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Is the Upside Down Will's mindscape?

So I’ve been thinking about what exactly the Upside Down is. Is it another planet? Another dimension? Then it hit me. What if it’s someone’s mindscape? We’ve seen what Vecna’s mind looks like and the Upside Down seems like it could be something similar. Did El somehow banish Henry into someone’s mind? El’s powers, along with all the other lab kids, were always centered around contacting other people’s minds. Her power to open portals to other dimensions came out of nowhere and was definitely not taught to her by anyone at the lab. It makes sense for this power to have something to do with the mind since that’s what she was focused on.

Here’s the original Upside Down compared to Vecna’s mind lair. Looks similar, right? Floating objects, smoke/fog, rocky structures, bright storms ahead, and it seems to be endless. So let's dive in:

The Upside Down was originally yellow before it became blue. Yellow is Will’s representative color. This is what initially made me wonder if this is Will’s mindscape. So where are Will’s objects? We know Vecna has his house floating around to show that it’s his mind. Will would have been 8 years old when Vecna was banished. Maybe the Upside Down had little to no structure because his brain wasn’t as developed yet? As Will got older, it started to look like Hawkins and changed colors.

Will does have a few monsters in his mindscape that we see ignore Vecna’s presence. I think these monsters could be representations of Will’s trauma. Lonnie was abusive and Will dealt with a lot of bullies so the demogorgons could be a physical manifestation of trauma. Vecna displays his victims on the pillars in his mind. Maybe the monsters are fictional creatures Will has defeated during DnD campaigns? He is a very creative kid so his mind might be filled with fictional monsters. I think the trauma manifestation is more likely, though. 

Music also opened a gate to the Upside Down! Right when Joyce started to play Should I Stay or Should I Go, a gate opened in the wall and then it started to close when she turned the music off. A song with significant meaning to Will opened a gate. They figured out music would save Max because it can reach parts of the brain that words can’t, so how did music open a gate to the Upside Down? It’s Will’s mind.

Obviously, the gates we see inside of the confirmed mindscapes look very different from the Upside Down gates. When El opened a gate into Will’s mind, she somehow made it a physical location. This could be the reason why the gates look different. Will’s gate looks more fleshy, almost like the edge of a brain? 

We also see what Max’s mind looks like before she steps into Vecna’s mind. It’s blue and foggy with fuzzy edges. When the Mind Flayer is taking over Will’s mind, he seems to be transported back into the Upside Down. These visions are very similar to Vecna visions, so shouldn’t Will’s surroundings just turn blue and foggy like they did for Max? Why does his mind have vines, spores, and creatures, just like the Upside Down? Is Vecna just taunting Will with his traumatic memories or is this what Will’s mind looks like? 

Mike asks if Will’s visions of the Upside Down are real or if they’re in his head and Will isn’t sure. When Max was in a trance, she couldn’t tell what was real or not until she saw the music gate. Why is he confusing fake and real in the same way Max does? Is the Upside Down all in Will’s head in a literal sense?

When Vecna enters someone’s mind, a red storm appears. Notice how the storm is a combination between blue and red. It seems like Billy’s mind was also blue before he was flayed. So both Max and Billy have blue mindscapes. The Upside Down is currently blue. We know that the storm is red because Vecna’s mindscape is combining with the mind he is currently in. Why is Vecna’s mind storm appearing inside the Upside Down if his mind isn’t combining with someone else’s? 

Vecna also brings spores with him when he enters someone’s mind. Max’s Snow Ball memory starts to fill with spores when Vecna finds her. When Max changes her mindscape to look like her Snow Ball memory, she leaves a decorative table in her other memories. It’s a piece of her current mindscape. This table has a similar function to the spores but Vecna’s mindscape doesn’t have spores in it. Why is Vecna bringing characteristics of the Upside Down with him when he goes into her mind? If the spores are just there because that’s where Vecna’s real body is, wouldn’t Max leave behind traces of her physical body’s location too? She would have pieces of the Creel attic in her mind if this were the case. Vecna is bringing spores with him because his mind is combining with Will’s mind the same way he’s combining with Max’s. His real body is in someone else’s mind and he is bringing pieces of it with him, just like Max’s table. 

The Upside Down being Will’s mindscape would explain why it’s stuck on the day he went missing. Will’s mind is stuck because of the trauma he endured. When Will talks about that trauma, he says he felt frozen in fear. His fight or flight response is freeze (for the most part). The Upside down is frozen in time and it’s cold! Did Will freeze his own mind as a stress response? He hasn’t moved past that trauma and neither has his mindscape. 

Vecna’s mind also seems to be stuck in his house. There are just pieces of his house left like it’s been breaking and rotting away. Maybe the same is happening with the Upside Down. It looks like Hawkins for the same reason Vecna’s mind looks like his house, Hawkins is significant to Will’s development as a person. I think when Will entered his own mind, he did something similar to what Max did with the Snow Ball. He transformed it to look like his home because he was trying to hide in the light. Vecna started rotting Will’s mind the same way he did Max’s so he could hunt him. 

This also explains why Will can still feel Vecna even though the Mind Flayer was removed from his body. Vecna is still inside his mind! Max said that she felt “marked” by Vecna because he was still lingering around her mind. Will’s Vecna sense is much stronger than what Max describes because he has been physically marked by him. 

Could this partially be why Will survived in the Upside Down for so long as well? Everyone else was attacked upon arrival. If it’s Will’s own mind, he could navigate it better and find places to hide. Vecna probably targeted Will because of this as well, he wanted to meet the owner of the mind he’s in. But he didn’t kill him like he did everyone else. Vecna likes it there and he couldn’t kill Will without his perfect world being destroyed. This is why he was planning on killing everyone but Will in season two! He wanted to take over Will’s mind so the Upside Down would belong to him instead. 

There are some inconsistencies with this theory, though. Why doesn’t Will feel Vecna when he’s in California? Why does distance have an impact on how Will feels his own mind? Maybe this has something to do with birthdaygate. As Will gets further from his own mind and memories, he forgets pieces of himself and other people begin to forget as well. Speaking of birthdaygate, the Upside Down being Will’s mind also explains my theory about the gates destroying Will’s memories. He’s forgetting his own memories. 

The distance thing also gives a reason as to why the Russian gate only worked when they were in Hawkins. They needed to be near Will for it to work. In fact, Will was just above them when they finally got the gate open.

I’m not even fully confident about this theory myself, but it would explain a lot of things! In terms of what the Upside Down represents, this also supports it representing homophobia (here). Will has a lot of internalized homophobia so his mind would reflect that. Anyways, the Upside Down is visually similar to the mindscapes and even behaves similarly. I believe the differences (vine gates, regular people can enter, etc) are due to El somehow making Will’s mind a physical location.

Part two