Note: This story contains spoilers from “Stranger Things” Season 5, Volume 2.
“Stranger Things” is nearly complete, and the pop culture references aren’t slowing down. Like every season of the Duffer Brothers’ hit show, “Stranger Things” Season 5, Volume 2 is chock-full of nods to movies, TV series, music and more from the 1980s and beyond.
Here are some of the biggest pop culture references from “Stranger Things 5” Volume 2.
More “A Wrinkle in Time”
There’s possibly no single piece of media that would be more helpful to “Stranger Things” fans for Season 5 than Madeleine L’Engle’s young adult sci-fi novel “A Wrinkle in Time.” In the pop culture round-up for “Stranger Things 5” Volume 1, we talked about the book’s importance to this season, particularly as it relates to Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) and Vecna’s mind prison, which they refer to as Camazotz (a direct reference to “A Wrinkle in Time”).
The references kept coming in “Stranger Things 5” Volume 2. With Holly’s classmates now folded into Vecna’s plan, Henry Creel began referencing the book to all of them as a way to gain their trust, saying that he’s gathering them to fight against “The Black Thing” — an entity of pure evil from the novel.
“A Wrinkle in Time” fits right at home in Henry’s mind prison, as the environment is meant to reflect the 1950s/early 1960s (around the time when Creel moved to Hawkins in 1959). The house features a poster of the 1951 Disney animated film “Alice in Wonderland,” and an introduction to the location in the fifth episode is set to the tune of Floyd Cramer’s 1953 song “Heart and Soul.” Though the book “A Wrinkle in Time” didn’t come out until 1962, it’s a closer contemporary to Creel’s fantasy world than the 1980s Hawkins viewers are familiar with.
That’s no shield generator
Since the beginning, “Star Wars” was always one of the big franchises on the “Stranger Things” vision board. All the way back in the first episodes, Jedi like Yoda are used as a comp for Eleven’s telekinetic powers.
In “Stranger Things 5” Volume 2, “Star Wars” references came back in a big way, with Dustin explaining his theory about the Upside Down with an assist from “Return of the Jedi.” After discovering a wall surrounding the Upside Down with an epicenter at Hawkins Lab, Dustin tells Steve, Nancy and Jonathan that he believes the wall to be similar to the shield surrounding the Second Death Star in the final film of the original “Star Wars” trilogy. Dustin then suggested that his crew, like the strike team led by Han Solo, destroy the “generator” powering this shield.
The theory ended up being incorrect, but the comparison led to a fun moment where the group debated the quality of “Return of the Jedi.” As Dustin pointed out to Nancy, it’s appropriate that Steve would consider the third (and easily the most divisive) film of the “Star Wars” trilogy to be the best — children love the Ewoks.
“It’s pronounced ‘Fronken-steen’”
In the first episode of “Stranger Things 5” Volume 2, the Party devises a plan to connect Will with Vecna by resurrecting a Demogorgon as a sort of relay point. In a true bit of (perhaps unintentional) Netflix synergy, their plot directly nods to “Frankenstein,” pumping electricity into the body of a dead Demogorgon.
In-universe, the characters acknowledge this similarity themselves, though nobody quite shouts “It’s alive!” — though an “It’s working!” from Mike is close enough. When they begin the experiment, Mike tells Robin to “Light her up, Frankenstein,” to which Robin responds, “It’s pronounced Fronken-steen” — a reference to the Mel Brooks/Gene Wilder spoof movie “Young Frankenstein.”
A “Titanic” breakup
One of the biggest moments in “Stranger Things 5” Volume 2 involves the breakup of Nancy and Jonathan, who have been a couple since “Stranger Things 2” (and a real-life couple even longer than that). The breakup occurs as the two fear for their life in a melting version of Hawkins Lab in the Upside Down, believing they are about to die in a sea of white goo. With nowhere to run, the two face up to a tough conversation, acknowledging that they no longer want to be together, with Jonathan using an intended engagement ring to propose a breakup — it’s as odd as it sounds.
