Current Consensus: Why is it Still Prismatic Purple Raining in Hawkins, Indiana? (The Anniversary Effect...we tryna ignore it)
By Julia Wilmot
They didn’t completely lie, per se, but the writers didn’t steer into the full truth, either. In their defense, they were cursed! Or, fired? Maybe controlled? Or…replaced, removed, taken—yeah, these. Just not why or by whom you’d think…They had seen IT coming so before they left, they hid the key to the 32-wheel trailer, so we could all help find them. It’s somewhere here….searches under Lucas’ bed…aha! And–oh? A Montauk license plate? It reads: “How Stranger Things is (and has been) reviving itself in a new body, and how you can help figure out what otherworldly beat Hawkins has got goin’ on.” Signed, “@ strangerwriters (pls bring a candlestick)”. Cool, time to get on the road, then?
Trigger Warnings/Disclosure: Conversations/Material about mind control, fabricated realities, War and Ethnic Cleansing, suicide, mentions of conspiracies such as MKUltra (depatterning, unethical experimentation, conversion therapy), schizophrenia, substance abuse.
So there I was, slack-jawed with two watches on my left wrist (as a failed attempt to ground myself in our current timeline), watching a blonde Joyce Byers standing in front of a picture of a young ‘Eleven’ in black and white. In 1963 Pennsylvania? In a different world? For a moment, I truly believed I was watching an untold version of Stranger Things (2016).
(The Twilight Zone (1959), Season 4, Episode 5, “The Mute”-- Cora & Sally Wheeler, 1963)
In this episode of The Twilight Zone (1959), German clandestine group members in 1953 make a pact to teach their children how to only communicate using telepathy. The only American parents of the group tragically perish in a fire ten years later, in Pennsylvania, leaving behind their young daughter, named Ilse Neilsen, who is unfamiliar with and incapable of speaking aloud but is nonetheless incredibly brilliant, observant, thoughtful, and trained with the ability to stare long enough at a picture of a boat and bring it to life. That is, in her imagination. She’s a girl sheltered from society learning to go outside what she knows, to explore a new unknown, with a new set of parents, inhabiting a previously filled role as the daughter of Mrs. Cora Wheeler and Mr. Harry Wheeler.
(The Twilight Zone (1959), Season 4, Episode 5, “The Mute”-- Ms. Frank and Ilse Neilsen)
This new journey teaches her that just because she was used as the subject to an experiment does not mean she always has to be. She can live a different life, one where she has a little more freedom than she had before. She can go outside, play, and make friends. But, when Ilse goes to school, she’s immediately forced to conform to speaking aloud. Her teacher, Ms. Frank, orchestrates the rest of the class. At home, however, despite this language barrier, Mrs. Cora Wheeler, a lonely mother of a deceased child, and Ilse Nielson, a little girl needing the love and patience Cora can give her, meet halfway and learn to speak each others’ language.
Cora and Ise create a bridge for each other, like in A Wrinkle in Time. This bridge is reminiscent of Joyce Byers and ‘Jane’ Hopper’s long-standing strangely familiar but gentle connection to the very end. She was the first woman that took care of El instead of treating her like an experiment. Joyce was patient and loving and you could tell that for the first time, El felt safe in her embrace.
So between Ilse, El, Sally, and a secret fourth and fifth (Sara Hopper and Will Byers), what chills me most are the unparalleled endings that offer counterpoints to each presented ending. Yes, Sally’s face looks like El’s, but Ilse’s story parallels hers (hold this thought). The Duffer Brothers, creators of Stranger Things, have directly referenced this episode as the inspiration for their beloved 011, El, Eleven, ‘Jane’. And yet, after all these years of unlearning and learning what it means to be loved, to be human, to be herself, she was broken down, voided of personality, and according to the Brothers (who speak in half-truths alllll the time), was always a projection, a representation of “the magic of childhood.” Not only does this imply that as we grow up, the magic that has raised us needs to die, but ‘Jane’s’ ending tells those who resonate with her challenges, progress, and past, that the only way to escape the cycle of abuse is simply to cease existing. Everything she built for herself, the challenges she overcame, amounted to a memory in a matter of minutes, a memory of a life she didn’t get to live, and a memory she would have to (in theory), loop over and over again in a never-ending story. She was reduced to a narrow view of a superhero. ‘Jane’ died multiple times throughout the series: when she was de-patterned, tortured, abused, manipulated, and more, when little by little, as she slowly became the projection of hopes and dreams instead of her own autonomous self, and another time when someone, or something, rewrote her beginning, middle, and end.
