What to Know
The final season of Stranger Things has a lot of themes that have fans itching for clues between each installment. Can you really blame them? Netflix chose to edge the millions of fans with two batches of episodes spaced out, followed by the standalone release of the finale a week after the second batch of Season 5 episodes. What else do fans have to do besides link the show to other important pieces of fiction? In this case, it’s about connecting Stranger Things to The Wizard of Oz.
A great and powerful all-knowing being who also has some humanity left in him? Check, well sort of. I mean, Vecna is still scarred by his memories as Henry. A mysterious world that kids need to find their way home from? Um, double check with the Upside Down and the other plane above that. There are other similarities outlined in one user’s TikTok, some of which are hard to ignore.
The fan theory connecting Stranger Things to The Wizard of Oz makes sense in some ways.
According to the theory on TikTok, the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz may have a connection to Stranger Things because of all of the rainbows at the kids’ ward of Hawkins Lab, as shown in Eleven and Henry’s flashbacks. The theory also points to the idea of someone being “taken on an adventure,” as in Dorothy’s story.
With the final season of Stranger Things, we have Holly Wheeler and Max in a strange land outside of Hawkins and the Upside Down. The theory also points to a “dark wizard” who isn’t who he says he is. In The Wizard of Oz, that’s the Great and Powerful Oz, of course. In Stranger Things, it’s Henry, who turns out to also be Vecna.
In the end of The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy finds a way home. In Stranger Things, in a flashback anyway, we see Eleven learn how to send Henry “home” when she traps him in the Upside Down version of his home for a while. There’s even a Stranger Things version of Dorothy’s “there’s no place like home mantra,” thanks to Will finding comfort in his fort in the woods during Season 1.
What does the theory mean for the end of the series as a whole? Honestly, that’s not too clear at this point. But hey, The Wizard of Oz has a happy ending, if not a slightly unsatisfying one that places the entire story in Dorothy’s dream. Will the same be said for one of the main characters in the show?
Another fan compared Stranger Things to Alice in Wonderland.
In the comments under the TikTok that compared Stranger Things to the iconic movie, someone else compared it to the store of Alice in Wonderland. They wrote, “Holly is Alice [and] the Upside Down is a dark version of Wonderland.” Season 5 is certainly giving those vibes with Holly in her frilly dress, pigtails, and cape in the woods outside of Henry’s childhood home.
Unfortunately, no amount of comparisons between Stranger Things and other stories from TV shows, books, or movies will help fans figure out what happens in the end before they actually watch the series finale. Let’s just hope it’s as exciting as the build-up suggests.
