Nancy's pink dress, because Maria drowns in a lake after trying to play a game with Frankenstein's monster.

Now, Will was also kidnapped and taken to the lab in Timeline A, but this gets a little harder to figure out how Will got there in the first place. I think Lonnie has something to do with it, because there are one too many instances of Will being paired with trunks, and we see Jonathan check for Will in Lonnie's Oldsmobile in season 1. However, I'm not 100% certain about that and I will update this if I find anything that changes my thoughts on that.

I know that Will had to have been taken to the lab around 1978, at the age of 7, if he and El were not taken at the same time in 1976. This means, that Will's kidnapping was covered up as a death, (maybe a death from a fatal illness?) that was then altered by a character with the ability to fabricate fake memories. . . shifting the death of a son, to that of a daughter. Sarah's death is the cover-up for Will being taken.

Jonathan doesn't remember much of this either, he would have been 8 years old when El was kidnapped, and 10 years old when Will was kidnapped; if we go off of El being taken at the age of 5 and Will being taken at the age of 7.

1978 is an important year in Timeline A. This is because in Timeline B, it is the year that:

Lonnie took Jonathan hunting at 10 years old

Terry was electrocuted/had her signals scrambled

Sarah dies

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Another thing that I need to address, is Hopper's role in Timeline B.

In 1983, when Hopper calls Diane, he’s wearing his blue flannel… just like how Max’s mom wore a blue flannel in S4…

(I have seen almost every character in the Byers-Hopper family in a BLUE FLANNEL, the only one I haven’t found in a blue flannel (without a jacket over it) is Jonathan.)

But, we see Hopper calling Diane, and then we hear a baby crying in the background. We assume that after 7 years she has moved on… but what if this woman was never Hopper’s “Diane” anyways?

We KNOW that the phones are important. We also know that the lab/Russian government are always listening in on phone calls- since season 1! So, this “Diane” woman that Hopper called was someone from the lab or someone trying to keep the truth from spreading.

Because, I went back to S3, and found this:

This is the only line that says [Diane] in the closed captions. I’ve looked through a few other shots, and the only other shot similar to this is when Hopper is watching Magnum P.I. and a little text comes up saying that the show is playing. They usually do not specify which character is talking in the tv shows with brackets - it just shows the dialogue on screen.

Hopper got incredibly drunk that evening, but the point I’m making here, is that Joyce is Diane.

Hopper’s wife, Diane.

(He never says ex-wife in season 4. He says: “My wife Diane, she wanted a baby,” )

So. . . This means that Henry has had a hand in every little kettle he could get his hands on after he nabbed Will’s time powers.

I doubt that Hopper going to Vietnam was influenced by Henry in any way, but I know that everything else we are shown is influenced by him.

I was trying to piece this all together, and after going through and making a timeline, I think I’ve got how it all lays out - at the very least, I know where the timeline that was altered. At most, I think I have a large surprise that will come up in S5 pinned down.

My focus when pinning the timeline down, was actually on Hopper and Jonathan.

In S1, Joyce tells Lonnie that Jonathan has wanted to go to NYU since he was 6 years old. Now, Jonathan would have been 6 years old in 1974, because he was born in 1968.

I couldn’t figure out why Jonathan would want to go to NYU unless:

- his parent(s) went there / one of his parents went there / something happened to make him want to go to NYU.

NYU is such a specific school, and it is mentioned once in S1, then rarely brought up again. Even in S4, Jonathan was just planning to go to the same college as Nancy, if he was accepted.

It made me think about how Hopper was in NY for seven years. . . And it took me a while to figure this out.

So, Hopper goes off to fight in the Vietnam War when he is 18. The Vietnam War goes on from 1955-1975. This means that Hopper was in Vietnam possibly from 1960 to 1970 at the latest. However, according to the ST Wiki, Hopper met Diane in 1965. . . (I am taking this with a grain of salt), because if this is the case, then Hopper could have been in Vietnam at any point in time between 1960 (when he was 18) to 1970.

But if you do the math from when Sarah was born, if Hopper met Diane in 1965 (and they began dating that year), and Sarah was born in 1971, then Hopper only knew Diane for five years before Sarah was born. Now, we know that Sarah dies in 1978, from cancer. . . and from that 1983 phone call to Diane (counting backward 7 years), Hopper would have been in NY from 1976 to 1983. . .

Another thing is, in Season 1, Hopper says that he has been in Hawkins for 4 years from the point that we meet him in 1983.

1983 - 4 is 1979 -> the year of the Hawkins Lab Massacre. . . so, why would Hopper (as a police officer) not know about that? I know, the lab is secretive and whatnot, but you would assume in an emergency situation, they might call in backup.

1979 is also the year that Mike, Will, Lucas, and Dustin had their Elder Tree campaign. . . (and I'm not quite sure if Will was there depending on the timeline and how things may have worked out).

And then I started to question just how much inspiration could have been taken from Back To The Future?

The Answer? Quite a bit of inspiration was taken from Back to The Future.

Marty's family is made up of his parents (George & Lorraine), his older brother (Dave), his older sister (Linda), and himself (Marty).

This is apparently an important enough movie for the Stranger Things plot that it is heavily referenced with wardrobes and it is even shown on the big screen in S3. (There is more significance here, but I'll explore that in a later part).

At the beginning of the scripting process for Back to The Future Part II, the creators were thinking of having the roles of Marty McFly Jr. and Marlene McFly set as Twins.

And in S4 of ST, we can see quite a bit of twin imagery throughout the season, in reference to Will and El. (again, I will post more in a later analysis, I don't want this to get too long).

If we go off of the basis that Henry/Vecna/001 stole Will's time powers, then we can assume that the second timeline that was generated from the changing of a fixed point in time (an origin event - in this case), changed other things throughout the seasons in Stranger Things.

Think about it, Henry could have easily gone back in time and replaced Hopper (being Jonathan, Will, and El's father) with Lonnie.

He could have manipulated Joyce, Hopper, and Jonathan's memories if the memories were STILL left AFTER the timeline was altered, making them forget that their family of 5 had ever existed in the first place. Swapped Will and El at birth, putting them in the lab or arranging for them to be taken by Brenner, and then, he could have later helped Will escape the lab massacre. . .

One last thing to address;

The Mind Flayer and why Will was possessed in the first place. . .

If Henry cannot create, then he needs Will alive to utilize that power. Henry may not have been strong enough on his own to manipulate Will into doing his bidding, but working with the Mind Flayer to get what he wants?

Therefore activating Will as the spy, taking El out of the way by using a distraction (making her focus on Max? Knowing that her weakness is the people she cares about - because he's already done this once before with the Lab Massacre by killing the other lab kids?), and getting what he wants?

The Mind Flayer literally looks like the strings attached to a hand for a wooden string puppet. . . (think Pinocchio if you need a visual)

The Mind Flayer possessed Will so that Henry/Vecna/001 could manipulate and bend the final puzzle piece to his will.

(and that's why, I think in S5, we're going in with a bang... because I think that El and Will have been Vecna'd in S4; they have been falling into Henry's traps since S1.) (I'll explain more of this in Part 2 or 3 because again, this is super complex and took me about a month or longer to compile all of the evidence)

So, in short, Henry/Vecna/001 truly has been moving our characters on the board like chess pieces. . .

(this is going to have like 3 parts explaining the theory itself and then like 20 posts of evidence all linked under a masterlist once I have the time to set that up.)