There’s an alternate version to Ilse’s story in The Twilight Zone (1959) that predates the episode which was released in 1963: a published version in the form of a 1962 short-story written by Richard Matheson, with the same title, “The Mute.” It was published in an anthology called The Fiend In You, with several other stories by different authors. In the short-story, Ilse’s character was originally a young boy named Paal. On the screen, the Wheelers’ late daughter (in the photograph) named Sally Wheeler is actually David Wheeler in the short-story. Matheson gender swapped the characters for the screenplay, resulting in two different versions of the story existing through two separate media. There are a few nuances that changed throughout the story that are irrelevant, but the important idea is that a gender swapped version of a character can exist in another dimension, almost like a shadow of one another:
Jordan Peele, A BIG TWILIGHT ZONE FAN, consumed by blue-light in the late-night hours, writing the script for Us (2019):
Red: Once upon a time, there was a girl – and the girl had a shadow.
(Us, 2019)
(Eleven + Meatflayer: Stranger Things, Season 5, Chapter 8)
The two were connected, tethered together.
(bonus)
Red: [...] How it must have been, to grow up with the sky. To feel the sun, the wind, the trees.
“Let's exchange the experience…Say if I only could, I’d make a deal with God, and I’d get him to swap our places…” (Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush)
Will and ‘Jane’, two sides of the same coin. Yet, this idea, in a show that often prides on scientific accuracy, defies the laws of physics. How can two sides of the same coin be seen at once? Exist on the same dimension and still be part of the same coin? Maybe a reflection will do it. A mirror.
Somehow, their parallels, the promised ones in season five, fell short. It’s like everyone “liquefied into the hive mind,” became a conformed version of themselves, a shell of who they once were. They all follow some conventional path, which isn’t what they’ve ever done. It’s almost like after Volume One of Three, episode “The Sorcerer,” our beloved writers simply disappeared. The system they had going, crashed. It had already crashed long ago–but this time it became apparent. And before anyone says Netflix greenlit an AI generated script, I’d just like to emphasize one thing:
(byler <3)
"He’s a [source error/Sorcerer] a real-life honest-to-god [source error/Sorcerer]" (Mike to Will, Season 5 Episode 5).
In the episode Sorcerer, a fan noticed a code behind Mike as Will siphons—sources—Vecna’s powers. It reads [F203], and with a quick google search,
F20.3 is the classification code for undifferentiated schizophrenia: “when a person was diagnosed with undifferentiated schizophrenia, it meant they were exhibiting symptoms of the disorder (like hallucinations, delusions, or disorganized speech), but they didn’t meet the full criteria for one of the schizophrenia subtypes (e.g., paranoid, catatonic, or disorganized),” though US is no longer recognized in the DSM-5-TR as of 2013.
There are many potential causes of schizophrenia, and I’d like to emphasize substance abuse—specifically “using mind-altering drugs or marijuana, especially frequently and as a teenager or adult.”
In season four, Jonathan and his “funny-friend” Argyle love to smoke “smelly plants” in the van all day, and that same season Murray offers the children mushroom risotto. Shrooms and Cannabis are state-altering drugs, and there’s been this notion that someone, or something is poisoning the food there in Hawkins. LSD is also heavily used in the Montauk Project conspiracy, and in the events of Project MKUltra. (Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds, Conspiracy Theories: Subset 68 MKUltra for more details)
To drink your water means to flush down the drug faster out of your system. For us, maybe the water = knowledge, and as adaptable as water is, it can also conform. Which is not always a bad thing. Forced conformity, water spilling over—that’s where things don’t feel so great. Like the pipes bursting. So we might have to learn how to use the water to help it, to bend the water, and widen the playing field. Think in a new language, maybe that’s the point. Just like Ilse’s telepathy. Meet halfway, and exceed the bounds of the mind. The official strangerwriters twitter references just that.
Okay, so what was the point of all of that?
To understand what Stranger Things is, how it works, we have to understand what it isn’t entirely: a capitalist distraction. “But what do you mean!” I KNOW! It sounds like I’m making things up, wishful thinking. When Vecna merged worlds, nothing exempted ours except for the fact of fiction. However, if during the series run they’ve been blurring lines between fiction and reality, what’s stopping the writers from simulating the experience for the fans? This year, they sent us all on a hunt to find those keys. These clues we’d find that would lead us to significant concepts and dates were right, just that they were backwards…or meant something adjacent. We kept breaking, reforming, re-patterning our thinking and our theories and—hey. It all shaped out to be a nice circle. Or, a spiral–depends where you’re looking at it from.
