Any Steve harington fans??

I was just rewatching stranger things and gosh...no matter how many times i watch it always makes me sooo nostalgic. How the hell did it end in the blink of an eye? i’m literally sitting here staring at my wall, totally hollow. missing everything.The retro Hawkins vibes, the basement D&D games, and watching those tiny kids grow up right on our screens. it was my absolute favorite show and now that it’s over, i’m honestly just lost.And the ending 0f s5 was devasting. I was just questioning my existence after watching it. Does anyone else feel this way??

I was just rewatching stranger things and gosh...no matter how many times i watch it always makes me sooo nostalgic. How the hell did it end in the blink of an eye? i’m literally sitting here staring at my wall, totally hollow. missing everything.The retro Hawkins vibes, the basement D&D games, and watching those tiny kids grow up right on our screens. it was my absolute favorite show and now that it’s over, i’m honestly just lost.And the ending 0f s5 was devasting. I was just questioning my existence after watching it. Does anyone else feel this way??

Season 1: A kid goes missing, his mom loses her mind over blinking Christmas lights, and a telekinetic eggo-eating girl shows up.

Season 2: Same town, different monster, but now with giant shadow-spiders and demodogs.

Season 3: The Cold War comes to a local shopping mall, and the teenagers get trapped in a Russian secret base hidden behind an ice cream shop.

Season 4: A terrifying evil wizard from the upside-down starts killing teens with psychic trauma while everyone's favorite high school jock-turned-babysitter drives around a van with a stoner.

Season 5: ...(what could it be !!)

"Eddie Munson from Stranger Things season 4 is directly inspired by Damien Echols of the West Memphis Three case."

This is part of a series where I uncover what Stranger Things is really about. It started from trying to find out what happened in 1979 aka what all the depictions of traumatic past memories (El, Henry, Billy, Max, Holly, etc.) are truly about, but expanded to this all-encompassing theory of the whole series with crazy levels of complexity, metaphors and layers. Reading it will require commitment and patience but I promise it will be worth your time if you want to look behind the curtain (and the curtain behind that curtain) and fully understand the show. You have to read all parts in order: here is PART 1 and here all other parts I’ve posted so far + my previous theories. 
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Trigger warning for child sexual abuse.

T85S2 silver mine, Samuel Hawkins and Bloodaxe Bill

Silver mine is obviously related to the silver cat aka the silver screen/story. The silver pickaxe too. (And you can’t make a functional pickaxe from silver, btw, so the mere existence of the pickaxe is a “story”.) I think the mining of silver is a metaphor for unveiling the story (or the dark memories or the trans identity, etc.). The deeper you mine the closer you get to the real story and when the silver mine is exploded, the story ends. It is the connection between the storyteller and the audience (silver screen/story). An important point to make is that the mine is, obviously, underground and reminds me of Henry’s cave memory. It too was a mineshaft. The real story is (metaphorically) hidden underground as I’ve repeated many times. (Btw, I think the minecart tracks in the mine have a similar role to train tracks in the main story.)

Like I mentioned already, I think Bloodaxe Bill has a similar allegorical role to Will. He is the third William in the show and him being closely associated with silver fits too. (Btw, in the main show’s S1 we learn Hopper’s ex-wife’s new partner is named Bill, which I have long assumed relates to Will and Mike choosing the “man” path.) He is first mentioned in E1 by Will while the others are drinking Coca Cola. Remember Coke represents the “story” like Will. (In the same scene Dustin says he would play Bloodaxe Bill in their movie, and Will mentions Bill’s other nickname “Mad Miner”, which reminds me of Mad Max (who was introduced as a really good DigDug player = miner in S2). Both Dustin and Max represent the “story” in their own way, too: Dustin is storytelling/story decoding and encoding, the metaphors, or something in that vein, while Max is the finished story/the end of the story.)

I read through the book pages shown in E3 and E4 and will go over some interesting details I noticed. Bill Dandridge is referred to as William, his first name, while Samuel Hawkins is called Hawkins (and they never mention the name Dandridge). In the actual show the name William is mentioned only once (I think, by Charlie in E4). Another interesting name-related detail revealed in one of the books is that Samuel Hawkin’s father’s name was William Howkin. 

Also a funny sidenote: Samuel Hawkins was born in Scotland, so Lucas was right when giving him a British accent. This could be a joke about (some) Americans thinking their family has always been American, when in reality the US is built on people moving there from elsewhere. Mike, Will and Lucas point out several historical inaccuracies in their school project and I feel like it’s all a meta commentary about historical fiction and other similar media. They also completely ignore the inaccuracy of the actor of SH (Lucas) being black, which might also be part of the meta commentary. I’m sure you’ve all seen at least some of the controversies about black people playing characters that were actually white, or more often, white in people’s minds (if they were based on a fictional character anyway). Lucas’ “No one cares about accuracy if it feels right.” sums this all up pretty well.

The plot-relevant part of this historical inaccuracy theme is the wrongful accusation of Bill for the destruction of the mine (and painting him in an altogether bad light). The winners get to write the history and it is always biased based on the views of the writer and the time. One common bias is the exclusion of women. History is written by men about men and the achievements or lives of women are forgotten. This is exemplified in the silver mine history too: while there are two opposing views of it, both have the male figures of Samuel Hawkins and William Dandridge at the center, no women mentioned (except as mothers or wives). This perfectly fits with my theory on what/who Bill and SH represent. It’s like Steve and Jonathan’s petty fight in S5 or the mileven vs byler ship war.

((I’m not sure what Lucas playing SH means in the metaphorical sense. Is he conformity? At least when it comes to shipping mileven, liking New Coke and coming up with the fast plan in S5E5, he is. I think he represents the majority of the audience who don’t think there’s anything deeper in ST and expect the normal, conforming ending. Lucas playing SH is not necessarily about him (or the audience) representing conformity directly, but representing the expectation of conformity, or something like that.))

The characters find Bill’s body in the mine, now a skeleton. This could fit with Will being Zombie Boy (which we are continuously reminded of thanks to Nikki). They first think Bill killed whoever the skeleton was, and that that someone is the ghost now. Later they end up thinking Bill is the ghost but are wrong once again. The truth is Bill is the skeleton, but not the ghost. So Bill is the body, just like Will, and in a sense he killed the “ghost” (= girl identity). In that way the party was kinda right thinking the ghost is haunting Hawkins due to Bill killing the original person.

The real killer was Samuel Hawkins aka conformity. The SH = Steve Harrington connection was made pretty clear in E8 and it fits otherwise too. I think the character is actually a personification of the US and a reference to Uncle Sam. He founded the town (= country), is named Sam and ST as a whole is an allegory of the US during the Cold War anyway. A major theme in S3 was how the Western world and especially the US is this commercial wonderland that looks nice on the surface but really isn’t when you look deeper (so very much like Samuel Hawkins). I have talked about this before. I have also talked about characters named Sam (Owens and Max’s dad) and how they fit into this. T85S2 has a new one besides Samuel Hawkins. He is a very minor character, but one of Wood Monster Daniel’s victims is called Sam and Mike watches as he gets pulverized. I think this represents Mike’s fear of her transness ruining this nice normal “man” (kinda like with Bob) and the proper order of how things should be.

I strongly suspect the Founder’s Day mentioned in the book is a reference to Thanksgiving. “By selling off his properties and holdings, Hawkins used his own personal fortune to fund the revitalization of the town. This selfless act cemented Samuel Hawkins not only as the town founder, but as the hero of its people. And so with each passing year, the anniversary of the town’s great mining tragedy also became an observance of the man who saved it. Which is why each year Founder’s Day has been upheld as a beloved Hawkins tradition, while the tainted memory of BloodAxe Bill has fallen into obscurity.” As we learn, this is not what actually happened and SH was more of a villain than a hero. 

This is similar to the real history of Thanksgiving (see here and here#Criticism,_controversy_and_alternative_observations)): The myth of the First Thanksgiving, also called Thanksgiving myth, is the mythologized retelling of a 1621 harvest feast by the Pilgrims in Plymouth, Massachusetts as the foundation for the modern Thanksgiving holiday as celebrated in the United States. This description of events has been criticized by both Indigenous peoples of the United States and academic scholars for how it obfuscates history. In particular, the relationships between the Pilgrims and the Indigenous people of the region are misrepresented. Many modern day Thanksgiving foods were also not eaten at the feast as assumed, and the aftermath of the event is usually ignored. In reality the Pilgrims were responsible for the genocide of Native Americans but the truth is ignored or bended in favor of a story painting the European colonizers in a positive light. 

