By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 18 seconds ago
It’s an exciting time for Stranger Things fans. The series finale is dropping on New Year’s Eve, and we’ll finally discover whether our characters can roll a crit hit and successfully defeat Vecna once and for all.
Understandably, fans have many questions about the finale, including who will die and whether the Mind Flayer is really as dormant as everyone thinks. However, I’m focused on a different question that the show has so far refused to answer: what the heck is so important about November 6, a date that Stranger Things is absolutely obsessed with?
November 6 Is The Day Time Stopped
This mystery all began with the revelation that the Upside Down is frozen in time on November 6, 1983. That’s the same day that Will Byers was abducted, which made fans speculate that there must have been some kind of connection. Eventually, we got a kind of answer: this is the date Eleven opened a gate to the Upside Down by making mental contact with a Demogorgon.
That still leaves a few mechanical questions for Stranger Things fans to unpack, of course. It’s still not exactly clear why time is completely frozen in the Upside Down, but the original mystery seems cleared up. Eleven created a bridge to a world of monsters, and one of them snagged Will that same day.
Mystery solved, right? Nope.
November 6 Is More Than The Day Time Stopped
Not exactly: later, we find out that November 6th, 1959, is also the day that Henry Creel (the future Vecna) was going to make his acting debut in a play directed by Joyce. Fast forward nearly three decades, and on November 6th, 1987, Vecna will try to merge the hellish dimension dubbed “the Abyss” with our own world.
These events (especially the play) seemingly have nothing to do with when Eleven just happened to open a gateway. So, we’re left wondering what the heck is so significant about this particular date. With any luck, the Stranger Things series finale will provide some answers, but it’s oddly fascinating that the show has turned this date into a major mystery that has lasted nearly a decade.
The play Stranger Things: The First Shadow clarifies that this is the date things went catastrophically wrong for Henry Creel. After gaining powers in Dimension X, he kills his mother and sister, injures the girl he loves, and is hauled back to Hawkins Lab by Dr. Brenner. Because of this, some fans think that Henry (now Vecna) is obsessed with this date, returning to it as a kind of traumatic memory.
There Are No Coincidences
Traumatic memory would explain (partially, at least) why Vecna wants to launch his crazy “merge the worlds” plan on November 6th. He might be re-enacting his trauma, or even sharing his pain with everyone on the planet on a morbidly ironic date.
It wouldn’t explain why this just happens to be the same date that Eleven opened the gate to the Upside Down, causing Will Byers to get kidnapped by Vecna. It could all just be a coincidence, but I think Lucas spoke for all of us in Stranger Things Season 5 when he said, “I don’t believe in coincidences… Not anymore.”
It’s a very safe bet that the Stranger Things series finale will provide some answer to why November 6th is so important. Whether that answer will satisfy the fans who have been puzzling over this mystery for years is another question entirely.
The quality of that answer may determine whether the show successfully sticks the landing or becomes the next Game of Thrones: a masterpiece that slowly unraveled until there was nothing really left of the show fans once loved.
