Why did the demogorgon not kill will

One of the appeals of Stranger Things is the way it treats its creatures. There are no humanizing aspects to these villains. Like any creepy alien movie of the '80s, the monsters are monsters and the heroes are the heroes. It's the perfect recipe for a quintessential good vs. evil story.

However, what if this is all a façade, and not only is the Demogorgon more humanized, but it's actually one of the protagonists' future form?

Upon a Stranger Things rewatch, Redditor u/CinnaSol cooked up a doozy of a fan theory. What if the Demogorgon is actually Will from the future, sent back in time through the Upside Down to perpetuate a never-ending time loop? It sounds a bit more like Dark than Stranger Things, but it makes sense after a bit of explaining.

Firstly, the Upside Down needs to be explained. We already learned the Upside Down is another universe that the government tore a gate into through scientific experimentation. That's all well and good, but suppose the parallel universe isn't just a dark, twisted, ashen version of Hawkins: it's the future, post-apocalyptic version instead. In other words, the government didn't find a portal to another dimension, they found a portal into the future.

The loop continues as follows: the government lets the Demogorgon in through the gateway, the Demogorgon/Mind Flayer proceeds to methodically take over the world, which then becomes the future world, which then is linked to the past again, and so on and so forth, potentially for eternity.

The Demogorgon in all its horrific gloryNetflix

So how did the original Demogorgon originate? It couldn't be from the Upside Down organically if the Upside Down is just the future, so the answer is someone we know and love from Hawkins. Looking at the suspects, it's easy to point out the obvious answer: Will Byers.

The Demogorgon hunted down Will and knew exactly where to find him, but he wasn't killed —unlike Barb. Instead, he was taken but seemingly unharmed. Why would the Demogorgon do this unless to get his past self out of the way to avoid any time travel paradoxes?

In Stranger Things Season 2, Will explains why the Mind Flayer seemingly wants to kill everyone but him. Why? Because Will is the center of its plan, killing him would cause a simplified version of the grandfather paradox: killing Will would erase the opportunity for Will to ever get access to the Mind Flayer and become the Demogorgon.

When Will is possessed by the Mind Flayer in Season 2, he also describes the visions he sees from the monster's perspective as "memories" that aren't his. It's almost as if he's gaining access to his own future memories, and his body doesn't know how to process the.

Will Byers in the Upside DownNetflix

There's just one big issue with this theory: it all rests on one big bootstrap paradox. The only way the future world can end up so desolate is through the Will Byers plan, but the Will Byers plan relies on the Demogorgon.

This is a pretty common flaw in time travel stories. When time loops are involved, events can happen without any origin because they occurred in a non-linear fashion.

The Inverse Analysis — Stranger Things thrives in its simplicity, but a complex time loop riddled with difficult to explain paradoxes could take the show from a creepy nostalgia trip to a mystery box prestige show that could give Lost a run for its money. Considering how Stranger Things has done so far, it may not need a time loop ace up its sleeve, but it's interesting to piece together how one is built-in, just in case.

The Demogorgon, also known as the Monster, was a predatory humanoid creature that entered Hawkins, Indiana in November 1983. The creature originated from the parallel dimension known as the Upside Down. When Eleven, a child test subject from Hawkins National Laboratory with psychokinetic abilities, made transdimensional contact with the creature, a gate between dimensions opened at the lab. The creature then set foot in Hawkins, and began hunting, killing and kidnapping various local townspeople.

The friends and family of Will Byers, one of the Demogorgon's victims, slowly began to uncover the truth about the creature, with the help of the escaped Eleven. The creature was finally defeated in a showdown with Eleven at Hawkins Middle School. Eleven used her abilities to disintegrate the creature, but accidentally transported herself to the Upside Down in the process.

History

Background

A subject with psychic powers labeled Eleven was placed into a sensory deprivation tank as one of Hawkins National Laboratory's experiments; this allowed Eleven to delve into a deeper psychic state. Although she successfully eavesdropped on a Russian spy as instructed, she unwittingly came across the Monster. Eleven's instincts urged her to stay away from it; she panicked, and the experiment was aborted.

The Demogorgon being approached by Eleven.

Dr. Martin Brenner was intrigued by the creature, repeating the experiment on November 6, 1983. This time, Brenner ordered Eleven to make contact. As Eleven psychically approached the Monster, she could see it feeding off an otherworldly egg. With great hesitancy, she made contact. In that exact moment, a gate to the Monster's dimension cracked open in the wall of the tank room, allowing the creature to pass through. Eleven managed to exit the tank and escape the lab amidst the ensuing chaos. An unnamed scientist was not so lucky; the Monster caught him as he tried to operate an elevator.

