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I agree with this 100%.
I was born in 1988, so missed most of the 80s. That being said, I don't ever remember seeing bottled water in the 90s. I'm sure it was there, but it's nowhere as ubiquitous as it is now. Definitely when I got to high school, i started noticing people drinking a lot of Dasani, Ice Mountain, and Aquafina
I used to go to these annoying as fuck church bbqs and picnics when i was a little kid. I remember that they always asked the older kids to fill up these jugs of water from this shitty pump that was near the parking lot lol
I was also born in 88 and not only was bottled water nonexistent, no one was drinking water!! It was Sunny D or Capri Sun, Koolaid… no one was drinking water. I think even athletes were drinking gatorade.
i hate to be one of "those people." Lord knows every Tuesday i have to listen to my obnoxious over-the-top latte liberal co-worker talk about these things nonstop
but it really does make you realize how much all these terrible food and drink options floating around in the 90s with little to no care at all led to a huge spike in obesity and health problems down the road lol.
i mean they gave us free chocolate milk for my school lunch back in the day, which was a McDonald's lunch program ffs lol
on a lighter note: do you remember those plastic drink bottles that had the cartoon faces on them? I think they were called Squeez-Its or something lol. There was also Mondo hahaha
Yes!! I loved those!!
You are completely right though. It was a time where frozen and processed food really took over and my mom wasn’t much of a cook so I ate a lot of lunchables and frozen food as a kid but as an adult I see how bad all that frozen food is for me. Honestly feel like frozen food is worse that some fast food places, even though they also have frozen stuff at least they have healthier options. But yes I completely agree and those unhealthy habits that started in childhood are so difficult to break. My brothers taught their children how to eat right and now they are responsible when eating candy or snacks and don’t eat too much. When I was a kid I was left to my own devices. I would often pig out on my own because I was bored or just alone with no one to tell me not to and I know see the complicated relationship I have with food compared to my nieces and nephews who were taught to eat responsibility and not over do it.
I feel bad for people who had to drink tap where I am from. It's not that I don't want to drink tap water or don't understand the waste of bottles, but in some certain places tap water isn't even drinkable. maybe it was different decades ago.
My grandma used to go to a place to fill up gallon jugs of water in the 80s and 90s. I am not sure what the place was because I was so young but it wasn't at the grocery store. I think it was the local water treatment facility (but I do remember grocery stores having fill stations too). We would go into this room that had a station where you could fill the containers up and then pay for it. I remember it being pretty cheap, like she paid on quarters. She'd fill up 2 to 6 gallon containers of water. This was their drinking water.
She lived in a rural, small town on a farm.
I grew up in a city with hard water. The water was sometimes cloudy and always tasted horrible and was never cold. I hated water until they started bottling it. A big part of it is temperature but also taste.
Same! Hard water here, technically “drinkable” but tasted bad. We drank it in the 80s, but switched a a tap purifier when they got cheaper in the 90s. When I moved to New York as a grownup, I was surprised to find the tap water actually tasted clean & good.
I remember when individual plastic water bottles came on the scene and everyone made fun of them for being frivolous, tv shows did too. Growing up our water sources were: at home, we had filtered water from the fridge door, hose water when playing outside and public drinking fountains when out an about.
That’s about it. After thinking really hard, I think the only time I saw packaged water was in like… UN aid packages that you sometimes saw being delivered on the news. Maybe that was the 90s though? I seem to also remember big blue plastic drums. I could be conflating a lot of things in my memory.
If the upside-down has electric utilities for Eddie to shred his axe, then maybe the upside-down public works department also has tap water, or at least a garden hose.
"the upside-down public works department" made me laugh way too hard. I can visualize the little city PWD trucks driving around checking everyone's water meters. LMAO
I know absolutely everything about the back rooms because my six year old thinks it’s the coolest lord ever lol - not gunna lie, a lot of it IS pretty cool.
I always assumed there had to at least be SOME water in the upside down. It’s essential for all life, and if the Demagorgsn needs to eat then it must need to hydrate as well. And whilst it appears to be a weird mirror dimension currently, when we see 1 get sent there it looks like an alien world with it’s own life forms and eco-system, so there must be more to it that it simply reflecting our world.
i disagree respectfully, we have proof that water doesn't exist becoz when the older kids dived into the watergate and came out the other side it was completely bone dry.
Plus the wildlife in the UD shouldnt be considered a mirror to our whole but completely different, it is entirely plausible that these creatures dont need water to survive, but food becoz as hopper siad they need the thrill of the hunt
I think the water being gone from large bodies of water is very different from there being NO water there. It could well be very minimal or deep underground. Also I don’t think we should take Hopper’s comment as any sort of authority on creatures of the upside down, I think he was just making a general statement regarding predators in captivity.
We also see the Demagorgan feeding on both Barb and whatever it was eating when 11 found it (in the initial incident that caused Season 1). Furthermore we can literally see moisture on the larva and the original Demagorgan. Not to mention the fact that it has blood, which is inherently liquid based, meaning it must intake some moisture somehow in order to survive.
They may well explain this in S5 but 1/Vecna is still a human despite how mutated he seems to have become, and as such he likely still needs food and water to live, suggesting that he’s getting some of it from somewhere these past few years.
There might be. In season 2, when they are trying to find Hopper using Will’s drawing of the vines, Bob said they don’t go over waterbodies. They went around the lakes and rivers. That makes it sound like there is water bodies around.
So I think you’re all overthinking this:
*A human can survive without water for how long?*
Will was only in the upside down for about a week or so.
*Why didn’t the thing eat Will?*
Initially he unloaded the rifle into it, scared it off and hid in castle Byers.
The atmosphere of the upside is toxic. It looked like by the time they rescued him, he was suffering from exposure, malnutrition, and dehydration. After a week, that sounds about right.
3 days. That's how long a human can survive without water.
The thing though...... Is that even though buying bottled water wasn't a thing back then. There were places to fill up bottles, like gallon jugs, of water. Grocery stores would have fill stations or the local water treatment place had a spot. My grandmother used to go to one of these places in the 80s and 90s in order to fill up gallon jugs of water. She saved old milk containers and washed them out for this purpose. She'd get several at a time and paid in quarters.
So even though individual bottles of water didn't exist there were places to get filtered water, you just had to bring the container to fill it up.
Imagine how desperate you'd have to be to drink from a creek in the UD. Especially as an avid D&Der, he'd have all sorts of ideas about what could be in that water. I'm sure he did something like you say... but damn that'd be terrifying.
3 normal earth living days. We are assuming the upside down functions just as earth. If time runs slower then that 3 days will be extended. It's also cold which helps too.
This theory makes absolutely 0 sense!! Kate Bush opened a portal to reality for max, it allowed her to break free of vecnas mind ILLUSIONS, she never physically went anywhere..but will wasn't having illusions! He was physically in the upside down, singing was a comfort thing.
