Commentary: ‘Stranger Things’ Taps Into ‘The Matrix’

One of the main draws of Stranger Things: it doesn’t shy away from its influences and pays homage to the many horror and science fiction staples that came before it. As a nostalgia-driver for the 1980s, the show has touched upon films like A Nightmare On Elm Street, E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, and more. But that doesn’t mean it has to restrict its references to just that decade. As seen in the latest season, the plot taps heavily into one of The Matrix‘s big moments.

Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) returns as the main villain eighteen months after the events of Season 4. First, he kidnaps Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) before going after other young children around Hawkins. He brings them back to his home dimension, where he renders the children unconscious and plugs them into his living base. Once connected, he is able to utilize the children’s power to fulfill his plan of merging his dimension with Earth.

While plugged in to his base, Vecna creates a prison for the children’s minds within his own. It’s essentially a fabricated reality for the children to remain docile and imprisoned without any hope of escaping on their own. Although the visuals are very different, this plot point has some similarities to The Matrix. In that film, humans are plugged into a machine to keep them in a fabricated reality while while their life force is drained. Vecna essentially does the same thing, plugging the children into a living organism rather than a mechanical device. However, when Holly breaks free, the scene of her ripping herself from her cocoon mirrors that of Neo (Keanu Reeves) doing the same in the machine city. So while Stranger Things utilizes a lot of ’80s science fiction for its homages, it’s interesting to see it mirror a more recent film.

Stranger Things is now streaming on Netflix.