4. The Demogorgons
What are the Demogorgons? The first monster that viewers encounter in the series is the Demogorgon. They also belong to the collective consciousness in the Upside Down and are dangerous hunters that instinctively want to hunt and kill.
Depending on their developmental stage, they take on different forms:
- After hatching, they look like large tadpoles. They have forelegs and a tail at the back. The iconic mouth with the 4 flaps and countless teeth is still missing.
- They then further develop, gain hind legs and ultimately grow into dog-like creatures that now have longer limbs and the dangerous mouth.
- They continue to grow until they become more humanoid and can walk on two legs. The mouth remains in the adult form too.
Even the dog-like Demogorgons can easily kill humans, but the adult is a whole different ballgame. It has superhuman strength and one can assume that the adult variants do not need a connection to the collective consciousness to survive in the human world. This is different for the dogs: they died in the lab in Hawkins after the portal to the Upside Down was closed.
In Season 4, one can see in the Russian prison how a Demogorgon was able to take out almost the entire armed personnel. The Demogorgon dogs could indeed be killed with fire, but the adult variant died only after Hopper decapitated it.