Okay, so why would El come back? Why would these characters come back? It’s been a long-time coming (Cooke), and despite the reason simply being because they can…, there’s also this notion that “we’re going back—we’re going back and rewriting history,” as Finn Wolfhard told us in a promotional video for season five. Back to the Future collab, returning to Netflix this past June, Delorean 88MPH (infinityx2), and most importantly, it brings us right back to season 3 when reality fully broke down. So I wonder, are they restoring or rewriting, or both?
On October 31st, 2017, after the release of the second season, Millie Bobby Brown, who plays El in Stranger Things, rapped a banger season one recap on the Tonight Show, where she says “[we’re going] back to Indiana circa 1983” and she’s taking us there. The actress of the girl who represents the “magic of childhood” is taking us back to the past? Back to season one? But when do her words come into play? Ten years after the series that many of us grew up with? As many start significant and defining chapters of their lives (no pressure)? This year, Netflix released an existential “What's Next” video, telling us about their upcoming projects. They captioned: “In 2026, you will be deceived, and you'll like it. You will see old friends in a new light. [...]. This year, you will question everything. What will you discover next?” The main character, infiltrating Netflix TV Shows, filling in for us. Then a fortune teller whose words, “I see a trip to a strange new land,” are repeated twice.
On October 12th of this year, The Twilight Zone (1959) was added on Netflix, one of the foundational influences for Stranger Things. Oh, there’s more. The Netflix show called "The Body" releases November 11th, a day before Stranger Things Season 1 Chapter 4: "The Body" takes place, and the same day Joyce (maybe us, the audience) learns Will (the story we love so dearly) isn't dead. Isn’t 410. Isn’t gone. All these things can seem like wishful thinking, “apophenia,” but when you see enough of them, it spews out of the box of coincidences. Over the course of 10 months, and all I’ve learned by studying this show for 10 years, I can say I’ve heard of crazier things, but I’ve never seen or heard of anything so elaborate in the world of media. And I’m here for it.
Afterall, "insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society" (Art, The Boroughs).
I quickly wrote out a script based on what I (currently) theorize the Duffer Brothers had in mind when coming up with the the idea for Stranger Things circa 2011 (and possibly even earlier, contrary to 2013)---here’s a summary: they started this story in Montauk, New York, which happens to be one of the original titles for Stranger Things, and is referred to as if it is the bible. It’s cited as an anthology series too. Each season of Stranger Things has had many working titles over the years: JERICHO (5), Cedar Lodge (5), Wonder View (2), Laker Ridge (3), Tareco (4), Montauk (1) and more. But from Montauk’s DNA they produced a mutated protein, a dream-like version of the story, imitating the theorized latent content of the unconscious mind to emphasize that history, especially in all issues woven in, has always been told by the victor. It brings light and/or awareness to the brutalities of MKUltra, the secret twin experiments, unethical experimentation throughout many eras, all while exposing tactics of brainwashing as a meta-movement to immerse their audience in a plot-twist they could never see coming. And season 1 is the closest thing we have to the real story. It’s a love letter to outcasts, to those who need strength, and a sock to those who preach the structures and ideologies that continuously fail to capture nuance—a systemic order liquidating the mind and killing it before the body experiences a natural course of life. There’s so much. In my mind, it’s redefining the uninhabitable term ‘humanity’ by paying subtle and overt homage to works to show the intersection of fiction and reality, and how no matter what takes over, there will always be a calling for creative expression. We need empathy, we need passion, we need love, we need to dissect what we’re told, and re-evaluate.
And so when they tell us that the show is over, that there will never be a Stranger Things 6, I can’t help but wonder if it’s because we’re going backwards. They don’t lie–they get you with a technicality.
Now diving into the Stranger Things proposes a possible reason why we recently see actors type-cast, or why twins play one character, or where characters go when they’re off-screen. And the meta-commentary serves it. Once you know, you can’t un-know. So even if Stranger Things is a red herring, it doesn’t mean we have to love it any less. It may lead us astray, feign comfort, allow us a chance to dissect a world that reflects ours—and it may entertain us while doing so. The Upside-Down reflects Hawkins, and Hawkins reflects our world. The truth, though enlightening, can feel like darkness. But how can we know what both feel like without each other? Especially when the light can lie to you and the dark can tell you the truth. In Stranger Things, deaths have been overwritten by the artificial hands controlling the narrative, resulting in a truth that exists in the shadow, curtained by its facade. Like Will’s, Hopper’s, and Max’s. To make it eerily comfortable. Too…comfortable, almost as if you’re disconnected from your senses. More and more you begin to feel, and in the darkness you’ll find the answer that explains it. Their stories have been censored by a big bad evil guy, the AI, as the projection of a rigid structure, exploited, fed by, and simply fed the patriarchy. A system that eats itself.
