Volume 2 of Stranger Things Season 5 answers many questions viewers have had about the Upside Down for ages — especially after the big Henry, Vecna, 001 reveal in Season 4 and that backstory expansion.
But, the finale still has some answers to provide, and creators Matt and Ross Duffer wanted it that way. Several key figures are at the heart of many of these lingering questions.
Read on for our final queries heading into the series finale, which launches on Netflix and in theaters Dec. 31.
SPOILER ALERT: Warning! These questions spoil several events that occur in Volume 2 of Stranger Things Season 5.
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How does the memory Henry has of the scientist in the caves connect to Vecna’s ultimate plan? Is that why he’s afraid to go into the caves?
Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix We have a feeling that much of this can be answered with the help of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, which explains the aftermath of Henry’s unintentional visit to Dimension X in 1959, eventually leading him to be institutionalized and introduced to Eleven. So far, no answers have been provided on what happened to Henry when he went to Dimension X, but a shot of the Mind Flayer hovering over him is shown in the play after the fateful briefcase-opening. Henry is also haunted by a shadowy presence in the play, and the entity seems to prey on his shame and insecurities.
The camera very swiftly cuts away from the briefcase as Henry opens it, begging further questions of what is inside and what more could have happened to traumatize him.
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Will time travel come into play at all?
Image Credit: Netflix With a little over two hours left on the clock, several questions factoring into the timeline and overlapping connections with dates call to mind whether a time travel plot will answer said questions. There have also been several mentions of time travel in previous seasons of Stranger Things.
The show’s parallels to A Wrinkle in Time also suggests that some sort of tessering, or wrinkling time to travel across the fabric of the universe could occur or at least come into play as a comparison to something else. Maybe that’s what Henry is doing by possessing the twelve children and using their powers to draw Dimension X to Hawkins.
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Will Holly get to cast her dimension door?
Image Credit: Netflix Maybe Holly could be involved in time travel? Or Eleven. After all, the flea and the acrobat analogy Mr. Clarke (Randy Havens) made in Season 1 of Stranger Things looks awfully familiar to the ant on the wrinkled wire that is displayed in Madeleine L’Engl’s A Wrinkle in Time.
Holly still has yet to escape Vecna’s clutches, even though she was so close when she entered free fall towards the Hawkins Lab in the Upside Down.
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Why is the Upside Down frozen on Nov. 6? How does this tie into Vecna’s grand plan?
Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix/ This is a carry-over question from Volume 1. Now that we know what the Upside Down actually is, there still remains the question of its appearance to be frozen in time. The date, as previously established, is when Will Byers originally vanished, setting the whole story into motion.Another important date teased in Volume 1 is Nov. 6, 1959, which was the opening night of Oklahoma, directed by young Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder), and as Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin) asserts, it’s hard to believe in coincidences anymore. Holly was also kidnapped Nov. 3, 1987. Hopefully this will all add up somehow.
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Who unlatched the shed door that led to Will getting taken by the Demogorgon?
Image Credit: Netflix The Duffer brothers acknowledged in an interview that demogorgons do not have telepathy, so the one after Will in Season 1 couldn’t have unlatched the shed door to kidnap him. This leaves questions about the force behind that chilling moment from Season 1.
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Will Eleven sacrifice herself as Kali seems to keep hinting at?
Image Credit: Netflix Things are not looking great for Eleven, especially because with Kali came an answer to what exactly Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton) wants with both of them. Kali, while attempting to escape her prison in the Upside Down military base, stumbled upon a series of pregnant women who were getting blood transfusions with her blood. Kali could tell, though, that this wasn’t working in the way Dr. Kay hoped it would because the pregnant women were in pain and dying rather than channeling the infused blood to their embryos to make babies like Eleven.
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Who is going to die?
It has to be asked, though we do not look forward to finding out. A character death has been teased in the lead up to Stranger Things 5, but Jimmy Fallon debunked the theory that it is Joe Keery’s Steve Harrington when Keery was a guest on The Tonight Show.
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Will Mike get a reaction moment to Will’s coming out? Will he sense that he was the guy Will liked?
Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix In a heartfelt scene in Episode 7, “The Bridge,” Will comes out to the entire ensemble. He mentions a guy that he liked who didn’t like him in return, exchanging brief eye contact with Mike. It seems there is acknowledgment from both of them that Will is talking about Mike. We wonder if Will and Mike will have a moment to unpack that alone?
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Is Ted Wheeler dead?
Image Credit: Netflix Ted Wheeler (Joe Chrest) has not been seen since his gruesome tumble in Volume 1 when a demogorgon raids the Wheeler house. Karen (Cara Buono) is alive and well enough to put up a fierce fight to some demodogs that invade the hospital.
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Who really created the [SPOILER]?
It has been previously confirmed that Eleven caused rifts connecting The Upside Down and Hawkins when she made psychic contact with a demogorgon. She was also responsible for sending Henry back to Dimension X when she banished him in the flashbacks in Season 4 (find this date…).
Dustin (Gaten Matarzzo) says Dr. Brenner’s (Matthew Modine) journal holds all the answers to the Upside Down and the raging ball of exotic matter that harnesses the energy needed to keep the wormhole intact, bridging Hawkins and Dimension X. He also says it was created by science, not dark magic. So does this rule out Vecna or The Mind Flayer as creators of the fleshy tunnel?
Did Brenner engineer the creation of the wormhole and then blame it all on Eleven?
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