If you are a fan of Stranger Things, you've most likely heard of Conformity Gate. 

   After the premiere of the final episode of Stranger Things, many fans were left disappointed. The fans claimed the final episode was “too bad to be true” or that there were “too many plotholes”. This led to the formation of different conspiracy theories, eventually dubbed as Conformity Gate.

   The original theory was that the new episode would come out on January 7th. Unfortunately, no episode came. Fans were so confident in their theory that they ended up crashing Netflix. These same fans began bargaining, refusing to believe this was truly the end. These fans started to believe it would come on the ninth. Again, no new episode, making them believe it would be on the eleventh or the twelfth. Although I wanted to believe in Conformity Gate very badly, it became increasingly harder as these dates passed. 

   Most of the theories made up by fans did make a lot of sense. The main idea of Conformity Gate being that Vecna, the protagonist, was controlling what everyone was seeing or doing during the epilogue.

   Here are five theories created by fans to justify the concept that there will be a new episode. 

One thing people often bring up is that instead of traditional green graduation gowns, they were replaced with orange. People say that the orange color resembles that of a prison uniform. 

   Another is that many characters in the epilogue began to look similar to Henry Creel (better known as Vecna). For example, the Wheeler family all had haircuts similar to Henry’s throughout the end of the episode. Also at this time, many characters were wearing glasses, indistinguishable from Henry’s. Many of the people in this scene were also using mannerisms very much like him, such as folding their hands a certain way.

   A supporting factor to the theory of this being an illusion created by Vecna is that Steve Harrington became a baseball coach, despite the fact we’ve only ever seen him play basketball. Fans say this is because Steve’s weapon of choice against Vecna was a baseball bat, making Vecna think he played baseball. While this is definitely plausible, it’s also possible that this was just bad writing.

   One small but important detail fans have noticed is that there was a “Whatzit” board game in the Wheeler’s basement and the chief of police, Jim Hopper’s cabin. The interesting thing about this is that the first time we saw the board game, it was when Holly, Mike’s little sister, was kidnapped by a demogorgon.

   During the last scene, Mike Wheeler walks up the stairs and exits through the basement door. This mirrors The Truman Show, a popular movie about a fake reality where the main character is seen walking up stairs and exiting through a door. Fans believe that this similarity is purposeful, and this scene insinuates that Mike’s reality was fake.

While all of these theories are feasible, none have been proved to be true. Although the likeness of a new episode is low, many fans and critics are hopeful that this will not be the end of Stranger Things.