Hawkins National Laboratory: the experiments, the numbered children, the gate
Universe · Places · The laboratory
Hawkins National Laboratory is the origin point of the whole show: a federal building on the edge of the forest, presented as a Department of Energy center, where Dr. Brenner raised children with psychic powers and where, on November 6, 1983, a gate opened toward the Upside Down. Here is its history, season by season.
The essentials
- Front: a Department of Energy research facility
- Reality: a program of child test subjects, run by Brenner
- Founding event: the gate Eleven opened on November 6, 1983
- Closing: December 1984, after the gate was closed
Contents
A federal building at the end of a forest road
The lab has been there since the 50s: a concrete and glass complex, surrounded by fences and cameras, where Hawkins residents know people do “research.” To the public, it belongs to the Department of Energy and works on energy questions. In reality, it has housed since the 70s a program of experiments on children, inherited from government mind-control research.
That is where Eleven comes out, shaved head and hospital gown, in the first minutes of the show. And that is where Will, the evening of his disappearance, rides by bike.
The lab T-shirt, for those who like closed gates.
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Brenner and the numbered children
Dr. Martin Brenner, whom his subjects call “Papa,” runs the program. His subjects wear numbers tattooed on the forearm: One, Eight, Eleven, and about ten others. They live in the lab, sleep in white rooms, play in a room decorated with a rainbow, and are trained to listen, move, and break things with their minds.
On September 8, 1979, subject One, Henry Creel, massacres all the other children and the lab guards. Eleven, the only survivor, throws him into the Upside Down. Brenner hides the massacre, and leaves with a single child. Four years later, she is the one who will open the gate.
The rainbow roomThe “Rainbow Room”, with its toys and children's tables, is the lab's most unsettling set: it is a nursery for test subjects. It is the setting for the 1979 massacre in Season 4.
November 6, 1983: the gate
Brenner uses Eleven to spy at a distance, in a sensory-deprivation tank. One night, he asks her to make contact with a creature she glimpsed in the void. She touches it; the lab wall tears, and a passage opens to the Upside Down. The Demogorgon comes through, Eleven flees, and that same evening, Will Byers is taken.
The gate stays open for a year. The lab sends soldiers through it, in suits, down a corridor of flesh. It tries to kill Eleven rather than close the gate. Brenner is attacked by the Demogorgon at the middle school in November 1983; he is presumed dead until his return in Season 4.
Owens, the tunnels and the closing
In 1984, Dr. Sam Owens runs the lab with one instruction: contain. He has the roots that spread under Hawkins from the gate burned, and treats Will when the Mind Flayer possesses him. The gate has grown: it is a chasm at the bottom of a well, which Eleven closes in December 1984, from the top of a gondola, with Hopper at her side.
Nancy and Jonathan then leak recordings proving the lab's responsibility in Barb's death. The scandal leads to its closing, and Owens gets Eleven a birth certificate in the name of Jane Hopper.
| Date | What happens at the lab |
|---|---|
| The 70s | Brenner opens the children's program |
| September 8, 1979 | Massacre by Henry Creel; Eleven throws him into the Upside Down |
| November 6, 1983 | Eleven opens the gate; Will vanishes |
| November 1983 | Barb dies in the Upside Down; the lab covers up the case |
| Fall 1984 | Owens burns the tunnels; Will is treated |
| December 1984 | Eleven closes the gate; the lab shuts down |
What is left of it
In 1986, the building is abandoned, but Nancy and Robin find archives there, and Eleven comes back, through memory, to understand what happened in 1979. Season 5 makes it a military stake: under quarantine, Hawkins sees the army reinvest the site for its own experiments. The lab has closed; what it opened, not.
The Eleven figure, subject number 011.
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The lab locations, one by one
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The rainbow room
The playroom of the numbered children, in bright colors, where Eleven is tormented by Two and where Henry wins her trust in 1979.
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The bath
The saltwater tank where Brenner sends Eleven to listen to a Russian spy in 1983, and where she meets the Demogorgon.
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The gate
The basement gate, opened on November 6, 1983, grown in 1984, closed again by Eleven with Hopper.
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The tunnels
The network dug under Hawkins in 1984, which you learn in 1987 Henry had Will dig.
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The Nevada bunker
The second lab, in the desert, where Brenner and Owens run the Nina project in 1986.
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The Upside Down lab
In 1987, the double of the building on the other side, occupied by Dr. Kay, at the center of the circular wall.
The real building
The lab was shot in a former Georgia state psychiatric institute, a 60s concrete building on an Atlanta university campus, unused for about thirty years. Its brick-and-concrete facade, its narrow windows, and its wooded drive gave, with no set dressing, the look of a Cold War federal center. The interiors were built on a soundstage, in Atlanta.
The building has become a pilgrimage site for fans, but it is not open to the public, and the 1979 and 1986 scenes were shot elsewhere, in New Mexico for the Nevada bunker and on a soundstage for the rainbow room.
What the last chapter reveals about the lab
The last season changes the reading of the place. According to Brenner's notes, found by Dustin in the Upside Down lab, the 1983 gate was not the first opening: the Upside Down itself is a bridge created in 1979, when Brenner forced Eleven to contact Henry, and the lab is its geographic center. The circular wall Hopper never crossed turns around it.
Dr. Kay, in 1987, occupies the double of that building on the other side, with a sound emitter to hold Eleven back and Kali in a trunk. When Nancy shoots the exotic-matter sphere above the roof, part of the lab melts. That is where Nancy and Jonathan split, and where the bomb plan is decided. The lab, opened by Brenner, is closed by the children he had made.
The rift poster, for the bedroom.
In the shop44 mm Hawkins High School tiger pin9,90 €See the product
Frequently asked questions
What is the Hawkins laboratory?
A fictional federal research center, on the edge of town, where Brenner runs experiments on children with powers. It is there that Eleven opens the gate to the Upside Down in 1983.
Who runs the lab?
Dr. Martin Brenner until 1983, then Dr. Sam Owens in 1984, tasked with containing the gate.
Does the lab close?
Yes, at the end of season 2, after the closing of the gate and the revelations about Barb's death. The building stays abandoned.
Where was the lab filmed?
In a former building of Emory University, on the Briarcliff campus, in Atlanta.
Where was Hawkins Lab filmed?
In a former psychiatric institute of the state of Georgia, on an Atlanta university campus, unused for about thirty years. The interiors are studio sets.
What is at the center of the Upside Down wall?
The lab, according to the map Dustin draws in 1987: the containment wall turns around it, and the exotic-matter sphere floats above its roof.