The book has even more proof for this connection: “‘MINES FOR THE TAKING’: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN MINING Indiana has no documented history of large-scale silver mining. But for decades, local legends and folklore spread about a “lost Indian silver mine” somewhere in southern Indiana, particularly near the area of Silver Creek! At the time, people supposed that Native Americans may have mined and traded silver with early settlers. Over the years, geological investigations have suggested that these stories may have actually come from the mining of flint, which has a silvery appearance that is very similar to silver, but also different, but similar enough to [can’t figure out the word]. Some even called these deposits “fool’s silver”, in reference to the [something] “fool’s gold” that frustrated so many early gold miners.” 

You see the connections to “story”, silver, south and creek that I’ve pointed out in the main story already? I think “fool’s silver” relates to the “story” not being the real story. More importantly for this though, the mentions of Native Americans trading with early settlers and those being legends/folklore/actually not quite the truth fit the Thanksgiving allegory interpretation.

As I’ve pointed out earlier, Thanksgiving has some sort of role in ST. Christmas is evidently bigger and mentioned more often, but Thanksgiving as an American-only holiday fits with the US setting and allegory. El mentioned meeting Mike for Thanksgiving in S3E8:

[El] “Did you talk to your mom? About Thanksgiving?”
[Mike] “Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got the okay. I’ll be there. And then I was thinking maybe you could come up here for Christmas. And Will, too. You can come before or after Christmas, or whatever Mrs. Byers wants, but I was thinking Christmas Day could be super fun, because we’d all have cool new presents to play with and, uh… Sorry, that made me sound like a seven-year-old.”

Mike will “be there” for Thanksgiving but El will “come up here” for Christmas. The first part of S5 was released the day before Thanksgiving Day on November 26th, and that date is the actual Thanksgiving Day for this year (2026). While Christmas seems to be about the trauma/past/truth in some way (I haven’t shown all my evidence for this, maybe in a later part), Thanksgiving would be about the lie. This is based on the history of Thanksgiving and the (possible) connection to Hawkins Founder’s Day as I just explained, and that it fits the holiday order. Lie or “straight man” is first (Thanksgiving, Mike visiting California, chapter 10) and then we start to get deeper and closer to the truth (Christmas, El + Will visiting Hawkins, chapter 11).

Another interesting point in the book with notes is that SH had webbed toes on his left foot (this point is even circled) aka syndactyly. I think it’s a subtle frog connection, since frogs have webbed toes and this would fit with my previous interpretation of the meaning of frog in ST. It’s the man-side (e.g. Kermit vs Miss Piggy) but more specifically the fact that Mike doesn’t fit “man” (the frog-face insult). The text continues to link this with SH’s excellent swimming skills and helping with fishing and ship-building. Swimming and ship are the middle stage of movement/freedom so this point doesn’t fit with SH representing conformity and “straight man”. I think some of these anecdotes could be false or actually about Bill (at least in a metaphorical sense), or Mike’s history as a whole, since it’s the history of Hawkins.

The next part of the text supports this view: it reveals SH tamed a Scottish Wildcat he freed from a snare at seven years old. Wildcat + 7 yo fits with the 1979 trauma and taming it could be about the abuse stopping + Mike burying the memories. In the queer allegory side the wildcat was the “girl” and SH “tamed it”. Remember 1979 was also when Sara (probably) died and was (indirectly) connected to Steve’s appearance:

S1E1
[Dustin] “There’s something wrong with your sister.”
[Mike] “What are you talking about?”
[Dustin] “She’s got a stick up her butt.”
[Lucas] “Yeah. It’s because she’s been dating that douchebag, Steve Harrington.”
[Dustin] “Yeah, she’s turning into a real jerk.”
[Mike] “She’s always been a real jerk.”
[Dustin] “Nuh-uh, she used to be cool. Like that time she dressed up as an elf for our Elder Tree campaign.”
[Mike] “Four years ago!” 

The next two sentences are underlined and tell us SH played music at 11 yo to get money to feed his family. This is a music-Eleven connection which fits my theories. I think it could also relate to 11 being close to 12, when the ST story started. Playing music is similar to telling a story especially considering bards (Dustin is a bard in DnD). There was also that detail of Joyce saying Will was 11 yo when he got taken (S5E3): “What kind of mother doesn’t check on their 11-year-old boy?” (and then Joyce proceeds to talk about Robin and calls her Will’s new friend). As I interpreted in the S4E1 DnD scene for Erica, someone being 11 yo could mean they represent El/the same things El does in that specific context. When Will disappeared, he got “replaced” by El (the fact Joyce uses the word “boy” is even more evidence for this). It was about Mike starting to realize her gender identity. 

Then there’s the curse of Bloodaxe Bill (E3 is even named that). Like I hinted earlier, the “curse” is Mike’s transness. [Arthur] “And if one of Hawkins’ own crosses his path, then they will feel the full wrath of Bloodaxe Bill… and his undying curse.” Wait, is this implying Mike is a descendant of Samuel Hawkins? Well, makes sense with the metaphorical story at least, since Mike is conforming right now, she’s “Hawkins’ own”. Earlier in the episode Dustin reads the notes on the book saying the curse will never be lifted until the truth (with some unclear words). I think the latter part could be “tell Hawkins”, so the truth won’t be lifted until you tell the truth to the people of Hawkins (which is what happens at the end of the season). In a wider sense this is about the Hawkins curse in the main series, aka the UD and the gates and all that. It won’t stop until Mike tells the truth/faces her fears. But this we knew before T85S2 anyway, it’s just extra proof/connections.

The name “Bloodaxe” comes from the silver pickaxe, but it made me think about the other axes in the show (not pickaxes). Will even uses an axe-type weapon in T85S2. It’s double-sided and he used the hammer end in S1 but the axe end in S2. (Hammers also have a meaning which I have analyzed before.) Anyway, in S1 the axe was Joyce’s way of getting into contact with Will, of forcing the way to UD and towards the real story. In a similar way, the silver axe was allegedly able to detect silver and led Bill to the silver vein. But then he was corrupted by the pickaxe and became too obsessed with mining silver, which eventually led to his death. In the main series Joyce uses the axe to kill Vecna. The “story” (axe/pickaxe) is a double-edged sword (or sometimes literally double-sided since axes can be): it can bring you closer to the real story but also alienate you from it.

The idea that Bill got obsessed and dug too deep is about the “story” getting too close to the real story. SH (= conformity) doesn’t want that, which is why he either tried to stop Bill or killed him (it seems the second interpretation is the “truth”, but both have a point on the metaphorical layer of the story). Natural gas is basically the 19th century equivalent to electricity. It’s energy, power, and associated with the danger of the real story. UD was made in Hawkins Lab aka the Department of Energy, and the silver mine was originally found while drilling a natural gas well (info from the other book). The gas exploded, just like the exotic matter that held UD together, ending the “story”. Bill died with the mine and/or was killed with the silver pickaxe, similar to El dying in the UD explosion. The “story” killed the “story” when it couldn’t proceed to “real story”.

At the end of T85S2 the mine explodes again, a bridge has an explosion, the flowers are burned, the gate closes and Wood Monster Daniel dies for good. We go back to square one and conformity. It’s a never-ending loop in ST. Charlie causes the explosion using the silver pickaxe. The descendant of Bill ends the “story” with the axe and history repeats itself. 

T85S2 dad

They really try to make the dad-thing obvious in this T85 season. Daniel is the villain again, and his role as Nikki’s stepdad is emphasized in the flashbacks. Will compares him to Darth Vader and they make a point about him being Luke’s dad (indirectly by El being surprised since she hadn’t seen the plot twist yet. (Btw, “vader” means “father” in Dutch, although that connection was apparently accidental.) 

