Before Nancy and Jonathan were attacked, the plan was to save the flayed, to work out what was going on and help them.

This discovery completely changes the direction of their plans. And that same day they discover that the flayed are eating chemicals and turning into giant goop monsters. They then start trying to work out who else is flayed.

They become aware that there are at least 5 flayed, and probably more. Very soon after the Sauna Test, they meet up with Nancy and realise that it is not just Billy that is flayed. The odds were stacked against them being successful. Instead the victim was a very strong (basically) adult, being helped by a group of young teens (the others did come into the equation later, but never to directly face Billy until the battle). The victim was no longer a (mostly) cooperative child being helped by all his friends and a group of adults and teenagers. In S3 they didn't have the same resources to deflay Billy. But the circumstances were trickier in S3. The very best plan would have been for them to sedate him somehow and be able to properly strap him in before blasting him with heat, as they had with Will. They had already tried the sauna test (which was a very smart plan, and probably their best option at the time). Since they don't mention anything like that ( im pretty sure but correct me if im wrong)īy the time they are aware of the open Gate, it is already too late to try and get it out of Billy again. Tried to avoid it by forcing Mind Flayer out of his body just like they did in Season 2 with Will. The only reason that they were not mentioning the need to get it out of Billy 'before closing the Gate' at that point in the story is that they didn't know the Gate was open again. In The Sauna Test they attempted to use heat to extract the MF. And that is true.Īs you mentioned above, they did try to get the MF out of Billy in the same way that they got it out of Will. So there was an option for him to survive in the show, therefore he did still sacrifice himself.Īlthough, it seems more like your issue is 'they had no plan to get the MF out of Billy, the only plan was to close the Gate, and that he die'. He was not Flayed at that moment, and the MeatFlayer died seconds after that attack. If he had stepped aside and offered El up to the MF (after she got the MF out of him), then he could have survived the closing of the Gate. Yes, if had Billy been Flayed when the Gate was closed, he would have died. But I disagree with this section:īut the thing is that he would eventually die when they closed the gate. So I definitely think Option 1 is the answer.

But it is definitely a strong indication that the Flayed die when the Gate closes and the connection is severed. It doesn't outright prove the theory (as we have no proof that the Demodogs were flayed by the same method as Will, and we have never seen the effects of closing the Gate on a flayed human). The fact that all the Demodogs died does suggest that this assumption was correct. In S2 closing the Gate was the only option that they had to defeat the Demodogs, but it would kill Will if they did so. So please excuse my long response that parrots a lot of what you have said back to you. Well, I think you're wrong, but I think you've also answered a lot of your own questions within the post.

Mind flayer stranger things 3