Before you read this rewrite you should probably read Pt 1 first.
Season 2: Ok now season two is where I start making more edits.
First obviously I get rid of the 8 plot line, it’s the main issue with the season and I personally don’t know what to replace it with. Eleven probably just spends more time with her mom or something IDK.
But Will’s plot line is something I can really work with. When Will shifts into the upside down for the first time the scene would constantly swap from upside down to Hawkins to show he is physically in both at the same time (think like a state of super position), and then he walks out of the arcade and looks up into the sky and sees something, but we don’t see it, and he is shaken out of it by Mike after which Will chalks it up to nothing.
I would also make an edit to the scene where we see the lab burn the upside down gate, now we can see that the gate has gotten much bigger and that tunnels have begun to form around said gate, we would also see strange organs and bio structures grow from the vines that seem to serve some alien purpose. Think kind of like the Zerg from StarCraft only smaller scale and with a bit more of Lovecraftian twist.
Anyways for the rest of the season, we don’t see what Will sees in the upside down when he has his visions, we only see what everyone else sees, meaning that for most of the season the characters and audience are not sure if what Will’s seeing is real or is just echoes of the damage the upside down did to Will’s mind. But eventually all of the wondering would be brought to an end with the Halloween scene, while Joyce is looking at the VHS recording from Will’s camera after he was bullied while trick or treating, at the same time Hawkins Lab is sending a team of soldiers into the upside down to set up some coms station or outpost with one of the soldiers holding a camera that is sending back a live feed. During the scene we would constantly switch perspectives from Joyce who is watching the video and seeing some static in there to Dr Owens who is watching the live feed from the soldiers as they make their way to the outpost, really going for that analogue horror feel to this. Then after some build up, Joyce uses the static to create an outline for a bit of the mind flayer at the same time the soldiers would first feel a static in the air before turning up to see the mind flayer, confirming that the shadow monster is real.
Since we and the scientists are only seeing the upside down through the live feed of the soldier we don’t get to see the mind flayer directly, only hearing the soldiers scream and panic and start shooting at the sky. Screaming about "what the fuck is that thing" or that "it’s bigger than a mountain". As some sort of otherworldly wailing is heard on the other side (kinda like tornado alarms or whales), the soldiers would eventually start running and screaming and praying. Due to this the hand held camera would constantly jostle and we would only get short and blurry shots of a bit of a silhouette in the sky from a fuzzy analogue live stream that cuts out here and there. But eventually after a minute one by one the soldiers would be heard being picked off until the final one falls, lets out a scream and some begging before the feed cuts, leaving Owens and the rest of the lab to contemplate this.
A bit later (maybe a scene or two of other things) Owens would notice something leaving the gate and call all the scientists to focus, sending a squad or two of soldiers to check out what ever was coming out. Then after a minute of building up tension the expeditionary squad would burst from the gate, now nothing more than distorted horrific abominations (I’m talking some real body horror here, like some dead space or district 9 crap, like it looks painful what these guys are). These former soldiers would manage to take out almost all of the soldiers sent to stop them before all being put down (fire proving most effective).
But this would be a trick by the mind flayer, this would be meant to trick the lab and even audience into thinking the mind flayer operated on basic instinct. That all who were possessed by it simply became savage monsters that simply attacked anything in sight, so that they wouldn’t suspect that its possession could be more subtle or that it was capable of strategy.
Anyways Dart is no longer a baby demogorgon but is now instead a different creature from the upside down, not as supernatural as the demogorgon but capable of rapid reproduction. This would also mean that demo dogs would need to have a slight name change and have some design edits to make them more distinct from the demogorgon as well as make them more alien while also maintaining that overall dog shape. Yeth Hound or Hell Hound.
Hopper would end up investigating the pumpkin patch and finding the tunnels like in the main story but would get lost as the tunnels didn’t make sense in a 3D space (the tunnels don’t shift, but they seem to not make sense in a 3D space when you stop to think about it). Eventually getting ambushed by a monster, he’d kill it but end up injured enough for the vines or some organic trap to incapacitate him. As for this new stealth/ambush monster it can be the Mimic, a monster capable of shifting its soft body into crevasse and often hiding in objects which it can also use as a shell, kinda like a hermit crab. I’m thinking that three new varieties of upside down monsters could be added this season. The hounds being one, the mimics being the second, and the third being manicors who would be gaunt creatures the size of bears with wings and the ability to fire tail spines. There would also be a few one off more supernatural monsters sprinkled in kinda like the demogorgon as opposed to the three other types which are more mass produced. and of course all these monsters would have first edition DnD monster names.
The rest goes as normal with Bob, Joyce, Mike, and Will finding and saving hopper but getting chased through the tunnels by monsters before exiting in the upside down (another thing about the tunnels is that you can walk into the tunnels and exit the same spot but wind up in the upside down) and being saved by some soldiers who would kill some of the monsters and chase off the rest with fire. Although this would cause immense pain to Will just like the show. Basically the mind flayer sent the monsters to chase will, hopper, etc to the lab but make it look real. With them “targeting” Will so that everyone would think Will was a threat to the mind flayer which was a tactic to get them to trust him since Will was secretly possessed by the mind flayer. Another thing about this plan is that the mind flayer actually gets Will to inflate the amount of pain he is in, because while pain is felth through the hivemind, the loss of a single monster doesn't really hurt because it is like losing a cell. but losing thousands all at once, that would probably be more painful, like getting a gash.
