7 'Stranger Things' Season 2 predictions
It's been over a year since we rampantly binged our way through the sweet '80s nostalgia of Stranger Things Season 1, and now -- finally -- the sequel is less than 10 days away.
The final trailer is out, a clip of Eleven has been released, and the Upside Down is so close you can practically smell it.
Still, we've got to find some way of killing time until those nine beautiful episodes glide their way into our hungry, hungry Netflix accounts.
In a desperate attempt to guess some of the things that might happen in Stranger Things Season 2, I've combed through as many clues as I could find in the trailers and promotional material.
Here are a few (probably misguided) predictions I've come up with.
1. Eleven will re-join the others -- but not straight away.
From the trailers that have been released so far, we know two things: 1) Eleven is well and truly back, and 2) at one point in the series she has a full head of hair.
The thing is, we've also seen a clip of her bursting her way out of the Upside-Down and back into the real world -- and in that clip, which likely takes place not long after the events of Season 1, she still has short hair.
So we know there's a time gap there. There's also that conversation between Will and Mike in the final trailer, where Will says, "I don't understand", and Mike responds: "Eleven would".
If we put all these clues together, the implication is that Eleven probably won't feature much in the first couple of episodes in Season 2 -- but at some point she'll come bursting back onto the scene to help save the day.
2. Will will get examined, but something will go wrong.
The trailers for Stranger Things Season 2 are littered with shots of Will in a lab. In the first teaser he can be seen lying in a reclining chair on the day before Halloween (the date on the screen reads Oct 30 84) while a doctor observes him, and men in suits watch on monitors.
Then, in the final trailer, there's this sequence:
The monitors all go blank in unison, some random dude can be seen looking nervous, and then there's a shot of Hopper racing through a corridor with an unconscious Will in his arms (still wearing the light blue hospital gown).
If we had to guess, we'd say the tests the doctors run on Will will act as a catalyst on his connection to the Upside-Down -- and the gateway will be opened that little bit wider.
3. Hopper will find traces of the Upside-Down in a pumpkin patch.
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The episode titles for Stranger Things Season 2 have been changed now, but the original nine included one called "The Pumpkin Patch". This title doesn't feature in the new, updated titles, but -- judging by the artwork above -- it looks like the pumpkin patch itself will still play a part.
So what's the significance? Well, my best bet would be that it has to do with this clip:
And, more importantly, this clip:
This could be the point at which the characters realise the extent to which the Upside-Down is infiltrating Hawkins. From the looks of it, those pumpkins all contained something fairly grim and Upside-Down-y. Maybe they were eggs of some kind, or pods that Hopper decided to systematically destroy to kill the creatures they contained?
4. Nancy will break up with Steve and start dating Jonathan Byers.
It seemed like this was destined to happen throughout Season 1, but then the final sequence made it clear that it absolutely hadn't -- Nancy was still with Steve, and Jonathan (despite being given a shiny new camera as a Christmas present) was still very much single.
They're not going to pull the same trick two seasons in a row though, right? From the trailers, it's clear that Nancy is still with Steve at certain points in Season 2 -- but judging by the scene above, there's still that lingering tension between her and Jonathan as well. If I had to guess, I'd say Nancy and Jonathan will finally get together this season.
Also, I reckon Steve might die. Don't ask me why, it's just a feeling.
5. They will need to leave Hawkins to find an answer.
If you head over to the official Stranger Things Twitter page, you'll notice the account has a pretty weird bio. It's got a bunch of emoji in it, some arrows, and then the number "450".
Surely not just a coincidence, right?
Well, apparently not. For starters, as one Redditor pointed out, 450 is the road that leads out of Hawkins:
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The sunflower, clouds, and rainbow emoji, meanwhile, seem to indicate strange weather conditions (possibly the "storm" referenced repeatedly in tweets from the official account).
The arrows are a little trickier to understand. Maybe it means that three characters will leave Hawkins on some kind of mission, but four will return? The Duffer Brothers have said previously this Season will "venture a little bit outside of Hawkins", so this seems like a possibility.
6. At least one major character will die.
It's not quite up to Game of Thrones standards, but the death of Barb in Season 1 did make one thing clear: Stranger Things is not the kind of show where everyone makes it out unscathed.
Plus there's that scene from the Comic Con trailer where the boys play Dragon Quest and their knight gets burned alive by the dragon. In the previous season, there were a bunch of theories about how the D&D game the boys play right at the start foreshadows some of the main plot points in the story (e.g. Will be snatched by the Demogorgon).
Is it possible that the knight dying in Dragon Quest foreshadows the death of a key hero? And if so, which of the characters is the likeliest to die?
Personally, I think the boys and Eleven are safe. There are still (hopefully) going to be two more seasons to follow this second one, after all, so the key players surely have to stick around for awhile longer. Hopper, meanwhile, seems like a possible candidate for a tragic death (he's got that whole doomed hero archetype thing going on), but I still reckon he's too big to be killed off yet.
If I had to guess, as I mentioned earlier, I'd pick Steve. Sorry Steve.
7. They'll eventually trap that weird new monster in the Upside-Down.
Compared to the relatively puny and easy-to-destroy Demogorgon, the new Season 2 monster looks quite a bit more formidable.
But actually, do they really need to destroy it? We don't know much about the Upside-Down, but we're given the impression it's a dimension that's been around for awhile -- the gateway between it and Hawkins is the thing causing all the problems.
If the boys can find a way to close that gateway, then that'll pretty much be problem solved, right? Well, seeing as we've still got two more Seasons of Stranger Things to come after this one, probably not.
But it might at least act as a temporary fix.
Topics Netflix Stranger Things
