Stranger Things Season 5 Unmasks the Upside Down’s True Nature

For nearly a decade, fans have been left guessing about the Upside Down, but the latest season of Stranger Things finally lays the cards on the table. As Dustin Henderson bluntly puts it in season 5, all the wild ideas about this shadowy world have missed the mark. Unless, of course, you caught the stage production Stranger Things: The First Shadow, which dropped some hints last year.

The Big Reveal in Season 5

Right at the start of season 5 Vol. 2, Nancy, Jonathan, Steve, and Dustin decide to ignore Hopper’s instructions to stay put at the church. Instead, they set off to investigate the massive wall they crashed into inside the Upside Down. Dustin, always the brains of the group, reckons the wall is a kind of dark magic barrier set up by Vecna, similar to the Empire’s shield in Return of the Jedi. If he’s on the money, they might be able to find the source, shut it down, and sneak into Vecna’s real hideout to rescue Holly.

Their search leads them to Hawkins Lab, where Dustin stumbles upon Dr. Martin Brenner’s old files. Digging through the research, he discovers that the Upside Down is actually a wormhole – an interdimensional bridge to a mysterious place they start calling ‘The Abyss’. This is likely the home turf of the demogorgons, demobats, and the Mind Flayer, and it’s also where Eleven sent Henry Creel (aka One) during their psychic showdown in the Rainbow Room back in 1979.

Origins and Motives Unveiled

Henry ended up stuck there for four years, until Eleven made contact with a demogorgon and the tunnel to the Upside Down was created. Since then, Henry – now known as Vecna – has been using the Upside Down as a gateway, opening rifts to try and merge the Abyss with Hawkins, turning Earth into a monster-infested nightmare.

Matt Duffer explained,

‘Netflix wanted us to explain the mythology to them, because we were very adamant early on, “We don’t want to explain it in the show. We like that there’s mystery, and that there’s a lot that you don’t understand by the end of the season,”’

He added,

‘They said, “That’s fine, but we would like to know.” I think it was actually a really good exercise – we spent quite a bit of time with our writers figuring out exactly what the Upside Down was. We wrote a 20-page mythology document. It wasn’t called the Abyss at that point; it was called Dimension X, which is a Ninja Turtle reference. We’ve been holding those cards back for so long; it was a real relief to actually be able to show our hands here.’

Stage Show Connections and Deeper Lore

If you were lucky enough to see The First Shadow, you’d already be familiar with ‘Dimension X’. The play, which digs into Henry’s past, opens in 1943 with a warship, the USS Eldridge, being sucked into Dimension X. The ship’s captain, Brenner’s father, is the only one to make it out alive, with the rest of the crew falling victim to sinister smoky creatures.

The play also reveals more about Henry’s backstory. In one scene, Max and Holly, exploring Vecna’s Mind Lair, witness a young Henry in a Boy Scout uniform encountering a bloodied Soviet spy in a mine. The spy, panicked, shoots Henry in the hand, but Henry retaliates, killing the man and taking a mysterious briefcase. The play clarifies that Henry, missing for 12 days, was found with a hand injury near caves in Nevada, and the Russian’s body was later discovered in the same area. The briefcase, as revealed on stage, contains secrets about opening rifts to Dimension X and other classified tech.

Bridging the Worlds

According to the play, the briefcase’s contents sent Henry to Dimension X, where he first encountered the Mind Flayer. Later, Dr. Brenner pieced together the link between Henry and the Mind Flayer after finding Henry’s spyglass – the same one Holly uses in the series – in the caves.

Both volumes of Stranger Things season 5 are now available to stream. The finale is just around the corner, and if you’re keen to make sense of all the twists, there’s a handy guide to the season’s release schedule and a breakdown of the Vol. 2 ending for those who want to dig deeper.