Stranger Things Theories That Change Everything

In hindsight, it felt inevitable that "Stranger Things" would become a phenomenon. Despite being an original property, its 1980s setting gives it a nostalgic, familiar feeling. It helps that it's full of cultural references, from "Gremlins" to "Ghostbusters," for viewers to pick up on. Beyond that, "Stranger Things" hooked viewers with its biggest mysteries, like why Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) has powerful telekinetic abilities and what the true purpose of the Upside Down is. 

"Stranger Things" has done a great job of teasing out information with each passing season. Even between seasons (which frequently spanned years), fans were still invested, ruminating on what could really be going on in Hawkins, Indiana. This led to some pretty incredible fan theories that range from the shockingly plausible to the outrageous but still pretty entertaining.

These are the "Stranger Things" theories that could change everything. Once you hear them, they'll make you want to do a complete rewatch of the series. As if you needed another excuse to binge all of "Stranger Things" again. 

Eleven may have cool powers, but all things begin and end with Will Byers (Noah Schnapp). The first season of "Stranger Things," which many still consider the best, starts with him getting abducted by a creature from the Upside Down. This results in a massive investigation from police chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour), as well as Will's friends, who team up with the escaped Eleven. In the seasons that follow, Will always maintains some kind of connection to the Upside Down and all of the monsters therein. 

We know Eleven opened a Mothergate to this new dimension, but it's unclear if she had any impact on it to make it resemble Hawkins. It's possible something or someone else can influence this realm, and if it was going to be anybody, it would be Will. One fan theory from Reddit suggests that Will has powers like Eleven, except he's not aware of what he could do, thus can't control it. What if his emotions can alter the Upside Down to a degree? That could explain why Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) and other creatures are so interested in him.

It would also explain why Will has been kept alive while others have perished going into the Upside Down. Taking the theory even further, perhaps Vecna gave Will powers connected to the Upside Down to eventually fight the biggest threat to the dimension: Eleven. It's as if Vecna has manifested his own antibodies against Eleven's powers by giving Will some of his own.

One of the most heartwarming relationships to form on "Stranger Things" is between Hopper and Eleven, with the former adopting the latter as his daughter. Hopper's in a bad place when we meet him. Throughout the show, we learn more about Hopper's backstory, namely how he had a daughter, Sara (Elle Graham), who died of cancer. There could be more to that story we haven't learned about.

One theory has emerged that Sara was part of whatever experiments were going on in Hawkins, like the ones connected to Eleven. Business Insider brought this up to David Harbour himself, pointing to a scene where Hopper breaks down in a stairwell. Elsewhere in the show, there's a shot of Dr. Owens (Paul Reiser) bleeding in a stairwell that looks similar to the one Hopper was in. Harbour played coy but did let this much slip: "It is the same location. So that's interesting. Or it's a similar location. But there's actually another thing you'll notice which is that there's a stuffed animal lion that appears in Eleven's room when he breaks into the lab and finds that room, and it also appears in Castle Byers, and it also appears on Sara's lap."

A stairwell and a plush lion connects Eleven, Will, and Sara together. On the surface, Hopper losing Sara explains why he forms such a profound bond with Eleven. She becomes his new daughter, but there could be something deeper to that connection. Plus, if Sara was involved in the experiments, there's a chance we could see her again. Someday, Hopper could have to choose between Eleven and Sara. Maybe.

Although Will gets kidnapped on the first season of "Stranger Things," the first major casualty is Barb (Shannon Purser). Nancy (Natalia Dyer) leaves her alone at a party, leaving her vulnerable to a Demogorgon and dragged to her doom. Unlike Will, Barb is killed, which kickstarted a social media campaign with the hashtag #JusticeForBarb. But the character's demise could be far more crucial to the plot than some realize, as hard as it is to say goodbye to a fan-fave character.