The “Stranger Things 5” moment clearly resembles an iconic scene from James Cameron’s “Titanic,” where Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack famously dies after giving up a floating door to Kate Winslet’s Rose. Nancy makes a pointed comment about how “sitting spreads our weight out” as they both manage to fit on a table in the room, possibly nodding to the oft-debated question of whether Jack and Rose could both have fit on the door. Though the scenes seem like exact opposites, they do both come off as true professions of love. In “Titanic,” the door represents Jack’s love for Rose as he makes her promise to live a good life; in “Stranger Things,” Jonathan and Nancy’s table-set breakthrough shows that they both love each other enough to finally let go.
“A cannonball in my pocket”
While Nancy and Jonathan are having their “Titanic” confession, Jonathan reveals that he had considered saving their relationship by proposing (oof). In the scene, Jonathan says that the ring has been sitting “like a cannonball in my pocket” before using it to propose a breakup rather than a marriage. The line is a fun (perhaps unintentional) nod to another role Charlie Heaton played: the popular Marvel Comics character Cannonball in the film “New Mutants.” Sadly, none of those X-Men got the “Doomsday” invite.
Raptors in the kitchen, Demos in the laundry
Like “Star Wars,” Spielberg has been a primary reference point in “Stranger Things.” That hasn’t changed in the last season. While the most overt Spielberg reference is probably the “E.T.” shirt worn by one of Holly’s abducted classmates, the biggest is a nod to “Jurassic Park” at the end of the sixth episode.
As Lucas and Robin attempt to help Max wake up from her coma, they are attacked by a group of Demodogs (threats primarily seen in “Stranger Things 2”). They quickly take Max and run, taking shelter in the hospital’s laundry room. As the Demodogs search for Max in the laundry room, the situation quickly begins to evoke the raptors’ hunt for Tim and Lex in Spielberg’s classic “Jurassic Park.” “Stranger Things” riffing on one of the director’s most iconic scenes makes perfect sense for the final season — especially when the Demodogs drew raptor comparisons after their initial appearance in “Stranger Things 2.”
Worlds collide
In “Stranger Things 5” Volume 2, we finally get the full scope of Vecna’s plan: to merge Earth with the parallel reality Dimension X, now known as the Abyss (based on, you guessed it, a D&D term). With the Upside Down serving as a wormhole between the two realities, Vecna plans to literally crash them into each other, with the end result of making the two worlds one.
This is a very comic booky concept, with the idea of worlds colliding appearing in both Marvel and DC comics. Notably, the merging of realities occurs in “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” an event by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez that sought to streamline DC continuity by making a singular primary world known as New Earth. “Crisis” notably released from 1985 to 1986, placing it 1-2 years before the events of “Stranger Things 5.”
The idea of worlds colliding is also at the center of Jonathan Hickman’s Marvel Comics saga, which concluded in the soon-to-be-adapted event book “Secret Wars.” Throughout Hickman’s “New Avengers” series, the Illuminati (comprised of such figures as Iron Man, Mister Fantastic, Black Panther and Namor) fought against a decaying Multiverse, which was smashing parallel worlds together at “Incursion points” where two realities began to intersect. At each Incursion, the Illuminati had a choice: destroy one planet, or let both universes die when they collide. Eventually, Doctor Doom used cosmic power to assemble all the Incursion points into a patchwork planet called Battleworld, which seems to be Vecna’s plan. It’s unclear, however, how he intends to keep both worlds from getting destroyed when they seemingly smash together. I suppose we’ll see in the finale.
Steve and the Beanstalk
In the penultimate episode of “Stranger Things,” the Party assembled for one last plan to stop Vecna from crashing the Abyss into Earth. As they tried to devise the smartest approach, Hopper proposes that flying a helicopter into the Upside Down is the best option short of securing a “magic bean.” Finally, it’s Steve’s turn to make a plan: using the Squawk radio tower as a “beanstalk” they can climb once the Abyss is close enough for them to reach the captured children.
While many of the other “Stranger Things” plans reference pop culture like movies and D&D, Steve takes a page from fairy tales — more specifically, Jack and the Beanstalk. Nobody ever accused him of being the most up-to-date member of the party.
“Stranger Things” Season 5 Volumes 1-2 are now streaming on Netflix. The finale will premiere Dec. 31 at 5 p.m. PT.