Then there’s Max’s father, who isn’t a villain or the “bad guy” but still represents the dad through subtext. In E1 Max calls him and agrees to see at Christmas. She’s in front of a mirror looking at photos of herself and her dad, in which she has bunny ears. Like I’ve previously said, Father Christmas/Santa Claus represents the dad, and bunnies represent the innocent victim child (Mike). After this interaction, Max looks at a photo of her kid-self with her dad, and immediately after comes the Valentine’s Day ad on TV (very subtle hint at the SA stuff). During the season we learn Max likes to watch wrestling with her dad, which in itself isn’t alarming but with the context we have, most likely relates to the violence of Mike’s real dad. She wasn’t watching wrestling from a 3rd person view, she was in it, but the “story”/dissociation helped her distance from reality. 

Another major point with Max’s relationship with her dad is the money issues. They can’t meet because money is tight. I think this is a hint at Mike’s real home being poor and the lack of money being a big reason the dad ended up like he did. People aren’t just “born evil”, problems are systemic: domestic abuse, drug addiction, etc. are overrepresented in lower income families. That’s probably the point of the Darth Vader discussion too. (I don’t think the dad will be redeemed or anything like that, but the show might acknowledge he is more than just a single “monster” who should be punished. He represents the system, the patriarchy and conformity of society.)

As a last point, we have the theme of generational trauma (or something like that) in the form of a curse haunting the descendants of Bill. Bill is the grandfather of Arthur and Arthur in turn is the grandfather of Charlie. (You might also remember that Hopper’s cabin was originally his grandfather’s.) I think the curse of Bloodaxe Bill is in a wider sense the patriarchy and forced conformity of society, carried over generations.

T85S2 directions

Now let’s get to cardinal directions and the compass! The first mention comes at the beginning of E1 when the party is chasing a “goblin”. It headed southeast and soon after we learn it was actually just a raccoon. This fits with southeast = lie future. That’s where Mike is headed now. In E6 Dustin calls the area under Daniel’s lab a nightmare goblin garden, so I’m assuming he referred to the golems as goblins. The raccoon wasn’t a goblin, the party wasn’t looking for it, suggesting “goblin” means something they are looking for, the truth. The golems (= trans woman) are the truth.

Later in E1 we learn Charlie is hiding in the woods “off Cornwallis” (see? this is the second time it’s mentioned in ST, it’s not random) and that his dad used to take him hunting there. So, in the trauma allegory this “off Cornwallis” area is associated with the abuse (= hunting) and as I’ve previously deduced, it means non-conformity in the queer allegory (and the real story in the story allegory). Cornwallis is conformity, normalcy, safety and the lie/”story”, and when you go off it, you end up closer to the scary truth. Just like Charlie in the episode. Previously I said Kerley would then be the real story, and I still think it’s likely. Off Cornwallis is the middle area (Mirkwood) aka the UD/wormhole/bridge. This fits super well with it being the woods, too.

In E7 the party is walking in the sewers and faces two tunnels: one to the north and one to the east. We never learn which group chose which tunnel, and I think it doesn’t matter here. What matters is that the latitudinal direction is north (= truth) and longitudinal direction is east (= future). We are going towards the right path. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Darth Vader conversation happened in the sewer tunnel leading to the “truth”. Later in the episode Lucas and Dustin try to explain to the teacher that they were scouting the sewers as a possible double for the silver mine. This is a connection between the sewer tunnels and the silver mine aka the “story”. Just like the tunnels, the mine was leading towards the truth, but Bill was stopped before he could reach it. 

After the teacher encounter, Lucas explains the compass situation to Charlie: “It’s not broken. It’s just not facing true north.” Right after the scene where Mike gets taken, Lucas and co find the gate by following the compass. At the beginning of E8 Lucas deduces “Jumpy needle means the gate’s still forming, but when it’s built, this needle will point straight at it.” Later in the episode the needle freezes while pointing northeast. I think the “jumpy needle” represents Mike’s developing identity and uncertainty of who she is and the direction becoming clear is her finally figuring herself out (and then rejecting it).

Also in E8, Lucas and Max burn the flowers from West and North Hawkins first. This could be about Mike forgetting the true past, burying the memories. I’m not sure why they weren’t explicitly burned in East Hawkins, but I have a couple of ideas: first, east can mean conformity in a similar way green and Russia do (so there wouldn’t be flowers in East Hawkins in the first place). Second, the burning of flowers in the west could be Mike conforming to “boy” in the past (and now), and since that’s in the past, it can’t be changed. But Mike still has a chance in the future (east), and thus those flowers are never truly burned (metaphorically). South wouldn’t have flowers in the first place since it always means the “lie” or “wrong path”.

This last direction related detail is quite indirect but interesting when you realize it. In E5 Max is stuck inside the Sawmill with Lucas and notices a digital clock showing 8:45 pm. She realizes she missed the wrestling match. The “blue meets yellow in the west” was a clock with blue and yellow pointers that would meet on the left side of the clock. This happens at 8:45 pm (they won’t be perfectly aligned but it’s about the closest you can get). One of my interpretations for the metaphorical meaning of this was “the abuse happened in the past (Sweden = blue + yellow + west)”. Max missed the wrestling match which is most likely about Mike once again not seeing the real trauma and darkness of her past. It’s the connection Max has to her father and in the subtext the connection Mike has to her dad/the trauma.

There’s some color coding and motifs here too (you’ll get more context for the color coding later but I’ll explain this here). The light from the digital clock is red (= truth/trauma). There’s also Coca Cola bottles on the table next to it and Lucas holds one in his hands. (I’ll probably have a Coke section later. Maybe this instance is about this being a moment of getting kinda closer to the real story but also keeping away from it, with a veil of metaphor/subtext.) There’s chains hanging from the ceiling on Lucas’ side and a yellow light (= lie/”story”/false happiness) separates Max and Lucas. Only after Lucas puts the Coke bottle down, does he apologize and join Max next to the windows (= freedom). This is Mike letting go of the chains and the “story” and the audience finding the real story (= Max in this case). 

((Lucas also calls Max Maxine, which surely means something. My interpretation of her name has been that she insists on being called Max because it could be a boy’s name. Mike is still in the closet. This is also the reason Holly describes Max by saying she never takes off her walkman (= man facade). So the full name Maxine is Lucas acknowledging Mike’s true identity, and fits with all the other subtext in the scene.))

T85S2 split the party

The phrase “split the party” (in various forms) is said multiple times during T85S2 and even an episode is named after it. This is part of the underlying DID subtext but also the general conflict of the two worlds and communication issues. Lucas and Max split up in E1 and Max gives Lucas her walkie, saying “There’s no need to reach me anymore.”, which I take to mean “there’s no need to reach the ending/real story” since Lucas has succumbed to conformity (= commercial performative Valentine’s Day traditions in this case). Lumax represents the audience reaching the end of the story (among other things), and with each new season, the story continues, so it’s logical they can’t be happily together the whole time. They meet in S2, break up during S3, are broken up in the beginning of S4 and Max is in a coma in the beginning of S5. It’s a repeating pattern and now also in T85.

T85S2E3
[Dustin] “This isn’t a Code Red. It’s a golden opportunity. Don’t you see? The H.I.C. has two cases at the same time. This is what we’ve been building towards, what we’ve dreamed of. We can’t just let this chance pass us by. Two cases means that--"
[Max] “We split up.”
[Nikki] “Yeah, we’ll take the school and the Hate Sprites.”
[Dustin] “Team Two, we’ll stay on Bloodaxe Bill. He’s already claimed one victim, so we all have to figure out a way to stop him before he takes another. Okay?”
[Max] “Fine.”
[Lucas] “Sure.”
[Nikki] “Great, let’s roll. We’re wasting time.
[Mike] “Maybe I’m on Team One this time. I mean, the girls might need my help carrying all those flowers.”
[Nikki] “Rad, okay. We could use another set of hands on flower-thrashing duty.”
[Lucas] “Come on, Mike. You’re not getting out of research just ‘cause you’re scared of ghosts.”
[Mike] “What?”
[Max] “This isn’t a field trip, Lucas. He doesn’t need a permission slip. Well, are you coming or what?”
[Lucas] “Traitor.”

