'Stranger Things' Theories: D&D Hints About Season 3, How The Show Connects To Stephen King's 'It'

Let's organize these in order of plausibility. Remember that theory about how the Dungeons & Dragons game at the end of the first season might predict everything that happened in season 2? That ended up not coming true, but that's not stopping Nerdist from digging into more D&D lore to predict what may happen in season 3.

In Stranger Things season 2, episode 8, entitled "The Mind Flayer," Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo) suggests a parallel between the malevolent "shadow monster" that's controlling Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) and a character from the game called a mind flayer, which, according to Nerdist, is a member of a race of "psionic tyrants from another dimension that harvest entire races for their own twisted ends and live in an evil, subterranean cave network known as the Underdark."

The outlet points out that in D&D mythos, there are more powerful mind flayers that exist, known as arcanists and liches, that lean on sorcery to make their powers even more fearsome. The theory goes that because we saw Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) using her special Force powers – the equivalent of sorcery – to close the portal between her world and The Upside Down, that Eleven could be the next victim of the Shadow Monster/Mind Flayer so it can hijack her powers for its own evil plans.

The Duffer Brothers have even hinted at something similar in an interview talking about the ending of the new season:

"The hope we wanted people to get out of it is that this thing [is still out there]. They've shut the door on the Mind Flayer, but not only is it still there in the Upside Down, it's very much aware of the kids, and particularly Eleven. It had not encountered her and her powers until that final episode. Now, it knows that she's out there. We wanted to end on a little bit of an ominous note on that level."

Better watch your back, Eleven.