Hi everyone! Hope you´re doing good. So, i´m a fan of Stranger Things since circa 2017, when i binge watched Season 1 and 2, and became fascinated with all the sci-fi side of the show - this unknown piece of alien mythology with psychic powers and Lovecraftian aspects in the mixture is so interesting. Basically the great question of all the series have been what the Upside Down - that strange dark copy of Hawkins from where monsters emerge - actually is, what is the origin of this world, and why it´s affecting only Hawkins? We haven't had any answer until Season 4, when Vecna was introduced as the true big-bad and it´s origins as the original test subject Number 001 have been finally revealed!
The link to everything that will be quoted here is at the end of this post, in the "Sources" section.
Now, we known from S4 that in 1979, Eleven acidentally unleashed 001 and he killed everyone at the Hawkins Lab, except for Eleven, who sended him to another world through a red portal. For all these years, 001 have been in this parallel world and this is the meaning behind all the Upside Down threat that emerged in 1983. However, what´s that world which 001 was sended to by Eleven? It´s the Upside Down? Or a different world? Well, in the finale of S4, we see brief flashbacks of 001 arriving at a strange new environment of floating rocks and dark orange sky, where he find the Demogorgons and where he find a cloud of dark particles which was molded into what we known as the Mind Flayer, the monster who attacked Will in Season 2. Michael Maher, the concept artist for ST, published in his site a bunch of concepts of this world which El sended 001 to, and he called it “Dimension X”. Dimension X is the actual in-universe official name for this dimension, as the recent released script of Episode 9 of Season 4 revealed to us. Maher described it as a “strange new environment which One would explore”.
This give hints that this world where El sended 001 in 1979 wasn´t the Upside Down. It´s a completely separated realm. The name is different, the design is different, there´s no spores in the air like in the UD….. and also, in various interviews the Duffer Brothers stated that they always wanted to answer from where these monsters are coming from when they have written the aspects of the mythology. The following quote shows this:
"pretty intricate in terms of what it all means, and where this monster actually came from, and why aren’t there more monsters”.
This is Ross Duffer describing the document they write to explain all the mythology in a interview of 2016. Notice that he says that the document answers where the Demogorgon actually came from, so he´s not native to the Upside Down, and it appears that they always have the idea of these monsters of the Upside Down coming from another world instead. This world only can be Dimension X, where 001 found the Demogorgons and the cloud of particles that would be transformed into the Mind Flayer. Another quote from a recent interview, which proves this:
“So we wrote this document — we spent like a week with our writers just writing out all the mythology and that really is where we really defined what the Upside Down was and where these monsters were coming from and what it all meant”. Again, they talk about answering where these monsters are coming from, so they´re not originally coming from the Upside Down.
So, Eleven sended 001 to Dimension X, a world existing in a different space-time spectrum and dimensional configuration from our world (which is the “Right Side-Up”). In Dimension X there are various alien species, like the vines and the Demogorgons. Also, there´s clouds of dark particles that form super-organisms of hive-mind intelligence. When 001 found one of these sentient beings, he molded it into the Mind Flayer and so created that giant spider-like entity we saw attacking Will in Season 2. Essentially, the Mind Flayer is a extension of Vecna´s psychotic conscience, and this is also what Jamie Campbell Bower, the actor who played Vecna, thinks, judged by the following quote:
“He created the Mind Flayer. That’s his creation, that’s his baby. That is an extension of his spiders that he loved growing up. The Upside Down itself feels like purgatory. It’s this never-ending desert of blood. It’s not blood, but you know what I mean?”.
The Upside Down is frozen at Nov 6, 1983, as we saw in S4. What this mean? This mean that the UD is not a active world copying Hawkins all the time, but rather, it´s a exact copy of Hawkins from Nov 6, 1983, the day which Eleven touched the Demogorgon and opened the Mothergate. I think that the UD was created in this day: when Eleven, at the Right Side-Up, touched the Demogorgon, from Dimension X, the two worlds touched and this created a finite world which is a mixture of Hawkins with Dimension X. The UD is this "amalgamation" of Hawkins with Dimension X, as it has vines and a dark atmosphere like that parallel dark dimension which Henry was sended to.
