The Official Sunset Valley Timeline

Welcome to the official Sunset Valley timeline, a comprehensive guide to what led our strange little town to gain the monster and conspiracy-filled reputation it has today!

Also, shout-out to the Wiki deciding multiple paragraphs into this that me trying to type was clearly me trying to refresh the page, that was very helpful.

**1960**

This was the year the now infamous Sunset Valley Laboratory first opened with Dr. Solanum as the head scientist. It started as a pretty normal lab, at least for the time, offering adults a few quick bucks to take some drugs and report the effects. However, after multiple reports of subjects witnessing the same "flower-faced or spider-like" monsters, the lab began to shift its focus towards figuring out if these were, somehow, more than mere hallucinations.

*Note: In the book, Suspicious Minds, El's mom reports seeing flower-like monsters (which I'm assuming were demogorgans, though I don't think that's been confirmed) while participating in an experiment like this, so I decided to use a similar event as the starting point for Solanum's fascination with a possible monster realm.*

**1967**

During this year, Zero/Jack, age 7, fell into the Upside Down and became the first powered child in Sunset Valley. Solanum heard of this and set off to kidnap him from the hospital where he was recovering from his time in the monster realm, believing that not only were her theories about to be confirmed, but that his newfound abilities may give her the opportunity for an even more exciting study. This event kicked off Project Midnight and one of the worst mistakes in the town's checkered history.

**1970**

After a few years of studying Zero/Jack and trying-and failing-to find more information about the realm that gave him his powers, Solanum decided to start something new. She began a new project, Project Indigo, aimed at using blood transfusions to give Zero/Jack's powers to a new batch of kids.

Twelve, age 3, and Kitty, age 2, were the first two children taken for this new project and were labelled Experiments A and B respectively.

*Note: I changed Twelve's age from 4 to 3 here because, as I was writing this, I realized I had him as a year too old for the entire rest of the timeline.*

**1971**

Two/C, age 3, and One/D and Three/E, both age 2, were added to Project Indigo.

**1972**

Psyche/F and Dana/G, both age 3, and Four/H, age 2, were added to Project Indigo.

**1973**

Five/I and Six/J, both age 3, were added to Project Indigo.

This year was more interesting than '71 an '72, as the usual Indigo business was interrupted when the lab was infiltrated by a Russian spy, who managed to escape from Solanum's custody before she could deal with them. They took what they learned about Project Indigo back to their home country, where they started their own experiment to replicate it: Project Eclipse. Their project involved five children taken from local orphanages: Alpha (age 5), Beta (age 4), Gamma (age 3), Delta (age 2), and Epsilon (age 1, eventually Solanum's 13/Experiment O), who were given similar drug mixtures to the ones Solanum used in her initial experiments, as the Russians obviously didn't have Jack. The Eclipse kids successfully connected to the Upside Down and gained powers as intended, but due to the use of drugs instead of powered DNA, their abilities were weaker than the Indigo kids'.

*Note: This also links back to Suspicious Minds and my theory on powers in the show as a whole. I'm not gonna go full Film Theory on this, but basically, I believe that 1) all powers link back to the Upside Down (Terry/El's mom seemed to connect while pregnant; I think Henry connected when he moved to Hawkins, since he seemed to be communicating with something in the move-in scene), 2) the younger you are, the more likely you are to develop powers (hence El & Henry getting powers but not Terry), and 3) through some wacky science stuff, the right mixture of drugs will create an artificial connection to the Upside Down (the aformentioned stuff with Terry).*

*So! I believe that Solanum's initial test subjects did not get powers because they were adults and an artificial connection is generally weaker and less likely to grant powers anyway. I think that being kids was the key to the Eclipse Children gaining powers, but that the connection being artificial still made them weaker, and the older they were, the weaker they were, meaning Alpha is the weakest and Epsilon/Thirteen is the strongest.*

**1974**

Elias/K, age 4, and Eight/L and Ten/M, age 3, were kidnapped by SV lab.

**1975**

Seven/N, age 3, was kidnapped by SV lab.