I keep running back to this idea that Hawkins spits and chews out the Montauk Mike knows, a version of the one in our world, and in this story, Michael Wheeler is hooked up to electrodes, experiencing what many (including myself) believe to be sexual orientation conversion therapy via fabricated reality experimentation…lots to take in. And it deserves proper care—which is why I will release my “Frozen Journey” theory shortly. But this begs us to ponder whether that is why season five is disjointed? The fabricated reality is not only using his memories, it’s altering them. And there’s someone working to make that happen, cutting things out, re-ordering his memory via tapes, amplifying scenarios, memory confabulation, Mandela effect, etc. To make him feel like he’s missing pieces of the puzzle he didn’t even know he had, propelling him into an eternal state of confusion and wonder. Mike’s lost. He’s in a loop. It’s why we’ve been called into question: to find Mike, the fragmented mind of the author perceptible in many different pieces of media. Like Humpty Dumpty we can at least try to put him back together again. For him to remember, for him to escape:
(hall of mirrors, Us, 2019)
And when he escapes, they all do.
(Right:exit signs – note that a lot of ideas are stolen from smaller accounts– and since many people found this immediately after the finale, it’s a community find!)
So we have themes of the stories of victims being altered and handled against their request; queer history erased before it was even told; black history and many others misremembered and untold, and many histories already erased. And if we think about how all that exists today, there must be meta-commentary at play? Palestinian history, Congolese history—people–children, actively erased en masse. What we’re shown on screen parallels what we know: common patterns in this evil, deriving or stating our world history. And noticing lies in the structures we deem as “reality” will allow us to bring something into the piece, observe it, to get to the root cause, and see how it applies in our world. Like shadowing a surgeon during heart surgery. It’s asking us ‘is it right?’ ‘Do we let it keep happening?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Or why not?’ and, ‘How can we help?’ It’s a cycle, a vicious cycle. And how can we make door three more accessible? More possible, and less of a figment of our collective imagination? We can use our paddles to simply learn. Find the passion, restore the heart of humanity, restore the pieces that were missing. Now, before it’s too late and they’re lost forever. Write stories, play, sing, make, songs, sway to the music, draw pictures, document, make short films–bring people together, no matter how far–the art of passion, the art of freedom, the art of liberation–it’ll be in the words, the melody, the strokes. They’ll come to life.
It’s not solely about applying everything back to reality, about bringing it to life in our world, it’s about seeing what’s familiar in the fictitious and recognizing the patterns, and what they can tell us. It’s like a forensic pathocinematographer entering the story that represents our world to figure out why it died, and work its way backwards. Art reminds people that even if you don’t have all the tools, the pieces, you can make your own. However big, however small, it’s going right on that puzzle. Almost a kind “try your best not to overthink your art.” Which then branches this franchise, resulting in the creation and nutrition of stories. Instead of being stuck in the same loop of oppression, over and over and over again; the same loop of retellings, and remakes–for artists, after the doom of AI, it’s hope for a Brand New Day.
And so, if we deduce that the pieces of Montauk are scattered throughout Stranger Things, this black hole, or a fifth dimension like the twilight zone, that is the amalgamation of everything to ever exist and never exist at once, to prove that a binary, a convention, a stereotype could never explain the complexity of the mind. We can start noticing the rigidity of the structures we feel but may not assume are for cells. Corporeal cells and not the mind. This incarceration, conformity, is at the heart of many issues that stem from patriarchal surveillance, it imbues in the young, and how the world has become ignorant yet not immune to it. Then there’s Montauk, which is the shadow of Stranger Things. But what if, similar to Us (2019), the shadow regains agency. The shadow, the thing not even the light can show, yet it causes. That puts forth the success of Stranger Things; the facade wins in our world. But a good thesis always presents antitheses. So if Stranger Things was the representation of the antithesis, what is the latter? What exists on the other side?
