Demogorgon (Stranger Things): the season 1 monster explained
Creature · Predator · Seasons 1, 2, 4, and 5
The Demogorgon is the first monster of Stranger Things: the petal-headed creature that abducts Will Byers on the night of November 6, 1983 and kills Barbara Holland. With no eyes, drawn to blood, able to pass from one world to the other, it is the predator of the Upside Down. This page brings together everything we know: its anatomy, its life cycle from larva to demodog, its appearances season by season, and the three creatures it is confused with.
The essentials
- Nature: humanoid predator from the Upside Down
- Distinctive sign: a faceless head that opens in five petals
- First appearance: season 1, November 1983
- What draws it: blood, even a drop
- Juvenile stage: the demodog (season 2), on all fours, in a pack
- Name borrowed from: Dungeons & Dragons, by Mike and his party
- Defeated by: Eleven in 1983, then Hopper and Joyce in 1986
Contents
What is the Demogorgon?
The Demogorgon has no name. It is Mike, Dustin, and Lucas who baptize it that way, in the Wheeler basement, pointing at the Dungeons & Dragons demon figure the game had left on the table the night Will disappeared. The name stuck, like every name the party will later give the creatures of the Upside Down.
The creature itself is a tall emaciated biped, with gray damp skin, arms too long ending in claws. It has no face: where a head should be, five petals of flesh fold over a circular maw lined with teeth. When it hunts, the petals open like a carnivorous flower. It is the most famous image on the show, and the most imitated.
The Demogorgon lives in the Upside Down, the mirror dimension of Hawkins. It comes out through rifts it tears itself in walls, trees, ceilings: organic membranes that close behind it. It hunts at night, alone, and it needs only one thing to find its prey: a drop of blood.
The real Demogorgon, the one from the gameIn Dungeons & Dragons, Demogorgon is the Prince of Demons, a two-headed baboon creature whose heads argue constantly. Nothing like the beast of Hawkins, except the idea of an evil from elsewhere. The nod mainly says one thing: for these kids, role-playing is the only reading grid available in the face of the unthinkable.
In the shop: a piece inspired by the Demogorgon, chosen by us.
In the shopMen's Adopt a Demodog T-shirt39,90 €See the product
The Demogorgon season by season
The creature is the main monster of only one season. But its species, for its part, runs through the whole show, in different forms.
1983Season 1: the predator of Hawkins
On November 6, 1983, Will Byers rides home from a game of Dungeons & Dragons. A faceless silhouette follows him to his fort, Castle Byers, and takes him into the Upside Down. The next evening, Barbara Holland, Nancy's friend, bleeds from a cut at the edge of Steve Harrington's pool. The Demogorgon takes her too. Nancy crosses to the other side through a rift opened in a tree in Mirkwood forest, comes back, and understands that the thing is drawn to blood. With Jonathan, she turns the Byers house into a trap. The Demogorgon survives the fire and Steve's nail bat, then catches up with Eleven and the boys in a classroom at Hawkins middle school. That is where the little girl disintegrates it, and vanishes with it.
1984Season 2: Dart and the demodogs
A year later, Dustin finds in his trash a small slimy creature he names D'Artagnan, “Dart”. He feeds it nougat chocolate bars, and it grows at a crazy speed: in a few days, the slug becomes a quadruped with a petal head, a demodog. Dart is not alone. Under Hawkins, the Mind Flayer is raising a whole pack in a network of tunnels. The demodogs pour into the national laboratory, where Bob Newby dies covering the others' escape. In the tunnels, Dart recognizes Dustin and lets him pass. When Eleven closes the lab gate, the entire pack collapses, as if unplugged.
1985Season 3: the missing one
No Demogorgon in the summer of 1985. The Mind Flayer has changed method: it possesses humans, the Flayed, and melts them into a creature of flesh at Starcourt. The season does not show a single Demogorgon. But in the last scene, in a Russian prison in Kamchatka, a guard leads a prisoner toward a cell, and what is in it is not human.
1986Season 4: the Kamchatka arena
The prison Demogorgon has become the instrument of Soviet executions. Jim Hopper, held there since Starcourt, faces it in an arena with the other prisoners, and survives thanks to Joyce and Murray who have come to get him. Later, the trio discovers that the Russians are keeping other creatures in captivity to study them. In the last episode, while Eleven and the group attack the hive in Hawkins, Hopper, Joyce, and Murray burn the prison Demogorgons with a flamethrower. Every blow to the hive weakens its soldiers, wherever they are.
1987Season 5: the soldiers of the hive
In fall 1987, Hawkins lives under military quarantine and Demogorgons roam the streets torn open by the rifts. Will Byers, linked to the hive since his 1984 possession, discovers he can turn it against itself: he kills Demogorgons by the force of his mind alone. It is the proof, at last, that these creatures were never free animals. They are the fingers of a single hand, and that hand is named Henry Creel.
Anatomy and behavior
The Demogorgon is not a monster in the classic sense: it is a species, with a biology, a life cycle, and hunting rules that the show lays down with the precision of a wildlife documentary.