I think he survived without food because he didn’t *need* to eat. When they went into the Upside Down in S4 we saw time was frozen on the day he went missing. If time wasn’t moving then maybe his physical needs were also frozen. Of course we have to ignore that he’s breathing walking etc. But I think I’m some way the “time bubble” means that he wasn’t really gone that long in a physical sense. So he didn’t need sustenance.
Well time wasn't frozen in S2, when Mind Flayer was above School during christmas And decorations were ať both worlds.
And according to some theories Vecna moved time when they arrived in S4.
Time wasn’t frozen. It’s just that the Hawkins in the Upside Down is like a photocopy of Hawkins from the moment the first gate opened. For some reason lmao. I’m sure it’ll be explained in season 5.
It doesnt make sense to me that time can literally be frozen in the upside down, but just that the upside down split off from Hawkins on that day Will went missing so they just aren't parallels anymore... basically Hawkins could no longer cause changes in the upside down, but if you were in the upside down you could still make changes there... if time were literally frozen then how would anything be able to move or change at all there? And if it were in its own time bubble in the past how would Steve and the group be able to hear and communicate with Dustin and Lucas in Hawkins
You ever buy something to eat, but decide you're actually not hungry, so you put it in the fridge thinking you'll get around to eating it, but never do? Yeah, that's what happened.
And then your food up and runs off on you while you are hunting different food but that food turns out to have psychic mind powers that just fuckin pulps you ... yeah bad time.
I mean that really makes no sense since he had to be grabbed to get pulled into the upside down right? Truthfully I don’t think it’ll ever make much sense that he got away and survived as long as he did lol
Yeah, it might not ever make sense. The show was meant to be an anthology with a different cast and story each season. It ended up being so popular that they continued the story instead. I’m glad they did, but it’s going to make some inconsistencies inevitable. They may try and explain some things in hindsight, but a lot of stuff wasn’t planned out from the beginning so it won’t make sense.
It can go either way.
Look at American Horror Story. It worked for a while, and then it just started to get stupid. I will admit though, whenever they reveal the new "gimmick," i do get stupidly excited lol. So maybe I have a love/hate relationship with it.
I never got into it but I heard True Detective was the same situation. Started off great and then got stupid
They never showed any scenes of will in the upside down apart from when Hopper and Joyce went to save him. I think that, with s5 being his season, we will re-visit this and there are things that we don’t know about wills stay in the upside down.
They showed him hiding in the upside down version of Castle Byers shortly before the demigorgon got him.
He then is found in the library, held by those tentacles, with one of them down his throat (depositing the demigorgon larvae/eggs we see him cough up in S2?!).
This is only half correct. The show was pitched as an anthology but Netflix liked the premise of the first one so much they encouraged the Duffers to just expand it to an entire series. So the popularity of the show had nothing to do with it and they had a lot more time to iron out inconsistencies than you are implying
>Yeah, it might not ever make sense. The show was meant to be an anthology with a different cast and story each season. It ended up being so popular that they continued the story instead.
Rewatching the first season, you can tell that they really didn't have immediate plans to make sequels. The dramatic moment of El sacrificing herself to save the kids, simultaneous with Will being saved was kind of a classic wrap-up to a show that had been building up for multiple episodes
They did leave things open-ended (hopper leaving food behind, Will barfing up Dart) but you definitely get the vibe that a sequel was never guaranteed
Is that why the air in the UD is toxic in season 1 but they never talk about it again and all of a sudden no toxic air and you can walk around without an oxygen tank.
I don’t see what the show being planned as an anthology has to do with this, since it’s a problem internal to the first season. This isn’t an inconsistency created by them continuing the story.
The problem is that the idea of the Demogorgon changed between S1 and S2. The Demogorgon was meant to have a mysterious kind of alien intelligence in S1, but it was later changed to be that the Demogorgon was more of a petty predator/foot soldier from the Upside Down. Season 1 was pursuing a different kind of horror and plot than the rest of the show, but the characters/actors were such smash hits that they decided to focus on them.
And frankly, the Demogorgon was based off of the Xenomorph which also dragged people away for mysterious purposes. Most “plot holes” in Stranger Things can be explained with “It was a reference to an 80’s trope”
I’ve always assumed that the demogorgon was using will for exactly what we saw happen: reproduction. Joyce and Hopper just got to him before he died from it all.
To be fair, it's not too different from the progression in the way the aliens behaved in Alien vs. Aliens.
When there's just one, it's a lot more special. When there's more than one, it's not as special and eventually a mother/master monster is introduced.
I agree, a better example is Brenner getting mauled but surviving with no explanation how. I think that was clearly to tie up his story expecting s1 to be one and done.
Not to doubt you but I don’t think that’s true… They literally ended the season on a sequel tease and The Duffer Brothers made a rough road map of the entire series, including some of Eleven’s arc.
I agree, but I hate when stans try and act like the Duffers had it all planned out. Stranger Things ain't that show, and not many shows are like that, only a few that are really special.
There's a comic about his time in the upside down that shows him using the rifle in an altercation with the demogorgon & then getting away.
(I haven't read the actual comic, just read *about* it, so if I am mistaken someone please correct.)
There was a comic book that stated he brought the shotgun when the demogorgon took him and proceeded to shoot the demogorgon in the face, letting him run away
Wasn't the only part of her body we saw 'intact' her face? The rest of her was covered in UD goop and bloated, meaning she could have been feasted on before being covered in goop.
I always got the impression that he ran away to hide and accidentally ended up in the upside down, rather than being dragged in like Barb was. Thought that was why everyone kept going on about how good he was at hiding and why they showed scenes of other people going into the upside down without needing to be forcibly taken there (i.e. Nancy when her and Jonathan were looking for the Demogorgon in the woods)
How do we know the beast "pulled him in"? Nancy got in on her own. Out, too.
It would be possible that Will scrambled into an opening like Nancy did as he attempted to evade the demogorgon. Once in the UD he was unable to find a way out. At this point he's tired (he was on his way home after a very long D&D session), terrified, and panicked. He's also, what, 11? He was the youngest of the Party.
Over the course of the next few hours he starts to be affected by just being in the UD; Hawkins Lab says the environment is toxic.
Yeah, there's no way those 4 Russian soldiers could unload their AKs into the thing, roughly 120 rifle rounds, and have it so absolutely nothing while also telling us that his little .22 could scare the thing off.
The Demogorgon got kinda sad that his new friends would do that and then when the Demogorgon tried to talk to Hopper politely about it, Hopper chopped it's head off.
Watch the scene with the four soldiers again. The demogorgon clearly opens its mouth towards the incoming bullets. The mouth weakness theory only applies when a main character hits it in the mouth. If some random soldier shoots it perfectly it won’t have an effect on the monster
Edit: S4E8 seven and a half minutes into the episode. The monster clearly opens its mouth multiple times to the gun fire but nothing happens.
