The implication with the Mind Flayer being this predatory world-conquering hive is that the Upside Down is an adjacent parallel timeline, practically identical to ours and probably invaded recently. It would be interesting if they introduced a group of human survivors that's been hanging on over there, they find a gateway the Mind Flayer is opening between worlds and a couple of them manage to avoid being killed and slip through. Maybe Hopper or his deputies pick them up wandering through town and we get to hear their story - after they wolf down a meal like they haven't eaten in weeks (which maybe they haven't). This would probably be a late season 3 or early season 4 kind of thing, something that would happen shortly before a final attack began.
If they wanted to do a standalone episode like they did this year with Eleven and Kali, they could make it about the Upside Down being attacked and going from a place like our world, with billions of people, green plants and blue skies, to the dark cold hell it became, with a handful of people surviving in the shadows. Living in tunnels and underground shelters and scrounging for food. I think it would be interesting to see the invasion of the other world play out.
It would likely start the same way it almost started in season 2, with a minor incursion the military thought could be controlled. Eventually it would get out of hand and things would go downhill fast. There'd be flows of refugees leaving the expanding "infected zone", ground attacks, airstrikes, and eventually nukes. The Mind Flayer meanwhile would be countering with vast armies of demogorgons and probably other creatures that fly in the air and swim underwater. Plus infiltrators like Will. Humans who have been compromised and are now under its control. At the end, we'd see our survivors from the previous episode setting out on the journey that would eventually lead them here.
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