Bang's Blogs: Demogorgon vs Death Angel

 

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“Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?” - Friedrich Nietzsche


The Demogorgon, the Man With No Face.


The Death Angel, the Listener from Outer Space.


These monsters have come across time and space to invade our world, and when they do, you can’t run or hide. They’re coming for you. Don’t make a sound, and don’t bleed, lest you get dragged into the wall or eaten. Will the Death Angel be sent into the Abyss, or will the Demogorgon be brought to extinction? Strange things roam quiet places in this DEATH BATTLE!

Before We Start…

Like Steve previously, the Demogorgon will be getting the primarily five season Netflix show, but we’ll also be looking into supplementary material such as the video games, stage play, and novelizations. For the Death Angels, we’ll be looking at the three films, A Quiet Place, A Quiet Place II, and A Quiet Place: Day One, as well as the video game A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead, which is confirmed to be canon to the movies. Coincidentally at the time of this blog, AQP released their first comic, Storm Warning, so we also looked into that. And finally, we looked into various word of god sources where director John Krasinski himself talks about the films, such as The Empire Podcast. 


Also for the sake of simplicity, we’ll be considering this fight as a 1v1 scenario. Initially we wanted to tinker with a sizeable group fight of 9-12 or just the whole hordes, but we don’t really get a solid number on either hordes true size so we figured it's just easier to put them in a 1v1 so we aren’t weighed down by annoying scenario-based factors. 


Special thanks to…

  • Versus Battles Wiki (For Calcs)

  • Rina Antiqua, Kuma and Kaiser (For Calcs)

  • L.A.D, Yuix, Garf and Cabbage for all the amazing art made for this blog

Connections

Unlike the other two Stranger Things matches, the connections for these ones are way more simple and can be summed up in one easy sentence. Apex predators from other worlds (Demogorgons are from the Abyss and the Death Angels come from a lightless planet) with petal-opening mouths that hunt with sounds and senses (Death Angels are attracted to sound and Demogorgons are attracted to blood) and completely outclass humans and their weapons with their armor like bodies. Pretty straightforward but we thought we’d mention it here anyways since we’ll be doing one for Eleven vs Carrie as well.

Background

Demogorgon

“Something’s coming. Something hungry for blood.”


On November 6th, 1983, contact was made with something from the outside from Hawkins National Laboratory, where Dr. Martin Brenner and his experiment, Eleven, were at work. Initially, Dr. Brenner was trying to eavesdrop on a Russian spy, but the recipient was not human. A crack in our reality was created, and chaos ensued as something ransacked the laboratory. Eleven was able to escape, but the damage was already done. Something entered Hawkins, Indiana.

After a long winded night of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, a young Will Byers went missing. Reports from the locals suspected something like a bear roaming the woods, but Will’s friends didn’t believe it. They believed something took their friend deliberately, rationalizing to themselves that the monsters on their board game were real. Mike Wheeler in particular linked the disappearance with one of their recent D&D campaigns, having been defeated by the fearsome “Demogorgon” and then hours later, Will vanished in real life. Nobody would believe them though, at least not at first.

Back in Hawkins Lab, an investigation was undertaken to figure out what they contacted in the first place, and the wound on their walls made it apparent that something is creepin’ by the town. In spite of their best efforts, any attempt to enter the Gate ended with the death of their men, as the hunt continued on. Animals were killed, and the next victim would be taken; Barbara Holland, friend of Nancy Wheeler, who by this point was helping Will’s older brother Jonathan look for Will. This thing was attracted to blood. It seemed like there was an ace in the hole after all.

Nancy and Jonathan used the scent of blood via a bloody-nosed Steve Harrington to lure the creature into the Byers home, and while Steve was able to injure the beast, it escaped into the walls once again, soon to be attracted by pools of blood spilled elsewhere at Hawkins Middle School. While the search for Will Byers was a success, the four boys were caught in the crossfire with Eleven, whom the government was searching for after she escaped. The spilled blood of government agents attracted the beast, and it attacked, tearing through blazing bullets and chasing down the kids into Mr. Clarke’s classroom. Eleven was the only one who could stop it, and she used her remaining power to turn the aggressor into ashes, and Eleven disappeared once again.