Love. Passion. Curiosity. Throwaway lines, possibilities, how they’re made, where they come from, how we make sense of the world, the love of the game. Helping each other to ask questions. Question our surroundings. And eventually, it’ll hit you: your why. If a system survives, it must be eating well. If a pattern shows up again, there must be a reason. The irony that a media platform taking action that sounds too progressive is what deters people from ever thinking they would preach it. But the demand for stories increases, and after new ways of thinking or the return of a beloved show breaks the internet, how many more minds will pursue their passions? So, like everything, we have to realize there’s always a double motive. An exchange.
Over the last ten months, the fandom “exchanged the experience,” as Kate Bush foretold, with the writers. Fanfictions over 400k words, justified endings, drawings, video essays, overlapping and fresh theories ran rampant–everything went crazy. By showing people an altered version of the real show, tending in an out-of-touch direction, comparatively, it re-ignited love for story-building, for justice, for people, the moment we sensed something missing and uncared for.
So, “let’s go back to Indiana circa 1983,” just one more proof, since this never-ending story never did end. Stranger Things 5 chapter 8 is denoted by 508 in a scriptbook.
If Stranger Things takes place in a fabricated reality connected to a real brain, it might be interesting to design the series using both biological processes and HTTP resource codes: interestingly, code 508 is called ‘Loop Detected.’ Hm. If something loops, it’s supposedly never-ending, 89898 (number of episodes throughout the series). There were theories circulating for months of a conformed ending, entrapment in Camazotz, a loop. It’s a palindrome, read the same forwards and backwards: in the heptapod language in Arrival, they know the beginning, the middle, and the end before writing. The Duffer Brothers, pulling reference from the film, have had the backbone of the story long before they started filming season one, contrary to what was stated in Stranger Things: One Last Ad-venture doc from earlier this year. Them and their crew anticipated it all. Funny enough, there is no 509 HTTP resource code. It jumps right to 510. So if I had to guess? There is no episode 9, either. But there is an entirely different side of the series. How far it extends, I don’t know. My guess is 18 more chapters across two more seasons starting in Montauk. And the anthology might follow restored timelines. They’ve been filming this, they’ve been preparing. “No scenes from previous seasons have ever been cut or re-edited. And they never will be,” because they’ve simply been repurposed, removed, placed elsewhere. Or, taken from elsewhere. Finn Wolfhard even said during a panel that there was a cut scene in “The Body…”
Hey, Finn? Patterned gaps between seasons (and the cover-ups), filming under secret titles like “cedar lodge,” suspiciously high 480 million dollar season budget with coverage footage of 650+ hours for a just over ten-hour season… where did the money go?
I think the footage in Montauk’s telling of the story will also cross-over with the footage from the Stranger Things, but re-contextualized through editing. It’s not all new, but it’s not all old. That’s why I’m thinking it’ll have 60 episodes to qualify for the newest category (as of January 8th, 2026) at the Emmys: Legacy Award (min. Req = 60 episodes, most impactful series on pop culture). Conveniently, I noticed it is 7:18(PM/AM) in the Upside-Down in the finale… and seeing as they have 42 right now, averaging 8-9 episodes per season…18 would top it up real nice. There’s truth to season 6-7 and Duffers, if you’re listening–
you lie (½)…
And so it has been up to us to use other media, interviews, projects, knowledge, to bridge Stranger Things and Montauk, to pull Montauk outside of Stranger Things’ shadow. To allow them to co-exist. As dimensions of one another. It’s up to us to bring back the magic of childhood, to deflect the media propaganda and the every-day-life propaganda that it died. Because so long as there are stories, there’s magic, and that magic helps people get through their stories.
So if ‘Jane’ Hopper represents the “magic of childhood,” then why did she die? “Forced conformity, that’s what’s killing the kids,” just as Eddie Munson says. Just as X-Men 134 predicts the cycle. Every single character became a shell of themselves in the fifth season, arguably not Dustin Henderson, our time traveller. This skewed idea of what it means to age is what sent these characters on a frozen journey of their own, personhood in stasis. The curiosity, the light, the wonder, the brilliance, the depth—the world tricks us into believing we have to live faster, that we have no time to ponder or to feed the things that actually give us life, that we have to travel to the future before we even get there. But if this is true, then we get there with not even a morsel left of our soul. And if we’re always living in the future, the past must be the now, and so is the present. It’s all relative, metaphorically speaking. Because Stranger Things is a reflection of the state of our world, the structures that surround us, the way marginalized people are treated, of course the magic of childhood had to die, when you look at it through this lens. The weight of all the magic we’ve lost was put on a sixteen-year old girl who spent her whole life fighting monsters, demons. And then we banished it. What about her? Where’s her story? I do not believe the writers who propose all these contradictions would have instilled no deeper meaning, would fail their characters, audience, and not have it be the craziest meta–commentary to this date. That feeling that something is wrong comes from the writers simulating a story told without heart, empathy, a story focused on pattern and output, not the journey. That’s AI, that’s how much of history has been told and come about too.
