Netflix’s Stranger Things season 4 has the opportunity to introduce the most powerful of Eleven’s test subject “sisters,” Nine. The so-called Stranger Things Expanded Universe has been hinting for a while now that a number of the other children test subjects from Hawkins Laboratory may be making their way to the television screen for season 4, but now fans are getting the biggest tease yet with the presence of Nine, aka Jamie.

Jaime and her twin sister, Marcy, were entered into the Department of Energy’s Project Indigo sometime in the 1970s. Given the respective designations of Nine and Nine-Point-Five (or Control, since Marcy didn’t exhibit any special powers at all), they were originally seen as disappointments by Dr. Martin Brenner, with Nine’s pyrokinetic abilities showing only limited success. But when she inadvertently roasted a lab tech alive, Brenner saw an extreme amount of potential for future assassinations and other such assignments – until Eleven, that is, psionically blossomed, proving herself to be the single most powerful asset in Indigo’s arsenal. Nine was scheduled to be terminated, along with whatever other children were still left on-site in the early ‘80s. A sympathetic doctor, however, hid the poor girl away in a nondescript medical facility rather than murder her in cold blood – even “monsters have lines they won’t cross,” he said.

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This is where the comic book miniseries Stranger Things: Into the Fire steps into the breach. Nine has slowly awakened from a drugged state of oblivion – designed to keep her powers subdued – and has remembered the “betrayal” of her twin sister fleeing Hawkins without her seven years previously (although, to be fair to Marcy, Jaime had slipped into a temporary coma at the time, an aftereffect of the sudden explosion of her fiery powers). Now, fueled by the perceived need for revenge, Nine has broken free from the backwater hospital that has been her home for the past few years and stepped out freely into the world, looking to hunt down those who had wronged her.

Such a premise, of course, is strongly reminiscent of Eight’s Stranger Things story, the wayward subject who Eleven managed to track down in Chicago all the way back in season 2; the erstwhile Kali Prasad had managed to assemble her own crew of misfits and misanthropes, and they had undertaken a series of revenge killings, especially against the former personnel of the project. And the comics, which are currently set just three months before Stranger Things season 3, have also shown the exploits of Nine-Point-Five and Three, who are similarly on the lam but engaged in an altogether different mission: to find and reunite with their former “siblings” from Indiana.

Although it’s entirely possible that the Stranger Things Expanded Universe will kill off or otherwise phase out the character of Nine, preventing her inclusion in the television series’s main narrative, it nonetheless further reinforces the idea that the show’s cast can bump into any of these wild cards at any time in season 4. This opens up the possibilities of Stranger Things‘s test subjects teaming up to defeat the Mind Flayer, Dr. Brenner, or the Soviets (or some combination thereof).

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It also suggests a number of thematic storylines that can happen in Stranger Things season 4. With Eight and, now, Nine hell-bent on getting even with the world, does that mean that audiences might see a similar emotional turn for Eleven in the next batch of episodes? Or is it the opposite, with El showing how all of these lost sisters can come back into the civilized fold through being accepted into a new family? (But only after defeating a sinister parallel dimension together, of course.) In this way, the comic miniseries can provide a valuable, albeit small, step in this reconciliation process, helping give closure to Eleven’s character arc along the way – arguably the main throughline of Stranger Things itself.

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About The Author


Marc N. Kleinhenz
(268 Articles Published)

Marc N. Kleinhenz is the author of “Nerdism In-Depth,” the Substack newsletter about every major piece of nerd culture. He was also the editor-in-chief of Orlando Informer for several years and still is the consulting editor of Tower of the Hand, which is dedicated to George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. In addition, he’s written for 32 other sites (including IGN, The Escapist, and Gamasutra), has appeared on radio and television news as a pop-culture (read: Star Wars) specialist, and has served as a consultant on the theming industry.

Marc majored in English and minored in philosophy in college, but his true passion for knowledge resides within the Star Wars universe, where he continues to document and analyze every last multimedia release, from the novels and comics to the television series and theme-park attractions.

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Marc has had several short stories and comics published and has even spent a year teaching English in Japan (living in Kobe and working in Itami). He currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife, two children, two cats, dog, and bird.

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