Fortunately, it wouldn’t be the last of Eleven, who ended up going into the Upside-Down from exerting her power. Everything else fell into place as to what happened; Will was taken by a monster into the Upside-Down, a mirror of Hawkins full of meaty tentacles, radioactive air, and barren wastelands. And it was home to far more; monsters all under the control of the Mind Flayer, an ancient eldritch horror that doesn’t even realize how old it is, led by the five star general known as Vecna. And its foot soldiers? Apex predators that use portals to enter our own world and hunt us down; the Demogorgons.


Death Angel

“Rule #1: Don't make a sound. Rule #2: Never leave the path. Rule #3: Red means run.”


June 18th. The day the world was invaded by something beyond our understanding. A species of extraterrestrial predators from a lightless planet crashed onto Earth in a giant meteor shower. Fragments of it hit Millbrook, New York, Mexico, and Shanghai. Emerging from the bits of asteroid were what could only be described as blind behemoths with evolutionary armor, and they hunt based on sound, which inevitably led to widespread death and destruction on a catastrophic level. All sentient life went extinct, and even the world's superpowers combining was not enough to stop these pedal-mouth predators, and the US military and government was thoroughly destroyed. All that remained was very few humans, isolated on islands, as the US military discovered that the creatures lack the ability to swim, and many were able to catch on to the creature’s habits, making the world a quiet place. Watch your step, and check your surroundings, because they kill anything that moves. But little hope remains for humanity against the Death Angel.


Experience & Skill


Demogorgon

While the Demogorgons may seem like mindless movie monsters on a surface level, they’re actually pretty dangerous outside of pure brute force. They are said to be at the top of their food chain within their home dimension, with very little else there to oppose them. Even swarms of Demobats are no match for the might of even one Demogorgon. They do also engage in hunting tactics, with the comics comparing them to sharks traveling great distances to hunt down their prey and have showcased the ability to utilize their environment to aid in this. Not only are Demogorgons stealthy in typical movie monster fashion, they’re actually ridiculously smart. Well, for what you’d expect at least! The series itself starts out with a Demogorgon stealthily stalking and picking off unsuspecting prey, with our first one screen Demo’s goal being to kidnap Will Byers and use him as a tether for The Mind Flayer’s incoming take over of Hawkins. In season 5 we also see Demogorgons work together in a clear display of pack mentality, doing so while chasing prey over miles of distance and even performing a stealth attack on a US Military base within the Upside-Down. Taking them down several men at a time and impressively following up on each other's attacks to swiftly deal with the armed forces.


Death Angel

Death Angels are efficient predators, killing anything that makes a sound, which led to a large portion of humanity being wiped out, which implies all animals were also killed. Although there isn’t really a hunting strategy or method, the Death Angels show many signs of intelligence to a certain degree. For one, Death Angels have shown that they can communicate with each other audibly, and to get around their inability to swim, a Death Angel was able to hitchhike a ride inside a boat to reach an island. It's also fairly stealthy, able to get the drop on Regan and Marcus in a fairly silent grain silo and drag a man from under a garage door from out of nowhere.


Abilities


Demogorgon


Abyss Physiology

A Demogorgon’s physiology is quite fascinating. Dustin Henderson in season 2 speculates that Dart (a newborn Demogorgon), is some sort of polywog and prefers cool or wet habitats. They have a natural distaste for heat of any sort and are susceptible to electricity. Fire is a usual deterrent for them in any capacity. They have oil-like black blood and are chock-full of special particles, which while tying into their disdain for heat, can also under the right circumstances resuscitate a deceased Demo, if they are exposed to more of said particles or come in contact with enough heat to basically charge ‘em back up. However, even getting a Demogorgon to this point is quite the task. Their bodies are also immensely resilient, remaining active even when dissected and can keep pushing forward despite missing limbs. Obviously, they are very vicious creatures and they become stronger after feeding and if in an environment where they’re left unopposed, they will quickly enter a bloody feeding frenzy. To aid in this, Demogorgons have long, muscular limbs built for leaping long distances in a single bound tipped off with large razor sharp claws that can rip through body armor. 