1983

The Demogorgon appearing before Will Byers on Mirkwood.

The Monster had the ability to travel between dimensions on a whim, creating temporary portals in the fabric of reality. The Monster arrived at Mirkwood, a road near a local forest, where it stalked Will Byers on his way home. The Monster chased Will as he entered his house, forcing Will to run to his garden shed. Will hid in the shed, loading a rifle in self-defense, but the Monster simply appeared behind him, taking him into the Upside Down.

Once in the Upside Down, Will managed to evade the creature for almost a week and began attempting to communicate with his mother. Joyce and Will had some success, with Will manipulating the electricity in his home dimension, although these attempts would sometimes attract the monster. In an early attempt, Joyce saw her house wall become warped and distorted as the Monster started to break through, terrifying her. In a later attempt, the Monster broke clean through, although Joyce managed to outrun it.

Meanwhile, Will's friends Mike, Lucas, and Dustin began investigating Will's disappearance. Mike noted a strange coincidence linking the disappearance with a recent "Dungeons & Dragons" campaign. During the campaign, Will's player character was defeated by the fearsome Demogorgon; hours later, Will had vanished from real life. In addition, Eleven used the game piece representing the character to attempt to illustrate her vision of Will hiding from the creature in the other dimension.

The group began to hypothesize that the Monster may have really existed, and was responsible for Will's disappearance. From this point on, the group began referring to the creature as "the Demogorgon".

Scientists at Hawkins Lab began investigating the dimension, discovering exactly what it contained. One such scientist entered through the Gate, wearing a hazmat suit linked to a chain rope. The scientist was savaged and killed by the Demogorgon almost immediately after entering the dimension. The Demogorgon hunted and killed other people and creatures, being particularly lured by blood. Its victims included Barbara Holland, hunters Dale and Henry, and a wounded deer. After Nancy Wheeler entered the Upside Down through a temporary portal, she observed the Demogorgon as it feasted on the deer. The Demogorgon noticed her, chasing her until she returned through the portal.

Will eventually succumbed to exhaustion, lying in his makeshift fort. The Demogorgon found him, breaking through the fort wall and taking him to the Upside Down library.

Nancy and Jonathan Byers later exploited the Demogorgon's attraction to blood to ambush it. With the aid of Steve, they severely injured the beast, setting it alight - however, it survived and slipped into the Upside Down. The Demogorgon left the Byers house and headed to the library, leaving a trail of blood.

Eleven killed a large number of government agents at Hawkins Middle School, defending herself, along with Mike, Lucas, and Dustin. The Demogorgon was attracted by pools of spilled blood, breaking through the wall. The Demogorgon began a spree of violence, attacking Dr. Brenner as surviving agents opened gunfire.

Eleven destroying the Demogorgon.

For a while, the four kids outran and evaded the creature, hiding in their science teacher's classroom. Eventually, the Demogorgon found them, breaking into the room and attacking them. Eleven confronted the creature, using her powers to blast it backwards across the classroom, causing it to crash into the blackboard, which severly injured it. After wishing farewell to her friends, she used her remaining power and boosted it to the extreme. This caused the monster to be incinerated, making it explode into a flurry of ashes, and sending it's remains back into the The Upside Down. El was also dematerialized and transported into the Upside Down.

Appearance

The Demogorgon was a tall and thin humanoid creature with elongated limbs. Its head appeared to lack facial features until it unfurled the flesh like a flower to reveal "petals" lined with many sharp teeth, and a large open mouth. The Demogorgon's arms and digitigrade legs end in claws; its skin is slimy.

After being set on fire by Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve, the Demogorgon's body was covered in burns.

The physical presence of the Demogorgon is often preceded by the creature's guttural growls and shrieks, alongside all lights in the area rapidly flickering on and off.

Nature

Most knowledge on the Demogorgon is highly speculative - even Dr. Brenner admitted that he and his peers had a limited understanding of the creature. That being said, the behavior of the beast is "predictable" as Brenner remarked, comparing it to a typical predator. Nancy made similar associations: she compared the creature to nocturnal predators such as lions and coyotes. She noted that the solitary nature of the creature was similar to that of a bear.

