Skyler Orton
If you’ve opened any form of social media for the past week I’m sure you’ve been hit by the wildly popular Stranger Things theory dubbed “conformity gate” by fans. The theory gained a large group of both followers and detractors ever since the controversial finale aired but it was proven false when on January 7th no new episode appeared. Here’s what happened…and obviously, spoiler warning for Stranger Things 5.
The Theory
After Stranger Things quickly wrapped up its final battle and rushed along to an epilogue, many viewers were left let down. “How could Vecna be defeated so quickly?” thousands asked online, finding episode eight in its current form unsatisfying. This led to the creation of a fairly basic theory. The Hawkins crew lost their final fight and the entire epilogue was secretly a vision Mike was having while being controlled by Vecna. After the initial theory was created, several fans jumped on finding new “evidence” towards this theory sprinkled throughout the episode.
A major plot point in season five was slightly off-color objects being a guide through Vecna’s mindscape. Naturally in the finale fans started to argue that certain objects were slightly off in this same way. The theories expanded wildly from here ranging from “there’s too many people with glasses at the graduation scene” and “Vecna as Mr. Whatsit wore glasses” to “actually there’s VHS tapes that spell out Vecna lives in Morse code.”
The date January 7th came from a D20 that landed on 7 in the final game (in fact an Easter egg reference to Will’s roll in season one) and fans continuously believed they saw the date everywhere.
These theories got genuinely insane and were used to fill in any plot holes fans didn’t accept. For example, many Robin fans were annoyed that her girlfriend Vickie was absent from the finale and decided that, as Vecna never saw Vickie, she wasn’t in the vision. This is silly as obviously he also would not have seen several other characters who did appear in the epilogue such as classmates, teachers, and other minor characters.
My personal favorite one was a theory surrounding Steve’s job coaching youth baseball. Many fans stuck to the idea that this didn’t make sense as Steve is only ever shown playing basketball in the show (season two against Billy). They then use this as evidence for the fake episode theory as Vecna saw Steve holding a baseball bat through the Demogorgons. If you think about it for a bit the logic here is absurd as there are several explanations for why Steve would coach baseball. For one it’s a spring sport and the finale takes place in the season. For another Steve could have picked up another sport offscreen. Either way the fact that this was serious evidence really shows how desperate people were.
The Stranger Things marketing team did little to assuage these rumors. For the most part the cast and crew were tight lipped about the existence and when the Duffer brothers eventually attempted to confirm it was wrong the biggest believers wrote it off as lying to cover their tracks. They even made it worse by promo spots on late night talk shows including the same imagery fans were misled by. This only helped to contribute to the even bigger problem with this theory that being…
The Hoax
It only took a matter of days before fans who didn’t believe created their own evidence after the incredible traction “conformity gate” videos got online. For example, going down the rabbit hole I found screenshots of supposedly taken down instagram posts confirming the episodes and other clearly faked evidence. Existing show footage and merchandise was mislabeled in a way that at best was misguided and at worst downright malicious.
One of the more infamous pieces was a WSQK collectible flashlight that states Vecna lives under a UV light. While initially convincing in how it was portrayed, it soon became clear that these collectibles were released far before the finale was released and likely wasn’t a tease for anything new episode related. Another one that got consistently used was a clip of a Mr Clarke centric promo video in which a clock apparently read 1:07. It did not.
Falsified quotes from executives were common as well. For example executive producer Shawn Levy was quoted as saying the finale scripts were on red paper while episode eight scripts were clearly pictured on white paper. Not only does this make no sense (who would print a document that needs to be read clearly on red paper) but also has no source.
The biggest part of the hoax was a website (the url of which I will not share as it now gives a malware risk warning) that hosted a countdown clock ticking down to December 7th. This was picked up and shared by several of the most active conspiracy theorists until the site was hilariously revealed to be fake. After hitting zero the owner of the site changed it to say “just because it was posted on TikTok doesn’t mean it’s real”. This part of the hoax is definitely less problematic than the faked cast and crew content but definitely contributed to the mass spread of the rumor.
How does this happen?
Shockingly this type of theory is not uncommon in fandom culture if a show doesn’t live up to intense fan standards. This most often happens in shipping culture, leading fans to have expectations that will never happen onscreen. That’s exactly what happened to Stranger Things 5 and the conformity gate conspiracy started with a passionate group of Will and Mike shippers. After season 5 proved that theory wrong they came up with a new theory to find a way to justify their headcanon. From there the theory spread first into the dedicated fandom and then the general public and media caught on.
Funnily enough almost the exact same thing happened to BBC’s Sherlock back in 2017 after a season that was both disappointing to shippers and general audiences. Fans became convinced that the finale was a dream and that a secret final episode would air instead of the new show that replaced Sherlock’s spot on the schedule. This similarly started with disappointed shippers and spread to the wider fanbase, albeit it was never as wild as this last week has been for Stranger Things.
Were people that crazy?
Honestly if the ending of Stranger Things season 5 was slightly less concrete I can see how this theory would be compelling. Stranger Things takes a lot of its inspiration from classic conspiracy theories especially in the early seasons so it doesn’t seem implausible that the show’s creators could pull something like this. However, on a metatextual level this was always impossible.
The finale being shown in theaters, and the 45 minute epilogue were the biggest signs that this was never in the cards. There are probably legal problems with selling tickets for the final episode of Stranger Things and then releasing an episode the next week. I can see quite a few customers being unhappy. Plus the Duffer brothers made certain to tie off all the main characters storylines and spent a lot of time on it which leads me to…
Would this have been a better ending?
I believe that this theory would have been an infinitely worse conclusion to the show than what the creators wrote. The finale epilogue was generally well received and spending so much time on it and then dropping it as “all a dream” would have made the lengthy screentime a waste. Not only that but I don’t see any way that a new episode or even episodes could have come to a better ending. It also would have confused the majority of the audience as, while this was widespread across social media, it definitely didn’t reach everyone.
Additionally, none of the evidence was concrete enough for a full fakeout to be satisfying. If the clues were slightly more obvious or maybe had hints that led to an ARG of some sorts that had the potential to be an incredibly interesting twist. While a completely different genre, Dropout’s Game Changer did that this year and it was incredibly satisfying. However, as the show is now, a secret ending never would have worked.
What’s next
Broader than just these conspiracy theories, I am concerned about what is next for Stranger Things fans because fandom can get ugly fast. The Game of Thrones fandom famously sent death threats to both the showrunners and the actors after the season eight ending. This is even more prevalent in shows with younger fanbases and a huge fan theory culture.
The most infamous example was when Voltron: Legendary Defender fans sent death threats to almost the entire cast and crew (as well as several to fans) and also harassed them online over several years. I don’t know if the Stranger Things fandom will ever get to that level but I did see several joking ones in comment sections online during the conspiracy so anything is on the table. Not necessarily saying this will happen but regardless I think it wont hurt to remind any fans to stay kind online especially to the cast and crew.
No matter what, the discourse will continue as Stranger Things will return in an animated spinoff this year and later as a live action spinoff with an entirely unrelated cast.
