8 "Stranger Things" Season 4 Plot Holes That Are Turning Our Heads Upside Down

We quickly meet the villain our heroes have to face in "Stranger Things" season four when innocent teenagers Chrissy and Fred, played by Grace Van Dien and Logan Riley Bruner, are mysteriously murdered. Vecna, an evil spellcaster named after the Dungeons & Dragons character, is killing and feeding off the trauma of his victims in order to emerge from the Upside Down into the real world at full power. Before he kills them, Vecna manipulates their minds, showing them horrifying visions that give the audience insight into their trauma, including Chrissy's difficult home life and Fred's guilt born of a horrible childhood car accident. Even Max (Sadie Sink) experiences visions when she's targeted by Vecna through her unresolved trauma from Billy's death in season three. But basketball player Patrick, played by Myles Truitt, doesn't get the same treatment before he's killed by Vecna.

Patrick has minor visions (like seeing the grandfather clock), and one scene between Max and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) alludes to Patrick possibly being abused at home (he shows up to basketball practice with a black eye), but his trauma is never contextualized beyond that like Chrissy's and Fred's. Unless Patrick's death is brought up again in season five, we may never know exactly why Vecna killed him.

Before Chrissy is murdered, she rekindles her friendship with Hellfire Club president and dungeon master Eddie Munson, played by Joseph Quinn. Because of his extroverted personality, gothic appearance, and interest in D&D, everyone outside of Eddie's circle sees him as a "freak," and their fear of him represents the "satanic panic" of the '80s.

Traumatized by Chrissy's death and knowing he will be the prime suspect for her murder, Eddie goes into hiding. Despite the fact the whole city are on the hunt for him, Dustin, Max, Steve, and the rest of the Hawkins city gang still manage to find him before the police do. He remains hidden for the rest of the season with the help of his newfound allies. By the end of volume one, police and a small-town mob led by high-school basketball star Jason Carver (Mason Dye) are still looking for him, which seems a little far-fetched. If Dustin and friends could track Eddie down after some simple sleuthing through the video store's rental history, it's hard to imagine the Hawkins police couldn't track him down, too.

At the end of season three, Hopper (David Harbour) sacrifices himself to save Hawkins when Starcourt Mall explodes — or does he? Luckily for fans, the first episode of volume one confirms that Hopper is still alive when Joyce Byers receives a mysterious package from Russia. We eventually learn that Hopper was transported through the Upside Down and somehow landed in the hands of the Russian army, where he has been tortured, held captive, and subjected to forced labor at a Russian prison.

Joyce and Murray (Brett Gelman) spend the majority of volume one trying to locate Hopper, even traveling to Alaska and paying ransom money in hopes of breaking him out of prison. Toward the end of Hopper's captivity, during which he befriends his prison guard (played by "Game of Thrones" actor Tom Wlaschiha), it's revealed that the Russians have been keeping a Demogorgon hostage and feeding it unruly prisoners. When Joyce and Murray are reunited with Hopper in volume two, they discover that other Russian scientists at the prison have been preserving multiple Demogorgons, Demadogs, and even a piece of The Mind Flayer for experiments. While this is a great way to incorporate the Demogorgon back into the show, not much context on how the Russians got the monsters is revealed.

In order to save her friends (and the world) from the monsters of the Upside Down, Dr. Owens (Paul Reiser) tells El that her powers could be restored if she agrees to participate in more experiments in another underground lab in an undisclosed location in the Nevada desert. In this lab, Dr. Brenner, aka Papa (Matthew Modine), is revealed to be alive. He convinces El that the only way to bring back her powers is to relive the memories she lost from the Hawkins lab when she was young.

As El is witnessing her memories through old surveillance-camera footage and pre-virtual-reality probing technology, she has visions of what really happened in the Hawkins lab all those years ago. But time would've moved differently when El was under the experiments, and we only ever see what the scientists choose to play back from the camera footage they have. At one point, Brenner tells Owens to fast-forward to the last day, aka the massacre at Hawkins Lab, so it's not clear how much time El spent living and training with the other numbers before their unfortunate end.

At one point, while she's reliving her memories at Hawkins Lab, Eleven has a series of conversations with One in which her English-speaking skills seem to be far more advanced compared to the skills she had when she first met Mike and the gang in season one. At that point in 1983, she communicated in only one or two words at a time.

In an interview with Variety before volume two's release, the Duffer Brothers alluded to the scene in episode eight where Eleven wakes up from her coma with Dr. Brenner at her bedside having no memory of the massacre at Hawkins Lab. Dr. Brenner's obsessive protection caused him to raise her in isolation, which further diminished her speech and socialization skills that fans remember from season one. But even with this background from the creators, Eleven's level of communication remains one of the most consistent inconsistencies throughout "Stranger Things."

In their interview with Variety, the Duffer Brothers addressed a larger plot hole noticed by eagle-eyed fans. When Eleven and Will take Mike to the Rink-O-Mania, the date is supposedly March 22, which was revealed to be Will's birthday back in season two, but no one mentions it in the episode or throughout the season. Fans thought this might explain why Will is upset and moody during this scene, or serve as an early clue that he has unrequited romantic feelings for Mike, but the brothers admitted the date has no significance, because they forgot it was Will's birthday as well when they were writing the script.

Season four establishes that the Upside Down seems to be frozen in time at the moment Will entered it in season one. When Nancy, Robin, Steve, and Eddie are looking for a stowed gun in Nancy's Upside Down bedroom, they instead find one of her diaries dated Nov. 6, 1983, at which point she has not hidden the weapon in her room (she doesn't hide a gun there until at least 1984 in two).

This plot line works to explain why the gang has to come up with another plan, but it brings into question how other characters interacted with objects that weren't introduced until after Will disappeared in season one. For example, when Joyce hangs Christmas lights and paints letters on the wall in hopes of communicating with Will in season one, it's unclear how Will knows where the letters are if it was past the date on which the Upside Down's timeline is frozen. In season four's Lite Brite scene with Dustin, Lucas, and Erica Sinclair (Priah Ferguson), the two gangs separated by the Upside Down yell to each other to locate the approximate location of the toy so Nancy can spell out her messages and communicate with them. The Upside Down's frozen timeline doesn't seem to mesh with these scenes.

One of the most heartwarming moments in the last episode of season four is when the entire Hawkins gang reunites at the Byer's house. Some also travel to Hopper's old cabin in the woods to spruce it up, including new cast member Argyle (Eduardo Franco). When Jonathan and Nancy are talking outside the cabin, Argyle is harvesting mushrooms from the nearby trees. When Vecna's invasion into the real world from the Upside Down suddenly resumes in Hawkins, Joyce, Hopper, Jonathan, Nancy, Mike, Will, and Eleven sense the imposing danger and stand on a hill that overlooks the town, which is already engulfed in dark clouds and flaky particles.

The only character missing from this shot is Argyle, who was definitely present in the scene before but is absent in this dramatic cliffhanger. This is either a major error in continuity, or Argyle's absence could turn out to be significant to "Stranger Things"'s final season.