Stranger Things Season 4 ends with the biggest cliffhanger in the show’s history. There’s a storm coming and Season 5 is set to be the final entry of the Netflix phenomenon. All the pieces of the game are now on the board and we not only know who the villain is but we also know what they’re after.
It also seems like they’ve won as well due to the doorway to hell being unleashed on Hawkins. We are told throughout season 4 that if he kills Max then the final sacrifice will be complete and he’ll be able to unleash the dark dimension on the unsuspecting city.
This is why the gateway opens as technically he does kill her even though she’s brought back.
That kinda takes me into my first theory which is that Vecna likely has Max’s soul and getting it back will be the way to close the doorway.
Theory time is getting a little played out now though so we’re completely scrapping that for this video and coming up with a totally new, unseen idea.
It’s incredible how creative we are at the channel and it’s hypothesis time! Shoutouts riot gear for that one.
Dead But Not Gone
I think that all of those that have died in The Upside Down might exist within Vecna in some way. Huge thank you to Reddit user Ezra88 who pointed out that after Henry killed all the kids in the lab he said they weren’t gone, they were there with him in his mind.
Very important line and this could hint at those that he kills being able to come back in some form or another. Now the most obvious person I think this would apply to is of course, Max. When we last left her she was in a non-responsive coma, stuck in a hospital bed. The doctors couldn’t explain how she’d managed to come back to life and upon entering her mind El saw that it was about as empty as the Pope’s Tinder account.
She’s just not there but the fact that she’s still ticking could mean that Vecna has taken her soul. Now I’ve already done a full video breaking down how Vecna might be inside her using her body as a Vessel to sustain his life after his last body’s destruction.
If Max is inside Vecna’s mind she could end up coming back to her body after his defeat. However, she could also potentially roam around there and she may even come across the other kids from the lab that are trapped there too. All these psychic beings could end up teaming up with Eleven and it might actually lead to Vecna’s downfall if they all work together to take him out.
There was this big section in the season where they talked about how Max managed to actually enter Vecna’s mind at the Creel house and this is how she escaped, hinting at this potentially coming back around.
Huge shoutouts to Think Story for also theorising that if bad memories kill someone, happy ones could be used to bring them back. In his ending explained video he went over how we got a lot of focus on Max’s memories and how these may be weaponised to resurrect her down the line.
If Max counts as the final sacrifice that opened the doorway then bringing her fully back to life may also mean that the ritual gets reversed because Vecna didn’t fully carry it out. That seems to be the main reason why the dimension started to tear across the town and therefore if she’s fully ressurected it should start to close it off.
The portals in the area all appear at the spots that his victims were killed and this includes things like Eddie’s trailer, the road, the lake, and attic in the Kreel house. Their bodies are also strung up in Vecna’s home so potentially saving characters like this could bring them back and close the portals.
Can Eddie Return?
This idea of characters coming back is also being heavily discussed in the case of Eddie. The guy played his final concert in the series and he was killed by the Demo-bats in the final episode. I’ve seen tonnes of fan theories for this on my videos including that their poison only paralyses people, how he could end up being trapped in Vecna and a lot more.
Joseph Quinn who plays Eddie also had some ideas for how he could come back when talking to the Radio Times.
He said that both he and Joe Keery had been firing ideas back and forwards and they said that they’d come up with a few. This included a supernatural element like him being resurrected in The Upside Down or even something as simple as him just appearing as a vision in Dustin’s mind to give him someone to sound off to.
However, I think he could also be brought back in the same way that Billy returned.
If we look at Dustin he fits the mould of being one of Vecna’s victims. Like Max he likely harbours a lot of guilt over Eddie’s passing. Just like how Billy ended up being the reason that Vecna was able to strike this could end up being the case in Dustin. If this ends up being true then Eddie could end up being used as a way to taunt him.
Fifth Season’s Monsters
I think that we might have got a hint towards one of the upcoming monsters for the fifth season.
Stranger Things has kept up the idea that they’re all somewhat tied to Dungeons and Dragons monsters and this has been something that’s happened throughout each entry. In the Eighth episode Will ends up showing Mike a painting which has a three-headed dragon on it. I actually think that this might be teasing what’s coming down the line and the battle that we see playing out here could end up being brought into live-action for the show.
According to Dungeons and Dragons lore, this could be the creature Tiamat, a multi-headed dragon based on the same name who appeared in Eternals. Though Vecna is the big bad, now that the Mind Flayer has been downgraded a bit I think they need to bring in something new to work as one of his ways to attack Hawkins.
There were also the stranger things that Steve and co kept hearing in the upside down. At multiple points they heard weird noises that could be foreshadowing this beast’s arrival.
This would be a great way to set that up and hopefully we get something along those lines come the next season.
Will’s Connection to Vecna
Also Will, just tell him mate, just tell him. We all know, everybody knows.
Now, Will also could be instrumental in defeating Vecna as he clearly still has a connection to him.
Whilst everyone is celebrating his downfall, Will is the one who says that he’s still alive and he gets the chill on the back of his neck before the dark clouds roll in.
Now there’s one of two possibilities, either he will be used as a way to track and weaken Vecna or he might end up becoming a vessel for him. It’s often been brought up how the Mind Flayer didn’t want to kill Will he wanted to kill everyone around him. Gemstone 20 on Youtube touched upon how Vecna could end up wanting to use Will as his next body because he’s desperate to return to the right-side-up.
After his last body was destroyed he could end up attempting to possess Will and Vecna in Dungeons and Dragons was actually a wizard capable of doing this.
Vecna could possibly be existing in the shadow particles right now and he may have taken on the Mind Flayer form now that he’s free from a physical one. He of course spent hours doodling him and he was fascinated with spiders. Makes sense that he’d try and take on this in the end.
Eleven’s Father
Now there are also a lot of theories at the moment floating around that Henry is Eleven’s biological father which explains how she has her abilities. I think the whole real dad twist is kinda getting overdone a bit recently and though I like it in The Boys, Star Wars and so on, I hope they avoid it with this.
It’s important to bear in mind as well that Eleven’s dad already has the canon name of Andrew Rich. Plus I’m sure Henry was taken to Brenner’s lab as a kid and that’s where he stayed until we meet him later on in the series.
Doubt he was hitting the town and getting women pregnant so you kids, you take your bloody fan theories and shove ’em up your ****.
Time Travel?!
Now lastly is the idea that the group might have to use time travel to defeat Vecna. In many ways, we’ve had nods towards this throughout the season as the clock has appeared at numerous points and there’s been a big focus on the past and present.
Hell, even The Upside Down is stuck in 1983 aka the day that Will entered the Upside down.
So technically, going back there is like stepping back into the past and there may be ways inside of it to reverse time further back than that.
Very little is known about the dimension and when we see Vecna first exploring it, it looks completely different to how we typically know it.
Time is a weird thing in The Upside Down that definitely doesn’t work the same way as it does for us.
Therefore it might be a case of reversing time in some way to stop Vecna when he’s younger. They might even travel back to the day when Vecna was sent to The Upside Down and stop him from going into it. This would reverse all the events, kinda f**k the show but that might be a way to stop him.
I also think that Eleven will fly next time as there’s been a lot of talk about this, Mike’s said it, Brenner has and there’s also the supergirl reference in the finale. Clearly hinting towards it and this might be how she travels through The Upside Down at great speeds.
Anyway, that’s the end of hypothesis time and I’d of course love to hear your thoughts below.
Also Steve gonna f**k Nancy.
The series is rumoured to be returning in 2024 so there’s plenty of time to talk about what we think may happen.
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.