Stranger Things Fans Are Still Trying to Figure Out a Season 1 Plot Hole

Netflix’s Stranger Things captured imaginations from its very first season, blending ’80s nostalgia with supernatural horror and compelling character drama. Years later, with the final season approaching, the show’s dense lore and complex timeline continue to fuel intense fan discussion and debate. While later seasons expanded the Stranger Things mythology significantly, some viewers find themselves returning to Season 1, scrutinizing early events through the lens of newer revelations. One particular point of contention, reignited recently on Reddit, centers on a potential plot hole involving the mechanics of the Upside Down and one of Stranger Things’ most iconic sequences: Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) communicating with her missing son Will (Noah Schnapp) via Christmas lights and a hand-painted alphabet wall.

The perceived plot hole refers to one of the biggest revelations of Stranger Things Season 4, which established a crucial rule about the shadowy alternate dimension mirroring Hawkins. In the episode “Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab,” Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) discovers that the Upside Down is essentially a snapshot, frozen in time on the exact date Will Byers disappeared: November 6, 1983. This revelation came when Nancy, searching her Upside Down bedroom for weapons she acquired later, found only older belongings and a diary whose last entry was dated November 6th. 

Nancy’s investigation confirmed that the version of Hawkins replicated in the Upside Down reflects the town precisely as it was the moment Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) made contact with the Demogorgon and tore open the initial Mothergate. However, dedicated fans quickly pointed out a timing conflict with Season 1’s events. Will vanished on November 6th, but Joyce didn’t create her famous alphabet communication wall until November 9th, three days later. This discrepancy sparked the core question echoing in fan communities: If the Upside Down is stuck on November 6th, how could Will see and use the alphabet wall that Joyce painted after that date?

The Upside Down Snapshot Paradox: How Did Will See the Letters?

This question formed the basis of a recent Reddit discussion initiated by user ContributionOwn6977, who asked, “Joyce wrote the alphabet on the wall, but that was days after the Upside Down took a snapshot… how did the letters show up if the dates aren’t lined up cause didn’t it freeze in time so how could Will see the letters…?”

The user specifically noted that Will’s apparent interaction with the later-added letters seems impossible within the established rules. The confusion is understandable, as the visual sequence in Season 1 strongly implies Will is directly interacting with the physical lights corresponding to the letters Joyce painted.

However, other fans in the thread quickly offered explanations rooted in how cross-dimensional interaction works in Stranger Things. User lastseason pointed out the mechanism demonstrated later with a Lite-Brite, explaining, “Each letter on the wall had a light bulb above it, so on Will’s side in the UD, much like the older teens, each bulb had a corresponding glimmer cluster.” This aligns with later visual cues confirming that light sources in the prime dimension manifest as corresponding energy particles or “auras” in the Upside Down.

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Crucially, sound also travels between the dimensions, at least near gates or points of contact. As user Sanjay-The_Almighty stated, “Will used the light particles thingy to manipulate the bulbs above each letter of the alphabet.” User TelephoneCertain5344 added, “Joyce gave a good explanation of where she was painting each letter, and he figured it out.” Will wouldn’t have seen the actual paint or the physical bulbs, but rather the energy signatures they created, which he could manipulate. Combined with hearing his mother explain her setup (“R is… R-U-N,” she prompts, guiding him), Will could logically deduce the sequence and spell out messages. Finally, user canatlas99 theorized that Will might have even drawn his own guide in the Upside Down dirt to keep track.

Retcon or Rule? The Evolving Rules of Stranger Things

While the “light particles” explanation resolves the direct contradiction, some fans, like Reddit user tolgren, suggest the core issue might stem from evolving lore, explaining, “They probably didn’t decide on the snapshot idea until after Season 1.” It’s plausible the writers hadn’t fully codified the Upside Down’s temporal mechanics early on, leading to interpretations of Season 1 events that feel inconsistent with later rules. The explicit confirmation of the November 6th freeze didn’t arrive until Season 4, eight years after the alphabet wall sequence aired. This delay could result in retcons, where later rules inadvertently create apparent plot holes in earlier seasons. If the writers hadn’t intended the snapshot rule in Season 1, Will interacting more directly with the wall would have seemed less problematic then.

However, the show does offer consistency in its communication methods. The use of lights creating energy patterns is revisited in Season 4 when the Hawkins group uses Holly Wheeler’s Lite-Brite to communicate with the older teens trapped in the Upside Down. They manipulate the energy patterns corresponding to the Lite-Brite pegs, even though the device itself doesn’t exist in the Upside Down. This reinforces the idea that the underlying mechanism for Will’s communication in Season 1 was intended to work via these energy transfers, not via the impossible sight of the physical wall. 

The Season 4 reveal of Vecna’s (Jamie Campbell Bower) history and his banishment to a primordial Dimension X in 1979, which was later shaped into the Hawkins snapshot when Eleven opened the 1983 gate, adds complexity but doesn’t fundamentally break canon. Still, while the established mechanics of light and sound transfer offer a logical pathway for Will’s communication that bypasses the frozen timeline paradox, the delayed reveal of the “snapshot” rule understandably leaves some fans questioning the original sequence.

What are your thoughts on the Upside Down timeline and the alphabet wall? Share your theories in the comments!