Shows Like Stranger Things

Frequently asked about Stranger Things

Common questions people search for, with answers written by us at MoviesPack.

• What is the Upside Down and where did it come from?▾

  The Upside Down is a dark parallel dimension that mirrors Hawkins, Indiana, but is frozen in a state of decay and overrun by a hive-minded alien ecosystem. It existed long before the events of the series, but Eleven's psychic confrontation with the Demogorgon in 1983 accidentally tore open the first stable gate between the two worlds. The Mind Flayer, an immense shadow entity, appears to be the dimension's dominant intelligence and uses it as a staging ground to consume and assimilate life from the human world.

• How did Eleven get her powers, and what is her connection to Hawkins Lab?▾

  Eleven was born to Terry Ives, a woman who unknowingly participated in Project MKUltra experiments conducted by Dr. Martin Brenner at Hawkins National Laboratory. The in-utero exposure to psychedelic drugs and sensory-deprivation testing appears to have triggered or amplified Eleven's latent telekinetic and psychic abilities. Brenner then abducted the infant, raising her in captivity as 'Subject Eleven' and weaponizing her powers for government remote-viewing programs, which is how she was forced into the encounter with the Demogorgon that opened the original gate.

• What is Vecna's true identity, and what motivated him to create the Upside Down hive mind?▾

  Vecna is Henry Creel, a.k.a. One — the very first child subject at Hawkins Lab and the source of the psychic ability that Brenner later tried to replicate in other children including Eleven. Henry was born with the ability to enter and reshape minds, and as a child he murdered his own family after becoming disillusioned with what he saw as humanity's chaotic, self-deceptive nature. After Eleven banished him into the Upside Down in 1979, he bonded with the Mind Flayer and gradually built a psychic network of possessed creatures, positioning himself as the dimension's true ruler with the long-term goal of annihilating human civilization and remaking the world according to his own order.

• Why does the Upside Down appear frozen at the moment Will Byers was taken in 1983?▾

  In Season 4 it is revealed that the Upside Down does not have its own independent timeline — it exists in a kind of temporal lock anchored to the moment Eleven first made psychic contact with it. Because that contact occurred in November 1983, every object that existed in Hawkins at that time is mirrored in the Upside Down exactly as it was then, including Joyce's still-hanging alphabet lights and Will's Castle Byers fort. This explains why later structures built in Hawkins have no Upside Down counterpart and why the dimension felt hauntingly familiar yet subtly wrong throughout the earlier seasons.

• What happened to Will Byers during the year he spent in the Upside Down, and what lasting effects did it leave on him?▾

  Will was kept alive inside a cocoon-like structure, fed by the Upside Down's organic matter and used as an incubator — the dimension appeared to be cultivating something inside him rather than simply trapping him. After his rescue he continued to experience 'now memories,' involuntary visions of the Upside Down triggered by the Mind Flayer's influence, suggesting a psychic tether had formed between him and the hive mind during his captivity. By Season 2 this connection deepened when a fragment of the Mind Flayer possessed him directly, forcing the group to exorcise it through heat, and Will has since described an ongoing ability to sense the Upside Down — a permanent mark left by his time there.