Joyce's alphabet wall: the Christmas lights turned into a phone
Universe · Cult objects · The alphabet wall
Joyce buys her Christmas lights a few days after her son disappears, in November 1983. In this article: what she understands before anyone else and by which signs, the wall letter by letter and the words the bulbs spell, the three staging choices that make the sequence unforgettable, what the wall becomes through the end of the first season, the two sets it is often confused with, and its place in the show's imagery through 1987. By the end, you will know everything that stretch of wall tells.
An alphabet painted by hand on the living-room wall, a string of Christmas lights hung above it, one bulb per letter: Joyce Byers's Stranger Things wall is the most recognizable set of the first season. It appears in November 1983, in the third episode, and it serves only one purpose: talking to a child who is no longer there. Two messages come out of it, “RIGHT HERE” and “RUN”, and the scene ends with a silhouette pushing the wallpaper from the other side. Here is how this object was born, how it works, and what it became.
The essentials
- Episode: “Chapter Three: Holly, Jolly”, season 1, episode 3
- Date in the story: November 1983, a few days after Will disappears
- Directed by: Shawn Levy, from a script by Jessica Mecklenburg
- The setup: twenty-six letters painted on three lines, one bulb per letter
- The two messages: “RIGHT HERE”, then “RUN”
- Right after: the creature pushes the wallpaper and Joyce leaves the house
- His end: Lonnie takes down the lights and patches the hole in the wall from episode 5
- Release: the eight episodes of the season on July 15, 2016
Contents
- Before the wall: what Joyce understands before anyone else
- The Stranger Things wall, letter by letter
- Why the scene works: the set, the light, the sound
- What the wall becomes through the end of the season
- Do not confuse them: the station map and Will's drawings
- From the lights to the tower: its place in the show's imagery
Before the wall: what Joyce understands before anyone else
Will Byers disappears on November 6, 1983, riding his bike home from a ten-hour game of Dungeons & Dragons. From the next day, his mother refuses the version the police offers her. No one follows her: not the deputies at the station, not her older son, not her ex-husband. The viewer, though, has known since the first scene that she is right, and that asymmetry carries the whole season.
The second episode gives her her first proof, and it is electrical. Joyce picks up a call in which she hears breathing, then her son's voice, before the set heats up and burns out in her hand. She unplugs what can be unplugged, has a new phone installed, and starts looking at the lamps in the house differently. The bulbs dim and light up again when she speaks.
That is where the character makes a decision no one else would have made. Instead of waiting for the next sign, she supplies a channel. A few days after the disappearance, she buys Christmas lights and strings them across the whole living room. She asks a question out loud, and a bulb answers.
The problem then becomes one of throughput. A lamp that blinks says yes or no, nothing more, and a mother looking for her son needs whole words. The solution she finds in the third episode fits in a can of black paint, and it looks like nothing a reasonable adult would do in their living room.
The string of fat bulbs, the one you need to rebuild the wall of letters.
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The Stranger Things wall, letter by letter
The most famous wall in the show is a stretch of light partition, in the living room of a wooden house at the end of a lane. Joyce paints the twenty-six letters of the alphabet there by hand, in capitals, on three uneven lines. Above, she fixes the string of lights, one bulb per letter. There is nothing else: no device, no specialist, no instructions.
The way it works is totally simple, and that is what makes it readable in a second. She asks a question out loud, the bulbs light one after another, and she reads the letters as they come. That evening two messages come out of the wall, and they fit in nine letters and three letters.
The first is a position: RIGHT HERE, right here. The second is an order: RUN, run. The two contradict each other, and that is precisely what is frightening. A child says he is there, in the room, a meter away, and in the same breath asks his mother to leave. The show never explains how he sees, or from where.
The warning comes too late. The wallpaper warps behind her, a silhouette pushes the wall from the other side, and Joyce runs out of the house. The sequence lasts only a few minutes, and it already holds everything else: two worlds stuck against each other, and a hardware-store object to pass from one to the other.
Why the scene works: the set, the light, the sound
The set, first. Everything that makes up the scene is at hand height and of the period: paint, nails, a string of lights bought in a store, tired wallpaper. Nothing arrives from outside, nothing is built for the occasion, and it is this lack of gear that makes the scene believable. In reality, the Byers house is a private wooden house near Fayetteville, Georgia, about forty minutes from Atlanta; you can see it from the road and it is not open to visitors.
The light, next. The whole episode is lit by sources visible in the frame: bulbs, flashlights, headlights, strings of lights. When light becomes a means of communication, it stops being a lighting comfort, and every drop in power becomes information. That is also why the Byers living room looks darker with each episode: everything that was not useful has been unplugged.
The sound, last. The alphabet scene plays almost without music: you hear the crackle of the bulbs and the mother's breathing. The rule holds for the whole show and it runs against intuition: the more unreal the scene, the less music there is. The silence gives the viewer time to read the letters at the same time as Joyce.
What remains is the framing, which explains the rest. The camera almost never leaves Joyce's face while the information is on the wall: you read the answer in her eyes before you read it on the partition. And the choice of the lights is not only decorative. The episode is called “Chapter Three: Holly, Jolly”, and its original title, “Chapter Three: Holly, Jolly”, takes up an American Christmas song, and the youngest of the Wheelers sees the creature there in her decorated room. The show will use a holiday image for five seasons to show a horror.
