Stranger Things: The Upside Down explained

As Stranger Things gears up for the final showdown, let’s take a trip to another dimension. This is the Upside Down explained.

Netflix’s incredible original series, Stranger Things, is heading into its highly anticipated final season, and chaos is on the way.

We’ve followed Eleven and the gang contend with supernatural monsters and government conspiracies in one of the streamer’s best TV shows, but we’ve still got lots to learn.

Many questions need to be answered in Stranger Things Season 5. One being what the Upside Down is, so let’s break it down.

Contents:

• What is the Upside Down in Stranger Things?
• Who created the Upside Down?
• How do you get to the Upside Down?
• Is the Upside Down only in Hawkins?
• Who has been to the Upside Down?
• Monsters of the Upside Down explained
• Why is the Upside Down stuck in 1983?
• What does Vecna want?
• Why is Will Byers connected to the Upside Down?

What is the Upside Down in Stranger Things?

The Upside Down is an alternate dimension that mirrors the real world. The only difference is, the twisted dimension is filled with dangerous monsters eager to escape.

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Before it paralleled Hawkins, it was a mostly vacant dimension populated by strange vines and a species of unknown predators.

In 1983, Eleven made psychic contact with the hive-mind, which opened the Mothergate at Hawkins Lab. This resulted in a mirror of the human dimension. After that, the Upside Down began to ‘bleed’ through, corrupting Hawkins’ crops and burrowing its vines under the town.

Who created the Upside Down?

Some fans theorized Eleven created The Upside Down, but Millie Bobby Brown confirmed she simply opened a rift to it. It seems to exist naturally.

The Upside Down is another dimension, so it wasn’t necessarily created by anyone. We could learn something different in Season 5, however.

The Eleven actor told Variety “I think that the alternate universe was always there. That is always going to be under Hawkins. I just think she has access to it. I don’t think that she created the Upside Down.”

Vecna didn’t create it either. In Season 4 Part 2, we saw him being pushed to the Upside Down through a rift Eleven created.

How do you get to the Upside Down?

You get to the Upside Down through rifts, which are essentially tears in the fabric of the universe.

These tears allow interdimensional travel, but as seen in Season 4, they also allow you to travel across different points in time.

Of course, people don’t often choose to visit it as a vacation spot… Will and other Stranger Things characters have been forcefully dragged into them by monsters from there.

Is the Upside Down only in Hawkins?

We’ve only seen the Upside Down beneath Hawkins, but theoretically, it could be everywhere.

Gates have opened in Hawkins, and we’ve seen the Upside Down mirroring that town specifically. Still, there’s no reason the alternate dimension couldn’t span much further.

Given the vast expanse we saw when Vecna landed there in Season 4 Episode 9, it’s safe to say the Upside Down might be everywhere and could mirror any town in any country.

Who has been to the Upside Down?

Most of the Stranger Things characters have been to the Upside Down by the time Season 4 ends. However, Will Byers was there the longest.

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The mission to kill Vecna at the end of Season 4 saw lots of characters enter the upside down, including Dustin, Max, Eleven, and more.

Throughout the series, we’ve also seen government agents canvassing the Upside Down by sending people in.

Eleven and Will have cumulatively spent the most time there out of the good guys. Technically, though, Vecna was stuck there for the longest.

Monsters of the Upside Down explained

The Upside Down monsters are part of a hive-mind, with some naturally occurring monsters acting as drones. Others, like the Demagorgon, are powerful creations of Vecna.

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In Season 4, we learned the Upside Down always had monsters, but Vecna created the Mind Flayer to be the apex predator. Through it, Vecna can direct the monsters of lesser intellect.

When Vecna arrived in the Upside Down, there was a mystifying organism made of silvery-black particles. Vecna used his psychokinetic abilities to manipulate these particles and create a hive mind, which allowed him to possess other creatures.

The Demadogs and the rest of the creatures function as one connected being, all controlled by Vecna.

Why is the Upside Down stuck in 1983?

The Upside Down is stuck in 1983 because that’s when it started bleeding into our dimension when Eleven opened the first gate.

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When Nancy, Robin, and Steve visited the Wheeler house in the Upside Down in Season 4 Episode 7, they found Nancy’s diary, dated November 6th, 1983.

That’s the day Eleven first made contact with a living being from the Upside Down, at Papa’s request. That encounter opened the first gate, which allowed the Demogorgon to waltz out like a spider from a black hole in the deepest recesses of your apartment, grab poor Will, and take him back there.

This is an unresolved mystery, purposefully. In a Deadline interview, The Duffer brothers said, “The big reveals that are coming in Season 5 are really about the Upside Down itself, which we only start to hint at. There is that moment where we realize in episode seven [in Season 4] that it’s frozen in time.”

What does Vecna want?

Put simply, Vecna wants to open so many gates to the Upside Down that the wall between dimensions becomes irrelevant, and he and the Mind Flayer can dominate our dimension.

On the surface, it doesn’t sound like a compelling or unique motivation for a villain, but the flavor is in Vecna’s backstory.

He grew up exceptionally intelligent, but with a lack of empathy. We saw him display sociopathic tendencies, like murdering animals and studied their corpses. The concept of time and the value of life had begun to lose meaning for him.

His philosophy shifted to a cynical place; he believed that the world and its rules were pointless and that the grind of a nine-to-five and the constructed dynamics of human existence were beneath him. Thus, a superiority complex is born.

Additionally, his powers isolated him. When experimenting with his abilities, he murdered his family — all of this was revealed in a scene backed by the Philip Glass track, ‘Prophecies’, because of course.

After that, he was taken in by Brenner and designated ‘001’: the first test subject. We all know Papa is not an ideal father figure, and growing up a lab rat with no guidance only made Vecna — whose given name was Henry — more dangerous.

As a young man, he was still trapped. And his powers had also been dampened by a device Brenner implemented to nullify his abilities. Eventually, he connects with Eleven and uses her to remove the device.

When his powers returned, he slayed the other kids at the facility and asked Eleven to join him, thinking that she would relate to him as a ‘higher being’.

Eleven is not devoid of humanity, so instead beats his ass in a telekinetic brawl and blasts him through a gate into the Upside Down.

As he falls, his body is partially destroyed by the environment before he goes through some sort of rapid evolution, which continues over the next several years until he’s unrecognizable.

Why is Will Byers connected to the Upside Down?

Will Byers is connected to the Upside Down because he was trapped there for a long time and the Mind Flayer infected him.

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When Will is retrieved at the end of Season 1, we see him gagging in the bathroom before a strange slug-looking creature is spat out into the sink.

Sadly for him, Will wasn’t just trapped in the Upside Down, he was essentially hooked up to it. We saw him with tube-like things in his throat, webbed to the wall as if a Xenomorph was saving him for supper.

In Season 2, Will seems psychically linked to the Upside Down and sees visions of the Mind Flayer.

Turned out, those particles we see in scenes set in the Upside Down had made their way into Will’s body. Enough of them collected for the Mind Flayer to possess him, before the connection was destroyed when Eleven closed the interdimensional portal at the end of Season 2.

Considering he was still getting chills in Season 4 when sensing trouble coming, we think this link is going to be delved into further in Season 5… potentially with life-threatening consequences.

Season 5 will see the characters come closer than ever to the Upside Down taking over their dimension, and we can’t wait to see how they handle it and Vecna.

Until then, check out when did Stranger Things come out, is Stranger Things based on a true story, and does Max die in Stranger Things. Or, see what new TV shows are coming soon.