Nancy also theorized that the Demogorgon was attracted to blood, comparing it to a shark. This ability to detect blood appeared incredibly potent; it could be lured by even small quantities, even when separated by dimension. However, the creature was not exclusively drawn by blood; for example, both Joyce and Will Byers were attacked by the beast despite the absence of blood. It is unknown whether the creature was attracted by other stimuli, though one distinct possibility is sound: when Nancy ventured into the Upside Down, the Demogorgon was unaware of her presence until she made noise. Since sound from the human dimension was faintly audible to human ears in the Upside Down, it is possible the Demogorgon could be attracted by sound. In any event, like many predators, the Demogorgon simply took any opportunity to hunt and acquire prey, and generally preferred solitary or isolated victims.

Sometimes, the Demogorgon, instead of eating its prey, would capture them in an attempt to breed more Demogorgons, as it did to Will.

The Demogorgon was able to travel between dimensions at will, creating temporary portals or wounds in the fabric of reality. How or why the Demogorgon possessed this ability is unclear, though it only became aware of and started traveling to the human dimension after a moment of contact with Eleven. Mr. Clarke, the boys' science teacher, theorized that interdimensional travel would require "a massive amount of energy, more than humans are currently capable of creating"; by this logic, the Demogorgon must have wielded a great deal of energy while dimension-traveling. Nearby lights and electricity would constantly flicker on and off while the Demogorgon did so, which suggests that creating these portals did indeed involve huge volumes of energy.

The Demogorgon was hostile every time it was encountered, immediately pursuing anything which caught its attention. It generally used instinct and brute strength, rather than intelligence, to get through obstacles; the main exception to this being the use of telekinesis to unlock the Byers' front door (an act which was remarkably similar to Eleven's capabilities). The Demogorgon generally hunted in close proximity to Mirkwood. The reasons for this are unclear, though this was potentially motivated by Mirkwood's close proximity to Hawkins Lab and the Gate, as well as the relatively isolated forest in between. The furthest it ever traveled in pursuit of prey was Hawkins Middle School, lured by the large quantities of blood spilled in Eleven's final confrontation with Dr. Brenner and government agents.

Eleven first observed the Demogorgon hunkered over large, yellow eggs feeding off them. It’s not clear whether or not these were the creature’s offspring, or if they were even the same species.

It is unknown when, where, how, or why the Demogorgon was born or created. While it may have hatched from one of the aforementioned eggs, there is currently a lack of evidence to support this theory.

Though the relationship between this particular Demogorgon and the Mind Flayer is somewhat unclear, Dustin believed the Demogorgon was akin to “the Mind Flayer’s foot soldier”.

Powers

• Interdimensional Travel: The Demogorgon was able to move between dimensions. It entered Hawkins repeatedly by creating temporary tears in space-time. The resulting portals resembled necrotic wounds. It used this ability to pull individuals, such as Will Byers and Barbara Holland, into the Upside Down.
• Superhuman Strength: The Demogorgon was a creature with outstanding physical strength. It could break through solid walls and is able to easily overpower and carry a fully grown man.
• Superhuman Durability: With its durable skin and tough body, the Demogorgon could withstand massive amounts of bullets from multiple firearms and several beatings from a baseball bat with nails. However, it was unable to resist Eleven's power of biokinesis, which she uses to dissolve and kill the Demogorgon.
• Telekinesis: The Demogorgon appeared to have had some form of telekinetic power. It unlocked the hatch on the Byers' front door while pursuing Will. It is also possible that it used this power to pull in the deer, and may contribute to its physical strength despite a visible lack of muscle. However, this has not been made entirely clear.
• Blood Detection: The Demogorgon was strongly attracted to blood and could sense even small amounts from different dimensions.
• Regenerative Healing Factor: After being trapped and set on fire, the Demogorgon appeared to have healed most of its injuries after a short period of time.

This individual seems to be considerably more powerful and resilient than other Demogorgon specimens seen in this series.

Victims

Killed

Survivors

• Will Byers
• Dr. Martin Brenner

Appearances

*The Demogorgon appears in a flashback in E Pluribus Unum.

*The Demogorgon appears in a flashback in Vecna's Curse, The Massacre at Hawkins Lab, Papa and The Piggyback.

Video games

Behind the scenes

The Duffer Brothers described the Demogorgon as "an interdimensional being that has more in common with the shark from Jaws than Pennywise from It. When the monster enters our dimension, it’s like a shark breaching the water. Very much like a shark, it drags its prey back into its home, where it feeds."[1]

Many of the scenes with the Demogorgon were done practically, with Mark Steger portraying the Demogorgon in a suit with an animatronic head. CGI was used for scenes that required the Demogorgon to do things a man in a suit couldn't possibly do.

