‘It’s crazy if there’s nothing’

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Stranger Things series finale “The Rightside Up.”

One of the biggest questions discussed online among the Stranger Things fandom in recent weeks involves the lack of demogorgons (or demo-anything) in the big series finale battle in the Abyss. If this dark alternate dimension is truly where all the creatures originated from, why weren’t there legions of monsters attacking Team Hawkins alongside the Mind Flayer?

Series co-creator Matt Duffer already shared their reasoning in an interview with The Wrap: “Mainly it’s just that Vecna [Jamie Campbell Bower] was not expecting this sneak attack on his home turf…. They’re there somewhere. We obviously discussed having a demo battle on top of the Mind Flayer battle, but it felt more right to us that why does he need the demos when the Mind Flayer is this giant thing and can attack them?”

One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5, the new documentary that goes behind the scenes of the final season, shows clips of that debate that played out in the writers’ room.

“There have to be some monsters in the Abyss,” Paul Dichter, one of the writers commented in the footage, to which Matt Duffer responds, “I agree.” Dichter continued, “There has to be [a] demogorgon, bat, dog, something. It’s crazy if there’s nothing there, I think.”

Matt pointed to the MAC-Z battle in episode 4, which featured multiple demogorgons attacking the military and hunting down the kids, suggesting a concern of repeating what they already did earlier in the season. “I guess I maybe feel…wonder about demo fatigue,” Kate Trefry, another writer, said.

The writers ultimately decided on one battle between the Hawkins gang and a godzilla-sized Mind Flayer, created out of Vecna’s “Pain Tree” headquarters in the Abyss. Most of the kids fight the creature outside, while Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) enters the ribcage to fight her “brother” head on.

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Martina Radwan, the director of the documentary, commented on the demo writers’ room debate in an earlier interview with Variety.

“I love that they were so sure about the demogorgons in the final Abyss — except Ross was like, ‘Mmm, maybe there’s some fatigue, demogorgon fatigue.’ And Kate agreed,” Radwan said. “And you’re like, ‘Oh, OK — so this is not the last conversation. They disagree, and they will resolve it on some point.’ We, in the doc, left it open because at the time the doc comes out, everybody knows there are no demos in the Pain Tree.”

All episodes of Stranger Things and the One Last Adventure documentary are now available to stream on Netflix.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly