Has the Upside Down in Stranger Things always been there? Origins discussed

How to describe the Upside Down from Stranger Things? Imagine you are cleaning your attic (relax, you only have to imagine) and you see a moldy hole in a wall, and when you try to clean it, you fall right through it into another dimension. It is a place so gross and moldy that it looks like a cat's fever dream. That's the Upside Down.

If you have watched Stranger Things, then at one point you must have asked yourself questions like "Who created this place? And who hurt them?" Nobody in their right mind would want to live in a dark, depressed place with no Wi-Fi. Just look at Vecna—the place got him so messed up that he is ready to throw punches at 13-year-olds.

Was that place always there, or did Papa and his mad scientist friends create this? Some blame Eleven for this monstrosity, but no one knows for sure. Until now. Today, the mystery of Stranger Things' strange underworld will be solved.

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Stranger Things' Upside Down: The Origins

First things first, nobody built the strange monstrosity brick by brick. No one was hurt enough or rich enough to create a place that makes hell look like a five-star cabin in Aspen. According to Stranger Things creators, the Duffer Brothers, the Upside Down is an alternate dimension. In simple words, it's Earth's evil twin who was always kept hidden because he was a psychopath.

Before Will was sucked into the dimension and the people of Hawkins realized how badly in danger they were, the Upside Down was always there. It lived among the shadows like a mirror image of Earth, but after an apocalypse. Everything there looks like Earth, but dead or corrupted.

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The Upside Down and the Mad Scientists

Newton's first law of motion rightly states that an object will continue to stay in motion or rest until unbalanced by an external force. Similarly, the Upside Down was just sitting, minding its own business, until Eleven decided to poke.

In Hawkins National Laboratory, Dr. Brenner, aka Papa, and his group of eccentric scientists were 'helping their government' by conducting harrowing experiments on little children. Or, as people in the ’80s used to call it, just another Tuesday. They were successful in creating a powerful weapon in the shape of a 5-year-old: Eleven.

During the Cold War, she was being trained to spy on Russian agents through telekinesis, but she accidentally created a portal. She accidentally contacted a Demogorgon and made him the Neil Armstrong of his species. He not only accepted a 5-year-old's invitation but also went through with it and came for a visit. It's a classic case of butt dial gone wrong.

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Welcome Demogorgons

Since the start of Stranger Things, fans have been watching creatures that look like a cross between a dog and a Venus flytrap wreak havoc all over Hawkins. But, right until Stranger Things Season 4, they had no idea that the psychic girl trying to save the world is the reason the creatures are there in the first place.

Eleven's contact with the Demogorgons didn't just bring them into this world but opened many portals between the two worlds. And rather than closing the portal and saving everyone, the genius scientists decided to keep it open and study it. It resulted in the Demogorgons abducting Will, killing Barb (never forget), ripping open Bob, and traumatizing everyone else in Hawkins.

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Hello Vecna

After Stranger Things Season 4 was released, fans got more information about the Upside Down. And frankly, no one saw it coming. Fans learned that Eleven wasn't the only child traumatized by Papa; this was a passion that he had been following for a long time. Brenner had been a papa to 10 more kids, and Eleven was just the 'eleventh' kid in the experiment.

Papa started the experiment with a disturbed young boy with telekinetic powers named Henry Creel. After getting caught for murdering his whole family, he became Patient 001 at Hawkins Lab. One day, after a telekinetic showdown with little Eleven, he got banished into an unknown dimension by her.

But as it is said, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Henry, too, thrived in that void and became Vecna. The dimension was a haunting wasteland, and Henry became its architect and made it what everyone knows today as the Upside Down. He shaped it according to his twisted mind, creating the Mind Flayer and controlling the Demogorgons.

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Did Eleven create the Upside Down in Stranger Things?

The short answer is no. The Upside Down always existed. She did not create the Upside Down in Stranger Things, but she did punch a hole through to it, and Vecna exploited the access. He, too, didn't build the dimension but simply remodeled it according to his taste.

One interesting thing about the Upside Down is that time is stuck on November 6, 1983—the exact day when Will Byers disappeared. This became known when Nancy, Steve, and the gang went exploring there and found everything as it was on that day. It means that when the gate opened, Vecna locked that time.

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Can the Upside Down be destroyed?

Well, so far, fans have understood that Vecna is the key to destroying the Upside Down. If you kill the architect-cum-main power source, it may turn into its original wasteland state or collapse entirely. But nothing is known for sure.

Destroying the Upside Down is important because Vecna believes that the original world is weak and impure, and merging the two worlds will give him ultimate power over everything. So, the kids need to be quick about whatever they plan to do.

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So, to answer the question of who created the Upside Down from Stranger Things—it is a pre-existing parallel dimension that Eleven accessed by opening a gate. It has always been there, and its true origins and nature remain deliberately ambiguous, to possibly be explored in the last season.

All fans know is that the '80s were a weird time. On one hand, when Elliott was being greeted by friendly aliens like E.T., Mike and his gang were fighting for their lives against Vecna and his Demogorgons. Talk about stranger danger.