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This text incorporates spoilers for “Stranger Issues” season 5, quantity 1.
The Duffer Brothers have by no means precisely hidden the truth that “Stranger Issues” attracts inspiration from basic Stephen King novels like “It” and “The Talisman.” King has additionally showered reward on “Stranger Issues,” so clearly, the respect is mutual. Granted, the present is stuffed with homages to only about each common sci-fi and fantasy property from the Nineteen Eighties — for example, “Stranger Issues” season 4 was closely impressed by a really particular “Star Wars” movie of the period. Even so, King tends to be the go-to comparability level for most of the present’s antics.
Due to the Duffers’ well-publicized King appreciation, it is easy to search for extra references wherever the present goes. And since “Stranger Issues” season 5, quantity 1 retains referencing the character of time, a horrible thought arises: What if the present’s Upside Down has truly been an enormous stealth homage to 1 specific King story all alongside?
In King’s novella “The Langoliers” (which was part of his 1990 assortment “4 Previous Midnight”), a handful of aircraft passengers find yourself in a model of the world the place all the pieces is useless and dilapidated. They uncover that they’ve gone via a portal-style time rip and the dimension they’re in is definitely what’s left after the current time: a useless, previous world that is slowly being consumed into nothingness by creatures that they dub the Langoliers. Is it attainable that the Duffers’ Upside Down has truly been like this all alongside? As a substitute of a separate mirror dimension, might the Upside Down be what’s left of our personal world after it passes the current, and the creatures that populate it had been meant to eat it into oblivion earlier than Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) took management? Let’s have a look at if this principle has any legs.
The useless previous of The Langoliers shares some suspicious similarities with the Upside Down
The primary factor that leads me to imagine that one thing time-themed is occurring with the Upside Down is the truth that, properly, “Stranger Issues” season 5 retains dropping time-themed hints. Madeleine L’Engle’s guide “A Wrinkle in Time” in “Chapter One: The Crawl.” The “Again to the Future” Flux Capacitor name-drop and Vecna posing as “A Wrinkle in Time”-inspired imaginary buddy Mr. Whatsit in “Chapter Two: The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler.” Wormholes in “Chapter Three: The Turnbow Lure.” Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) explicitly evaluating Vecna’s reminiscence area to time journey in “Chapter 4: The Sorcerer.” There actually is loads of these things.
After all, there are additionally all of the pre-existing similarities between the Upside Down and the doomed previous of “The Langoliers.” Each are creepily trashy variations of the normal-slash-present world. Folks can use mysterious portals to journey between the 2 worlds. Even the resident monsters have their similarities: In case you’ve seen the 1995 ABC miniseries adaptation of “The Langoliers,” the titular creatures’ three-sided mouth design is not all that far faraway from the Demogorgons in “Stranger Issues” and their flower-shaped maws.
Even when this principle seems to be right, it is unlikely that the true nature of the Upside Down is precisely just like the previous world in “The Langoliers.” Beat-for-beat copying has by no means actually been the Duffer Brothers’ recreation; they’re much more liable to wink and nod at one thing earlier than in the end delivering their very own twist on the theme. Nonetheless, I would not be shocked if “Stranger Issues” season 5, volumes 2 and three proceed taking issues on this path — in a technique or one other.
“Stranger Issues” season 5, quantity 1 is streaming on Netflix in its entirety.