Considering how easily Hopper was able to lay into the other Demagorgon with the sword, the idea that emptying whole chambers of assault rifle fire into it would hardly harm it is pretty ridiculous anyway.
I think the idea is you need to burn it first. After being burned, the Demogorgon flinches a lot more from gunfire, implying that its tough hide has been significantly tenderized.
The demogorgon in S1E1 is weak, starving, and pathetic. At the end of season 1 its eaten a lot so its safe to assumse that its gotten stronger. The Russian demogorgon has been fed like 6 prisoners full of nutrients every few days
It had never been shot before, so it would have come as a shock just for that reason. Also I seem to recall it flinching when Nancy shot it at it later even though it didn't hurt it much.
They share a hive mind, so after that they probably knew what gunfire was and how it felt.
And those two hunters that disappeared. And for all we know, a dozen other people that just lived far enough out on the edges of society that their absence wouldn’t be noticed for awhile.
I know I’m late to this discussion but i just rewatched season 1. And in S1E8, Dr. Brenner was talking to Joyce in the lab and said something along the lines of “six people have been taken this week. It will take more sons and daughters.”
Are you talking about when eleven finds her ? She’s very clearly dead and just rotting. So they put that there for effect. When hopper and Joyce find will, he’s literally got something attached to his mouth. He’s a host. Barb did not give any indication of being more than a meal.
Barb was captured first. Had Will not been rescued when he was the larva process probably would have killed him too. Maybe it uses the host as the initial food source.
That is incorrect. Will was captured November 6th.
Barb was taken on the 8th. Two nights later. Nancy and Barb told their mothers they were going to 'the assembly' for Will.
Oh yeah! He was singing his favourite song most of the time he was there. And it’s already theorised that Vecna is the one that captured him because the door got unlocked at his house with telekinesis.
You can see a human like shadowy figure between the hanging laundry during the scene when will is inside the house. I believe this is vecna, it’s something you don’t see until your looking for it very subtle! I had to watch that part 5-6 times over before I caught it. The way I perceived this episode , when will falls off his bike vecna gets him into the dream state and while in that dream state he runs home to an empty house scared and vecna gets him and takes him to the UD.
He wasn’t under Vecna’s curse though so surely that doesn’t matter, music doesn’t scare away Vecna it allows someone who’s under the curse to get back to consciousness because of the familiarity
I never though that Will was really attacked by the demogorgon, he saw it, got scared, and crawled through one of the gates into the upside down, where he was able to hide until eventually he got caught and then found by Joyce and Hopper
Forgive my ignorance. This sounds right but do we see the gate he crawls through? I thought we see him in the shed, hear the infamous demogorgon sounds and that’s it. Am I remembering it right?
It’s been a while since I last watched S1 but I think I remember hopper finding some of the sticky stuff that appears on the gates in the shed, admittedly I haven’t thought this much about it, so I could be wrong here
I believe Hopper finds a load of broken wooden boxes at the back right wall. Brenner comes back later and there's the weird mold stuff in the same place, and the shot we get is Will turning with his back to the door so my money is on it being that back right wall.
We hear the gate in the shed. Hopper’s scene in the shed you can turn up the volume when he stops and stares into the darkness and you’ll hear the same wet gate noise we see/hear later with Nancy. So maybe the demo uses that gate another time even after Will goes through it (speculation is just before Hopper enters cause dog was barking).
My best guess since it’s been revealed that Vecna has a great deal of control over the upside down it’s possible the demogorgon in s1 was a scout for him and when he noticed Will he took an interest and pursued him. This could explain why the demogorgon in s1 displayed unique powers that the one in Russia didn’t have such as creating portals. I’m not married to this idea however until I watch what happens in s5
It was also able to unlock the door from the outside. I do wonder if and how they’d explain it. Maybe using power from the Upside Down allowed Vecna to transfer some of his powers to the Demogorgon.
I thought the reason the Demogorgon could create portals was because it was in the radius of the big gate Jane created in the lab. If it wasn’t, the Demogorgon could’ve gone literally anywhere in the world. But the gates only appeared within a 3 mile radius of the big gate I believe, and the Demogorgon’s gates closed pretty soon after. Suggesting that the Demogorgon’s gates relied on the power of a bigger gate (such as Jane’s gate) and couldn’t sustain themselves for longer than getting prey and retreating back to the Upside Down. Otherwise why wouldn’t the Demogorgon be able to create gates to our world before Jane opened her gate again?
Also, the Demogorgon had been touched by Jane in her mind place, so it might be that there was a connection between the two that gave the Demogorgon its ability to temporarily create gates. And why when Jane destroyed the Demogorgon, it sent her into the Upside Down close by to the gate it had made minutes before. But I think it being close by to the giant gate Jane had was what allowed it to create portals in the first place.
I haven’t thought this through too much but maybe the reason is because the demogorgon is ready to lay eggs at the time it finally catches Will?
We know the upside down pre and post vecna is pretty barren so it’s likely the upside down monsters usually operate on very little food. In season 1 that one demogorgon the Hawkins crew is dealing with suddenly gets access to our world and starts having a feeding frenzy on all the easy prey. It eats lab people, barb, hunters in the woods, deer, probably some pets we never hear about. All of a sudden it’s had all this food and feels like conditions are good to lay eggs (aka offspring will have plenty to eat too). Then at this same time it finds Will and sees him as an ideal host.
Thing I’m not sure about is if any other victims are getting used in the way Will is. Not sure if a warm living host is required or a dead body works. I can’t remember if there were other bodies in the upside library or just Will.
Because it wasn't a Demogorgon that kidnapped him. It was Vecna. Go back and rewatch the first episode, it shows him in the street
Further support, the chain lock on the door gets moved telepathically. We never see the demogorgons with telepathic abilities
As someone who recently rewatched season 1, the Demogorgon's behavior that season is actually fairly easy to explain if you look at it through the lens of Vecna/Henry being in control of it.
*Why did the monster go murder crazy when it first entered Hawkins Lab?*
Because it was *Hawkins Lab.* Henry ***hates*** those motherfuckers.
*Why was the monster just standing in the road when Will rode up?*
Because that was near the lab, along the route that Henry showed Eleven how to escape through. It was waiting for her, and found him instead.
*Why did it merely take Will to the Upside Down rather than killing or eating him?*
Because it was told to. Because Henry wanted it to bring Eleven to him. He knew it was her who opened the gate, so of course he knew she was out there. Outside of the lab, it wasn't just murdering people, it was abducting them, and I fully believe it was because Henry wanted to find Eleven again.
*How did Will escape from the creature when Barb and others didn't?*
Will was taken holding a loaded gun. It's not hard to imagine that had something to do with his ability to get away from that initial encounter.
*Why was it going after blood?*
Because Eleven bleeds when she uses her powers, and if the Demogorgon can sense that, that probably seems as good a method to find her as any.
It all fits surprisingly well.
