Wow, So The Duffers Are Really Really Going All In For The Wrinkle In Time Inspiration For Season 5

Wow, so the Duffers are really really going all in for the Wrinkle in Time inspiration for Season 5

I made a few posts about two months ago that are good supplemental reading material about how 'being different' in itself is a reference to a Wrinkle in Time, and how Escape from Camazotz is not about Eddie but another reference to the novel that symbolizes forced conformity.

We have (hopefully) photos coming later today of Mike, Holly, and Will riding on bicycles. Now this is so so interesting because the writers have already confirmed a Wrinkle in Time will be an inspiration for the season multiple times. Not to mention that it has already been written into the show since Season 1:

The 'A Wrinkle in Time' plot goes as follows: "Combining theology, fantasy, and science, it is the story of travel through space and time to battle a cosmic evil. With their neighbour Calvin O’Keefe, young Meg Murry and her brother Charles Wallace embark on a cosmic journey to find their lost father, a scientist studying time travel. Assisted by three eccentric women—Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which—the children travel to the planet Camazotz, where they encounter a repressed society controlled by IT, a disembodied brain that represents evil. Among the themes of the work are the dangers of unthinking conformity and scientific irresponsibility and the saving power of love." - Encyclopedia Britannica.

At a point in their journey, Charles Wallace becomes willingly hypnotized by The Man with the Red Eyes (a vessel for the IT). He tries to put up a fight but eventually succumbs to the hypnotism and is also kidnapped onto the planet / realm Camazotz.

Meg and Charles are siblings. Calvin is a boy from school who befriends Meg and then becomes her love interest. In the original movie adaptation, and at the beginning of the 2018 adaptation, he sports a distinctive green and beige varsity jacket layered with a red and orange plaid shirt.

I've talked about the themes in the novel in those two posts about, but I'll briefly emphasize that the main theme is nonconformity and how being different is good. Calvin and Meg in particular bond over their shared experience of 'being different', and Calvin is finally able to *cough* come out of the closet and start 'being different' openly.

And there is no world in which is this not intentional. :)

i like to think that the parallel between mike destroying the pillow fort el slept in and will destroying castle byers is actually very meaningful -

i like to think that the choice of a pillow fort was deliberate for hiding el. it's a childish object in the same way castle byers is, and the destruction of it symbolises a loss of a kind of softness and innocence that will never come back.

when will destroys castle byers, it's after trying to make things go back to how they were before he went missing. it's the emotional culmination of all of his angst that the things that have happened to him have happened, and that he's stunted in place when everyone else is moving on and managing to be straight. especially because castle byers was something he & johnathan had built to cope with their father leaving.

when mike destroys the pillow fort it's because he's lost el, and with her any hope of finding will.

it's notable that in the scene, he first stares at the door as if waiting for el, or even for will, to come back. he cares for el at this point as her own person, but i think in this scene he is angry because he feels stupid for ever letting himself hope that he could find will again, and that things could go back to normal - just as will felt trying to get the party to play D&D with him.

for both of them it is a deep embarrassment holding frustration and grief of losing their childhoods, and of losing each other, as two people who were boys together.

the fact that mike has this development so much earlier than will in the show is testament to how the trauma changed the both of them - mike grew up too fast, and will didn't get to finish growing up.

i think mike's actions in the show all follow on from here. his grief of losing will - first when he went missing, then when he came back and was wounded - was so much that he shut it out in favour of being angsty about eleven. and then once she came back, he couldn't understand why everything still felt wrong, and instead he rejected childish notions and preferred to think of his woundedness as maturity, getting obsessed with eleven in order to avoid doing things that reminded him of how things used to feel when they were still kids. this is why he is so mocking and cold to will, because he hasn't really processed how much will going missing shook the security of his world at such a young age, and he never acknowledges that it did. he also hasn't been able to grow up, he's just trying to hide it from himself.

don't you bylers understand that will moving on from mike would be a far more revolutionary and progressive ending for his character than byler becoming canon?

he's 15, mind you. still a teenager. do you know just how much adolescents change between 15 and 18?

i had a huge crush on a guy when i was 15 to the point where i was ready to sacrifice anything to be with him. but not even two years later, i realized just how dumb he really was and i moved on. and now i can't even stand the sight of him.

it'll probably be the same for will. s5 is gonna be about will moving on from mike and learning to be himself.

Babe I'm sorry but this is objectively false, like - as a fact - because queer romance in a main show like stranger things between two of the main characters is far more revolutionary than "gay boy gets friendzoned by straight best friend and moves on"

but also I can say the exact same thing for Eleven? lmao

I think it would be far more revolutionary for her to be a single protagonist than stay with the boy she started dating when she didn't even know what that meant, and she can continue to learn to be herself without men in her life! A great message to all the little girls out there, they can be protagonists even without having to have a boyfriend and focus on the love from their family and friends as a priority 🤗

Plus it would also be revolutionary for Mike's character to find out he's queer on screen and have an actual good character arc for himself where he overcomes all of his fears thanks to the love from Will, since the love he got from Eleven didn't help him to do that at all on its own, plus go against the theme of forced conformity that the writers introduced

Byler is just the better narrative and story for all of them at this point and not as an opinion but as a fact... Any decent storyteller could tell you that

Also…. 🤭🤭🤭🤭

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Oh for sure. I’m going to get into that in an actual dedicated post, but it’s going to be such a monstrosity of a thing to talk about that I don’t know how I’m going to do it.

I’m very familiar with Peter Pan from other shows that have used it as inspiration and already made me deep dive into the subject twice. I was already going to make a post about PP before, but I didn’t know if I was inserting my own interests into Stranger Things because the evidence wasn’t enough for a connection. But now it is.

Here’s a fun fact:

Peter Pan is considered by scholars to be inspired by the writer’s older brother, who tragically died at the age of thirteen and thus forever remained a child in the eyes of his family. In particular, their mother never got over his death. Contrasted to Will, who was of course ‘saved’ from this fate but therefore not spared from the equally terrible fate (in the eyes of the author) of having to grow up.

I can’t sleep because I just have so many thoughts rolling around in my head. The more and more stuff we get about S5 the closer I can get to being able to ‘predict’ where they’re going with it, not with hard facts about plots and locations but the thematic aspects as well.

The way children and childhood seem to be highly symbolic for this last season is very juicy. The random children in the mansion. The Derek kid at the farm. The supposed leak about Robin with all of those kids. The disappearance of Holly Wheeler. The rest of the kids in the Creel House / Playground scenes. The kids on the military school bus. The multiple flashbacks to our characters as their younger selves. Taking inspiration from children’s novels such as a Wrinkle in Time.

I said before I think this show is actually presenting lots of commentary on childhood nostalgia, meanwhile almost the entire media and general audience dismisses it for being un-self aware. But it’s very aware.