The Wheelers' basement in Stranger Things: the game table, Eleven's fort and the last game
Universe · Maple Street · 1983-1989
By the end, you will know what the room holds, who sleeps there, and what the group lives through there from one season to the next.
The Wheelers' basement is the group's headquarters, from the game of November 6, 1983 to the last one. Eleven hides there, the Upside Down gets its name there, and the group comes back when everything goes wrong, in 1985 and again in 1986.
The essentials
- The place: The basement of the Wheelers' house, on Maple Street
- What is there: The game table, Mike's Supercom, a sofa, a bathroom, a door onto the yard
- The opening game: November 6, 1983, after ten hours of play
- The fort: Built by Mike for Eleven on November 7, 1983, still standing the next fall
- The name of the other world: The gesture in chapter 2, the word in chapter 5, in the same room
- The war room: Early July 1985, a code red, then the word flayed
- The set: Interior built in a studio, in Atlanta. The facade is in East Point
Contents
- The headquarters, under a Maple Street house
- November 6, 1983: a school night, ten hours of play and a seven
- The blanket fort and the flipped board
- Christmas 1983, Halloween 1984: the fort they do not take down
- 1985 and 1986: the refused campaign, the war room, Max's night
- November 1987: the Byers in the basement
- May 1989: Mike's last game
The headquarters, under a Maple Street house
The room is under the Wheelers' house, on Maple Street. It is the group's meeting place: they play role-playing games there, and they sleep there at Mike's. His toys are there, his Supercom, and his dungeon-master gear. A bathroom, a door onto the yard, stairs up to the ground floor.
The group enters the story from there. The very first scene, though, takes place at the lab: a scientist trapped in an elevator. The game comes right after.
The interior, basement included, is a set built on a stage at EUE/Screen Gems studios, in Atlanta. The facade is that of a house in East Point, in the suburbs.
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November 6, 1983 The game
Ten hours of play, a fallen die, a seven Mike did not see.
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November 7, 1983 The fort
A girl on the run, a sleeping bag, a nickname.
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November 8, 1983 The board
Will in hiding, the monster figure set beside him.
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Christmas 1983 The campaign won
A game won, a fort left standing.
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October 31, 1984 Two confessions
A shadow in the sky, then day 353.
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July 1985 The code
A refused campaign, a war room, a new word.
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March 1986 A sleepless night
Envelopes written for later.
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May 1989 The last game
Binders put away, a door that closes.
Black canvas bag, black handles, yellow print in a rounded frame. Under a hanging lamp, creatures sit at a table. In the center, one has its head open in petals, behind a raised screen. The game table, with monsters in the boys' places.
In the shopDungeons & Demogorgons tote bag20,90 €See the product
November 6, 1983: a school night, ten hours of play and a seven
November 6, 1983 falls on a Sunday, the night before school. Mike runs the table as dungeon master. Something is coming, hungry for blood. An army of troglodytes first, then he announces the Demogorgon.
Will, the wizard, has to choose. For the fireball, he needs 13 or higher. The other option is a protection spell. He chooses fire, and the die falls off the table.
Mike's mother interrupts. It is a school night, and she has just put the little one to bed. “I just put Holly to bed.” The campaign took two weeks to prepare. The game has been going for ten hours. Mike pleads his case with his father, next to a television that hisses.
Will finds the die. He asks if the roll counts. The others decide that a roll the dungeon master did not see does not count. On his way out, Will quietly tells Mike the result. “It was a seven.” The monster got him.
Will heads home, and he disappears. What happens next is in the chapter of the disappearance.
The monster's name comes from their game, Dungeons & Dragons.
The blanket fort and the flipped board
The next evening, November 7, the boys bring a soaked girl in from the woods. Mike decides she sleeps here, and that in the morning she will ring the doorbell. He builds her a fort of blankets and cushions, reads the number on her arm, and looks for a nickname. All of that is in the Maple Street chapter. That number becomes her name, Eleven; the nickname he draws from it is “El”.
In the morning he brings breakfast down. She has found the radio. He is surprised. She is the runaway from the Hawkins lab.
This radio is Mike's walkie-talkie. It will carry Will's voice one evening, then the calls of the following year.
On the evening of November 8, at the table, she takes Will's figure. She flips the board onto its black side and sets the figure on it. “Hiding.” He asks if it is for escaping the bad guys. She sets the monster beside it.
Three chapters later, in the same room, she whispers that it is the wrong way up. He remembers the flipped board, and he puts a name to it. “The Upside Down.” Someone else compares the thing to the Vale of Shadows. The idea is born on this table in chapter 2, the name in episode 5 of season 1.
One evening Mike, crushed, reproaches her for having lied to him. Will's voice then comes out of the radio: he is singing. Mike calls him. In chapter 7, they slip out through the yard door.
Christmas 1983, Halloween 1984: the fort they do not take down
At Christmas 1983, the group wins a campaign against the Thessalhydra. At the end, Mike looks at the fort, left as it was.
In late October 1984, grounded, he has to fill two boxes of toys for a yard sale. He fills them in the room and keeps the ones that remind him of Eleven. Then he sits in the fort. It is day 352, in the evening, and he says he is still there. The scene is in the first chapter of season 2.