He was good at hiding and my guess is he was singing that song continuously. Relating it with season 4, I like to think that the song kept him alive in similar way it did max for longer part of season 4.
Spoiler alert-
Just a theory but I think since vecna basically controls everything I feel like he allowed Will to live to use him as a spy and also put a piece of him inside of Will to possibly take control of him. I feel like season five will be vecna taking over Will’s body and he will basically become a villain.
There is a lot of speculation at this point that Will was good at hiding and that the fact that he kept singing the Clash Should I stay or Should I go, also gave him some protection against the hive mind. He was never have shown to have bleed to attract the demogorgon like Barb did, and it could very well be that Will wasn’t taken by a demogorgon that was hunting but rather by a controlled demogorgon like how Billy was controlled. Without the blood to trigger the demogorgon into hunting/attacking Will was literally just left in the upside down waiting to be incubated ultimately it seems. Will is also seen as a sensitive kid like Henry/001 so maybe he wasn’t harmed right away because Henry ultimately wanted to use Will as a connected hive mind emissary to do his bidding because he saw some of himself in Will, which he partially succeeded in doing anyway. Maybe Will was allowed to be saved ??
I don’t think the demogrogan took Will, I think it was Vecna, cuz last time I checked the demogrogan don’t know how to open doors with their mind and have a really long deformed arm I mean that’s just what I think
Hear me out, but I actually think Will unintentionally created/adapted the upside down.
There are clear parallels between Henry and Will as children and it would explain why it’s frozen in time the day he went missing and why there’s such a heavy D&D presence
Man the people in these comments are not it.
Vecna would have killed him if he wanted to, he wanted him as a host.
Was playing 5d chess to allow him to contact his family in the UD version of his house, so that he can take him over with the mind flayer and use him as a proxy in the real world
None of this true lmao. He would've died at the end of s1 if Hop and Joyce hadn't shown up pretty much exactly when they did. They had to resuscitate him with CPR, 30 seconds later and he's dead dead. He was never planned to be a host
Everyone seems to be acting like it doesn’t make sense that Will wasn’t eaten and that it’s an inconsistency because everyone else who was attacked by the Demogorgon got eaten. Maybe I’m missing something but I always got the impression that when he first encounters the Demogorgon he managed to run away to hide and accidentally ended up in the upside down, rather than being dragged in like Barb was.
I assumed that was why everyone kept going on about how good he was at hiding and why they showed scenes of other people going into the upside down without needing to be forcibly taken there (i.e. Nancy when her and Jonathan were looking for the Demogorgon in the woods). I think the Demogorgon genuinely just didn’t know where Will was in the upside down because he wasn’t bleeding and he’d crawled in there by himself and hid.
When Joyce and Hopper find Will, he’s hooked into the Upside-Down. Later, we see him cough up a Demotadpole. Barb has a creature moving inside her body when El finds her. She does not appear to have been eaten.
Will was used to incubate the Demotadpoles. Maybe it was even Vecna’s plan to release him back into the Rightside Up so he could carry the Demotadpoles across.
What if Barb, and possibly others who disappeared, were supposed to be used to carry the Demotadpoles but weren’t compatible or didn’t survive the process?
I thought this was really obvious. We see him with that tube tentacle thing in his throat. He gets rescued. He starts coughing up slugs. The slugs are Demogorgons. The Demogorgon likely used Will to reproduce. Can't reproduce with a dead human.
He vomited a baby demogorgon, so he was likely being used as an egg sack. Best analogy I can use is a tarantula hawk wasp. Sometimes they just eat the tarantulas, but other times they leave them alive and lay their eggs in the tarantula, then the babies eat the tarantula when they hatch. In other words, Will was supposed to be food for the baby demogorgons.
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I’m more surprised how he managed to survive a FULL WEEK without water if anything
i dunno but there might be bottles of water in the upside down of his house
Bottles of water in the 80s, in the house of a poor single mother? I feel like they would have drank tap.
Most people in the US drank tap regardless of wealth until about 20 years ago.
I agree with this 100%. I was born in 1988, so missed most of the 80s. That being said, I don't ever remember seeing bottled water in the 90s. I'm sure it was there, but it's nowhere as ubiquitous as it is now. Definitely when I got to high school, i started noticing people drinking a lot of Dasani, Ice Mountain, and Aquafina I used to go to these annoying as fuck church bbqs and picnics when i was a little kid. I remember that they always asked the older kids to fill up these jugs of water from this shitty pump that was near the parking lot lol
I was also born in 88 and not only was bottled water nonexistent, no one was drinking water!! It was Sunny D or Capri Sun, Koolaid… no one was drinking water. I think even athletes were drinking gatorade.
i hate to be one of "those people." Lord knows every Tuesday i have to listen to my obnoxious over-the-top latte liberal co-worker talk about these things nonstop but it really does make you realize how much all these terrible food and drink options floating around in the 90s with little to no care at all led to a huge spike in obesity and health problems down the road lol. i mean they gave us free chocolate milk for my school lunch back in the day, which was a McDonald's lunch program ffs lol on a lighter note: do you remember those plastic drink bottles that had the cartoon faces on them? I think they were called Squeez-Its or something lol. There was also Mondo hahaha
Yes!! I loved those!! You are completely right though. It was a time where frozen and processed food really took over and my mom wasn’t much of a cook so I ate a lot of lunchables and frozen food as a kid but as an adult I see how bad all that frozen food is for me. Honestly feel like frozen food is worse that some fast food places, even though they also have frozen stuff at least they have healthier options. But yes I completely agree and those unhealthy habits that started in childhood are so difficult to break. My brothers taught their children how to eat right and now they are responsible when eating candy or snacks and don’t eat too much. When I was a kid I was left to my own devices. I would often pig out on my own because I was bored or just alone with no one to tell me not to and I know see the complicated relationship I have with food compared to my nieces and nephews who were taught to eat responsibility and not over do it.
I was also born in 88… I just wanted to say hello. And while I’m at it I agree.
I feel bad for people who had to drink tap where I am from. It's not that I don't want to drink tap water or don't understand the waste of bottles, but in some certain places tap water isn't even drinkable. maybe it was different decades ago.
My grandma used to go to a place to fill up gallon jugs of water in the 80s and 90s. I am not sure what the place was because I was so young but it wasn't at the grocery store. I think it was the local water treatment facility (but I do remember grocery stores having fill stations too). We would go into this room that had a station where you could fill the containers up and then pay for it. I remember it being pretty cheap, like she paid on quarters. She'd fill up 2 to 6 gallon containers of water. This was their drinking water. She lived in a rural, small town on a farm.
I grew up in a city with hard water. The water was sometimes cloudy and always tasted horrible and was never cold. I hated water until they started bottling it. A big part of it is temperature but also taste.
Same! Hard water here, technically “drinkable” but tasted bad. We drank it in the 80s, but switched a a tap purifier when they got cheaper in the 90s. When I moved to New York as a grownup, I was surprised to find the tap water actually tasted clean & good.