What the wall becomes through the end of the season
The wall is not a set for a single evening. The child's body is pulled from the quarry at the end of this same episode. In the next episode, the town prepares the funeral, and Joyce is the only one who knows that this body is not the right one. She goes back to her letters, plugs the lights in again, and asks her question once more.
This time, the answer no longer goes through the bulbs. She hears her son's voice behind the wall, tears off the wallpaper, and sees him. The wall stops being a board of letters and becomes a membrane, and it is an axe that will end up opening it. The device has done its job: it served to find the exact place to push.
In the fifth episode, the wall is taken down. Lonnie, Will's father, reappears in Hawkins, acts present, talks about a lawyer and compensation, takes the lights down and nails boards over the hole in the wall. The letters stay, but the device no longer works. The show says a lot in one detail: in this town, reasonable adults erase the evidence without even meaning to.
The lights come back one last time in the eighth episode. Nancy and Jonathan choose the Byers living room to trap the creature there, with a bear trap, something to start a fire and a nailed bat, and they string the lights across the ceiling again. The same object changes function: it no longer serves to talk, it serves to warn. When the bulbs go wild, the creature is close.
The wall is therefore used in only two episodes out of eight. That is short, and it is probably one of the reasons it is remembered so well: the show never wore it out, nor turned it into a recurring gadget.
The poster of the Byers house, for the stretch of wall beside it.
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Do not confuse: the police station map and Will's drawings
Three walls from the show get mixed up in memory, and they have neither the same maker nor the same function. The first is the alphabet wall: it is Joyce's, it is in the Byers living room, it dates from November 1983, and it serves to receive a message.
The second is the one at the police station. The chief of police pins up his map of the county and his board of the disappearances, to grid the searches and keep count of what he does not know. It is an adult's tool, in an administrative place: he talks to no one, he organizes.
The third comes a year later. In the fall of 1984, back home, Will covers the walls of the house with hundreds of pencil drawings, unreadable one by one, which, set end to end, form the map of the tunnels running under the town. Same house, same walls, opposite intention: the wall of 1983 receives a message, the one of 1984 produces one.
The distinction matters for a simple reason: each of these walls says something about the person who made it. A mother invents a language, a police officer draws a map, a child draws what he has seen. It is the same scene shot three times — a character in front of a flat surface — and each time you understand who they are before they have spoken.
From the string of lights to the tower: its place in the show's imagery
Ask someone to sum up the first season in one image: they will describe this wall. Not the creature, not the lab, not the bike left by the side of the road, but painted letters and bulbs that light up. The image follows the grammar of 80s posters: a wide frame, a light source in the shot, one dominant color, a recognizable silhouette. It stays readable as a thumbnail, which is why it has been reused so often.
The wall above all set a rule the show has not left since: electricity is a language. After the bulbs come the middle-school ham radio, through which the party hears Will's voice; the ten-meter antenna Dustin puts up on a hill in the summer of 1985; and, in 1987, a whole radio station, whose morning show is used to pass meeting times to those who know how to hear them. What a mother held on a nail in 1983, a town holds four years later in a building and a tower.
The object itself never comes back as it was. No season rebuilds the alphabet wall, and that fits the story's method: the finds are not replayed, they move. The wall has, however, become the decoration fans reproduce the most, and it is the simplest: a light wall, the alphabet in uneven capitals on three lines, a string of fat bulbs, one letter under each bulb. The advice that always comes back: warm bulbs rather than white LEDs, because in 1983 the light was orange.
The word most often spelled out in fans' rooms is the one that ends the scene. Three letters, an order, and a mother who did not follow it. It is perhaps the best definition of the story: a household object, a period technique, and a woman who refuses the version she is handed. The stretch of wall costs nothing, explains nothing, and carries a whole season on its twenty-six letters.
The T-shirt of the first season, the one from November 1983.
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Frequently asked questions
In which episode does Joyce paint the alphabet on her wall?
In the third episode of the first season, “Chapter Three: Holly, Jolly”, directed by Shawn Levy from a script by Jessica Mecklenburg. The action is set in November 1983, a few days after Will disappears.
What words do the lights spell?
Two: “RIGHT HERE”, right here, and “RUN”, run. The second comes just before the wallpaper warps and Joyce runs out of the house.
How does the alphabet wall work?
The twenty-six letters are painted by hand on three lines, and a string of lights is stretched above, one bulb per letter. Joyce asks a question out loud and reads the letters whose bulb lights up, one after another.
Why Christmas lights?
Because it is November and these are the lights you find in a store then. The episode's original title, “Holly, Jolly”, also takes up an American Christmas song: the show uses a holiday image to show a horror, and it will do it again across five seasons.
Does the wall come back in the later seasons?
No. Lonnie takes the lights down and plugs the hole in the wall as early as the fifth episode, and the device stops being of use. The lights come back once, in the eighth, as a warning system during the living-room trap; after that, it is the principle that moves, toward the radios and then toward a whole station.
Should this wall be confused with Will's drawings?
No. The drawings date from the fall of 1984: Will covers the walls of the house with them, and set end to end they form the map of the tunnels under the town. The alphabet wall receives a message, the one made of drawings produces one.
How do you rebuild this wall at home?
On a light wall, the alphabet in uneven capitals painted by hand on three lines, then a string of fat bulbs fixed above, one bulb per letter. Warm bulbs are better than white LEDs: in 1983, the light was orange.
