The Rainbow Room in Stranger Things: the lab playroom, September 8, 1979
Universe, Laboratory, Season 4
The Rainbow Room is the playroom of the Hawkins lab. On September 8, 1979, Henry finishes Two there under Eleven's eyes, asks her to follow him, and loses the duel. A gate opens in the wall. It closes before Brenner comes in.
A round room, painted walls, numbered children making light bulbs move. On September 8, 1979, the same room becomes the last place where the orderly speaks to Eleven, then the wall he disappears into.
The essentials
- Place: the playroom of the Hawkins lab
- Date: September 8, 1979
- Before: a game of chess, a magnetic card slipped under the table
- Duel: Eleven against Henry, alias One, alias the orderly
- After: a gate in the wall, then no memory left in Eleven
Contents
Where the numbers train
The lab does not show the children the basement. It shows them a colored room. That is where they sit in a circle, light bulbs, and play. Eleven, at seven years old, is the weakest of the group: one bulb, and even then, not every time.
The others have numbers. Two leads the group. Three, Four, and Five follow him. They go after her in this same room, the day before the massacre. The next morning, Brenner puts an electric collar on Two in front of everyone, as an example. The room therefore serves two things: the exercise, and the punishment.
The orderly moves between the tables. The children know him that way. They do not yet know he is Henry, subject One, kept on a leash by a chip in his neck.
Eleven's hospital gown, the clothing of the sessions in the colored room.
In the shopEleven hospital gown69,90 €See the product
The card under the chessboard
On September 8, after the punishment, the orderly invites Eleven to a game of chess in the room. He tells her to let nothing show. He speaks low. He states that Two and the others will try to kill her as soon as she leaves the infirmary, and that Brenner will let it happen because he is afraid of her.
Under the table, he slips her a magnetic card. The meeting is not in the colored room. It is in the basement, near a pipe a child can pass through and an adult cannot. It is there, not in the Rainbow Room, that she takes the Soteria chip out of his neck. Henry's powers come back.
The guards come down. Henry breaks them. The massacre begins in the corridors, not in the playroom. The playroom is the place he comes back to in order to finish.
Two, the wall, and the refusal
Eleven goes back up. Brenner is unconscious. The alarms scream. She enters the Rainbow Room and sees Henry finish Two, in the same way Vecna will kill later: the body lifted, the bones, the eyes. He explains to her where he comes from. He asks her to join him to rid the world of the others.
She refuses. She throws him against the wall. He gets up. They reach out at the same moment. The duel is psychic. Henry dominates her first, almost to the point of killing her. She finds a strength in a distant memory, pins him to the wall of the room, and begins to disintegrate him.
At that moment, a gate opens in the wall. Henry passes to the other side. The membrane closes. Brenner comes in just after, into a room empty of him. The timing matters: he did not see the passage. He saw the result.
What Brenner believes, then what the tape shows
Brenner's first reading is simple: Eleven killed everyone. She is the only child still there. He then watches the recordings. The tape says something else. It is Henry who walked the lab. It is she who stopped him, without understanding herself what she was opening.
When she wakes, she remembers nothing. Her powers have dropped. Brenner, for his part, has understood the scale of the act, and he does not know where Henry went. He almost says it: somewhere, in the black.
The room becomes a room again. The numbers will not come back. Eleven grows up in the lab with a hole in place of that day. The hole holds until 1986.
Henry, to put together: the orderly, subject One, the one who disappears into the wall.
In the shopBuildable mini figure Henry Creel14,90 €See the product
Why the room comes back in 1986
The Nina project does not take her to a new place. It puts her back in this one, at seven years old, on September 8, 1979. The first sessions show the bulbs. A vision of the massacre already makes her break. She goes after Brenner. He offers to let her leave. She stays.
The last dive is the whole day: the card, the basement, the chip, the corridors, then the Rainbow Room. By living the duel again, she finds the strength she had lost. The room is therefore not only a flashback set. It is the memory the return of her powers depends on.
Before this dive, she still believes she killed the other children. The tape, and the memory, turn the accusation around. The guilty one is the orderly. She is the one who said no.
A playroom that does not turn neutral again
Nothing in the paint on the walls announces a massacre. It is a room for children, with games and bulbs. The show films it that way first, so that September 8 cannot be read otherwise: the same floor, the same circle, and a body against the wall.
Everything Vecna does afterward comes out of this room. The gate, the refusal, the sentence about the black. Hawkins will take seven years to understand that the orderly did not disappear. He changed sides of the wall.
Going back into the Rainbow Room, in 1986, is not visiting a cute memory of the lab. It is reopening the only day when Eleven saw Henry face to face, and when she won without knowing what she had just sent to the other side.
Before that day, the room is ordinary for them. Children in a circle, bulbs, a game of chess in a low voice. Eleven fails the exercise there more often than the others. September 8 begins with a punishment, not with an alarm. Nothing in the chairs announces a wall that opens. Nina makes her see the two times in order: first the bulb that does not light, then the duel. Finding her strength is not learning a new gesture. It is remembering that she already said no, in this room, to the orderly. The tape Brenner watches says the same thing, without the trance: she is not the one who walked the corridors. The numbers will not come back to sit in a circle. The paint on the walls, for its part, did not change between the exercise and the duel.
The Hopper vs the Demogorgon poster, the other front of season 4.
In the shopPoster Hopper vs the Demogorgon in Kamchatka24,90 €See the product
To rememberOn September 8, 1979, the lab playroom is the stage of the duel between Eleven and Henry. A gate opens in the wall. She forgets everything, until Nina brings her back into the same room.
Frequently asked questions
What is the date?
September 8, 1979. Eleven is seven years old. She does not remember it afterward, until the Nina project.
Who is the orderly?
Henry Creel, subject One. The children know only the orderly. The Soteria chip, in his neck, took his powers away.
Does the massacre take place in the room?
It begins in the corridors, after the basement. It ends in the Rainbow Room, where Henry finishes Two in front of Eleven.
How does Henry disappear?
During the duel, a gate opens in the wall of the room. He crosses it. The membrane closes before Brenner arrives.
Did Brenner see the scene?
No. He comes in after. He first believes Eleven guilty, then the tapes show him Henry.
Why is it told in 1986?
The Nina project makes her live the day again. By finding the duel, she finds her powers, and the truth about who killed the other children.