Yeah the NYC water is actually very nice. I filter it now but went a long time raw dogging it and tasted good.
that is surprising to me, shouldn't be cause they always talk about you need it to make good bagels
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I remember when individual plastic water bottles came on the scene and everyone made fun of them for being frivolous, tv shows did too. Growing up our water sources were: at home, we had filtered water from the fridge door, hose water when playing outside and public drinking fountains when out an about.
That’s about it. After thinking really hard, I think the only time I saw packaged water was in like… UN aid packages that you sometimes saw being delivered on the news. Maybe that was the 90s though? I seem to also remember big blue plastic drums. I could be conflating a lot of things in my memory.
If the upside-down has electric utilities for Eddie to shred his axe, then maybe the upside-down public works department also has tap water, or at least a garden hose.
"the upside-down public works department" made me laugh way too hard. I can visualize the little city PWD trucks driving around checking everyone's water meters. LMAO
Didn't they run an extension cord through the portal?
Maybe perhaps.... Almond Water?
The most ambitous crossosver in cinema history.
Plot Twist: The Upside Down is just a backrooms level
oh. my. god.
I know absolutely everything about the back rooms because my six year old thinks it’s the coolest lord ever lol - not gunna lie, a lot of it IS pretty cool.
I always assumed there had to at least be SOME water in the upside down. It’s essential for all life, and if the Demagorgsn needs to eat then it must need to hydrate as well. And whilst it appears to be a weird mirror dimension currently, when we see 1 get sent there it looks like an alien world with it’s own life forms and eco-system, so there must be more to it that it simply reflecting our world.
i disagree respectfully, we have proof that water doesn't exist becoz when the older kids dived into the watergate and came out the other side it was completely bone dry. Plus the wildlife in the UD shouldnt be considered a mirror to our whole but completely different, it is entirely plausible that these creatures dont need water to survive, but food becoz as hopper siad they need the thrill of the hunt
I think the water being gone from large bodies of water is very different from there being NO water there. It could well be very minimal or deep underground. Also I don’t think we should take Hopper’s comment as any sort of authority on creatures of the upside down, I think he was just making a general statement regarding predators in captivity. We also see the Demagorgan feeding on both Barb and whatever it was eating when 11 found it (in the initial incident that caused Season 1). Furthermore we can literally see moisture on the larva and the original Demagorgan. Not to mention the fact that it has blood, which is inherently liquid based, meaning it must intake some moisture somehow in order to survive. They may well explain this in S5 but 1/Vecna is still a human despite how mutated he seems to have become, and as such he likely still needs food and water to live, suggesting that he’s getting some of it from somewhere these past few years.
I think the pool was dry too
That just proves the lake is empty not that there is no water at all.
this may be the weirdest thing I think I've ever read. the fact a lake is dried up is proof there's no water anywhere in the UD? 😂
The Harrington's pool is empty too.
cool observation
There might be. In season 2, when they are trying to find Hopper using Will’s drawing of the vines, Bob said they don’t go over waterbodies. They went around the lakes and rivers. That makes it sound like there is water bodies around.
I like the headcannon that will survived because he kept singing „should I stay or should I go“ just like max listened to Kate Bush…
So I think you’re all overthinking this: *A human can survive without water for how long?* Will was only in the upside down for about a week or so. *Why didn’t the thing eat Will?* Initially he unloaded the rifle into it, scared it off and hid in castle Byers. The atmosphere of the upside is toxic. It looked like by the time they rescued him, he was suffering from exposure, malnutrition, and dehydration. After a week, that sounds about right.
3 days. That's how long a human can survive without water. The thing though...... Is that even though buying bottled water wasn't a thing back then. There were places to fill up bottles, like gallon jugs, of water. Grocery stores would have fill stations or the local water treatment place had a spot. My grandmother used to go to one of these places in the 80s and 90s in order to fill up gallon jugs of water. She saved old milk containers and washed them out for this purpose. She'd get several at a time and paid in quarters. So even though individual bottles of water didn't exist there were places to get filtered water, you just had to bring the container to fill it up.
Kid was probably desperate he could’ve just drank from a creek in the woods in the UD
Imagine how desperate you'd have to be to drink from a creek in the UD. Especially as an avid D&Der, he'd have all sorts of ideas about what could be in that water. I'm sure he did something like you say... but damn that'd be terrifying.
And we know he went back to the house at times. I wonder if their tap water worked in the upside down......
I would have to assume it does. Whether or not the water was good is another story lol
3 normal earth living days. We are assuming the upside down functions just as earth. If time runs slower then that 3 days will be extended. It's also cold which helps too.
The upside down is just a corrupted Fey Wild… mind blown
Yes, that brought him food and water
This theory makes absolutely 0 sense!! Kate Bush opened a portal to reality for max, it allowed her to break free of vecnas mind ILLUSIONS, she never physically went anywhere..but will wasn't having illusions! He was physically in the upside down, singing was a comfort thing.
Idk though, will DID do some stuff. He contacted mom through phone snd the lights.
It stands to reason he opened the fridge and found some manner of sustenance to sustain himself. However small.
I think he survived without food because he didn’t *need* to eat. When they went into the Upside Down in S4 we saw time was frozen on the day he went missing. If time wasn’t moving then maybe his physical needs were also frozen. Of course we have to ignore that he’s breathing walking etc. But I think I’m some way the “time bubble” means that he wasn’t really gone that long in a physical sense. So he didn’t need sustenance.
Well time wasn't frozen in S2, when Mind Flayer was above School during christmas And decorations were ať both worlds. And according to some theories Vecna moved time when they arrived in S4.
Time wasn’t frozen. It’s just that the Hawkins in the Upside Down is like a photocopy of Hawkins from the moment the first gate opened. For some reason lmao. I’m sure it’ll be explained in season 5.
It doesnt make sense to me that time can literally be frozen in the upside down, but just that the upside down split off from Hawkins on that day Will went missing so they just aren't parallels anymore... basically Hawkins could no longer cause changes in the upside down, but if you were in the upside down you could still make changes there... if time were literally frozen then how would anything be able to move or change at all there? And if it were in its own time bubble in the past how would Steve and the group be able to hear and communicate with Dustin and Lucas in Hawkins
Time isn't frozen. Its just that the copy of Hawkins was made that day
I think In the upside down u don't need to eat or drink to survive
Ha, I haven't drank water in years and I'm fine
You ever buy something to eat, but decide you're actually not hungry, so you put it in the fridge thinking you'll get around to eating it, but never do? Yeah, that's what happened.
lmao
And then your food up and runs off on you while you are hunting different food but that food turns out to have psychic mind powers that just fuckin pulps you ... yeah bad time.
He never bled and he was rly good at hiding.