Like Lucas Sinclair, I can’t say I believe in coincidences anymore. He told us, I mean, he looked right at us as he said it (so what if the subject has become aware that they are in a simulation….). I believe that there’s something knocking the audience into a path, pulling us apart and together at every turn, and it’s the magical lens we choose to see that dictates how we understand it. Edward Hall in season 1 episode 9 of the Twilight Zone (1959) says, "when I was a kid, I used to dream in sequence: remember the adventure serials they used to have in the movie theatres? It was like that. Every dream was a chapter. I'd always remember, because when I woke up, l'd write down what happened. It's crazy huh?" and naturally, Stranger Things is told using Chapters, as well as a number of other Netflix originals. Stranger Things takes “it was all a dream” convention far beyond what anyone might ever believe. Something alarming is knocking at the door:
November 6th is approaching, Stranger Things Day, with November 26th (ST5.v1 release date) following shortly after. The anniversary effect is reeling people back in. For some reason, those who’ve never interacted with Stranger Things are getting more “conformitygate” videos on their timelines. “Get more conformitygate-pilled right now, RIGHT NOW!!” curated exceptionally for the time. This is a worldwide spectacle…and we’re all going crazy together.
Stranger Things is the kind of show that says everything, you just have to let it speak to you. There’s no such thing as silence in this show, or a stale plotline. There’s intention, you just have to tune to the frequency and listen to it. Use it. Those hidden clues in the NYT crosswords, WSQK radio station, promo vids. When the silence gets rough, well hey. Fill it with your own song. “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac plays in the finale, probably because someone thinks they’ve won the majority vote, the election. He gave us a blue pill and a red pill, we blindly took both to make a special purple pill. Maybe, even the rain will be purple in this world!
(Left: Stranger Things, Season 5, Chapter 8 – Right: ESOTSM)
In this world, we think about meeting our loved ones in another lifetime, in a different way, in a different world, across-dimensions in different stories and circumstances, throughout different eras' of history. It’s beautiful how we always return to our own little definitions of magic to find meaning. Maybe Michael Joseph Wheeler and Will Byers will meet again someday, alive, and well, in Montauk, or in Queens. Swinging from buildings, with a new supernatural mystery: who is Spider-Man? Maybe Joyce gets to be ‘Jane’s’ mom, again this time around, and Jane gets to be free. She gets to be with her. Memory confabulation is greatly at play in Stranger Things, and even if Ilse parallels Jane, and El parallels Sally, or vice versa, the story is still hidden. But I believe we’re almost there, almost out of Mirkwood, somehow, somewhere, someway.
The Duffer Brothers and their crew created a near antidote to AI, by helping us see the potential in throwaway lines, that with the rise of it, every writer, every actor, every cinematographer, every stylist, has offered their mind, their life, and expertise to combatting. This choir offers solace and encourages filmmakers to approach every challenge with curiosity, swerve the obvious direction only with meaning and purpose, and to remember that film is for the people. Writing is for the people. Drawing is for the people. Music is for the people. To remember to stay true to ourselves. It reminds us why we should want to dissect and contribute to this massive puzzle of humanity, with pieces shoved under the couch, missing forever, out the window, in the cat’s bed, in strange places, we have to try. Every mind fills this puzzle, but if we turn every mind into the same piece, less of the story gets told, as Quinta Brunson taught me. Stories are for everyone, everyone has a story. Even if characters seemingly crowd the narrative in the show, the odds of everyone being nearly the ‘storyteller’ offloading his arcs is high, like in Polar Express where Tom Hanks plays every character. For that I say Michael’s story will be told with him in control. And I know that ‘Jane’ Hopper’s story doesn’t end on a loop, either. And seeing her face in The Twilight Zone back in the year 1963 tells me that she’ll be back again, to have her story told by her. Not something unfamiliar, not by a boy, not by anyone other than ‘Jane’ or her real name. Most of these characters will meet each other again, on some sunny day, in another world, falling in love all over again, but first…the real world needs THE TRAILER to get to this brand new day…
Comments