Diksha Sundriyal
Of the many mysteries that Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ has created over the years, the one that remained unexplained was the nature of the Upside Down. It is revealed to be a place in the first season after Eleven tells Mike, Dustin, and Lucas that that’s where Will is being held captive, and since then, it has remained the source of all problems for the residents of Hawkins. Having built up the mystery around the place, the show finally answers all the questions regarding it in the second half of the fifth season, particularly after the characters discover the existence of a mysterious wall with no end. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Wall Reveals the Periphery of the Upside Down
When Dustin and the others come upon the wall during their trip to the Upside Down, he theorises that this is the boundary created by Vecna, inside which he is holding Holly and the other children captive. He believes that Vecna’s prison is on the other side and tries to find a way through it. For this, the group ventures into the old Hawkins Lab, with Dustin believing that the wall is being held together by a force created by a generator that is somewhere inside the lab. However, in his quest to find the generator, he discovers something that completely rewrites his understanding of the mysterious place. It turns out that the wall is not the boundary of Vecna’s secret prison; it is the boundary of the Upside Down.
In the search for a generator, Dustin chances upon Brenner’s office, where he finds his journal, which puts everything into perspective. It turns out that the government had been conducting experiments to find a way to enter a different dimension, which Dustin refers to as the Abyss. This dimension is the home of the Demogorgons and the Mind Flayer. This means that there are two worlds: the one that has Hawkins, and the other that has the Abyss. These worlds exist on different planes, so there is no regular way to go about it, unless a cosmic bridge, aka a wormhole, is created between them.
The Upside Down is this bridge, and Vecna and his monsters have been using it to enter Hawkins. The wall that surrounds the Upside Down is its boundary, beyond which there is the empty space between two dimensions where nothing exists. As long as the wall is standing, the Upside Down will exist, and so will all the things inside it, monster or human. But the moment the wall crumbles, the Upside Down will fall apart, and everything that exists within it will be destroyed for good.
The True Nature of the Upside Down Answers Many Questions
Discovering the true nature of the Upside Down answers several questions, especially as the group slowly reunites, each bringing a different insight based on what they have learned. It becomes clear that the motive of the government’s secret lab and Dr. Brenner’s experiments was to find a way to access the dimension. They wanted to find a way to use the Demogorgons as a weapon against their enemies, and the Russians, seemingly, were trying to do the same. It also becomes clear that when Henry killed everyone in the lab and had a showdown with Eleven, the place she banished him to was the Abyss, not the Upside Down. However, in pushing him into another dimension, she created the wormhole, which she later named the Upside Down.
The problem is that maintaining a wormhole requires a lot of energy. While Eleven had built the bridge, the government needed to keep it from falling apart so that they could access it for as long as they needed to find the Abyss. This is where Dustin’s theory about the generator comes into the picture. He might have been wrong about other things, but he was right in believing that the generator was needed to keep the wall intact. Jonathan and Nancy find it in the lab, and it appears to be a huge ball of energy. This energy has been keeping the entire Upside Down together, and it is being fuelled by something called the exotic matter.
The exotic matter is not easily found, but it is potent enough to create things like wormholes. The huge ball of energy is the exotic matter in motion, providing the Upside Down with the energy to exist and keep the wall from collapsing. What Jonathan and Nancy don’t realise is that destroying the energy ball will lead to their deaths, and even as Dustin tries to tell them not to touch the generator, Nancy shoots at it. Fortunately, the bullet doesn’t do much damage, but it does create a ripple of energy that destabilises the wall long enough for a hole to suck things like Steve’s car into the nothingness beyond the wall. With all of this, it also becomes clear that destroying the exotic matter is the key to permanently putting a stop to the terror of Vecna and his monsters and saving Hawkins from further violence and grief.
Read More: Stranger Things: Why Can’t Vecna Enter the Cave? What was in the Briefcase?
You must be logged in to post a comment.