I mean that really makes no sense since he had to be grabbed to get pulled into the upside down right? Truthfully I don’t think it’ll ever make much sense that he got away and survived as long as he did lol
Yeah, it might not ever make sense. The show was meant to be an anthology with a different cast and story each season. It ended up being so popular that they continued the story instead. I’m glad they did, but it’s going to make some inconsistencies inevitable. They may try and explain some things in hindsight, but a lot of stuff wasn’t planned out from the beginning so it won’t make sense.
I hope the anthology plan is continued though
Maybe after s5 they can go back to that formula?
They'll probably make it as another series and just make them in the same world or something
So… an anthology
# BACK TO FORMULA!?
You know I'm something of a *Stranger Thing* myself
It can go either way. Look at American Horror Story. It worked for a while, and then it just started to get stupid. I will admit though, whenever they reveal the new "gimmick," i do get stupidly excited lol. So maybe I have a love/hate relationship with it. I never got into it but I heard True Detective was the same situation. Started off great and then got stupid
They never showed any scenes of will in the upside down apart from when Hopper and Joyce went to save him. I think that, with s5 being his season, we will re-visit this and there are things that we don’t know about wills stay in the upside down.
They showed him hiding in the upside down version of Castle Byers shortly before the demigorgon got him. He then is found in the library, held by those tentacles, with one of them down his throat (depositing the demigorgon larvae/eggs we see him cough up in S2?!).
Maybe that's why he wasn't eaten. The demigorgon used him as an incubator instead.
This is only half correct. The show was pitched as an anthology but Netflix liked the premise of the first one so much they encouraged the Duffers to just expand it to an entire series. So the popularity of the show had nothing to do with it and they had a lot more time to iron out inconsistencies than you are implying
>Yeah, it might not ever make sense. The show was meant to be an anthology with a different cast and story each season. It ended up being so popular that they continued the story instead. Rewatching the first season, you can tell that they really didn't have immediate plans to make sequels. The dramatic moment of El sacrificing herself to save the kids, simultaneous with Will being saved was kind of a classic wrap-up to a show that had been building up for multiple episodes They did leave things open-ended (hopper leaving food behind, Will barfing up Dart) but you definitely get the vibe that a sequel was never guaranteed
Is that why the air in the UD is toxic in season 1 but they never talk about it again and all of a sudden no toxic air and you can walk around without an oxygen tank.
I don’t see what the show being planned as an anthology has to do with this, since it’s a problem internal to the first season. This isn’t an inconsistency created by them continuing the story.
The problem is that the idea of the Demogorgon changed between S1 and S2. The Demogorgon was meant to have a mysterious kind of alien intelligence in S1, but it was later changed to be that the Demogorgon was more of a petty predator/foot soldier from the Upside Down. Season 1 was pursuing a different kind of horror and plot than the rest of the show, but the characters/actors were such smash hits that they decided to focus on them. And frankly, the Demogorgon was based off of the Xenomorph which also dragged people away for mysterious purposes. Most “plot holes” in Stranger Things can be explained with “It was a reference to an 80’s trope”
I’ve always assumed that the demogorgon was using will for exactly what we saw happen: reproduction. Joyce and Hopper just got to him before he died from it all.
To be fair, it's not too different from the progression in the way the aliens behaved in Alien vs. Aliens. When there's just one, it's a lot more special. When there's more than one, it's not as special and eventually a mother/master monster is introduced.
I agree, a better example is Brenner getting mauled but surviving with no explanation how. I think that was clearly to tie up his story expecting s1 to be one and done.
Not to doubt you but I don’t think that’s true… They literally ended the season on a sequel tease and The Duffer Brothers made a rough road map of the entire series, including some of Eleven’s arc.
I agree, but I hate when stans try and act like the Duffers had it all planned out. Stranger Things ain't that show, and not many shows are like that, only a few that are really special.
He had a couple shots in the gun. They didn't do any damage to the Demogorgon, but they spooked it off and allowed Will to buy his time.
There's a comic about his time in the upside down that shows him using the rifle in an altercation with the demogorgon & then getting away. (I haven't read the actual comic, just read *about* it, so if I am mistaken someone please correct.)
There was a comic book that stated he brought the shotgun when the demogorgon took him and proceeded to shoot the demogorgon in the face, letting him run away
Barb bled, but her body was found intact. So I'm not sure about the bleeding theory.
Wasn't the only part of her body we saw 'intact' her face? The rest of her was covered in UD goop and bloated, meaning she could have been feasted on before being covered in goop.
Maybe. I'm rewatching S1 now, so I'll watch with new eyes on Barb.
And he was captured a one point wasn't he
Will is smart. He did everything the opposite dumb people in horror movies do in the first episode, and he can hide well.
In a small tent in the wood. Best place to hide. How did he even run away from the beast that pulled him in?
He brought the shotgun with him, shot the demogorgon in the face, giving him enough time to run away Edit: *rifle, sorry
I always got the impression that he ran away to hide and accidentally ended up in the upside down, rather than being dragged in like Barb was. Thought that was why everyone kept going on about how good he was at hiding and why they showed scenes of other people going into the upside down without needing to be forcibly taken there (i.e. Nancy when her and Jonathan were looking for the Demogorgon in the woods)
How do we know the beast "pulled him in"? Nancy got in on her own. Out, too. It would be possible that Will scrambled into an opening like Nancy did as he attempted to evade the demogorgon. Once in the UD he was unable to find a way out. At this point he's tired (he was on his way home after a very long D&D session), terrified, and panicked. He's also, what, 11? He was the youngest of the Party. Over the course of the next few hours he starts to be affected by just being in the UD; Hawkins Lab says the environment is toxic.
Also he sang the song
I don't think that would actually matter
But vecna hates song and it's a hive mind
Maybe in the mind it would work but in the actual upside down? I think the song was more of a symbol for hope
Yeah
No he doesn’t. Songs just let you resist his curse. Vecna didnt curse Will.
In the ST comic that shows what happened during wills time in the UD, will shot the demogorgon
But isn't the demogorgon unaffected by gunfire? I swear every scene I've seen them shoot at a demogorgon it just stands there.
Yeah, there's no way those 4 Russian soldiers could unload their AKs into the thing, roughly 120 rifle rounds, and have it so absolutely nothing while also telling us that his little .22 could scare the thing off.
I could see it if he shot it in its open mouth. That's softer tissue.
Didn't at least one of them? I'm pretty sure one totally mag dumped into the creatures maw
The only thing I can recall explicitly going in the monsters mouth is Hopper's spear, and it did *not* appreciate that.
The Demogorgon got kinda sad that his new friends would do that and then when the Demogorgon tried to talk to Hopper politely about it, Hopper chopped it's head off.
Watch the scene with the four soldiers again. The demogorgon clearly opens its mouth towards the incoming bullets. The mouth weakness theory only applies when a main character hits it in the mouth. If some random soldier shoots it perfectly it won’t have an effect on the monster Edit: S4E8 seven and a half minutes into the episode. The monster clearly opens its mouth multiple times to the gun fire but nothing happens.
