Stranger Things Season 4 where is the Mind Flayer?

The incredible episodes of Stranger Things Season 4 have come and gone and while there were very few mentions of the big beast monster in Volume 1, Volume 2 revealed a whole lot more for anyone wondering where the Mind Flayer is. Obviously, this comes with a massive alert for anyone that hasn’t seen it all yet, because we’re going to dive into the detail what was left over after the events of Season 3.

With the final two episodes from Volume 2 arriving on the 1st July we now have a good idea about what’s going on despite the focus for Season 4 being on Vecna. However, hints had been forming in Volume 1 when Dustin and the gang discuss the two of them in the same sentence, which implied that there was the possibility of it creeping into the action.

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The smoking gun conversation about the Mind Flayer

The initial conversation takes place in Episode 7 “The Massacre at Hawkins Lab”, so if you haven’t made it this far into Season 4 then you might want to finish it off before reading on. It takes place between Dustin, Lucas and Erica as they start to piece things together about Vecna and his plans.

They’ve just discovered the water gate, which is a witty reference to the infamous President Nixon phone tapping scandal. It makes Dustin realise that Vecna must be opening gates to the Upside Down using a psychic connection to his victims, which started with Chrissy in Episode 1.

Up until this point, the general consensus is that the Mind Flayer was defeated at the end of Stranger Things Season 3. However, the conversation opens up the distinct possibility of a return for the monster, with two episodes of Season 4 to take things further and the final season now confirmed to follow.

The conversation starts as Dustin asks what Vecna’s motive might be, but that leads on to him wondering, “On top of that, how does the Mind Flayer figure into all this?” The character hasn’t been seen in any of the Upside Down sequences in S4, so it seemed logical to assume that he was no more, but in the simple mention Dustin has laid the foundations for his return.

If that isn’t enough, he then starts to follow the logical next steps to attribute the motive and link to the monster by saying, what if Vecna is opening the gates to take over the world. It makes sense when you find out more about the whole 001 thing in the rest of the episode in terms of what he wants to do.

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Dustin then asks, “who do we know that wants to take over the world?”, and the obvious answer is… ding, ding, ding… The Mind Flayer. Dustin then goes on to speculate that if the Demogorgan was just its foot soldier then Vecna is his five-star general.

When you look at it from that point of view, it seemed that Vecna was working for the Mind Flayer having been sent to the Upside Down when 001 lost the fight with El in the lab. At this point you assue that since then, he’s been helping to pull the strings in the background and when the Flayer’s last plan fell apart, he’s been called up off the bench to get the job done.

After the conversation, there isn’t another mentions of the Mind Flayer in Episode 7 of Season 4 and there’s still no sighting of it. If you think back on his prior appearances in Stranger Things, its always been pretty big, looming over the Upside Down like some kind of daddy-long-legs monster god.

If it hasn’t been seen yet, then either its not in Hawkins anymore, or somehow its been weakened to make it less prominent in the black and red skyline. One possible explanation at the end of Volume 1 was that the blast at the end of the Season 3 reduced its powers, which is why its no longer overshadowing everything.

Another explanation before we found out the truth in Episode 9 was that if the Upside Down exists in both Hawkins and is linked to Russia then maybe it exists everywhere. If that’s the case then the Mind Flayer may well simply be in another location like Hopper in Russia and to an extent that has turned out to be the case.

However, far from being in the Soviet Upside Down licking its wounds and healing up for another stomp at world domination, it was actually in captivity by the Russian military, sort of. The Season 4 Volume 2 teaser included a shot in the Russian facility of some kind of entity in a large container with a glass front. It’s swirling around like crazy, so this was a hot tip off for the big bad monster’s whereabouts. But the truth is even more sinister.

With all of this it was clear that the Mind Flayer had survived the end of Season 3, which kind of makes sense when you think about it. The huge beast that was destroyed when the gate was closed in the explosion was just a rat pie that was being controlled by the Mind Flayer, or at least that’s what we thought was going on. All that did was sever the link to the Upside Down, so it had to be somewhere still.

The truth about the Mind Flayer

We find out that the Mind Flayer is just a hive mind for the creatures of the Upside Down. Number 1 (Henry Creel / Vecna) discovered it when he was sent to the alternate dimension by El. Using his powers, he was able to control it and use it to do his bidding.

With this reveal you find out that 001 is the ultimate monster in all of this and that the events of Stranger Things Season 4 have opened up a new supersized portal between the dimensions. He’s hurt having lost his fight with 11 and the Hawkins massive, but he’s still alive, but now he has the full might of the Upside Down to call on.

This includes the Mind Flayer, which we mentioned earlier is just the hive mind for the Demodogs, Demogorgans, vines and bat attackers that populate the other world. You can see it’s power over Hawkins at the end of the season and with cross dimensional ash falling on the town it’s clear that when Number 1 gets back his strength he’s going to be more powerful than ever.

Everything is building towards the end of the series next time around with an epic showdown in which Henry/001/Vecna has all of his army at his beck and call. He also has freedom to operate in our world himself, so it’s going to be fun getting to see how it all takes shape.

You can check out our sci-fi section to see other big releases that are on the way this year, or visit the Netflix website to see more on the show at https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80057281.