Project NINA in Stranger Things: the Nevada base where Eleven gets her powers back
Universe · Nevada · Season 4
A desert, a tank, a doctor, and the man who had built it. In this article: what the project is, who runs it, the buried base, the bath of memories, what Eleven finds there, the end of the silo, and what her powers change afterward. At the end, the desert has served.
Nina is not a woman. It is the code name of a tank, at the bottom of a silo in Nevada, where Eleven must relive what she buried.
The essentials
- The name: code d'un caisson, pas d'une personne
- The origin of the name: an opera, said by Brenner
- The place: ancien silo à missiles, désert du Nevada
- Who drives: Dr. Owens
- Who waits: Brenner, at the end of the hallway
- The ending: assaut au huitième chapitre, mort de Brenner
Contents
What Nina is, and who runs it
The word arrives first as a proper name. A wounded agent, in the back of a van, has time only for one instruction: warn Dr. Owens, because Eleven is in danger. He lets out “Nina”, holds out a pen, and dies. The pen does not write. It holds a number.
The number leads farther, toward someone able to trace a line. The detail of this trail is in Project NINA, the fifth chapter. Here, the word is enough: it is not a person to go look for. It is a device.
Dr. Owens runs the program with Brenner. One drives, the other waits. Owens plays candor. Brenner plays patience. The tank itself does not ask the opinion of the one being lowered into it.
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The road A word and a pen
Agent Harmon dies in the van. He leaves “Nina” and a number hidden in a pen.
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The desert Owens drives
Eleven arrives in front of an isolated door, in the middle of the Nevada sand.
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The hallway Brenner waits
She refuses, runs, gets caught. A shot puts her to sleep.
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The tank The first bath
The tank sends her back to childhood, in the rainbow room.
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The escape A few seconds
Her powers return against the guards, then drop again. She agrees to continue.
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The eighth The assault
Sullivan's men take the silo. Brenner dies on the sand.
The waffle pin, Eleven's motif, the one the tank sends back to childhood.
In the shop44 mm Eleven waffle pin12,90 €See the product
The buried base in Nevada
The site occupies an old intercontinental missile shaft, decommissioned, put back into service without a sign. Access is a door in the middle of the sand. Nothing indicates a hospital, even less a school. The set says the original use: a Cold War weapon, converted for a teenage girl. One does not come as a neighbor. One comes because someone decided that memory was treated underground.
Underneath, a hallway, a tank, a control room. It is the most closed of the places in this chapter. One does not enter by mistake. One is led there, then one is held there. Owens knows the path. Brenner knows the method. Between the two kinds of knowledge, there is no window: the sand above is enough to hide the program.
The chapter that sets this set stops before the end of the program. The base itself does not last to the end of the season: it is taken, later, by armed men. The sand does not keep a plaque.
The tank and the memories
"Nina" is the code name of the sensory-deprivation tank installed at the bottom of the shaft. Brenner ties it to an opera: the heroine, after her lover's death, had buried that memory. The name announces the method. One does not give a power back. One forces the return of the memory that blocks it.
The first bath takes Eleven years back. A rainbow room, a failed exercise, the other children's mockery, an orderly who does not rush her. That chapter does not give this man's name. It leaves him in the background, on purpose.
She tries again to get out of the silo. Guards catch her. For a few seconds, the powers come back, then do not hold. It is enough to prove that the path goes through the memories. She has no argument left. She comes back toward the tank.
What Eleven gets back
At the start of the stay, she does not find a weapon again. She finds a scene she had put away. The device replays the memories in order, up to the one she buried. Chapter five does not yet deliver the whole bill. It shows that the bill exists, and that she agrees to reread it.
The powers, for their part, are only a flash. Enough to push guards aside, not enough to leave. The show films this half-return as proof, not as a victory. Eleven understands that refusing the tank means staying with nothing.
The eighth chapter, the one titled “Papa”, will present the price. Between the two, she goes under again. The silo is not a new training. It is a forced archive.
The lab coat, the garment of the program that plunges her back in.
Dans la boutiqueEleven lab coat69,90 €Voir le produit
The end of the base
When the army arrives, the bunker guards fire back, without holding for long. Brenner has drugged Eleven to keep her from leaving, and has Owens chained to a pipe. Sullivan's men take the site and shoot the staff.
Brenner gets Eleven out of the building and covers her with his body. A helicopter opens fire. Hit, he collapses on the sand. His friends' van bursts in and distracts the shooter: Eleven's powers bring the aircraft down. Brenner, dying, asks her to say that she understands. She leaves without saying it.
The military operation misses its target and leaves without sanction. The silo, for its part, is finished. It does not remain a lab one revisits. What remains is a girl who again has something to defend herself with, and a man dead on the sand.
What the silo changes next
The project does not save Brenner, nor the staff, nor trust. It gives Eleven back the tool that had been taken from her after the summer of the mall. Without these baths, the story leaves her in California, with nothing in her hands, while the town in Indiana splits.
The price is written in the name. To become again the one who closes the rifts, she had to become the lab child again, in order, up to the buried memory. The desert does not add a power. It unlocks the one she had.
After the helicopter, the base no longer has a role. What travels east is the powers, not the silo. The sand becomes sand again. The sequel plays out elsewhere, with what the tank gave back and with what it cost.
One can measure the project by what it refuses to be. It is not a school, not a named prison, not a hospital with an entrance. It is a converted shaft, held by two men who do not agree about the girl, and who use her anyway. When the shots start, this dispute no longer protects anyone inside.
The chibi keychain, blonde wig and waffle: Eleven before the desert.
In the shopChibi Eleven blond wig and waffle keychain12,90 €See the product
Frequently asked questions
What is the Nina Project?
A program by Owens and Brenner to give Eleven her powers back. Nina is the code name of a tank that plunges her back into her memories, in order.
Why this name?
Brenner ties it to an opera: the heroine had buried the memory of her dead lover. The name announces the method.
Where is the base?
In the Nevada desert, at the bottom of an old missile shaft, behind an isolated door in the middle of the sand.
Who takes him there?
Dr. Owens. Brenner waits for her at the end of the hallway. She refuses, they put her to sleep, they put her in the tank.
Does she get her powers back right away?
No. After the first bath, they come back for a few seconds during an escape, then fall again. That is what decides her to continue.
How does the silo end?
In the eighth chapter, Sullivan's men take the base. Brenner dies covering Eleven. She destroys the helicopter and leaves.