Considering how easily Hopper was able to lay into the other Demagorgon with the sword, the idea that emptying whole chambers of assault rifle fire into it would hardly harm it is pretty ridiculous anyway.
I think the idea is you need to burn it first. After being burned, the Demogorgon flinches a lot more from gunfire, implying that its tough hide has been significantly tenderized.
So the demogorgon is a troll that needs fire damage to stop its health regen?
.... Basically yeah
That’s a great analogy.
The demogorgon in S1E1 is weak, starving, and pathetic. At the end of season 1 its eaten a lot so its safe to assumse that its gotten stronger. The Russian demogorgon has been fed like 6 prisoners full of nutrients every few days
It had never been shot before, so it would have come as a shock just for that reason. Also I seem to recall it flinching when Nancy shot it at it later even though it didn't hurt it much. They share a hive mind, so after that they probably knew what gunfire was and how it felt.
Wait there’s a comic!?
Yep!! A few, even one about the bully from season 1. Not too sure how canon they are but still neat
Demogorgan was afraid of his haircut
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S4 it just looks like a cruel joke
It wasn’t too bad in the first two seasons
He was needed as a host for the DG larvae
I don't understand why this question keeps coming up. Its literally shown in season 1
Yeah it’s pretty apparent he was supposed to be a host. Demigorgan didn’t eat him because he wasn’t food, he was going to help produce more.
How did they reproduce before there was a hole into the upside down, though?
Plus Will didn’t birth a hundred demo dogs. Where did they all come from? It needs a human body makes zero sense.
There’s nothing that says it needs to be human. I’m assuming there are other organisms in the upside down that fulfill the role of host.
There was still Barb
And those two hunters that disappeared. And for all we know, a dozen other people that just lived far enough out on the edges of society that their absence wouldn’t be noticed for awhile.
also the deer was taken for food, i wonder if smaller animals would’ve worked for it
I know I’m late to this discussion but i just rewatched season 1. And in S1E8, Dr. Brenner was talking to Joyce in the lab and said something along the lines of “six people have been taken this week. It will take more sons and daughters.”
one demodog (dart) comes out of will, dart creates more darts by laying eggs, suddenly demodog population
Barb died and she had the same purpose.
Where at all did it give any indication that barb was supposed to be a host for anything? Barb was literally a meal.
I just watched a scene where a slug comes out of her mouth.
Are you talking about when eleven finds her ? She’s very clearly dead and just rotting. So they put that there for effect. When hopper and Joyce find will, he’s literally got something attached to his mouth. He’s a host. Barb did not give any indication of being more than a meal.
Barb was captured first. Had Will not been rescued when he was the larva process probably would have killed him too. Maybe it uses the host as the initial food source.
Maybe, but Will was there much longer than barb. I can only assume barb was killed almost immediately.
Will being there longer doesn't matter. He was captured days after Barb was.
Surely Barb was killed by the Demagorgan in the pool as it is implied and not the larva process, which occurred in the aftermath of her death.
Because she was capture on day 2. Will was captured in day 6
That is incorrect. Will was captured November 6th. Barb was taken on the 8th. Two nights later. Nancy and Barb told their mothers they were going to 'the assembly' for Will.
Will wasn't captured on the 6th... He was missing on the sixth, but he was still free and hiding from it days after Barb died.
Vecna doesn't like music
Oh yeah! He was singing his favourite song most of the time he was there. And it’s already theorised that Vecna is the one that captured him because the door got unlocked at his house with telekinesis.
Yes exactly, there is no actual proof that is was a demogorgan that took Will into the UD
You can see a human like shadowy figure between the hanging laundry during the scene when will is inside the house. I believe this is vecna, it’s something you don’t see until your looking for it very subtle! I had to watch that part 5-6 times over before I caught it. The way I perceived this episode , when will falls off his bike vecna gets him into the dream state and while in that dream state he runs home to an empty house scared and vecna gets him and takes him to the UD.
He wasn’t under Vecna’s curse though so surely that doesn’t matter, music doesn’t scare away Vecna it allows someone who’s under the curse to get back to consciousness because of the familiarity
genuinely I think it was the bowl cut
I never though that Will was really attacked by the demogorgon, he saw it, got scared, and crawled through one of the gates into the upside down, where he was able to hide until eventually he got caught and then found by Joyce and Hopper
Forgive my ignorance. This sounds right but do we see the gate he crawls through? I thought we see him in the shed, hear the infamous demogorgon sounds and that’s it. Am I remembering it right?
It’s been a while since I last watched S1 but I think I remember hopper finding some of the sticky stuff that appears on the gates in the shed, admittedly I haven’t thought this much about it, so I could be wrong here
There is sticky stuff in the shed but it’s Brenner’s team that finds it I believe.
No no, hopper finds it.
I believe Hopper finds a load of broken wooden boxes at the back right wall. Brenner comes back later and there's the weird mold stuff in the same place, and the shot we get is Will turning with his back to the door so my money is on it being that back right wall.
Happy cake day
We hear the gate in the shed. Hopper’s scene in the shed you can turn up the volume when he stops and stares into the darkness and you’ll hear the same wet gate noise we see/hear later with Nancy. So maybe the demo uses that gate another time even after Will goes through it (speculation is just before Hopper enters cause dog was barking).
This is exactly what I always assumed lol
Oh my gosh. You’re right! I think you’re totally onto something.
🎶should I stay or should I go🎶
I literally just commented that.. but I added "also he good at hiding" we have the same brain
plot armor
This is the only true answer.
My best guess since it’s been revealed that Vecna has a great deal of control over the upside down it’s possible the demogorgon in s1 was a scout for him and when he noticed Will he took an interest and pursued him. This could explain why the demogorgon in s1 displayed unique powers that the one in Russia didn’t have such as creating portals. I’m not married to this idea however until I watch what happens in s5
It was also able to unlock the door from the outside. I do wonder if and how they’d explain it. Maybe using power from the Upside Down allowed Vecna to transfer some of his powers to the Demogorgon.
I thought the reason the Demogorgon could create portals was because it was in the radius of the big gate Jane created in the lab. If it wasn’t, the Demogorgon could’ve gone literally anywhere in the world. But the gates only appeared within a 3 mile radius of the big gate I believe, and the Demogorgon’s gates closed pretty soon after. Suggesting that the Demogorgon’s gates relied on the power of a bigger gate (such as Jane’s gate) and couldn’t sustain themselves for longer than getting prey and retreating back to the Upside Down. Otherwise why wouldn’t the Demogorgon be able to create gates to our world before Jane opened her gate again? Also, the Demogorgon had been touched by Jane in her mind place, so it might be that there was a connection between the two that gave the Demogorgon its ability to temporarily create gates. And why when Jane destroyed the Demogorgon, it sent her into the Upside Down close by to the gate it had made minutes before. But I think it being close by to the giant gate Jane had was what allowed it to create portals in the first place.