Solanum, through use of her own spies, discovered Project Eclipse and became determined to acquire one of what she referred to as "the Russian knock-offs" to compare their experiments to her own. She sent someone out to do so and they successfully returned with Epsilon/Thirteen/O, age 3.

Before the spy made it back with Thirteen, Solanum kidnapped Fifteen, age 3, as a failsafe in case that mission failed.

Alongside the continuation of Project Indigo, Solanum began a new project focused on using Four as a human lie detector for interrogations and Void-spying missions.

**1977**

At this point, all the Indigo children had their powers for a couple years-and there had been a couple years to analyze what the Russian lab did with Thirteen-so Solanum decided to try something new: a power mastery test. The results of this test were used to assign the children the numbers they would go by for the rest of their time in the lab (or for the rest of their lives, for those who never chose another name).

After the power mastery test, Thirteen, age 5, was brought in to help Four on during interrogations/spy missions as a Russian translator, as Solanum decided it would be more useful to continue teaching him Russian than to force him to speak English-only. They continued working on this assignments together until Four's escape.

**1981**

Four, age 11, escaped the lab and became the first escapee in Indigo's history.

**1982**

March 24th: Seven, age 10, succeeded in doing what Solanum had been trying to achieve for her entire career, connecting to the Upside Down (or Mirrored Earth, as it was known by the lab).

March 25th: Solanum decided to run another test on the Indigo kids, this time to see which experiments can connect to the Mirrored Earth. The results lead to her deciding to continue testing with Three, Seven, Thirteen, and Fifteen, whose connections were the strongest.

April: Five and Six, both age 12, escaped the lab with Psyche, age 13. As a result of their escape, Elias, age 12, was tortured by Solanum due to being their closest sibling, and his eye was ripped out.

**1983**

January: Twelve, age 16, escaped the lab.

December: Kitty, age 15, escaped the lab.

**1984**

June: The Russian lab began Project Starcourt, led by Dr. Isayev, to attempt to open their own gate in Sunset Valley.

December: SV1

Thirteen, age 12, escaped into the Upside Down.

Solanum escaped being arrested by Jasmine by ditching the lab (and One, age 15, Two, age 16, Three, age 15, and Twelve, age 17, who were still inside). She took Eight, age 13, Ten, age 13, Elias, age 14, and Dana, age 15 with her.

**1985**

Early January: Three, age 15, died in the Upside Down, and Thirteen buried him outside the Upside Down lab.

Halloween & The Surrounding Days: SV2

Solanum was captured by Flayed Russians and dragged back to Sunset Valley to get Flayed herself, after which she returned to her new hideout to take Eight, age 14, Ten, age 14, Elias, age 15, and Dana, age 16 to Mr. Squishy. She mostly succeeded, but Elias managed to escape before getting Flayed by burning through the side of the transport van during a fear-induced power-up. Unfortunately, he stumbled into the tunnels and got dragged to the Upside Down shortly after.

Eight managed to escape when Mr. Squishy died, but wound up lost and disoriented in the woods; Dana also survived by escaping to Canada.

Ten was the only one to die, having become part of the monster before the Gate closed.

November: Eight, age 14, was found and killed by Jack.

Solanum attempted another escape, but was captured by government agents at the airport. After spending a while in a top-secret facility being interrogated about the whereabouts of her remaining experiments, she was taken to the asylum.

December: Jack found and kidnapped Elias to give Carmine an exorcism for Christmas. :)

**1986**

Late February: Six was killed by Jack after being haunted by visions of Elias, Thirteen, Three, and everyone else she felt like she could've saved had she been a little harsher with Five during their escape.

After being sent out by Psyche to inform the others of Six's death, Five got stuck in the Upside Down trying to make it to Sunset Valley. Over the course of her time there, she met Twelve's old demodog Sapph, who she called Killer, and found and quickly abandoned Thirteen, who she dubbed "Too weak to waste her supplies on."

Psyche began her own journey to Sunset Valley after not hearing back from Five for a while.

March: SV3 & The Upside Down Apocalypse