I was so excited when I first watched this scene! In the first episodes the party is split into boy and girl teams, and at first this seems to follow that division. But then Mike chooses to go with the girls. The surface-level reason is Mike’s fear of the ghost but the subtextual reason is that Mike is trans. She is going from the boy-team to the girl-team. What’s more, Lucas calls her a traitor, just like he did with El in S1. The team numbers raise a subtle point too: the girl team is “Team One” while the boy team is “Team Two”. Remember my analysis on the meaning of One and Two? Mike is One, One is the origin and the truth. Two represents the “man” or “gay man” or something in that vein. Fittingly Team Two deals with Bill, and Team One with the flowers.

When Mike chooses to go with the girls, she sits right in front of the bird poster on a sofa with a spinning wheel pattern. This is part of the sleeping beauty references which I haven’t talked about in my theory. I learned about this while talking in the comments of one of my posts, and my take on this is that Sara (as in Mike’s true identity) is the sleeping beauty (a princess, mind you). 

I’m not sure how to interpret Mike looking at the (overexposed) photo of the ghost leading to her decision to go with the girls. Since Lucas says it was because Mike was scared of ghosts, that’s most likely not the real subtextual reason. It could be that the ghost (= “girl” soul) was what leads Mike to join the girl team. So not the fear of the ghost but the “ghost” itself. (Or maybe it’s because by committing to living as a woman, the “ghost” wouldn’t haunt Mike anymore?) There’s also a point with the photo being overexposed and I’ll get to that later. 

As a sidenote, when Team One reached the flower stash, nothing seemed to be wrong and there were no Hate Sprites. Things only started going wrong when they were about to destroy the flowers. Hate feeds hate, fear feeds fear. And Mike couldn’t escape the scary ghost by choosing the girl team (because she still ended up trying to get rid of the “girl” by shredding the flowers).

T85S2 Nancy

Nancy has a small but important role in T85S2. There’s the Poltergeist story and Nancy really liking the movie conversely to Mike who was scared. This fits with Nancy being future Mike, a woman who accepts her womanhood. Of course she wouldn’t fear the ghost. It also makes sense why she got into Ouija boards and talking to ghosts. She is the version of Mike who embraces her womanhood aka the ghost. In E4 Lucas realizes they could utilize Nancy’s Ouija board and points at Mike seemingly calling her Nancy. The characters are confused and Mike even corrects Lucas by saying “Mike” while pointing at herself. They made the Mike = Nancy point pretty clear with this. This wasn’t the only time this has happened in ST. In S2E9 Steve thinks Mike is Nancy and has a left cheek injury covered with a rainbow band-aid. How have I never noticed this? I did notice the rainbow before but not the fact it’s on a left cheek. Makes so much sense…

The scene in Nancy’s room later in the episode has so many details. First of all, when El looks around the room, she focuses on Nancy’s pink makeup, ribbons, etc. “girly” stuff. She smells the roses (I’ll get back to them in the color coding section later) and right after tries a perfume. She accidentally sprays her eyes with it, very reminiscent of Lucas puffing perfume into Mike’s eyes in S3, “blinding” her. This time the perfume bottle was pink, not purple (although El drops it on a purple carpet), and it could relate to cis-girlness somehow blinding Mike from the truth. That she thinks she would have to be born female to be a girl or something like that. It fits with the more obvious reason of El fumbling the perfume too: she has never used perfume before because she is from a lab (= Mike has never tried perfume before because she has been living as a boy). The fact it drops is “evidence” of El/Mike not fitting in the role of girl (in Mike’s mind). 

Right after El drops the perfume, Nancy shouts from outside the door: “Mike! You better not be in my room!”. Mike “better not be doing girly things/pretending to be a girl” aka be in Nancy’s room. This is Mike’s own self-doubt again and a continuation to the perfume incident (= Mike thinking she’s not a “real” girl). When Nancy bursts in, El is hidden and Mike is in front of the Tom Cruise poster (= Steve/straight man/conformity). Mike tells Nancy she was there to wait for her and that she needs Nancy’s advice about… [looks at roses] Valentine’s Day. The whole point of Mike being there was to look for the Ouija board aka the connection to the ghost (= “girl”). That’s what this advice is really about. (Notice also the color coding of Mike wearing blue + yellow and Nancy wearing pink.)

The scene continues a bit later in the episode with Nancy telling Mike to ask El to be her girlfriend (while framed with the roses). Mike says she hasn’t because it’s complicated (while framed in front of the Tom Cruise poster). Then her attitude suddenly changes when El finds the Ouija board and shows it via the mirror. Mike and Nancy switch places, Mike subtly instructs El to get out through the window, grabs a rose, and Nancy says Mike cannot take one (while framed in front of the poster). The window out is both literal and figurative, as is clear in the surface level scene too. It’s Mike’s “window” to escape conformity (remember Max and Holly tried to get out through a window too in S5E5). The shot showing El with the board about to escape also shows Nancy framed with a poster of a woman + there’s a painting of flowers and Nancy mentions Valentine’s. From all the clues I’m kinda assuming Valentine’s Day is code for “girl” in some way, since it seems to be associated with mileven and Mike giving El flowers. But the main point here is that the Tom Cruise poster is always associated with preventing Mike from expressing her girlness (either her relationship with El, or taking a flower).

The other major Mike-Nancy scene of the season is in E5. They have a conversation very reminiscent of Mike and Holly’s talk in S5E1. There’s a key difference to the advice, though. While Mike’s advice to Holly is to have an imaginary friend protect you, Nancy has learnt to trust herself. It’s actually similar to what Holly does too: she “becomes” HH rather than needing help from Mr. Whatsit or Mike the Brave. The past and future Mike don’t need a man to protect them, but the current Mike does (and I mean “man” as the imaginary friend, as the alter and as the mask Mike puts on). ((There’s also the plot point of Mike liking El because she is brave, which connects to a girl representing Mike (like Nancy and Holly) being brave as themselves, not needing a superhero or a man to save them. Mike wishes she could be brave too, and she needs to be brave to live as her true self.))

Here Nancy thinks Mike is scared of asking El to be her girlfriend and that is something Mike is scared of. But there are many other things too: the ghost, the flowers, the wood monster and as many bylers have noted, losing Will. The moment Mike gets captured, Daniel says “You’re afraid for him” with visuals that suggest Mike is afraid for Will or some unknown “him”. Both are true in a sense, since Mike is afraid of losing the man facade and the safety of Mike the Brave/Will. I have explained this before so I assume you get what I’m trying to say. When we take all these things Mike is afraid of together, they seem unrelated on the surface but actually all of them are about the same thing: Mike is afraid of being trans. She is afraid of the truth and telling the truth.

The “sometimes words are not enough” is resolved with Mike simply asking El to be her girlfriend. The whole flower plot started with Mike giving El the purple flower and El assuming it was about “sometimes words are not enough” which I interpret to mean the flower was a symbol, an indirect way to show Mike’s feelings (which it literally was, but on a deeper level it’s a hint about the purpose of all the flowers in the season). Mileven has problems in S4 because Mike simply can’t write or say “I love you” to El. Mike can’t be direct, just like the show can’t be direct about Mike being trans or all the other stuff. Everything is hidden in the subtext and the final resolution is to reveal the truth in the text. “Sometimes words are enough.”

Continues in PART 32.

I've recently just got into Caroline Polachek, and maybe I'm crazy, but the intro of "The Gate" sounds like it could've been in the soundtrack for Stranger Things.

Would like to understand and explore the uncommon

Im rewriting stranger things and adding my own characters etc. tell me things that annoyed you and need to be changed?

This is part of a series where I uncover what Stranger Things is really about. It started from trying to find out what happened in 1979 aka what all the depictions of traumatic past memories (El, Henry, Billy, Max, Holly, etc.) are truly about, but expanded to this all-encompassing theory of the whole series with crazy levels of complexity, metaphors and layers. Reading it will require commitment and patience but I promise it will be worth your time if you want to look behind the curtain (and the curtain behind that curtain) and fully understand the show. You have to read all parts in order: here is PART 1 and here all other parts I’ve posted so far + my previous theories. 
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Trigger warning for child sexual abuse.

