Stranger Things Season 4 Part 1 had some mindbending revelations that we surely didn’t see coming. Be it the origins of the villain, Vecna, the true story of how Eleven escaped from the facility, how she regained her powers, and more.
One such revelation was the origins of the gate to the Upside Down. Until we were under the impression that Eleven’s brush with the Demogorgon accidentally opened up the portal, but Season 4 Part 1 shows how wrong we were by revealing the actual instance when the first gate to the Upside Down was created.
Eleven accidentally created the first gate to the Upside Down. When Eleven fought 001 (Brenner’s first subject) at the facility, she flung him so hard that it created a portal from our reality into the Upside Down. 001 went through it, burned, and turned into Vecna.
Yup, I’m as baffled as you are about the traumatic past Eleven has gone through. We always thought that Eleven killed all those other children to escape, but the season also revealed how it was 001, aka Peter Ballard, aka Henry Creel.
Here’s a quick recap for you to get the complete context. Hawkins is under threat once again, as teenage children are randomly dying. When Sam Owens, who had previously helped Eleven and her friends, comes to know of this, he has a conversation with Eleven.
He tells her how she can get her powers back and help defeat this new enemy (Vecna). But for that, she has to stop thinking about her friends and come with him. Inevitably, she agrees, and we see the two return to the facility where she had escaped from in Season 1.
Here, she comes face to face with Martin Brenner, aka Papa. Sam Owens and Brenner decide that the best way for El to regain her powers is to help her recall how she gained them the first time. As a result, she’s continuously put into situations that have already occurred previously. It was almost like a simulation that felt real.
In these recreations, she meets a person called the Orderly, who befriends her and helps her through different exercises and training that used to occur. However, towards the end, she realizes how it was all a facade.
The Orderly had made her remove the inhibitor chip that dampened his strength and used her to get out of this place. He also spoke about how El could escape, but that was a lie, too. In reality, the Orderly merely wanted to kill all the kids in the facility and the people of the world. He thought Eleven could be the partner who could do it with him.
So, the Orderly kills all the kids in the facility, and when El sees it, she realizes what his true colors are. The Orderly admits to destroying the world because it was unfit for humans and needed to have evolved beings like himself and El.
This ends up with the two fighting. When the Orderly/001 was almost about to kill El, she gained her powers out of sheer desperation to save herself and destroy this evil. At this moment, she overpowers him and flings him against the wall.
In fact, El was so strong that he was stuck for a long time. After this, she flings him so hard that it creates a portal into the Upside Down. 001 burns completely and turns into Vecna, the villain of Stranger Things Season 4.
This is essentially how the first-ever gate to the Upside Down was opened. While there are more revelations in the show, I’ll save them for another post. Season 4 Part 2 will release on July 1, and I have a feeling there are more revelations to come.
About Stranger Things
Stranger Things is an American sci-fi horror TV series created by The Duffer Brothers for Netflix.
Set in the 1980s in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, the show follows the story of a young girl called Eleven, who has superpowers and her adventures with her group of friends. These dangerous adventurers include surviving in and saving a town that has an evil parallel universe attached to it called the Upside Down.
It stars Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp, Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo, Sadie Sink, Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, and Maya Hawke. The show has been renewed for a fifth and final season.
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