The brane-world concept of physics can very well explain how these dimensions works in ST. According to Oxford Dictionary of Physics, this is:
“A theory in which the four space–time dimensions of the universe that are apparent make up a surface, called the brane, in a higher-dimensional space–time, called the bulk”.
As i have understand it, the structure of our reality is organized in four dimensions, making a brane that defines the boundaries of our dimensional spectrum. However, we can have worlds existing in another branes, in another dimensional spectrums different to the spectrum of our reality, we can have worlds existing in realities organized in MORE than four dimensions, and we can´t see or access these parallel worlds. Dimension X is one of these worlds. The brane of our reality is separated from the brane of Dimension X by that strange hell-like environment which we´ve seen Henry falling before arriving at Dimension X. Michael Maher calls it “the Hellscape”, and describes it as a inter-dimensional space, so, this space of red lightinings and clouds is what separes the Right Side-Up from Dimension X. It´s a space between dimensions, between worlds.
When Eleven touched that Demogorgon while in the Void, the branes of Right Side-Up (only in Hawkins region) and Dimension X touched each other, breaking the Hellscape in that area and creating a fusion between Hawkins and Dimension X. While researching, i found a site called “Elwyns Big Bang Page” with a page explaining more deeply the brane-world cosmology, and here there´s a interesting idea with fits very well with my idea of the creation of the Upside Down:
“collisions between braneworlds can manifest themselves as big bang like beginnings, yielding universes that are parallel in time.”.
The collision of the brane that makes up the reality of Hawkins with the brane of Dimension X created a new finite universe parallel in time, the Upside Down!
Chris Trujillo, producer for Stranger Things, said something on a interview of 2017 to IndieWire that seems to fit very well with this concept of the Upside Down being a fusion between the two worlds, created when El touched the Demogorgon:
“Essentially, at the moment that the rift was formed and [unleashed] the monster, this dark dimension overlaps with the Hawkins’ world and it gets inflected with the vines and the spores”.
Chris said even more on the spotlights of Season 4, which puts even more credibility to this idea:
“The moment that the Upside Down was created inadvertently by Eleven, the set dressing and the world of the Upside Down is frozen in that moment”.
The Upside Down is frozen on Nov. 6, 1983, so it´s basically confirmed that it´s creation occurred on this day, when El touched the Demogorgon.
In a interview to GoldDerby, when asked about that strange world where Henry was sended to, Trujillo answered the following:
“In a way the Upside Down is almost this kind of amalgamation of this alternate dimension…..where we discover that Number One gets kind of pushed into this separate dimension….he essentially realizes that ‘oh i can use what i´ve found here..to sort of, create this world of my own’…and ultimately kind of land and wait for the time when the dimension opens up again..”.
So, it is basically confirmed that the creatures we´ve seen attacking Hawkins are, in fact, native from Dimension X, and that Henry created an army of monsters and then planned to contact Hawkins reality again, probably by putting a Demogorgon on Eleven´s void, creating the Upside Down, which is a amalgamation between Dimension X and Hawkins.
I think that the physics of the Upside Down works in this way: if you turn a light "on" in Hawkins, at the Right Side-Up, the energy charge running is not sufficiently to also move particles at the Upside Down in a way that also turns this light ´´on´´ in this parallel world, but, this event chain created by energy charge running at our world can move some electric particles at the Upside Down, creating a field of shiny particles around the Upside Down version of the light that was turned ´´on´´ in Hawkins! This field of shiny particles, if manipulated physically, can also move particles at the Right Side-Up, by this way, you can change light at Hawkins by manipulating this field of particles at the Upside Down, and this is what Will had done to communicate with Joyce using lights in S1!
This field of shiny particles is always around the Upside Down version of a light that has been turned "on" at Hawkins, as showed in S4E7.
