In the final season of Stranger Things, references to 80s kids-on-bikes classics like E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial and The Goonies stepped aside for a surprising number of references to, of all things, the Madeline L’Engle science fiction novel A Wrinkle in Time. Here’s what you need to know about Holly Wheeler’s favorite book in the context of the show.
Holly (Nell Fisher) gets lured to the Upside Down in season 5 by Vecna/Henry Creel (Jamie Campbell Bower). She calls him “Mr. Whatsit” after a character from A Wrinkle in Time. (Later in the season, we learn they met while she was in the school library doing a re-read. He claims to love the book too.) In the novel, Mrs. Whatsit and her sisters Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which summon a girl who doesn’t fit in named Meg Murry to another realm where her father has been held captive.
It is nice that Strangers Things remembered that coming-of-age stories with female protagonists exist for the referencing, even if they waited until the final season. Holly’s arc is chock full of them. There’s an Alice in Wonderland poster hanging up in her bedroom at the Creel House. She dresses in a yellow cape, like Little Red Riding Hood meets Madeline. There are also shades of Labyrinth in her journey. Though Vecna is not as alluring as the Goblin King, I love how Henry appears to Holly in a three-piece suit. He’s the perfect picture of a girl’s non-threatening prepubescent crush. It makes his villainy even creepier.
Holly’s A Wrinkle in Time references don’t end at Mr. Whatsit
After she reunites with Max (Sadie Sink), Mike’s little sister nicknames the realm where she and Max are held hostage “Camazotz.” This is the name of the dark planet from A Wrinkle in Time. She’s very insistent on this comparison. The sixth episode of the final season is even called “Escape from Camazotz.”
Henry is not on the same page, however. When he uses the L’Engle book to entice Holly’s classmates/his hostages, he refers to “the Black Thing,” a term in the book that describes the force that has consumed Camazotz, as a threat in the real world and not the Upside Down. “Just as the Black Thing threatened Meg’s family,” he says, “so does the darkness threaten yours.” He sees the reality they left as Camazotz.
Henry’s version is not an entirely unfair.
He’s not wrong to assess American society like this, frankly. Conservatism was on the rise in the 1950s, when Henry grew up, and the 1980s when Stranger Things takes place. The sinister nature of Camazotz disguises itself as a sickly sweet, squeaky clean American suburb. Everyone conforms after a Big Bad called “IT” removes the things that make them unique. Suburbs will do that! (The metaphor is intentional, and not the subtlest social commentary. But A Wrinkle in Time is a children’s book after all.)
However, the irony of Stranger Things, of course, is that in trying to escape the conformist world that bullied him, Henry found and helped to created a new one in the Upside Down. He turned his family home into a sickly sweet, squeaky clean paradise in the Upside Down. He took a class full of middle school kids and made them conform. There’s a friggin’ hive mind! Vecna has been targeting outsiders, like Will, Barb, Eddie, Max, and I guess Middle Schoolers in general etc. for years. He punishes them for daring to embrace their uniqueness. He even gets his paws in Derek, Holly’s one ally, the way IT hypnotizes Meg’s brother Charles Wallace. Holly is correct. This is Camazotz.
Or, at least, I hope it’s irony. Otherwise, the A Wrinkle in Time references don’t make a lot of sense. We’ll have to see how Holly embraces her inner Meg Murry to help defeat Vecna and escape Camazotz when the Stranger Things series finale finally drops.
(featured image: Netflix)
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