Spoilers Stranger Things Season 5 - SPOILERS

[Morrus]

As an aside, I was born in late March 1981. Holly's fictional birthday is early October 1980, so she's about 6 months older than me. It's kinda cool but also kinda creepy that there's basically a character my age in this show.

If shows having characters who are similar to your age creeps you out, that's gonna happen... a lot.

 

[pukunui]

If shows having characters who are similar to your age creeps you out, that's gonna happen... a lot.

It doesn't really. I don't know why I said that. Besides, they appear to have retconned Holly's age so she's now 9 or 10, so she'd have to have been born in the 70s. The Wheelers are no longer quite so close a fit to my family as they previously were.

 

[Morrus]

Weird question --

The Upside Down mirrors the real world, including the buildings.

If a new building is built in the real world, does it appear in the Upside Down?

And if you build a building in the Upside Down.... does that appear in the real world?

 

[pukunui]

Weird question --

The Upside Down mirrors the real world, including the buildings.

If a new building is built in the real world, does it appear in the Upside Down?

And if you build a building in the Upside Down.... does that appear in the real world?

I don't think so. The Upside Down mirrors Hawkins at a specific point in time. It doesn't change as Hawkins changes. It was like a snapshot of a specific point in time and the two have now diverged.

One thing that I find weird is how they call it the Upside Down, but it only seems to be reversed with horizontal portals (the one at the bottom of the lake, the one in the ceiling of Eddie's uncle's RV, possibly the rifts in the ground in Hawkins). The vertical portals all act like normal doors.

 

[Ryujin]

Weird question --

The Upside Down mirrors the real world, including the buildings.

If a new building is built in the real world, does it appear in the Upside Down?

And if you build a building in the Upside Down.... does that appear in the real world?

I was kind of wondering about that too. Maybe, because the buildings in Hawkins seem to be on the older side, everything was created as it is when Vecna "turned"? I don't remember seeing anything particularly new, apart from the base the military built there.

 

[Aellic Mornbringer]

I don't think so. The Upside Down mirrors Hawkins at a specific point in time. It doesn't change as Hawkins changes. It was like a snapshot of a specific point in time and the two have now diverged.

This is my understanding. The snapshot is taken the night Will goes missing when Eleven makes contact with the Demogorgon. I forget the exact episode in Season 4 but Nancy figures it out to a certain degree by the items she sees in her Upside Down room (if I recall, the camera pans over the study flashcards she wrote out for her upcoming chemistry test). As @pukunui notes, immediately after that, the two realities diverge. So new construction (or destruction) in one or the other does not mirror to the other side.

 

[Zardnaar]

In the 80s there were a lot of reruns on regular TV, I watched it a few times back then.

Same. Grew up with that movie, Sound of Music, a few other 60s ones.

 

[TheSword]

I wonder why it was then and not the moment El opened the portal to banish Henry through it

 

[pukunui]

I wonder why it was then and not the moment El opened the portal to banish Henry through it

Because the Upside Down didn’t exist yet then. It was still just the chaotic Dimension X. It was only after Henry transformed into Vecna that he gained some form of control over the dimension.

El making contact with the demogorgon is the first such dimensional contact since she pushed Henry through. This contact is what enables him to find a way to send the demogorgon through.

It’s possible Henry/Vecna didn’t intend for the Upside Down to mirror a specific point in time. It may have just happened that way.


(As an aside, based on the revelations in the First Shadow play, which have been hinted at in S5, I’m of the mind that Henry/Vecna is not the BBEG. Either the mind flayer is still controlling Vecna, like in the play, or there’s some other entity that is the master of the hive mind, that is controlling everything in the Upside Down: Vecna, the mind flayer, the demogorgons, the demobats.

Perhaps it is the three-headed dragon thing that appears in some of the promotional matter. I’ve seen people suggesting the kids will dub it Tiamat.