Lenora Hills in Stranger Things: the California of the Byers and of Eleven
Universe · Lenora · Season 4
A suburb, a high school, a rink, a van. In this article: why they live there, Angela, the Rink-O-Mania, Argyle and the pizza, the attack on the house, and the departure. At the end, the suburban street has lasted long enough.
Lenora Hills is a small California town, not a place of legend. Joyce, Will, Jonathan, and Eleven live there from the fall of 1985; two agents will guard the door only in March 1986.
The essentials
- The place: Lenora Hills, en Californie
- Since: l'automne 1985
- The house: Joyce, Will, Jonathan, and Eleven
- In front of the door: agents Wallace and Harmon
- The rink: Rink-O-Mania, the skate, Angela
- The ending: assaut de nuit, fuite dans le van
Contents
Why the Byers and Eleven live here
Since the fall of 1985, Eleven lives in California with Joyce, Will, and Jonathan, in Lenora Hills. They left Indiana after the summer of the mall. Eleven no longer has her powers. The house will become a hideout only in March 1986: after Eleven's arrest, Dr. Owens stations two agents there, Wallace and Harmon.
It is not a vacation. It is a move. Will leaves with his mother, his brother, and Eleven, who has become his sister. The story films a school life, letters, a skateboard, not a base. The banality is the subject. A suburban street has to make people forget what this girl has already closed.
Mike arrives later, for spring break. Eleven has written him letters in which life is happy. That life does not exist. Will, who knows it, says nothing at the start. The house therefore begins with a letter lie, not with a monster.
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Fall 1985 The move
Joyce, Will, Jonathan, and Eleven settle in Lenora Hills. Dr. Owens helped with the move.
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The letters An invented life
Eleven writes Mike a school year that does not look like hers.
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Spring Mike arrives
The reunion goes through the rink, not through a calm dinner.
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The skate Angela
A milkshake, then a roller skate. Eleven strikes. She is stopped afterward.
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The desert Owens takes Eleven
After the arrest, he picks her up. The boys stay in Lenora.
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The night The assault
Soldiers take the house. Wallace falls, wounded. The van leaves.
The Surfer Boy Pizza van pin, Argyle's delivery car.
In the shop44 mm Surfer Boy Pizza van pin12,90 €See the product
High school and Angela
At Lenora high school, the harassment has a first name. Angela and her group go after Eleven, who no longer has a power to answer with. The start of the season already shows her isolated, the letters to Mike serving as the set of a life she does not have. The California high school has no game club for her. It has a target.
I do not make Angela a supernatural monster. She is a cruel high school girl, in a town where nobody knows Eleven's past. That is what hurts: the ordinary of harassment, after years of labs. Angela's pillar takes up the character. Here, she is the reason the Lenora high school is not a refuge.
Will sees this life up close. He does not tell Mike right away. The silence is part of the house: everyone protects a false version, for the length of a visit. The lawn says nothing. The letters do, and they lie.
The Rink-O-Mania
The rink is called Rink-O-Mania. Mike has just arrived. Angela and her group circle Eleven on the track, insult her, then spill a milkshake on her head, in front of Mike and Will. Eleven hides, comes back out, and hits Angela in the face with a roller skate.
This gesture will get her arrested in the next chapter. The van that takes her is intercepted. The rink chapter holds the evening. Owens picks her up afterward and takes her into the desert. The boys, for their part, stay in the house.
The rink is the only big public place of this California thread. No mall, no national holiday. A track, a cup, a skate. The story does not need more to tip the address over.
Argyle and Surfer Boy Pizza
Argyle is the friend from this town, and his tool is a delivery van. The vehicle belongs to Surfer Boy Pizza: painted to carry boxes, not for an escape. It becomes, all the same, the only car of the house when the night turns bad.
Before the assault, the van is already the link with the outside. After, Jonathan, Mike, and Will take refuge in it. A wounded agent dies in the back while leaving a note. The detail of that road is not Lenora: Lenora is the fact that a suburban pizzeria supplies the escape.
I do not tell the rest of the desert. The van leads there, because the number left in the pen has to be traced. In Lenora, Argyle is first the boy whose work car becomes a shelter.
The yellow Surfer Boy Pizza t-shirt, the sign of the California van.
In the shopSurfer Boy Pizza T-Shirt Yellow Kids and Adults39,90 €See the product
The house under attack
In the fourth chapter, soldiers take the house by assault. Wallace is hit, without being killed. Harmon, wounded, collapses in the van and dies on the road after breathing the name of the project. Sullivan searches the house himself.
In the bedroom, he finds the note Eleven had left for Mike. The proof that she is alive, that she left of her own accord, and that she wants to become a superhero again. The suburban street stops being a cover. A unit opens fire on a suburban house.
Eleven is already no longer there: Owens took her away after the arrest. The assault therefore falls on those who stay, and on a letter. The house defends itself: Harmon covers the boys' escape. It empties.
Leaving Lenora
There are two departures, not one. The first is Eleven's, picked up after the rink, toward the desert. The second is the boys', the night of the assault, in the van. Joyce is not in that car at the moment of the shots: she has left for Alaska with Murray, to pay Hopper's ransom.
Lenora Hills does not come back as a home. It was a transition address, between the Indiana left in 1985 and the road of 1986. The spring fits in a high school, a rink, and a night of soldiers.
What remains of the house is the word in the bedroom and the blood in the van. Not a plaque. A suburb that the show uses long enough to show that Eleven, without powers, can still be hunted, and that a quiet street protects from nothing.
The name itself stays that of a small town. Not a capital, not a lab, not a wood. Lawns, a bedroom, a skate track a few minutes away, a van painted for pizzas. That is enough for a season, and it is all the story asks of this address. One does not come back there to look for a second life. The spring was enough: a school, a track, a night, and the street becomes a street again that the show no longer has to film at all.
The Eleven mini figure on a skateboard, the outfit of that year without powers.
In the shopBuildable mini figure Eleven on a skateboard14,90 €See the product
Frequently asked questions
Where is Lenora Hills?
In California. Joyce, Will, Jonathan, and Eleven have lived there since the fall of 1985.
Why are they there?
They left Indiana after the summer of 1985. Eleven no longer has her powers. Owens places agents Wallace and Harmon there only after Eleven's arrest, in March 1986.
What happens at the rink?
At the Rink-O-Mania, Angela has a milkshake spilled on Eleven. Eleven hits her in the face with a skate. She is arrested afterward.
Who is Argyle?
The friend whose Surfer Boy Pizza delivery van serves as a car, then as an escape on the night of the assault.
Who attacks the house?
Soldiers, in the fourth chapter. Wallace is wounded, then captured. Harmon dies in the van after saying the name of the project. Sullivan searches the bedroom.
Is Eleven still there that night?
No. After the arrest, Owens has already taken her away. The assault falls on the house and on those who stay.