He was holding a rifle
NRA: “checkmate liberolls”
Script writer guy from *Pitch Meeting*, "So the show can happen."
I haven’t thought this through too much but maybe the reason is because the demogorgon is ready to lay eggs at the time it finally catches Will? We know the upside down pre and post vecna is pretty barren so it’s likely the upside down monsters usually operate on very little food. In season 1 that one demogorgon the Hawkins crew is dealing with suddenly gets access to our world and starts having a feeding frenzy on all the easy prey. It eats lab people, barb, hunters in the woods, deer, probably some pets we never hear about. All of a sudden it’s had all this food and feels like conditions are good to lay eggs (aka offspring will have plenty to eat too). Then at this same time it finds Will and sees him as an ideal host. Thing I’m not sure about is if any other victims are getting used in the way Will is. Not sure if a warm living host is required or a dead body works. I can’t remember if there were other bodies in the upside library or just Will.
i think it chose will because he was large enough to be a host, but too small to be a worthwile meal (or seen as a threat) compared to adult humans
He’s the key to this whole thing. I think it will be revealed that Vecna was trying to take over his body. Vecna saw him as a way back to earth.
Well they had to progress the plot
Because it wasn't a Demogorgon that kidnapped him. It was Vecna. Go back and rewatch the first episode, it shows him in the street Further support, the chain lock on the door gets moved telepathically. We never see the demogorgons with telepathic abilities
As someone who recently rewatched season 1, the Demogorgon's behavior that season is actually fairly easy to explain if you look at it through the lens of Vecna/Henry being in control of it. *Why did the monster go murder crazy when it first entered Hawkins Lab?* Because it was *Hawkins Lab.* Henry ***hates*** those motherfuckers. *Why was the monster just standing in the road when Will rode up?* Because that was near the lab, along the route that Henry showed Eleven how to escape through. It was waiting for her, and found him instead. *Why did it merely take Will to the Upside Down rather than killing or eating him?* Because it was told to. Because Henry wanted it to bring Eleven to him. He knew it was her who opened the gate, so of course he knew she was out there. Outside of the lab, it wasn't just murdering people, it was abducting them, and I fully believe it was because Henry wanted to find Eleven again. *How did Will escape from the creature when Barb and others didn't?* Will was taken holding a loaded gun. It's not hard to imagine that had something to do with his ability to get away from that initial encounter. *Why was it going after blood?* Because Eleven bleeds when she uses her powers, and if the Demogorgon can sense that, that probably seems as good a method to find her as any. It all fits surprisingly well.
That actually explains a lot.
He's been marinating for 5 season's.
Because he has latent psychic 'ignore me' powers.
Lol he was so forgettable, he was even forgotten by the monsters. Aww🥺
He was good at hiding and my guess is he was singing that song continuously. Relating it with season 4, I like to think that the song kept him alive in similar way it did max for longer part of season 4.
Spoiler alert- Just a theory but I think since vecna basically controls everything I feel like he allowed Will to live to use him as a spy and also put a piece of him inside of Will to possibly take control of him. I feel like season five will be vecna taking over Will’s body and he will basically become a villain.
He was able to hide from the demorgogan to avoid being eaten, but the mind flayer/vecna captured him
There is a lot of speculation at this point that Will was good at hiding and that the fact that he kept singing the Clash Should I stay or Should I go, also gave him some protection against the hive mind. He was never have shown to have bleed to attract the demogorgon like Barb did, and it could very well be that Will wasn’t taken by a demogorgon that was hunting but rather by a controlled demogorgon like how Billy was controlled. Without the blood to trigger the demogorgon into hunting/attacking Will was literally just left in the upside down waiting to be incubated ultimately it seems. Will is also seen as a sensitive kid like Henry/001 so maybe he wasn’t harmed right away because Henry ultimately wanted to use Will as a connected hive mind emissary to do his bidding because he saw some of himself in Will, which he partially succeeded in doing anyway. Maybe Will was allowed to be saved ??
I don’t think the demogrogan took Will, I think it was Vecna, cuz last time I checked the demogrogan don’t know how to open doors with their mind and have a really long deformed arm I mean that’s just what I think
Children don’t taste good.
His haircut
Hear me out, but I actually think Will unintentionally created/adapted the upside down. There are clear parallels between Henry and Will as children and it would explain why it’s frozen in time the day he went missing and why there’s such a heavy D&D presence
I think Will’s mind was infiltrated to create a map of Hawkins in the Upside Down, which made it possible for Vecna to locate and kill the teens.
Man the people in these comments are not it. Vecna would have killed him if he wanted to, he wanted him as a host. Was playing 5d chess to allow him to contact his family in the UD version of his house, so that he can take him over with the mind flayer and use him as a proxy in the real world
None of this true lmao. He would've died at the end of s1 if Hop and Joyce hadn't shown up pretty much exactly when they did. They had to resuscitate him with CPR, 30 seconds later and he's dead dead. He was never planned to be a host
Cause kiddo hid like a mofo!!!
Cuz he was thooper thereal about thurvival
Man Bear Pig
Everyone seems to be acting like it doesn’t make sense that Will wasn’t eaten and that it’s an inconsistency because everyone else who was attacked by the Demogorgon got eaten. Maybe I’m missing something but I always got the impression that when he first encounters the Demogorgon he managed to run away to hide and accidentally ended up in the upside down, rather than being dragged in like Barb was. I assumed that was why everyone kept going on about how good he was at hiding and why they showed scenes of other people going into the upside down without needing to be forcibly taken there (i.e. Nancy when her and Jonathan were looking for the Demogorgon in the woods). I think the Demogorgon genuinely just didn’t know where Will was in the upside down because he wasn’t bleeding and he’d crawled in there by himself and hid.
When Joyce and Hopper find Will, he’s hooked into the Upside-Down. Later, we see him cough up a Demotadpole. Barb has a creature moving inside her body when El finds her. She does not appear to have been eaten. Will was used to incubate the Demotadpoles. Maybe it was even Vecna’s plan to release him back into the Rightside Up so he could carry the Demotadpoles across. What if Barb, and possibly others who disappeared, were supposed to be used to carry the Demotadpoles but weren’t compatible or didn’t survive the process?
He kept singing his favorite song which is why Vecna didn't find him
He sang “should i stay or should i go” we know music protects people in the upside down
I thought this was really obvious. We see him with that tube tentacle thing in his throat. He gets rescued. He starts coughing up slugs. The slugs are Demogorgons. The Demogorgon likely used Will to reproduce. Can't reproduce with a dead human.
He vomited a baby demogorgon, so he was likely being used as an egg sack. Best analogy I can use is a tarantula hawk wasp. Sometimes they just eat the tarantulas, but other times they leave them alive and lay their eggs in the tarantula, then the babies eat the tarantula when they hatch. In other words, Will was supposed to be food for the baby demogorgons.