On Halloween night, he brings Will over. Will talks about a View-Master, and Mike finishes the thought: stuck between two slides. Will describes a huge shadow in the sky, which the group will later name the Mind Flayer. He asks Mike not to tell the others. Mike answers that they will go crazy together. “Crazy together.” The same evening, day 353, he calls Eleven from the fort. She listens from the cabin, eyes covered, and whispers “Mike”. He thinks he feels her (“Eleven?”), then switches off the Supercom before she can touch him. The two scenes are in the Halloween chapter.
Brick figure. Brown hair, furrowed brows, freckles. A shirt with yellow, orange and brown stripes, a chest pocket, gray pants. A gray lamp with a yellow head in one hand, a black radio in the other, an orange bike beside him. The dungeon master and his radio.
In the shopBuildable mini figure Mike Wheeler and his orange bike14,90 €See the product
1985 and 1986: the refused campaign, the war room, Max's night
In early July 1985, freshly dumped, Mike and Lucas spend the night in the room. When they wake up, Will, in a wizard costume, has prepared a campaign for a day without girls: the swamps of Kuzatan, a horde of zombies. They play without believing in it, then sacrifice their characters to get it over with.
The fight that follows takes place in the garage, not here. Mike catches up with Will. He asks if he thought they would spend their lives playing in his basement. Will answers that yes, he did. Will then goes off to destroy Castle Byers.
The next day Lucas sends a code by radio. Mike, on the phone, says to come to his place. In the room, Will says what he feels: the shadow, a new host. The group sets the trap at the Hawkins pool.
The following day, Nancy and Jonathan come down to join them. Mrs. Driscoll, an old lady, had her seizure around nine, at the same time as the sauna trap. Mike drops the word “flayed”: she is among the possessed, like Billy.
The scene is in the fifth chapter of season 3.
In March 1986, Max spends the night in the room writing her farewell letters.
Steve sleeps in the same room.
In the morning, someone asks if she slept. The answer is obvious. She holds out her envelopes: a safeguard, for later. She refuses to spend what might be her last day in this room.
November 1987: the Byers in the basement
Warning: what follows covers season 5, through to the last shot of the series.
In 1985, the day the Byers leave, Nancy and Jonathan joke about it. Jonathan could stay in the basement. Nancy's father would love it. They would hide him under a tent, like Eleven.
In 1987, it happens. The Byers' house has been sold, and the town is under quarantine. Joyce sleeps on a folding bed in the upstairs hall, Jonathan on the basement sofa, Will on a mattress. On the morning of November 3, the two brothers are late. Mike's father asks how long this is going to last.
That same night, the house is attacked upstairs, then on the ground floor: Holly's room, the parents' room and their bathroom, Mike's room, then the kitchen. The basement is spared. The scene is in the attack on the house. The government then seals the house.
That year, the meetings are held in the radio station's secret basement. It is not this room.
May 1989: Mike's last game, then Holly's
Eighteen months later, in May 1989, the house has been repaired. The Byers live somewhere else.
With Dustin, Lucas, Will and Max, Mike plays his last campaign. The game is almost lost. Dustin has the idea of calling the sorceress, Will's wizard does it, and the game is won. Mike says this is the end. Max finds the ending a bit easy.
Mike then tells what becomes of their characters, then his theory about Eleven. The details are in the epilogue.
A voice calls them to the table from upstairs: the lasagna is getting cold. They put their binders away and go up one by one.
Holly runs down with Mary, Debbie, Joshua and Derek. One says it is their little castle. Another asks why she is the dungeon master. “Because this was my idea, and this is my house!” Mike looks at them, goes up, and closes the door on them. It is the last shot of the series.
In 1983, during the game of November 6, her mother was saying “I just put Holly to bed.”
The Duffer brothers, in an interview published when the finale came out, say that these shots imitate those of the first episode, that going out one by one shows the childhood being left behind, and that the little one takes the baton.
After the last take, Noah Schnapp said they had slept on the set, in a little fort, in the basement.
Round white pin. A red twenty-sided die, in yellow-orange flames. The fireball battle cry, taken up later by a high-school club.
In the shop44 mm pin Hellfire Club Fireball12,90 €See the product
Frequently asked questions
What is the Wheelers' basement in Stranger Things?
The room under the Maple Street house. They play there, they sleep there, and Eleven hides there from November 7, 1983. The group comes back in 1985 and in 1986.
Where does Eleven hide at Mike's?
In a fort of blankets and cushions, in the basement, from November 7, 1983. The fort is still standing at Christmas, then the next fall.
Where does the Upside Down get its name?
In this room. The gesture, the flipped board, is in chapter 2. The word is said in chapter 5.
Does Mike and Will's fight, in 1985, take place in the basement?
No. It takes place in the garage. Will then goes off to destroy Castle Byers.
Where does Max write her farewell letters?
In the Wheelers' basement, at night, in March 1986.
Does the Wheelers' basement really exist?
It is a studio set in Atlanta. The facade of the house is in East Point.