It's worth noting that Barb's body is discovered later on in the Upside Down. The corpse is fairly intact, so she wasn't taken for food. It's possible that Vecna, then still unrevealed, wanted to not only use Will for something more grand, but had different plans for Barb. We learn later in the series that Vecna feeds off people's vulnerabilities and insecurities. He didn't need to literally eat Barb for sustenance, but he could use her disappearance and death to inspire fear among the citizens of Hawkins. 

Season 1 also has a reference to two hunters going missing. At the time, it seemed like people were simply going missing because monsters were running amok. But with more seasons to provide context, one could argue that Vecna has been continually trying to instill fear in Hawkins via whoever was unlucky enough to wind up in his path. 

"Stranger Things" has plenty of references to other pieces of media. This is often very direct, like the boys dressing up as the Ghostbusters for Halloween. However, other references have some potentially dire consequences: Bob Newby (Sean Astin) may have encountered Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King's "It." 

During one episode of Season 2, Bob drops Will off to school and tells him about a clown that freaked him out as a kid. He later had nightmares about the event, and Bob happened to live in Maine during his youth. Derry, Maine, is where "It" is set. It definitely sounds like Bob could have wound up as one of Pennywise's victims. Even the way Bob got over the nightmares is in line with "It" lore, as he tells Will that, instead of running away from the clown (Mr. Baldo) in his dreams, he confronted it and yelled "Go away!" That's functionally how the Losers Club defeat Pennywise. The clown feeds on fear (not unlike Vecna), so the key is not to fear it.

Seeing as "Stranger Things" deals with monsters and other dimensions, it wouldn't be the wildest thing for there to be a kid-eating clown in this fictional universe, too. More than likely, though, this is a simple Stephen King shout-out. There are several more throughout the series, including how Eleven, with her psychic abilities, resembles both Carrie White from "Carrie" and Charlie McGee from "Firestarter."

It can feel like a cheat when a TV episode or movie ends, only for the reveal to be that everything we saw was someone's dream. Quite a few TV shows, like "Newhart" and "St. Elsewhere," have ended this way. It's a technique that can make an audience feel as though nothing matters, but it's often a persistent fan theory. It may be no surprise that one persistent "Stranger Things" fan theory is a permutation of that idea, with many believing the whole show is one big Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

With that in mind, each season effectively becomes a new session where the main characters, including Eleven, assume their different D&D classes and characters. For example, Eleven would be a mage while Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) is a bard due to his charisma. This would also explain why none of the main cast members ever die. Instead, the characters meeting their deaths are usually one-offs that get introduced at the beginning of the season and then die later on, like Bob and Eddie (Joseph Quinn). The characters even refer to the Upside Down monsters they encounter in D&D terms, like Demogorgons and Mind Flayers. 

It would be a cheap way to end the show, and fortunately, the show's creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, have already confirmed that isn't in the cards. That's for the best, as it would be pretty crummy if this epic adventure series ended with some kids playing a game. But theories like this will persist long after the show has ended, simply because it's so easy a theory to play with. 

Similar to "everything is a dream," time travel crops up as a popular theory in the science-fiction genre. Throughout the run of "Stranger Things," many assumed time travel would factor into the show's plot. Some suggested the Upside Down was a future Earth, one ravaged by nuclear annihilation — although it's worth noting that now the Upside Down seems akin to a "dark mirror" version of the world. Certain aspects are similar where others have become twisted.

Still, there are ways one could shove time travel into the grander plot of "Stranger Things." For starters, the Demogorgons could be a byproduct of human evolution. Specifically, they could be descendants of Eleven, which would explain why they have some sensitivity to her psychic powers. They don't necessarily have the same powers, but they can sense it. It's also possible the Demogorgons are descendants of Will Byers since he, too, seems to have abilities that could have helped forge these mutations. 

Even though time travel hasn't actually been introduced, there's still the fact that the Upside Down, which looks like Hawkins, hasn't aged in the same way. It's like a snapshot of a singular period in 1983. The Upside Down could be trapped in some kind of time loop scenario, like "Groundhog Day" but with monsters. Further, what if those monsters can move into different periods of time to change the past and therefore alter the future? It would be a big swing for "Stranger Things" to throw time travel into the mix so late in the game, but it wouldn't be the strangest thing to occur. 

