Stranger Things: Why A Beholder Should Be The Show’s Next D&D Monster
Stranger Things has drawn inspiration from the pages of the D&D Monster Manual before, but the show has yet to use the game’s most famous creature.
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The past three seasons of Netflix’s Stranger Things have seen Hawkins, Indiana besieged by creatures inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, and the beholder is the perfect follow-up for season 4. An ensemble period piece set in the 1980s, Stranger Things splits its focus between three differently-aged groups of characters but primarily follows four grade school boys who befriend a telekinetic girl named Eleven, with whom they face a number of horrors attempting to invade their town from the eldritch Upside Down. The show has made no secret of the heavy influence of 1980s pop culture on its world and storytelling. Paying homage both to the game itself and to the hobby of the kids in E.T., the first thing audiences are shown about Mike Wheeler and the gang is that they are avid Dungeons & Dragons players.
Both of the main supernatural threats in the show thus far, the Demogorgon and the Mind Flayer, have been named after well-known monsters in D&D. The tradition began when Eleven used the boys’ miniature of the Demogorgon to represent the creature stalking Hawkins after escaping from the Upside Down. When the Mind Flayer was revealed in season 2, it was named more purposefully after the D&D creatures of the same name (also known as illithids), as both are masterminds with powers of mental manipulation.
When the fourth season of Stranger Things finally rolls around, a monster inspired by the beholder would be a great choice for its next otherworldly villain. Floating orbs with large, one-eyed faces and several protruding eyestalks, beholders first appeared in D&D’s Greyhawk supplement in 1975 and have remained a popular breed of antagonist since. In addition to the value of arguably being the game’s signature creature, the beholder and its many eyes would be thematically appropriate for Stranger Things in the likely scenario that season 4 doubles down on the show’s undercurrents of Cold War espionage. Even this early on, a teaser confirming Hopper’s Siberian survival and the announced promotion of conspiracy theorist Murray Bauman to series regular are already pointing in that direction.
Granted, this connection to surveillance would be a bit of an extrapolation, given that the beholder’s many eyes aren’t traditionally associated with sight as much as they are with the individual magical abilities that they possess. But a change of this sort wouldn’t be unprecedented for the show: both the Demogorgon and the Mind Flayer from the previous seasons bear only the most casual resemblance to their namesakes. And given the arachnoid, very non-illithid silhouette given to the latter, an indistinct image of a beholder would appear similar enough to be related in some way, not necessitating the introduction of an entirely new creature.
The only issue with featuring another D&D-inspired monster is that the reference would have to be licensed, as the beholder is an original creation of the game, as opposed to something like the Demogorgon, some form of which existed in mythology prior to its inclusion in either property. Of course, now that Stranger Things is such a successful and well-established cultural phenomenon, it’s nearly a foregone conclusion that Wizards of the Coast (D&D’s publisher) would be on board, having just recently allowed Pixar to use the beholder (and the less frightening gelatinous cube) in Onward.
Beginning with the release of the game’s extremely accessible 5th edition in 2014, Dungeons & Dragons has grown to the greatest levels of popularity and cultural recognition in its history, while the related success of “actual play” shows like Critical Role and Dimension 20 has naturally brought much of the game’s lore to a new online audience. Further acknowledgement by one of the most widely-viewed programs on the largest streaming service in the world would not only encourage the increasingly-diverse interest in Dungeons & Dragons, but also provide Stranger Things with a fitting culmination for its line of villains lovingly inspired by the original tabletop role-playing game.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/stranger-things-season-4-dd-monster-beholder-why/