The Hawkins quarry in Stranger Things: the fake body and the cliff
Universe, Season 1, Will
The quarry plays two major roles in the first season. A fake body of Will is left there to close the investigation. Hopper proves the trick with a knife. Later, Troy forces Mike to jump off the cliff there, and Eleven catches him.
A body comes out of the quarry. It has Will's face. The town holds a funeral. Hopper, for his part, goes to the morgue at night, opens the torso, and finds cotton.
The essentials
- First use: a body pulled from the water, presented as Will's
- Chapters: pulled from the water at the end of « Holly, Jolly », the third; exposed in « The Body », the fourth
- Proof: Hopper opens it at the morgue: cotton, not organs
- Second use: the cliff, in the chapter « The Monster »
- Who jumps: Mike, to save Dustin. Eleven holds him in the air
Contents
A body in place of an investigation
Will disappeared on the night of November 6 to 7, 1983. The searches go on. The lab, which knows what took him, cannot let the town search too long on the side of the gate. The solution is a body.
It is left in the quarry. A state trooper « finds » it. Mike, Lucas, Dustin and Eleven, who followed the emergency vehicles, see the body come out of the water, to « Heroes » as sung by Peter Gabriel. The doctors who examine it afterwards are not those of the usual morgue: the local coroner has been sent home. Everything is done to make people believe the child fell into the water by accident.
The town believes it. The searches stop. Joyce refuses. A funeral is not a proof, not for her. The story needs this quarry precisely because it gives a plausible place of death, far from the lab, in water a child can fall into.
The badge with the drawing of Will: a child's hand, for the boy his mother did not believe was dead.
In the shopBadge 44 mm drawing of Will12,90 €See the product
The knife and the cotton
Hopper grows wary when he learns the usual coroner did not work. He goes to see the state trooper. The conversation ends badly: the man confesses he was ordered to lie. It is not yet a proof. It is an order.
The proof is in the morgue, at night. Hopper opens the body. The inside is not a drowned person's. It is stuffing, cotton. The lab made a double convincing enough for a wake, not enough for a police chief who cuts.
From there, Hopper no longer looks for a drowned boy. He looks for who had the means to make this, and why. The quarry stops being a drowning scene. It becomes the proof, made of cotton, of a lie told by the lab.
The one who does not bury
Joyce already has the lights, the alphabet painted on the wall, the certainty that her son is speaking. The body from the quarry asks her to give all of that up. She does not. In the chapter « The Body », she is handed a corpse. She refuses it.
The boys, on their side, have Eleven. She proves to them that Will is still alive, enough for Mike to stop feeling betrayed. The quarry and the salt bath where Eleven later searches for Will are not the same tool. One manufactures a dead person. The other finds a living one. Between the two, the town closes the case.
The fake body remains a precise cruelty. It does not only serve to fool the police. It serves to sit a mother in front of a coffin. Joyce sits, and she stands up anyway.
Troy, the knife, the jump
The quarry is not finished. In the chapter « The Monster », Troy and James chase Mike and Dustin and corner them at the top of the cliff. Troy holds Dustin, a knife in his hand. He wants revenge for the humiliation he suffered at school: Mike jumps, or Dustin loses his teeth. Dustin shouts to Mike that he does not need his baby teeth. The blackmail happens at the edge, above the same water the fake Will was taken from.
Mike jumps. It is not an accident. He throws himself so Troy will let go of Dustin. The fall should kill him. Eleven holds him in the air. The quarry, which had simulated a drowning, serves this time as a real cliff, and the power stops the impact.
Eleven lifts Mike back onto the edge, then breaks Troy's arm. The two bullies run off. The place of the lie becomes the place of the reverse proof: there really is a girl who stops a fall.
Will on a bike, to put together. He was riding that night, but not toward this water.
In the shopBuildable mini figure Will Byers on a bike14,90 €See the product
Why come back to the same hole
The show could have set the cliff somewhere else. It comes back to the quarry so the two scenes answer each other. First a fake corpse, taken out of the water by adults who lie. Then a real boy, held above the same water by a girl those adults are looking for.
Will is not in either scene in person. He is the face of the double, then the absent one the others are still fighting for. The quarry speaks of him without him.
After these chapters, Joyce, Hopper and the boys no longer believe in the drowning. The other residents still do. The quarry remains the lie that had to be cut open to move forward.
An alibi in the shape of a body of water
A fake body is a cover technique, not a monster. The cotton says it better than a speech. The lab knows how to sew a face, send a coroner away, give an order to a state trooper. The quarry is chosen because it is credible, not because it is linked to the disappearance.
Will disappeared near his home, not in this water. Saying it again keeps the places from being mixed. The quarry is not Mirkwood. It is not the fort. It is the place where the story was meant to stop, and the one where Mike decided it would go on, even if he had to jump.
Two scenes, one hole of water. The first buries. The second suspends. Between the two, a mother who did not believe the coffin, and a police chief who opened the body.
The town, for its part, stops at the ceremony. The lie is made to be believed by people of good faith. Joyce and Hopper are the exception, and not for the same reason: for her, because her son still speaks to her through the lights; for him, because the state police's story does not hold up.
Hopper in his hat and uniform, as a keychain: the chief who opens the fake body and finds cotton inside.
In the shopChibi keychain Jim Hopper hat12,90 €See the product
To rememberThe quarry receives a fake Will, filled with cotton, to close the searches. Hopper proves it with the knife. Later, Mike jumps from the same cliff, and Eleven holds him.
Frequently asked questions
Is the body from the quarry Will's?
No. The lab made it and had it « discovered » to make a drowning believable. Hopper opens it: the inside is cotton.
In which chapters do these scenes take place?
The body is pulled from the water at the end of « Holly, Jolly », the third chapter of the first season. Hopper exposes it in « The Body », the fourth. The cliff, for its part, is in « The Monster », the sixth.
Why is the usual coroner not there?
He was sent home. Those who sign the autopsy work for the cover, not for the town morgue.
Did Will really fall at the quarry?
No. He disappeared near his home. The quarry is the alibi, not the place of the abduction.
What happens on the cliff?
Troy threatens Dustin. Mike jumps to make him let go. Eleven holds Mike before he touches the water.
Who proves the body is fake?
Hopper, at night, at the morgue, after making the state trooper confess that he had been ordered to lie.