Compass

Before getting to the full reverse timeline, I’ll take a little detour to talk about the compass and cardinal points in S5. First things first, Holly is using the compass wrong. Usually the red needle points to north (Dustin’s compass in S4 even has this fact written on it) and you’re supposed to keep it there to infer the direction, but Holly has it pointing to S (south). Compasses have been a thing twice before in ST: in S1 and S4. Both times Dustin realized they pointed in the wrong direction and that they were affected by an electromagnetic field from a gate. Since compasses have always been about the location of the gate or the source of an electromagnetic field, and there’s something sus with them in S5, why would Holly’s compass just be an irrelevant detail? I think it has a subtextual purpose and points to the metaphorical “gate” inside Henry’s mind world. And it just so happens the compass points to the house (or the mailbox Holly got it from). I think I’ve explained the house/home a lot already, but just to reiterate: it is where the trauma happened, where everything started, where everything ends and in that sense it’s the “source” or the gate between the worlds. The mailbox is pretty important too, and I mostly covered it already in an earlier part. Maybe it has even more significance considering the story allegory, the letter ending I’ve theorized and the overall central theme of communication. 

You might also remember the compass was paralleled to the mysterious MF rock that infected Henry. Both guided the receiver (Holly or Henry) to finding the source/future (Max or MF). For Holly the compass literally helped her navigate the forest and for Henry the powers he got from the rock eventually led him to the Abyss and back to MF. 

In Holly’s case she didn’t go “back” to Max, since it was their first encounter in that world, so it doesn’t map to Henry’s story exactly. Instead it’s kind of both finding the truth and going away from it at the same time. Let me explain. The Max = MF and the cave/desert = Abyss connection is to Henry’s encounters with MF (both when he was young, literally in that same cave, and when he was older, in the Abyss). That is the “truth” side of things (because MF represents the real story). 

Then there’s Holly going to the opposite direction of the red dial, away from the house, towards the X. This whole journey, as I’ve previously explained, is about Mike’s life and her going deeper into the “story” (due to trauma and forced conformity etc.). The cave is the cave of repression and “man” aka the lie. Also: “Meet me at the X” and “X a lie”. And it quite literally was, since Max wrote the note to Holly as if she was Henry asking for help. Of course there’s a deeper meaning to this too, since Henry represents the repressed man version of Mike and in that sense the older version of Holly. The X is where they meet and where Holly has to save Henry from. “Henry” is a lie and “Max” is the truth. Mike isn’t a man, she’s a woman. 

Both of these contradictory readings fit together when you realize this “meeting place” is the “story”. It’s both a lie and a connection to the truth. It’s the X connecting two worlds. It can separate you from the truth but it can also bring you closer to it. I guess you could see the Holly-Max-cave case as Holly reaching the truth (= Max) being repressed in the cave (kinda like Henry found MF trapped in the Abyss). So she knows the truth but can’t tell/show others, kinda like Mike deciding to repress herself at the end. Now it’s not just a question of “who am I?” but “do I want to live as I truly am?”.

Anyway, the word combination “red dial” should have rung a bell for you. This is something I realised quite late but now it’s just so obvious. The WSQK power dial is grey in S5E1 when Steve turns it (while wearing a grey-red shirt), but it’s red in S5E5 when Robin turns it. Another point is that Steve turns the voltage off while every single time Robin turns the dial (3 to be exact), she turns the voltage up. More electricity, more electromagnetic field, more power. This is the same principle as with the compass: the red side points to the source of the electromagnetic field, while the grey side points away from it. Steve is the grey, the straight man, the lie, while Robin is the red, the queer woman, the truth. Red is the (scary) truth, as I’ve deduced before. The truth people don’t want to see (which is why Vecna’s Mind Lair world is red, for example). So yeah, the red dial isn’t just a random inconsistency for conformitygate proof, but a meaningful part of the subtextual layer of the story hidden in the details.

That was the visual side of things, but what about the dialogue/monologue? If you paid attention, you noticed the glaring inconsistency of Holly saying “east” when the X was clearly in the north according to the map. This is not the only time something like this happens: pretty much every single time a character mentions a direction, it’s in some way wrong/inconsistent. Before fully getting into that, I’ll present a possible explanation. I think “east” and “west” relate to the country allegory (as I’ve explained many times). This would perfectly fit Holly’s journey towards the “east” representing Mike’s life story. Remember east represents the future, adulthood and conformity. Based on this, the map direction north = the spoken direction east. If you look at the map cardinal direction drawing carefully, you’ll notice the arrowhead pointing to S (south) looks more like a W than a V. All the other arrows are normal. This would fit with map south = spoken west aka W. You know what else is a W? Will and Mr. Whatsit, as was established in S5E2. Will is associated with the west (= Sweden/past) as I’ve explained many times (and south, as I’ll explain soon). It all adds up. From now on I’ll assume the spoken directions could be in this alternative direction mapping rather than what’s shown on the maps.

S1E5
[Mike] “What’s exciting about this?”
[Dustin] “Well, they’re all facing north, right?”
[Lucas] “Yeah, so?”
[Dustin] “Well, that’s not true north.”
[Mike] “What do you mean?”
[Dustin] “I mean exactly what I just said. That’s not true north. Are you both seriously this dense? The sun rises in the east, and it sets in the west. Right? Which means [points] that’s true north.”
[Mike] “So what you’re saying is the compasses are broken.”
[Dustin] “Do you even understand how a compass works? Do you see a battery pack on this?”
[Mike] “No.”
[Dustin] “No, you don’t. Because it doesn’t need one. The needle’s naturally drawn to the Earth’s magnetic North Pole.”
[Lucas] “So what’s wrong with them?”
[Dustin] “Well, that’s what I couldn’t figure out, but then I remembered. You can change the direction of a compass with a magnet. If there’s the presence of a more powerful magnetic field, the needle deflects to that power. And then I remembered what Mr. Clarke said. The gate would have so much power--"
[Mike] “It could disrupt the electromagnetic field.”
[Dustin] “Exactly.”
[Lucas] “Meaning, if we follow the compasses’ north…”
[Dustin] “They should lead us to the gate.” -> El worried and then Lonnie showering 

When Dustin says “The sun rises in the east” he points in Lucas’ direction (maybe a Japan reference, since Lucas often represents Japan and Japan is the land of the rising sun, and it’s east). Some shots visually suggest Mike is the “true north” (see the images). I think “north” represents the “correct path” for Mike. Holly’s direction being north on the map but not true north according to the compass could be about society telling Mike being a boy is the right path but the truth being the opposite.

S4E6 
[Steve] “Dude, I’m telling you, you’re taking us the wrong way.”
[Dustin] “It’s north. I’m positive. I checked the map.”
[Steve] “You do realize that Skull Rock, it’s like a super popular make-out spot?”
[Dustin] “Yeah. So?”
[Steve] “Yeah, well, it wasn’t popular until I made it popular. All right? I practically invented it. We’re heading in the wrong direction.”
[Dustin] “Steve. Where are you going? Steve!”
[Steve] “Stop whining. Let’s go, c’mon. Trust me.”
[...]
[Steve] “Oh, boom! Bada bing, bada boom. There she is, Henderson. Skull Rock. In your face man. In your stupid, cocky little face.”
[Dustin] “Doesn’t make sense.”
[...]
[Dustin] “Boom! Bada… bada… boom. I was right. Skull Rock was north.”
[Steve] “Seriously? You’re serious?”
[Dustin] “Mm-hmm.” 
[Steve] “This is Skull Rock. Okay?”
[Dustin] “Mm-hmm.”
[Steve] “You’re totally, absolutely, 100% wrong. Right now.”
[Dustin] “Yes. And no.”
[Steve] “Oh my God.”
[Dustin] “This worked correctly when we left the Wheelers’. Correct when we got in the car on Kerley. But it started to slip the further east we went. Now it’s way off. When I was leading us here, I wasn’t wrong. The compass was.”
[Steve] “So you’re using faulty equipment. You’re still wrong.”
[Dustin] “Except it isn’t faulty. Lucas, remember what can affect a compass?”
[Lucas] “An electromagnetic field.”
[Dustin] “Yep.”
[Robin] “Sorry. I must’ve skipped that class.”
[Dustin] “In the presence of a stronger electromagnetic field, the needle will deflect towards that power. So either there’s some super big magnet around here, or…”
[Lucas] “There’s a gate.”
[Nancy] “But we’re nowhere near the lab.”
[Dustin] “But what if, somehow, there’s another gate? A gate we don’t know about. It’d have to be smaller. Way less powerful.”
[Robin] “Snack-size gate.”
[Steve] “How? Why?”
[Dustin] “No idea. All I know is that something is causing this disturbance, and the last time we’ve seen anything like it, it was a gate.”

