What Is The 'Stranger Things' Monster? That's A Good Question

(Warning: This post contains spoilers from Episode 2 of Stranger Things.) There's something haunting a small town in Indiana on Stranger Things, and it's not exactly something your local law enforcement can take care of. Imagine that: "Hi, 911, there's a monster that just took my friend at a pool party — should I be calling you or...?" Yeah, not quite. But the monster on Stranger Things really is a mystery that is very difficult to dissect. And that might just be the point.

In Episode 2, the monster that we're supposed to assume took Will seems to have also kidnapped Barb while at Steve Harrington's "pool party." We didn't see all of it, but we saw enough, and it was pretty terrifying. The monster — it's tough to say if this is a monster, alien, giant Venus flytrap, so let's stick with monster — attacked Barb while she was sitting by herself near the pool while Nancy and Steve did their own thing inside. (Basically, Barb was being a good friend by waiting for Nancy, but instead found herself in the inside of a goopy monster.)

It feels important to note that the monster seems to have appeared because of the blood Barb was dripping into the pool. (Earlier in the episode, Barb attempted to shotgun a beer, accidentally cutting her finger open.) So, why does the monster seem to be attracted to blood? Is it a shark-wannabe, or even worse, a land-bound shark hybrid?

More to the point, what does the monster want? First, it took Will, which is the main plot driving the season thus far. But now that it has Barb, we can either expect more bodies to fall, or for the monster's victims to be the reason our protagonists don't give up hunting for their friends.

The monster, aesthetically, almost appears to be a Venus flytrap. Whether that was done on purpose or not, the face seems to open which just adds to the supernatural/thriller genre the show so successfully nails.

Hopefully, as the season progresses and the cast and creators behind the show speak out more about the plot, we'll learn more about the monster behind the gruesome kidnappings and disappearances of the townspeople.