Stranger Things Season 5: What is the Abyss?

'Stranger Things' Season 5: What is the Abyss? Belen Edwards Read Full Bio The following contains spoilers for Stranger Things Season 5, Volume 2. "Everything we have ever assumed about the Upside Down has been dead wrong," Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) says in Stranger Things Season 5, Volume 2. And how right he is. The latest batch of Stranger Things episodes blows the show's world-building wide open, revealing what, exactly the Upside Down is. But that's not all. It also gives us more detail into the mysterious dimension where Henry Creel/Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) has been hanging out, which Dustin coins "the Abyss." You May Also Like So what's the deal with the Abyss, and how is it connected to our world and the Upside Down? Let's break it down. What is the Abyss? In the world of Dungeons & Dragons , the Abyss is "a realm of pure chaos and evil," as science teacher Mr. Clarke (Randy Havens) describes it. That makes it the perfect namesake for the alternate dimension that Henry has made his home. Before the release of Season 5, Stranger Things fans referred to this world as "Dimension X," a name that comes not from any dialogue in the show, but from the released script for the Season 4 finale . Separate from the Upside Down, the Abyss is a yellow-tinged world full of bleak mountains and floating rock formations. It's also the original home to creatures like the Mind Flayer and the Demogorgons. As Holly (Nell Fisher) discovers in Season 5, Volume 2, if you go through one of the rifts in the ground in the Abyss, you'll find yourself falling through the Upside Down. The Upside Down is a wormhole, not an alternate dimension. For Stranger Things ' whole run, our heroes have assumed the Upside Down is an alternate dimension, like the Abyss turns out to be. However, that couldn't be farther from the truth. Instead, using Dr. Brenner's (Matthew Modine) notes from Hawkins Lab in the Upside Down, Dustin realizes that the Upside Down is actually a wormhole connecting our dimension and the Abyss. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . Stranger Things has been hinting at this reveal throughout Season 5. Look no further than its references to A Wrinkle in Time , which features wormhole-like tesseracts. Or how about Mr. Clarke fully teaching a class on Einstein-Rosen Bridges, aka wormholes? Henry, the Mind Flayer, and the Demogorgons have been using the Upside Down as a path to get to our world. And if they're ever gravely wounded in our world or the Upside Down, as Henry was at the end of Season 4, they can always retreat back up into the Abyss. That explains why none of the crawls ever located Henry: He was biding his time up in the sky. How was the Upside Down wormhole created in the first place? Presumably, the Abyss has always existed in parallel with our world, but how did they end up connected? The...

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