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Manx’s Christmasland and Pennywise’s Maine circus are similarly otherworldly locations that operate on their own paranormal terms and contain murderous monsters that generally can’t escape into the outside world but can occasionally wreak havoc when they do. The trippy dream logic of the Upside-Down, its so far unexplained monster population of Demogorgons, and its way of mirroring but distorting an existing location all check out in terms of Inscape characteristics. However, the invention of “inscapes” in the fiction of King’s real-life son and occasional collaborator Joe Hill proves that there may be another connection between the world of Stephen King’s fiction and Stranger Things’ mysterious small-town setting of Hawkins, Indiana. The Duffer brothers themselves debunked the theory that season 2 character Bob Newby encountered Pennywise, saying they based the anecdote on their own fear of Tim Currys’ performance as the character in the classic '90s Stephen King miniseries IT. When the love interest of Winona Ryder’s perpetually harried Joyce Byers assured her young son that he used to fear a creepy clown until he finally defeated his paralyzing terror around the imaginary monster by standing up for himself, fans immediately began to wonder whether the clown in question was Pennywise, the villain of Stephen King’s iconic bestseller IT. Related: Stranger Things Season 4 Can Solve S3's Ending Problem With Christmas
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THE MAGICIANS LAND UPSIDE DOWN STRANGER THINGS SERIES
However, when asked about a fan theory that linked King’s best-selling doorstopper IT to the action of Stranger Things season 2, the creators were quick to deny a direct canonical link between the series and its famous inspiration. It’s not hard to see why the series succeeded, too, as Stranger Things offers an appealing fusion of two ‘80s pop culture heavyweights, Stephen King and Stephen Spielberg, in its tale of a small town plagued by spooky goings-on and the plucky kids out to get to the bottom of proceedings.Ī mixture of coming-of-age drama, horror, teenage comedy, and sci-fi tropes, Stranger Things is clearly indebted to the fiction of Carrie creator Stephen King as well as the movies of John Carpenter and Wes Craven. Stranger Things clearly owes some of its inspiration to the fiction of horror icon Stephen King, but could an idea from King’s son Joe Hill’s novel NOS4A2provide a connection between the Netflix series and King’s work? Created by Hidden directors the Duffer Brothers, Stranger Things became an outstanding runaway hit for streaming service Netflix shortly after it debuted back in mid-2016.