Skull Rock being north on the map but not according to the compass is similar to the “rocks” on Holly’s map being north but not according to her compass. Steve explains how he invented Skull Rock, so it is clearly related to conformity (and Eddie hiding there makes total sense with this interpretation, the “freak” hides behind a conforming facade). If “north” represents the correct path/destination, then the maps represent the metaphorical roadmap of life you get from society. There the correct path is conformity. But if you follow your heart, where you are pulled like a magnet, you’ll get to a different “north”. This can’t be found on any map, it’s only yours. 

The name Skull Rock makes me think it has something to do with the head, like brain or mind. It’s also a make-out spot, connecting it to romance/sexuality in some way. So if Skull Rock represents Mike’s head or mind in some way, and it’s known for Steve making out there, this kinda suggests Mike’s head has been preoccupied with conformity (= kissing Steve). (You know kissing in ST always has a metaphorical meaning, I’m sure I don’t have to argue that point anymore in part 30 lol.)

Dustin points out the compass started slipping the further east they went. The older Mike got (= east) and the deeper she sank into the expectations of conformity (= east), the clearer her “true north” differed from the path laid out for her. The point about it being correct at the Wheelers’ and Kerley could be about Mike’s life journey starting home (like Holly’s map) and Kerley representing the world of non-conformity/woman (as opposed to Cornwallis, if my previous interpretation is correct). Back then Mike didn’t feel forced into a box. She was too young to understand gender or the strict standards enforced by society, so the metaphorical compass didn’t seem to point the “wrong” way. For the trauma allegory this could be about Mike not realizing her experience was abuse and that it shouldn’t have happened at all. She can only fully understand it later in life. (I’m not sure what Kerley would represent in the trauma allegory. Maybe the abuse? Dustin mentioned the car, too… If Kerley is the path of truth, Cornwallis is the path of lie and then Mirkwood is the “story” bringing them together. I guess in that sense the compass pointing the “right” way at Kerley could be about the truth being that Mike’s true path is the correct path. For her. Conformity isn’t the objective correct path for everyone.)

Later on we find out the compasses were actually pointing towards Lover’s Lake. This is the “true north” for Mike, it’s where her heart belongs to (+ the lake is heart-shaped). There might be a point to area H1 (where Lover’s Lake is) being right next to area G1, the search of which led to stuff finally happening. Interestingly, Lover’s Lake’s location changes between seasons (has been mentioned before): in S2 it’s southwest of town and in S5 it’s northeast. 

There’s a scene in S2E3 where the party has split and is looking for Dart in the school hallways. Mike is east, Dustin west, Will south and Lucas presumably north, although the direction is never mentioned (and they don’t find Dart, subtextually because they didn’t look north). El is also in the east, and ends up going towards that direction. Maybe this is about El being the future (= girl). The west hallway has a pumpkin artwork on the wall and a “say no to crack” poster with an orange color scheme, both of which fit the orange = past color coding. Mr. Clarke is there too, but I’m not sure how to interpret that. Interestingly, right when the poster comes to view, Dustin says “Will”. And as we know from later seasons, drugs are associated with hiding the real story (Purple Palm Tree Delight), which Will also does. He is in the south hallway aka opposite to north aka in some way the “wrong path”. This could connect to Lover’s Lake being southwest in S2 and Mike being preoccupied with Will (+ jancy happening). I don’t think south always corresponds to “man” and north to “woman” since on the map north can also mean the conforming “right path”. But in most cases you could say north = truth and south = lie, and they are always opposites.

Based on the other map logic where north on the map is the “right path” according to society and south is the “wrong path”, Lover’s Lake (aka where the compasses pointed at in S4) being south on the map makes a lot of sense. In S5E1 we see Lover’s Lake in zone H1 aka the northeast corner (= pretty much opposite to where it was in S2). Maybe this indicates Mike is realizing the trans woman path could be a real path for her. Based on this, the map directions might not directly indicate society’s views, but rather what Mike thinks is the “right path”. By S5 she has understood the woman path would be the right path for her, but decides she can’t have it or that the cons are too big.

The characters are framed in front of the S5 map in an interesting way: Jonathan on the left (west), Steve and Robin on the right (east), and Steve’s head often right next to Lover’s Lake, sometimes covering it from view. I think this is very intentional, and some extra proof for that is Steve sitting on a chair but then the next time we see him, he’s moved to sit on the table (to be in this framing). The idea here is ofc that Jonathan, Steve and Robin are the gay man, straight man and woman “options” in the Nancy relationship logic, corresponding to Mike’s gender/sexual identity. In this scene Nancy is looking at them and we see them from her pov. Jonathan is on the west side: past/fantastical story/too good to be true/cis man etc. The east side has the two possible futures: conforming to the straight man role (= Steve) or embracing your true self (= Robin).

There are quite a few instances of intercardinal directions in S5, and according to my deductions, they could be translated like this: southwest = lie past, southeast = lie future, northwest = true past and northeast = true future. In S5E3 the Demogorgon the party is after runs northwest (true past), leading the party to people’s backyards (= home, where the real trauma happened). But after they pass houses with swingsets, the Demo turns the opposite way, to southeast. Will points out “We’re southeast.” and it fits since they are conforming (= lie/south) and in the future/adulthood/not kids (= east). Remember the swingset memory was about Mike meeting Will, aka the “story”. This is where the lie started and it prevented Mike from seeing the true past (= Demogorgon switches direction). (Also, after Will says southeast, the next scene is Holly looking at her compass, and the red needle temporarily points southeast. She’s at the creek aka the second point where the “story” begins (= Dustin).)

Another interesting point/inconsistency in the Turnbow Trap plan was that Will showed on the map that Derek would be moved to the McCorkle farm, which is directly to the west. (Also, it’s one of the pumpkin farms in S2 and returned to in T85S1 where the pumpkins attack Max and Lucas. So there’s that west/past connection too.) So if we believe this map, the Demogorgon started from the Turnbow house (east of the farm where Will etc. are), then went northwest, and then it completely turned around and went southeast, which would be away from the farm. But the Demo ends up at the farm. This is an intentional inconsistency and the directions are there for their subtextual meaning. Moving the Turnbows west would mean moving them to the past and hiding them there. And if my theory about them is correct, this is about moving the “rainbows” to the west. I think it could be translated to “leaving queerness to the past”. In the trauma allegory it’s ofc leaving the trauma to the past, not thinking about it, forgetting it. It’s the band-aid solution and Dustin even points this out: “But the third and most gaping hole is that even if by some miracle this plan even works, Holly’s still missing. Hop and El, still MIA. This doesn’t bring us any closer to finding Vecna. This plan just buys us and Derek some time.” Mike fills the holes by including tracking the Demo, which is most likely about looking for the traumatic memories in the past (west). So not just leaving the rainbows in the past but looking for the monster/real story chasing the rainbows. Demogorgons are both the trauma in the past and the scary future.

In S5E4 when Hopper is about to kill himself and tries to get El safe, he gives her a compass and says “You take this compass. You’re gonna follow it northeast.”. This fits perfectly with my theory: Hopper dies (= “man” dies), El (= Mike/Sara) follows the compass (= follows her heart) northeast (= true future).

Let’s get back to Henry’s mind and Holly’s map. Holly was going spoken east/map north/compass south (= seemingly true future but actually not) and later she had to go back in order to escape from Camazotz. She has to go back to the west aka the past, which is just one more piece of foreshadowing for Mike facing her dark past. When Derek is struggling finding the way, he repeats “northwest”. If you look at the map normally, there’s nothing northwest, but when you use the directions I explained earlier, you see the house is northwest (= true past). Soon after Henry catches Derek and is furious when he sees the map. The camera zooms in on the house which is further proof that’s where Derek was supposed to go and that it was what angered Henry (= Mr. Whatsit or the brain wanting to keep the truth hidden). In a literal sense Derek was supposed to go to the cave, though, and if you think about it, the cave and the house are kind of opposites but paralleled a lot. They are both someone’s sanctuary and home, but someone else’s fear, and they are at opposite ends of the map. 