With regard to how that whole hive-mind biology works, i think that Henry transcended his conscience into that cloud of dark particles. So, the dark particles now have Henry´s conscience on it, then any live being infected with the particles will also absorb part of Henry´s conscience and enter this hive-mind. That cloud of dark particles probably was a sentient being with a natural power of hive-mind, Henry only infected this hive-mind with his conscience and turned it into a monster that represents his thoughts and motivations. To truly end Vecna, i think there´s a need to destroy every piece of it´s conscience that is transcended: his physical body is only a way of manifestation to the real world, but he can also manifest through the particles. His mind is shared by every being he infected, so if we simply kill his physical body, he still will return in other ways.
When the Upside Down was created, a giant infectious gate naturally grown at the lab in Hawkins, and i think that a gate of the same kind also opened at Dimension X. Through this gate at Dimension X that Vecna sended the Mind Flayer to the Upside Down, but he probably wasn´t able to send any physical monsters, including himself, to the Upside Down, not until this gate at Dimension X have grown significantly, and this only ocurred some time at Season 3 or Season 4, when Vecna finally was able to pass physically to the Upside Down. The Demogorgon in S1 also had the ability to open mini Upside Down gates through Hawkins, and this probably is a ability that he absorbed due to it´s contact with Eleven in the void.
TL;DR: The Upside Down is a finite world created in November 6, 1983, when Eleven, while in the void, touched the Demogorgon. Upside Down is not a active world copying Hawkins all the time, rather, it´s a exact copy of Hawkins at the time it was created, mixed with the environment of Dimension X, the world where Henry was sended to by Eleven in 1979, and where he found the vines, the Demogorgons and that cloud of particles which later would be the Mind Flayer. When Eleven touched the Demogorgon, occurred a inter-dimensional contact between a being existing in the structure of the reality of Hawkins, at the Right Side-Up (Eleven), with a being existing in a different dimensional spectrum in another world, at Dimension X (the Demogorgon). The dimensional structure of the Right Side-Up touched the structure of Dimension X and this created a finite world that is a mixed copy of the two. This is the Upside Down. The existence of the Upside Down allowed Vecna to have some way to access Hawkins reality again and start his revenge.
What do you think about this? Any opinion and criticism will be greatly appreciated!
Sources:
https://www.michaelmaherjr.com/dimension-x https://www.michaelmaherjr.com/hellscape
These are links to the concept arts of Hellscape and Dimension X in Michael Maher site.
https://www.flavorwire.com/584827/the-stranger-things-creators-made-a-30-page-document-about-the-upside-down-and-might-explore-it-in-season-2 https://variety.com/2022/tv/features/stranger-things-duffer-brothers-is-will-gay-season-4-1235284214/
These are links to Duffer Brothers interviews where they talk a little about their document explaining the sci-fi lore.
This is a link to Stranger Things S4E9 script - around page 69 it's described the scene of Henry at Dimension X.
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095524666
This is the definition of the brane-world theory according to Oxford Dictionary.
https://elwynsbigbangpage.weebly.com/branes-and-multiple-universes.html
Another webpage with deep insights into the brane-world theory
Jamie Campbell Bower interview
https://www.indiewire.com/awards/industry/the-upside-down-into-the-scary-1201840622/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igtAjeN-DbY&t=7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U87t0pRIyM&t=404s
Interviews with Chris Trujillo, where he leaks little bits about the Upside Down mythology.
This volume did reveal interesting things....we first were showed finally how the Department of Temporal Phenomena is investigating the whole Alternate threat and that they understand it as "temporal bleeding", giving hints as to the possible origin of this whole threat...we have also seen how Jude was supposed to be representative of Judas in Gabriel´s fucked up biblical reconstructions, but he ended up escaping and Lynn take his place in the story, so Gabriel wanted to punish him for that...we seemed another victim of the alternates and how they are pretty cruel in attacking, and we also had the amazing revelation of who was that white text in the end of Overthrone, it was one of the Shepherds which was deceived by Gabriel...
The reveal that N was also the same alternate that attacked the Murrays is also a great reveal. So, in the end i think this volume did reveal a lot of things
I didn't like Vol5
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