Conception and design

The Duffer Brothers had a lifelong dream to create a monster for the screen.[1]

The artists at Aaron Sims Creative were given the task of designing the look of the Demogorgon, with the description of a "humanoid creature with no face, just a mouth." From the very beginning, the Duffers wanted the creature to be humanoid and grotesque, with the creature designs of H.R. Giger, Clive Barker, Guillermo del Toro, and Masahiro Ito being influential to the Demogorgon’s appearance because of their "strangeness."[1][2]The artists went through several early concepts, some of which were "more monstrous in shape, even more asymmetrical." Ultimately, they were inspired by nature when they came up with the flower petal-like mouth in the first week, a design that really resonated with the Duffers. [3]

Production

Having grown up on genre films before computer graphics, the Duffer Brothers wanted to go back to using practical horror elements and using a person in a suit that could interact with the actors in real-time. "There was something about the effects being so tangible in those films that made them especially terrifying to us when we were kids."[1][4]

Spectral Motion, a makeup and creature effects studio which has worked on productions such as Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth, was given the task of building the Demogorgon. They only had a span of two months to complete the project, leaving almost no room for error.[1]

The process began with a scan of Mark Steger's body, from which a full-size form was created that the body of the Demogorgon was sculpted onto. Animatronics were installed in the head and arms, which had to be operated with remote control.[5] Steger often had to wear metal stilts that elevated him nearly ten inches. Despite the suit's complexity, it only took half an hour to 40 minutes to put on and only weighed approximately 30 pounds.[6]

The Demogorgon's animatronic head in motion.

The animatronic head consisted of 26 motors, and the noise they produced often made hearing directions difficult for Steger.[6] The animatronics were also designed in such a way that the “petals” would move uniquely each time they opened. When the Duffers first saw the Demogorgon's mouth open, they were blown away, saying “It felt organic. Creepy. Real.” For the shots where the creature's mouth was open, Steger's exposed face would be removed digitally and replaced with a mouthpiece that was also created by Spectral Motion.[1][7]

The CGI enhancements and effects were handled by Aaron Sims Creative.[4]

Trivia

The Demogorgon Dungeons & Dragons figure, used by Eleven to symbolize the Monster.

• The Demogorgon received its nickname from Eleven using the Demogorgon game piece from a Dungeons & Dragons set to show that Will was hiding from the creature in her vision of The Upside Down.
  • In D&D lore, Demogorgon is a demon prince with two heads that strive to dominate one another but are unable to do so.
  • In mythology, Demogorgon is a god or demon associated with the underworld, and whose name is taboo.
• The Demogorgon is the first character in Stranger Things to be named after a character from D&D, with the second being the Mind Flayer and the third being Vecna.
• It is currently unknown how exactly the Demogorgon senses blood, as it appears to only have a "mouth" and no other visible orifices that could be used for scent. Similarly, it is unclear how the Demogorgon "heard" sound.
• Though the Demogorgon can use telekinesis, it is only shown exercising this ability twice: when it unlocked the Byers' front door and presumably when it pulled in the deer.
• While the Demogorgon exclusively hunted at night, Nancy saw it in the daytime while looking for Barb. This was done for storytelling purposes.[3]
• The Demogorgon was killed in Mr. Clarke's classroom.
• It was hinted that the falling ash-like spores present in the Upside Down have a possible direct connection to the Demogorgon. [3]
• The Demogorgon's open mouth somewhat resembles a Rafflesia arnoldi, a flower with the odor of decaying flesh, earning it the nickname "corpse flower." Furthermore, its teeth are similar to those of the leatherback sea turtle.
• In the original pilot script, people would bleed from their nose and ears when in contact with the Demogorgon, similar to how Eleven bleeds when using her telekinetic powers.
• In the Dungeons & Dragons game in "The Vanishing of Will Byers", Will uses fireball against the Demogorgon, possibly foreshadowing Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve setting the Demogorgon alight in "The Upside Down".
• The twin toddlers who portray Holly Wheeler, as well as Millie's younger sister Ava, were initially frightened by the practical Demogorgon suit. To calm them down, a crew member told them that it was a benevolent monster from the Disney/Pixar film Monsters, Inc.[1]
• If one looks closely, it can be seen that the shot of the Demogorgon attacking Barb in "The Weirdo on Maple Street" was reused in "The Monster", when the Demogorgon notices Eleven's presence. This was possibly done because of budget limitations or time constraints.
• When asked if the Demogorgon was some kind of plant due to its appearance, Mark Steger responded that it was fair speculation, adding that he feels it's "more mushroom, which is kind of between plant and animal. "[6]
• Joe Keery said in an interview that he was extremely wary of using the bat with nails around the stuntman due to him having limited sight and movement

Gallery

For this subject's gallery, see The Demogorgon/Gallery.

References