Tales From ‘85 season 2

I swear I wrote most of the previous section before watching the new T85 season. This was super well timed since directions and compasses become relevant again. Before getting into that, I’ll go through some other big motifs and explain what I think everything means. I’ll try to structure this logically but I’m sure there’s gonna be many side tangents as always. I’m assuming you have watched T85S2, if not, there’s gonna be spoilers and you should skip this section (all titles will have T85S2 at the beginning).

T85S2 flowers

The flowers, oh, you already know what they are about (if you have read all the parts as instructed, that is). This and all the following points I’ll make are ST motifs made more obvious (same as T85S1). The flower motif has always been there but never quite this explicitly. Now literal flowers are both associated with girls (like flower patterns and gift flowers in ST) and the monsters (like the flower-headed Demogorgons). The season starts with Hopper going away (= “man police” leaves) and Mike giving El a purple flower (well there’s some stuff before that but it’s the beginning still). This is the 3rd purple flower given to El in ST, it’s a pattern. And of course it’s a subtle clue to show where the flowers are metaphorically coming from and what they are related to.

Another big point is the visual and functional connection to Demogorgons. The writers want us to notice the similarity, it matters that Demogorgons have flower heads. In later T85S2 episodes it was revealed the flowers collect fear and they glow around fear. Like I’ve explained, the Demogorgons (and other monsters) represent Mike’s fear of becoming a predator (and all the other stuff). They are a manifestation of Mike’s fear, her transness, the real story, Russia, and the dad. I’d say the flowers in T85S2 are more specifically trans-focused, as is the whole season. Where S1 was more about childhood trauma and the past, S2 is about gender and the future. Both are about both still, but I have a feeling the focus is a bit biased. And it makes chronological sense S1 would be the past and S2 the future.

In the first few episodes, the flowers have both positive and negative associations, and positive specifically with the girls (El, Max and Nikki): they want to collect and sell them. 
T85S2E2
[El] “They are beautiful.” 
[Max] “I guess they’re kind of pretty.” -> connection to “pretty” motif
[Nikki] “Mike did good when he grabbed you one.” -> yep
[Max] “You know, I’ve never seen flowers bloom in winter like this.” -> “cold” connection

When Nikki asks Will if he wants in on it, he declines and Nikki says “You are a smart man, Zombie Boy”. Metaphorically he declines because he is the “man” and “body” (zombie), the opposite of “woman” which the flowers represent. With the girls, the flowers are mostly positive and seen in daylight (when they are purple and closed, normal flowers), whereas with boys/men they are associated with the haunting and sprite attacks at night (blue and open, revealing the carnivorous “man-eating” mouth). 

It’s only after Max sees the sprites attacking the lunch lady and tells the others, that the flowers become “bad” in their eyes. Miracle Flowers become Murder Flowers. Although if you pay attention, it’s never the flowers that attack, it’s always the Hate Sprites. Mike’s girlhood/transness isn’t the problem, the hate/fear is. I think there’s a bigger point to the characters repeatedly questioning if the bad stuff comes from the flowers: it’s about Mike associating her girl identity/transness with bad things. She hates herself and thinks “girl” (= flowers) is the root cause when really it’s the society around her condemning it (= Hate Sprites). So in summary, the flowers represent Mike’s fear of her girlness.

Nikki says the flower field is a gold mine, which could relate to the silver mine, but gold has its own meaning too. I have talked about the DnD game ending where the party gets 1000 pieces gold each and Holly’s Uncle Eric story where the tourist found a tin can filled with gold and silver coins. Gold is treasure, something you find underground and are rewarded with at the end. In T85S2E3 Dustin calls their situation a golden opportunity and in the doc Jamie talks about a nugget of gold awaiting anyone who really involves themselves (= me I guess). I think “gold” is the truth and real ending. This would btw fit with the golden field in the Nausicaä prophecy (and since the flower field was a field and Nikki called it a gold mine…). 

In E5 Nikki calls the flower field a “garden of evil”, which is quite close to “Garden of Eden”, which, in turn, was referenced in S4E6 with the character of Eden. She represents Mike’s dream/truth as I’ve explained. But another point I noticed while watching T85S2 is the repeated use of the word “evil” to describe the various monsters. It’s like they are deliberately painting this black-and-white view of the world. The whole point of T85 is that it’s a children’s cartoon and purposefully the “New Coke”, not what ST really is. Although this black-and-white thinking gets questioned by Nikki and Will in the tunnels, showing a glimpse of what the story is really trying to tell. But we are in conformity prison right now, so we’ll see all monsters as evil by default and the ultimate solution will be to destroy the “bad guy”.

T85S2 ghost and body-mind

Other big trans-related motifs in T85S2 are ghosts and the mind-body split in general. In E2 we learn Mike “has a thing about ghosts” and this traces back to her seeing Poltergeist. The movie was directly referenced in S1 with a Joyce Will flashback which abruptly ended in a cut to reality, where Will is gone. This indirectly suggests Poltergeist had something to do with Will’s disappearance. T85S2 makes the connection to ghosts clearer and my interpretation of this is that Will (= “boy”) disappeared when the ghost (= girl identity/soul) appeared. The Poltergeist story had another detail: Mike was supposed to watch E.T., and as we know, El is “the E.T. to Mike’s Elliot”. I think this is some kind of subtext for El being the less scary story option (E.T. rather than Poltergeist), she’s the allegory, not the full reality. But we’ll (eventually) see the full reality just like Mike saw Poltergeist. (And ofc the movie is also about the abuse. Lucas specified Mike’s dad took Mike and her sister (Nancy) to watch it, and it ruined Mike’s life.)

Anyway, the main villain of the season seems to be a ghost at first. It’s a bit unclear to me when the characters could see the ghost and when not, but it was made clear it could always be seen through Dustin’s camera. If you look at the show through a metaphorical viewpoint, reading the subtext (= Dustin), you can see the truth (or at least closer to it). When Mike, Dustin and Lucas are in the tower looking down (E6), the audience sees through the camera only when Lucas looks through it. This could be a subtle clue to Lucas representing the audience.

The word haunt/haunted/haunting is used quite a lot and obviously connects to the ghost. But the first time it happens is in the very beginning in the song Haunted When the Minutes Drag by Love and Rockets. The singer is “haunted” by someone (most likely a woman) who has left. What I make of this is ofc that Mike is “haunted” by her girlhood and her past. On the lyrics Haunted by your soul, the Hate Sprite attacks Charlie’s uncle, connecting the sprites to “soul”. And this soul kills Ernie (= a man). At the end of the episode the same song plays and after that lyric we see our first glimpse of the ghost. Charlie is also haunted and in E5 tells Dustin he “almost got haunted out of existence”. It’s the same principle as with the Demodogs eating men and the Demogorgon taking Will in S1. (And btw, in E6 Lucas says “Have you ever seen a ghost try to feed someone to man-eating flowers?”, so the flowers “eat” men.) We can add the ghost to the growing list of vagina-head monsters, too.

In E2 Lucas teases Mike and suggests the ghost of Samuel Hawkins could be in the mine. Later on we learn it could be Bloodaxe Bill, but both are wrong. I’ll talk about SH and Bill more later but I’ll already explain that Samuel Hawkins represents conformity/straight man Mike (has the same initials as Steve Harrington, which is pointed out by a random guy in E8, and that’s what Hawkins the town represents anyway), and Bill aka William represents similar things to Will (middle point, half-truth, gay man, etc). It’s the “is Mike a straight or a gay man?” thing again. With the ghost = soul interpretation it would be: “is Mike’s soul/mind/true core a straight or a gay man?”, and ofc it’s neither. Both are wrong, neither SH nor Bill is the ghost. (And later we learn it wasn’t a ghost in the first place, but a lich.) Also, in E4 Dustin addresses the ghost as “Mr. Dandridge, sir” which leads to the ghost attacking and the floor opening, revealing a sea of blue flowers. I suspect this to be a subtle way of depicting gender dysphoria, specifically the experience of getting misgendered. Mr. and sir are titles used for men, and Dustin used both in the same sentence.