Five lobes of flesh that open onto a circular maw. No eyes, no nose: the creature perceives the world another way, and it perceives it very well.
One drop is enough. Nancy understands it first: it is her cut, then Barb's, that drew the beast. Every trap of season 1 starts there.
It tears membranes in walls and trees, passes through, and the matter closes again. It hunts in one world and hides in the other.
It takes a nail bat, a bear trap, and a fire. Only Eleven, in 1983, manages to destroy it, at the cost of her strength.
One rule holds for the whole species: the Demogorgon never acts for itself. In 1984, the pack collapses the instant the gate closes. In 1986, the prison creatures falter when the hive is struck in Hawkins. In 1987, Will commands them from the inside. A free Demogorgon does not exist.
Key moments
-
Castle Byers, November 6, 1983
Will takes refuge in his fort, the lamp goes wild, and the creature comes in without opening the door. The whole show sits in that three-minute scene.
-
Steve's pool
Barb, alone at the water's edge, a drop of blood falling. The camera shows almost nothing, and that is why everyone remembers it.
-
The Byers house in flames
Jonathan, Nancy, and Steve facing the beast, bear trap and nail bat in hand. The first real fight on the show, and the birth of the Steve we love.
-
The classroom
Eleven, exhausted, holds her hand out toward the creature. It disintegrates into ashes, and the little girl with it. The last shot of season 1 before the epilogue.
-
Dart in the tunnels
The demodog stops in front of Dustin, recognizes the smell of its friend, and lets him pass. The only moment of tenderness ever granted to this species.
Another piece from the selection: a piece inspired by the Demogorgon.
In the shopLego Demodog figure 375 pieces50,90 €See the product
Not to be confused
“Demogorgon” has become the word the general public uses for any Stranger Things creature. That is wrong three times out of four.
| Creature | What it is | Seasons | The landmark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Demogorgon | Adult predator, biped | 1, 4, 5 | A petal head, alone, drawn to blood |
| Demodog | The same one, at the juvenile stage | 2 | Quadruped, in a pack, still small |
| the Mind Flayer | Particle entity, hive-mind | 2, 3 | Giant spider-shaped shadow, possesses humans |
| Vecna | Henry Creel transformed | 4, 5 | A humanoid who speaks and chooses his victims |
The demodog is not another species from the Demogorgon: it is the same animal a few days earlier. The Mind Flayer is not a giant Demogorgon: it is a consciousness made of particles, which needs bodies to possess and which commands the pack. And the Demogorgon is not Vecna: the beast does not speak, does not choose, remembers nothing. It hunts, Vecna thinks.
One last, rarer confusion: the demobats of season 4 are not flying Demogorgons. They are creatures of their own, a swarm that guards the Creel house on the Upside Down side and that, too, obeys the hive.
Our Demogorgon products
The Demogorgon is the most recognizable face of the show, and one of the most requested: plushes, figures, posters, and clothes with the petal head. We pick every piece for the fidelity of the design, and claim nothing beyond our passion for the show.
To complete the reading: a piece inspired by the Demogorgon.
In the shopBeige Hawkins demodogs sweater63,90 €See the product
Frequently asked questions
What is the Demogorgon in Stranger Things?
It is the predator of the Upside Down, a faceless biped whose head opens into petals. It abducts Will Byers and kills Barb in November 1983, before being disintegrated by Eleven in a classroom at Hawkins middle school. Its name comes from a Dungeons & Dragons demon, chosen by Mike and his friends.
What is the difference between a Demogorgon and a demodog?
No species separates them: the demodog is the juvenile stage of the Demogorgon. It walks on all fours, lives in a pack and grows in a few days, as Dart shows, the creature Dustin adopted in 1984. The adult Demogorgon of season 1 is simply a demodog that finished growing.
How is the Demogorgon killed in season 1?
Eleven disintegrates it with her mind in a middle-school classroom, after the Byers trap and Steve's bat have failed to bring it down. The effort is such that she vanishes at the same time as it. We learn in season 2 that she was thrown into the Upside Down and came back out.
Why is the Demogorgon drawn to blood?
The show does not explain it biologically, it shows it: Barb bleeds at the edge of the pool, Nancy in the woods, and each time the creature arrives. Nancy and Jonathan use that to trap it. It is a hunting rule, like the shark that smells a drop at a distance, and it is enough to make every wound terrifying.
Do the creatures of the Upside Down obey Vecna?
Yes, like all the creatures of the Upside Down. Season 2 suggests it when the pack collapses at the closing of the gate, season 4 confirms it when the Russian prison creatures weaken during the attack on the hive, and season 5 proves it when Will turns that hive against its own soldiers.
Are there Demogorgons in season 5?
Yes. In fall 1987, they roam Hawkins under quarantine, come out of the rifts opened at the end of season 4. Will Byers, linked to the hive since his possession, manages to kill some of them with his mind. They remain soldiers, never chiefs.