We'll have to get super nerdy to unpack this fan theory. Suzie (Gabriella Pizzolo) is introduced during Season 3 as Dustin's girlfriend who lives far away. She winds up helping out in the Season 3 finale, and she's in the mix for Season 4 when Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Will, Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), and Argyle (Eduardo Franco) need help finding the location of a specific computer. She's a tech whiz, so she needs to borrow her dad's computer; however, there's something off about the information we see on the screen. 

It's not merely a matter of her using a rudimentary version of the internet (it did exist then, mostly as ARPANET and BBS boards), that causes problems. For starters, we see her input a piece of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) code, which wouldn't be around until the 1990s. There's also a piece of HTSP code, which is used for streaming video. That wouldn't have existed in the '80s. These historical inaccuracies have led some to believe that Suzie and her family are time travelers who are using far more advanced technology than was available during the time to do ... something.

In truth, this is probably just an error on the production team's part. Most people wouldn't have the knowledge or desire to zoom in on a random piece of code from a TV show. It's likely not an Easter egg hinting that there's more to Suzie than meets the eye, but it is a good reminder that the internet we take for granted today is built from a lot of relatively new innovations. 

With Hawkins and the Upside Down so interlinked, it's clear that this fictional universe could contain a multiverse. Anything is possible, and there's an Easter egg in Season 4 that hints toward "Stranger Things" getting visited by a powerful cartoon character.

There's one point where Dustin, Max (Sadie Sink), Steve (Joe Keery), and Robin (Maya Hawke) are trying to figure out where Eddie went, so they look up his drug dealer (Reefer Rick) within a video store's database. There's a whole slew of Ricks on the list, and the bottom of the list mentions a Rick Sanchez. Granted, that's not the most uncommon name. It is, however, also the name of the titular, multiverse-crossing character on "Rick and Morty." 

Rick Sanchez has a slew of sci-fi gadgets at his disposal, making it possible he traversed dimensions to rent a video in Hawkins. Maybe it was the best place to get a rare movie. In any case, it leads to a fan theory that Rick has been to the world of "Stranger Things." It's a shame he didn't stick around, because he really could have helped the gang with their Upside Down problem. 

Additionally, there are also various Easter eggs connecting "Gravity Falls" and "Rick and Morty." The former is also a show about traveling to other dimensions. Ford Pines notably visits a Nightmare Realm filled with monsters. That feels very similar to the Upside Down. What's more terrifying? Ford visiting the same realm as "Stranger Things"? Or the possibility there are more than one nightmare dimensions within the larger multiverse? Neither of them are likely, but that's the fun of fan theories.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Upside Down is how the place feels like a living organism. Everything is covered in vines, and all of the creatures within it seem to share a hive mind. Thus, it seems plausible that anyone who dies within the Upside Down becomes part of it. Henry Creel was sent into this realm, but due to his own special abilities, he was able to retain part of his sentience and transform into Vecna. Others might not have been as lucky. Barb and Eddie, who have died in the Upside Down, could return in a future episode, assuming they assimilated into whatever grander design the dimension is capable of. 

Each season of "Stranger Things" brings some new terror to the forefront, whether it's the Mind Flayer or Vecna. What if the final creature the Hawkins gang has to confront is the entirety of the Upside Down? With everything being alive (or undead as the case may be), it would be a huge undertaking to knock it out. Plus, with Barb and Eddie become "one" with this monstrosity, it could be a way for the final episodes of "Stranger Things" to tie everything together. An interesting wrinkle on top of that would be if Eleven could telepathically communicate with what remains of Barb and Eddie, offering some final closure to those that knew them best.

From the debunked to the ridiculous, many "Stranger Things" theories have cropped up over the years. They will probably continue to do so long after the show's over. It is a testament to how much fans have enjoyed following along all these years.