When you have finished Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 on Netflix, and you are staring at that last scene and thinking what just happened, you are not alone. Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 has 10 episodes of new and scary creatures being thrown at the kids in Hawkins, such as the Snow Shark and the Gourd Horde (aka, Pumpkin Monsters), and the Horde Queen pulling all of the Gourd Horde members together, like a Puppet Master, and then when things seem like they are finally ending for the kids, the camera cuts back to the Upside Down.
Currently, the Queen’s dead body lies still on the ground, and there is a stem growing from the middle of her corpse. The petals of this flower are blue, and they have the Demogorgon mouth inside of them, and this entire flower is glowing too. The flower represents the Demogorgon, which is why it does not represent the end of the world, but at the same time does represent something brand new and something bad in Stranger Things: Tales From ’85.
The moment was described by showrunner Eric Robles, who discussed it in a conversation at Netflix Tudum, and he essentially described the flower with the Demogorgon’s mouth as the beginning of a new mystery and a new story in Stranger Things: Tales From ’85. That means it is a setup, and whatever the Demogorgon Flower ends up turning into is going to be at the heart of the direction of Stranger Things: Tales From ’85.
How did these new monsters in Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 come to exist in the first place?
When you want to learn what the Demogorgon flower is, you should know about where all the new creatures in Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 came from; this is because their origins are more complicated than what you might expect. In Episode 6, the show uses a flashback scene set on November 12, 1984, which takes place after Eleven had closed the gate in Hawkins Lab, as seen in the main show.
Government agents in yellow hazmat suits were cleaning up the Demodog bodies left behind after the gate closed. One of those agents secretly took samples of dormant Upside Down vines and brought them to a hidden lab to experiment on. Most of the experiments failed, and the vine samples kept crumbling into ash no matter what serums they tried.
Then one final injection of a glowing green liquid brought the last remaining vine back to life. The revived vine transformed into a new creature and released glowing green spores. When the agent tried to destroy it, it released those spores into the air; they spread through the snow, and wherever they landed on organic matter, something new began to grow. That is how Hawkins ended up with an entirely new breed of monsters that had nothing to do with the Mind Flayer or anything the gang had faced before.
The person behind all of this turned out to be Daniel Fischer, played by Lou Diamond Phillips, the friendly, seemingly harmless clerk at the Hawkins Food Mart who had actually been a founding member of the Scientific Progress Committee at Hawkins Lab.
He had never been allowed to work on the real experiments there, so he stole the research of biology teacher Mrs. Baxter, combined it with extracted DNA from dead Upside Down vines, and created the green serum that brought everything to life. He had no idea what he was actually unleashing.
What does the Demogorgon Flower mean going forward in Stranger Things: Tales From ’85?
The finale of Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 sees the gang pull off a genuinely impressive team effort to stop the Horde Queen from opening a new gate to the Upside Down. Eleven and Mike work together to distract the Queen while Nikki gets her light blaster weapon back online.
Just as the Queen is about to drag Eleven back into the Upside Down, Nikki fires the blaster and severs the creature’s arm. Eleven then uses her powers to seal the gate with the Queen’s body wedged in it, which kills the monster and saves Hawkins once again.
The kids go back to their Dungeons and Dragons campaign, Nikki gets a custom character figure made out of old LEGO pieces, Hopper extends Eleven’s curfew, and everything feels like it is back to normal. But of course it is not, because that flower is already growing in the Upside Down, and nobody down there knows about it yet.
Robles confirmed that all the creatures in Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, including whatever the Demogorgon Flower becomes, carry Upside Down DNA in them, mixed with the kind of science that Hawkins Lab was doing. He described it as Hawkins Lab science meeting Upside Down matter and said that the combination is what creates all the new monsters in this world. Which means the Demogorgon Flower, born from the Queen’s corpse, is going to be carrying both of those things inside it, too.
Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix.
Edited by Sroban Ghosh