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The following contains heavy spoilers for the “Stranger Things” series finale, “Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up.”
“Stranger Things” has captivated audiences for nearly a decade. This allowed Netflix to become known as a major player in pop culture and made an absurd amount of money for the streamer. It helped bring “Dungeons & Dragons” to a new level of popularity and reminded everyone that Winona Ryder is a national treasure. From now on, the dice are put away, the table is cleared, the adventure is over.
The finale was, unsurprisingly, quite polarizing. It’s no secret that ‘Stranger Things’ wasn’t planned to be a five-season seriesSo as the series grew in popularity and plans changed and morphed into the story we know now, trying to satisfy every viewer became less and less likely. Some fans took to social media to express their anger at the fate of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) in the finale, while others complain about the many unanswered questions and supposed plot holes in the final season.
One of these unanswered questions concerns demogorgons. After serving as the main antagonists for most of the series, the actual grunts that the kids fight off and on for five seasons (alongside the demodogs and demobats), they’ve all sort of disappeared by the time the gang reaches Vecna’s (Jamie Campbell Bower) diaper in the final episode. Now the Duffer brothers have explained this mystery to LeWrap.
“Vecna didn’t expect this sneak attack on his territory. Never in a million years could he have imagined this. They’re out there somewhere,” Matt Duffer said.
Where have the demos gone?
“We obviously discussed a demo battle in addition to the Mind Flayer battle, but this seemed more fair to us: why does he need the demos when the Mind Flayer is this giant thing and can attack them?” » continued Duffer. “He doesn’t need his little army of ants to attack, he’ll take care of it himself. It’s a giant, desolate planet.” He also points out that we briefly see a demogorgon in the distance during a season 4 scene where Henry wanders this strange planet, but says, “There’s not a giant civilization of demos up there.”
So if demogorgons and other creatures don’t live in large groups, how do they still attack in packs? How long does it take Vecna to summon her minions, gather them and then send them to Hawkins? Are they on the opposite side of the planet and traveling for days just to attack children in Indiana? Do they die right after the Mind Flayer is destroyed?
According to Matt Duffer, the writers imagined a scene in which we would see some of the other creatures. “They were going to come across a giant field of display eggs, alien-style, but you can’t put all your ideas in there,” he said. In addition to time constraints, Duffer attributes the absolute and complete lack of non-Vecna and non-Mind Flayer creatures to “demo fatigue.”
“I felt like we had done everything we wanted to do with them in [the last episode of the first part of the season] and I want to keep the focus on Vecna and Mind Flayer, who have been absent this season,” the co-showrunner said. And there you have it.
