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Stranger Thingsclearly owe some of its stirring to the fiction of repulsion icon Stephen King , but could an idea from King ’s son Joe Hill ’s novelNOS4A2provide a joining between the Netflix serial and King ’s workplace ? Created byHiddendirectors the Duffer Brothers , Stranger Thingsbecame an salient runaway strike for streaming service Netflix shortly after it debut back in mid-2016 . It ’s not hard to see why the series come through , too , asStranger Thingsoffers an appealing optical fusion of two ‘ fourscore pop acculturation heavyweights , Stephen King and Stephen Spielberg , in its tale of a small Ithiel Town plagued by spooky goings - on and the feisty kids out to get to the bottom of minutes .
A mixture of come - of - age drama , horror , teenage funniness , and sci - fi tropes , Stranger Thingsis distinctly indebted to the fabrication ofCarriecreator Stephen King as well as the movies of John Carpenter andWes Craven . However , when asked about a fan hypothesis that tie in King ’s best - betray doorstopperITto the action ofStranger Thingsseason 2 , the Creator were quick to refuse a verbatim canonical link between the series and its noted divine guidance .
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When the erotic love pursuit of Winona Ryder ’s perpetually chivy Joyce Byers assured her new son that he used to dread a creepy-crawly clown until he finally overcome his paralyzing panic around the fanciful behemoth by abide up for himself , fans directly begin to wonder whether the goofball in interrogative sentence was Pennywise , the baddie of Stephen King ’s iconic bestsellerIT . The Duffer Brother themselves debunked the theory that season 2 character Bob Newby encountered Pennywise , saying they based the anecdote on their own fear of Tim Currys ’ performance as the character in theclassic ' 90s Stephen King miniseriesIT . However , the invention of “ inscapes ” in the fiction of King ’s real - life Word and occasional cooperator Joe Hill prove that there may be another connection between the world of Stephen King ’s fiction andStranger Things ’ mystical small - town setting of Hawkins , Indiana .
NOS4A2’s Inscapes Explained
First explicate by Charlie Manx , the villain of Joe Hill ’s novelNOS4A2and the subsequent AMC serial publication of the same name , inscapes are interior landscapes , the psychic realms created by people set about to create a suspension from reality . Charlie Manx is the primary baddie ofNOS4A2 , terrifyingly immortalized onscreen by Zachary Quinto , and according to the telly adaptation ofNOS4A2 , he ’s not the only villain to own his own personal inscape . The Lovecraft Keyhole ( the main setting of later Hill adaptationLocke and Key ) andPennywise ’s Maine circusare also inscapes , a detail confirm by theNOS4A2TV show . This easter egg proves that Hill and King ’s works partake in a fictional canon in usual . But could the Upside Down ofStranger Thingssecretly be an Inscape too — and if so , what connexion does it have King ’s and Hill ’s inscapes ?
Is The Upside-Down An Inscape?
The trippy dream logical system of the Upside - Down , its so far unexplained monster population of Demogorgons , and its path of mirror but distorting an existing fix all check out in terms of Inscape characteristics . Manx ’s Christmasland and Pennywise ’s Maine circus are similarly otherworldly location that operate on their own paranormal terminus and contain murderous monsters that generally ca n’t escape into the outside Earth but can now and again wreak mayhem when they do . Both theUpside - Downand other ( possible ) Inscapes distinctly occupy real physical infinite and can be entered and ( on rarified , prosperous occasions ) exited by role other than their Jehovah , but do n’t appear on maps and ca n’t be make it at via conventional travel , with the like of Eleven and Will Byers instead relying on various forms of psychokinesis and mind - warping inter - dimensional travel .
The dark , grimy top side - Down also look a lot like both Manx ’s grim Christmasland and Pennywise ’s smash , corpse - strewn carnival in the sewers , with all three being location that once look normal and have now been warp beyond realization by malefic violence . All three feature article the ability to spread out and use up more of the land around them , with Pennywise ’s influence extending throughout the town of Derry despite his inscape being contained by the sewers andStranger Things ’ Hawkinsbeing plagued by supernatural phenomena outside of the Gate as well as inside the Upside - Down . Meanwhile , the resident physician Mind Flayer ’s power to draw in victims via intellect control and finally use up their bodies for support operates a lot like Pennywise ’s carnival and Manx ’s Christmasland , both of which also see their shape - shifting monsters control the idea of victims to pilot them to their doom .
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Why The Theory Might Not Be True
However , for all their trivial law of similarity , there are also significant differences between the inscapes ofITandNOS4A2and the Upside - Down ofStranger Things . For one matter , neither Hill ’s or King ’s inscapes have been successfully reached by government office ( although Manx ’s Christmasland made myopic , gruesome work of an FBI raid in a railroad tie - in vivid novel ) , and the fact thatStranger Thingsshows thescientists of Hawkins Labbeing the ones responsible for for launch the Gate does n’t outfit with the “ individual victims are entice into Pennywise and Manx ’s traps ” modus operandi of Hill and King ’s inscapes . Moreover , the fact that both the Russian and American authorisation are concerned in the Upside - Down in the first home flies in the nerve of how both Christmasland and Pennywise ’s carnival operates , since both of those options boast an ability to commit number of determinedly awful atrocity precisely because nearby human populations have no interest in investigating the mysterious disappearing that feed these eldritch living positioning .
How This Affects Stranger Things 4
The revelation that the Upside - Down is actually an Inscape would open upStranger Thingsfor all fashion of cross - coaction with the fictional macrocosm of both King and Hill , meaning the Netflix show could incorporate everything from Stephen Kingcharacters from CarrieorITor more in its storytelling snuff it forwards . However , this would also play a hair-raising tangle of effectual right hand , so it ’s unlikely thatStranger Thingswill ever make the Upside - Down ’s potential condition as an inscape canon even if it does add up . That said , Netflix does have a paw in producingLocke and Key , so there ’s at least one Joe Hill crossover they could conceivably connect toStranger Thingsvia an inscape — although any confirmation of this hypothesis will involve to explain how two exclusively unrelated ' fourscore teens played by Finn Wolfhard exist at the same time in the same realism .
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