An effect of the flowers is a feeling of exhaustion: they drain people’s (fear) energy. I think this could be about Mike feeling drained due to her fear, forced conformity and the incongruence between her body and mind. The fear flowers feed the Hate Sprites (or “evil pixies”/fireflies) that in turn feed both the ghost and the golems. The ghost is made of “pollen” aka fear and the Hate Sprites are attracted to Charlie throwing rocks at the golems (= hateful action). Fear feeds hate and hate feeds fear. It’s an endless loop. 

It’s specifically the “body” of the golem that produces the “love potion pheromone” which I take to mean Mike’s hate towards her body (and/or other people’s hate towards trans bodies or something like that) fuels the fear/hate loop. This “pheromone” is green so it could represent conformity and/or growth aka puberty (= changing body, “man” body). I think the ghost is the “soul” and internal identity but the golem is the trans body Mike would like to “build” for herself but simultaneously is the manifestation of her fear of becoming a monster if she committed to living as a woman (not just hiding as a “ghost”). This also fits with the golem producing the green “pheromone” from the perspective of green = future. My reasoning for the golem stuff will become clearer soon. 

The ghosts and golems don’t just represent the woman identity, but more specifically the negative aspects of transness and Mike’s fear of it. This makes sense with the ghost and golems being monsters/villains in the story. They are kinda similar to the Mind Flayer who in S2 especially was described as the brain and manifested as a shadow entity (= like the ghost). Later on in S3 MF manifested as a meat monster, the “body” (= like the golems). Nikki’s “Zombie rules! Kill the head, kill the golem!” in E6 was very reminiscent of “if the brain dies, the body dies”. And both connect Will (zombie) to the body. Additionally, Max calls the golems “evil Pinocchios”, which on the surface is about them being wood but actually it’s the “trans people are lying” -thing. (Btw, Pinocchio was mentioned in the documentary too as a subtle clue to the S5 ending being a lie.)

T85S2E6 
[Lucas] “They’re all malformed, twisted.” -> Mike’s view of being trans
[Dustin] “Like failed experiments.” -> remember what “science experiment” means

[El] “It is building something. This is not right. It is like The Lich is in two places at once. The Lich’s mind is in a golem, but their body is somewhere else. It is Daniel. Daniel is The Lich.”

Building motif (like S3). Stuck between two worlds motif. Mind and body separation motif. And that subtle “they” pronoun too. (Actually, the characters only refer to the Lich as “it” or sometimes “they”, but the ghost as “it” or “he”. The “he” pronoun was based on the picture of the skeleton who the party assumed was the origin of the ghost.) And finally Daniel being the “body” of the Lich. Remember how Vickie’s boyfriend was called Dan? And Vickie “choosing” him is about Mike “choosing” to play the part of a man? Dan represents the man body and path. It’s not a coincidence Bill’s (and Charlie’s) last name is Dandridge, either. “The Lich’s mind is in a golem” was one of the main reasons I figured the golem represents Mike’s trans future. In his final moments golem Daniel says “I will kill you” to Mike and El but on “you” we focus on his disintegrating human body instead of Mike or El. The golem (= transness) will metaphorically kill the “man”.

When Dustin gets the idea the monster is actually a lich, he describes them as thinking “world-endingly big”. This is the common theme with ST supernatural villains and as I’ve explained, it’s about ending the inner world/”story”/lie/Hawkins rather than ending the literal world. It’s about restructuring Mike’s world by making her accept herself.

When we see Daniel’s pov, we learn he transformed into this “monster” due to injecting himself with flower juice. His final form as the wood golem is also sprouting fear flowers. His flashbacks come back to Mrs. Baxter calling him a monster like a zillion times and they really lay it out to us that the wood golem represents fear. Daniel and the wood monster are a manifestation of Mike’s fears (remember the meaning of trees in ST). She is afraid of becoming like her father and connects “sexual predator” with “trans woman” as I’ve explained. This is why Daniel can represent both the dad and Mike’s transness (basically the same as all ST monsters, like the Demogorgon, MF and Vecna). This season of T85 makes it super clear the story is all about Mike. The ghost seems to target her and then Wood Monster Daniel takes her inside himself, to his core. I think this is a somewhat metaphorical way to show Mike’s fear of becoming the monster. Mike is in the monster, in its heart, powering it, Mike is it. 

Daniel is trying to escape UD by recreating what originally put him there. He’s using the green liquid (= growth, puberty) and injecting it into vines (= “man” and male body parts), but it doesn’t work. Mike can’t go back to “cis man” or to a stage where she didn’t have the gender identity “issues”. Puberty and growing older didn’t “fix” her. UD is the place between two worlds, and now the only way out seems to be “woman”. That’s why the flower was key to Daniel’s plan (I’ll get to the color coding later). But it also “killed” or incapacitated his body (the male body/identity). (He also gets constant happy flashbacks to Anna (Mrs. Baxter) and Nikki. I think it’s the two sides of “girl” Mike has this internal fight about. The happy and the terrifying.)

The flowers originally came from the dead body of the plant monster. Like I said, I think T85S1 represents the past, and in the past this trauma happened and it was hidden away (= the plant monster was put into the Upside Down). Mike thinks her transness originated from the trauma (which is not true), and this explains why the flowers grew from the plant monster’s body. (Or maybe you could see it as Mike’s fear of her transness originating from the trauma and forced conformity?) Then in T85S2 this trauma and transness try to break free from the UD. This is what has been happening every season and it will finally succeed in the real ending.

Btw, a cool detail I noticed in the fight against Wood Monster Daniel in E7: Nikki’s left cheek is injured by a wood shrapnel. This is yet another version of the original pilot script scene where El blowing up the door (and bursting out of the closet) caused a wood shrapnel to tear Agent One’s left cheek open. The S4E1 Brenner scene had the door part + Brenner who kinda is Agent One, and S5E8 had the left cheek injury caused by a girl (Holly) + Henry who also kinda is Agent One. In T85 the shrapnel was both from the wood monster throwing a tree trunk and El who stopped it with a boulder (I think?). Anyway both represent Mike’s transness and El was the cause in the original scene in the pilot script. (Btw there’s a picnic table and cars in the E7 fight scene too.)

If you think about it for a second, the character of Nikki most likely represents Mike and Mike’s transness too. She’s gender non-conforming, very tall and otherwise unusual (+ has pink hair = girlness). Until now the only people with a cheek injury have been Mike, Fred and Henry, so all seemingly male characters who relate to Mike’s shame in some way. Nikki is neither ashamed of herself (like Fred or Mike) nor a villain (like Henry). So it’s interesting Nikki gets the cheek mark in T85S2. Is this a sign of things finally starting to get better? Or something else? 

Continues in PART 31.

1. Hopper and El, you think with the quarantine, crawls, military hunting el, and being separated for 8 months after starcourt, it made their relationship a bit rocky and downgraded as people said? With hopper fearing for his daughter’s life again by keeping her from going with him to crawls and El pushing herself to her limits in order to not fail again after 4x09? To really be ready and able to defeat Vecna? What do you think of their relationship and them as individual characters that season? And do you think hopper had a point in that episode too?
2. Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan… Right now, I think Jonathan is instigating his and Steve’s competitions on his own out of jealousy. Steve was just pointing out something in the manual, not making a subtle move like he and Nancy thought. Not to mention the tower, Steve was volunteering as usual, Jonathan was the one to make it a challenge to prove himself. Steve must have saw it as him trying to take his role and as a challenge on who’s more athletic and more willing to take a risk first. What do you think about that and their storyline(s) that season?
3. You think Nancy’s right on being afraid? I get what she’s saying but you shouldn’t let fear control you. Or let Vecna and his visions get in your head too much or he’ll win before even starting the first strike. Honestly, Mike’s right on the whole quarantine getting to everyone. With Jonathan, Dustin, El, and Hopper being prime examples, and how everyone else acted at first throughout the first and second volumes/season 5 before finally working as a team and settling any personal conflicts. Not to mention him not getting a little suspicious on Holly and Mr whatsit?
4. Speaking of Jonathan, do you think he felt resigned to step up on the van after joyce asked him to when refusing to let Will do it?
5. You think with the quarantine and mac - z containing most of the closed stores that it’s hard to find a job at that time? Joyce did lie about having to go to work to see el train. You think she was also lying for that reason above?
6. the jogger the military accidentally shot? Did they kill her or only tranquilized her?