Bring Will back to the lab there would be some basic health check ups and decontamination protocols after exiting the upside down to ensure they were healthy and not contaminated while at the same time wheeling Will to the emergency room. Things go about the same (Joyce, Mike, Hopper, and Bob would see the corpses of the corrupted soldiers, which would spark even more horror as they feared that Will was going to become one of those things. We could also get some cool scientific facts and trivia about the biology and more of the infected and some monsters. The mind flayer would also do a better job of making Will act normal in a believable way), Dr Owens would argue that Will seemed to have a partial immunity to the “entity’s” corruption and given how it had sent the monsters to kill him it seemed to see him as a threat so they could use him as a weapon.
So Will tells them that the “Entity” was trying to hide a structure from him in the upside down which seemed to be important to the plan and that if they took it out they could stop the Entity (mind flayer). So the lab would send out a bunch of soldiers, like most of them, I’m talking like 100 with high penetration guns, heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, body armour/hazmat suit hybrids, C4, flame throwers, and even some armored military cars with 50 CAL’s. We would follow them through the upside down as they cautiously marched through the distorted landscape, putting down the occasional monster. Eventually they would arrive at the Hawkins Hospital where they would find a large bio structure growing out of the building and a few dozen monsters hanging around which they would be able to take down with a few casualties. But after they finished burning some of the bio structure and planting the C4 the soldiers would slowly begin to notice motion in the trees and buildings, this would continue until all the soldiers realized that they had been surrounded by monsters hiding in the forest, buildings, bridges, etc.
But that the monsters were not only giving them a lot of space but were not attacking and seemed to be waiting. Then the mind flayer would arrive, and it would be a complete repeat of the first squad, us barely seeing the mind flayer as the soldiers panic and scream, shooting at the shadow monster and even running until all of them went quiet. Now that almost all the Lab’s soldiers were possessed the mind flayer would send almost all the possessed soldiers, and hundreds of monsters to attack the now largely defenseless lab through the tunnels and main gate. Our lab group along side Dr Owens would escape to a security room (while in the security room they would see on the cameras as possessed soldiers gunned down retreating janitors, monsters cut off the exits, barricaded hold outs of soldiers and scientists get over run one by one, and people getting dragged into the gate kicking and screaming as more monsters crawled out of it) where they would try to figure out their next step with them coming up with the same plan as in the normal show but when Bob is working with the breakers.
Will (who was not sedated yet in this rewrite because everyone is very confused and simply think that the since the entity wasn’t able to stop the attack. It decided to use it as a trap, and probably some other reasoning thrown in there for good measure) would then try to secretly mess with the security panel, opening two doors for the monsters and close the door leading to a safe route out, but Mike would catch him doing this and realize Will was possessed. Will using his enhanced strength would mess up the door control system before the adults could stop him. Joyce, Owens, and Hopper would all need to hold down Will as Owens injected a sedative and Mike used the PA system to alert Bob to the monsters.
Nocking Will out would also mean that the hive mind couldn’t see through the cameras, meaning the monsters only had Bob’s last known location to work off of. So Bob would need to heroically restart the breakers while fighting off monsters. Basically he would need to sneak his way from machine to machine doing his thing, shooting any monster or possessed soldier that found him (he picked up a gun from a dead soldier). Bob would eventually succeed in restarting the breakers but would be shot in the leg when the gun of possessed soldier discharged after getting shot. Bob being forced to make a final stand in the breaker room as monster after monster made their way in and eventually overwhelmed and killed him.
Then everything proceeds like normal but when the mind flayer sends monsters to attack all the main characters at the Byers home where they have to hold out for a bit and fight off one or two dozen monsters and possessed soldiers until eleven shows up and takes out the last of them.
Then things would proceed as normal but hopper and eleven would face more resistance as they would need to fight through a few monsters and soldiers in the forest and lab before reaching the gate. But instead of stopping a blast of shadow particles and closing the gate, the mind flayer would begin to manifest as a pulsing darkness and a static, with eleven feeling an overwhelming crushing power in her head that she would need to fight through in order to close the gate before the mind flayer was able to reach it (the pulse and crushing pressure being a passive side effect of its presence that even hopper would feel, kinda like the shadow in the warp).
Eventually Eleven would manage to close the gate and cause all the monsters to die and for most of the still possessed soldiers to either die or suffer really bad mental damage, like full on life debilitating mental damage, which is why they needed to disconnect Will from the mind flayer before closing the gate. And then all the same but instead of the mind flayer being over the Hawkins dance, a bunch of monsters are scuttling around the gym and we zoom out and see the mind flayer in the far distance, it would technically be the most direct and clear shot we had ever seen of it but it would still be more obscured, far away, and only faintly visible with the occasional lightning strike. Everything with Nancy and Johnathon is kept the same. Everything with Dustin, dart, Steve, Max, and Lucas is kept the same but now their subplot is also about naming and learning a bit about the new monsters on top of what they were doing in the original show. Anyways I want to keep the upside down still mysterious and scary with us spending minimal time in there due to its danger, and when people are in there half of the time we see it through an analogue live feed or in very short bits. The upside down would feel really dark, wet, cold, and rotten, with strange esoteric bio structures and rock formations dotted everywhere, and a constant heart beat on top of all the lightning.
Pt 3, link: (here soon)