Demogorgons have a flower-like mouth, which opens up in four to five teeth filled petals. Novelisations state that these teeth are venomous, and of course are used to quickly incapacitate prey. They’ll use these petals to encapsulate the victims head and just shake them so hard their neck just snaps. They will then use these mouth petals to cleanly strip the flesh from their prey with the hook-like teeth inside pulling it back and down their throat. Demogorgons and their few variants operate on a hivemind, with the Mind Flayer acting as the center piece for it all. Through a telepathic link, they can communicate with each other and be given orders by The Mind Flayer. A key showing of this is in Season 2, where Will Byers when tethered into their link could accurately give away his position for a coordinated attack. This is an essential part of their physiology, and they cannot live on our world naturally, not without being inside of its hivemind’s telepathic radius, or it will slowly grow weaker and die over time. Meaning, weirdly enough, Demogorgons are technically social creatures and require consistent contact with the rest of their hive. Their reproduction is in a similar vein to Xenomorphs, as shown with Will Byers in season 1, Demogorgons will implant a tentacle down their hosts throat, allowing an egg to be placed inside of them to have a nice warm place to grow. 


Enhanced Senses

Being a predatory creature, this should be no shock. Despite having no visible eyes they see through this sort of red night vision, which is established in the comics to be the case. They are said to have an astounding array of senses. Being directly compared to sharks being able to pick up a single drop of blood in an olympic sized pool and their sixth sense. Allowing them to pick up on electromagnetic fields and temperature shifts, able to sense even the slightest vibrations around them by sensing pressure waves, they can detect movement and direction of objects all around them. The range of this is quite potent, being able to detect Barb’s blood dripping in the pool in the real world from the Upside-Down, alerting it to her location, or when Eleven drew blood in Hawkins Middle School. They are attracted to strong movement and are considered ambush hunters, again akin to sharks. Being more than comfortable enough to perform ambushes. The Demogorgon in season 1 also seemed to showcase some level of extrasensory perception, as it not only felt Eleven interact with it inside of The Void but also reacted to and scared her away from it. 


Minor Technology Manipulation

A horror monster staple ability, lights and electronics tend to go cattywampus when they roll up, including headlights, Christmas lights, military grade gear and sonar systems and not just a lamp or something. Interestingly, it is established they can be brought back to life with enough volts of electricity due to their special physiology, akin to Frankenstein's Monster in a way. 


Upside-Down Portal Creation

Demogorgons are one of the few things in the series that can create fleshy, nasty looking radioactive portals to the Upside-Down. They make portals super quick and on the fly, best showcased in Dead by Daylight, where the Demogorgon can place its claw onto a desired surface and form one in mere seconds. These are quite handy for them in long distance travel and even to get the drop on victims. In things like Dead by Daylight, Demogorgons can merely just place their hand on a surface to create a portal, though in the show itself it's a bit more physical. Requiring the Demo to physically claw and dig into where they want to make a portal. These portals have a shelf life however, while we don’t have a specific timeframe, they will eventually “scab” over and become unusable. In Dead by Daylight human characters can interact with them and tear them apart to make them unusable as well.


Telekinesis?

In a couple instances in Season 1, the creature seemingly showcases a form of telekinesis. Like when the Demogorgon was stalking Will Byers, it seemingly was able to unlock a door from the other side and seemingly pulled a deer away from Nancy and Johnathan. While this ability never comes up again in future seasons, we can safely say this wasn’t Vecna or something, as he was in a completely different dimension at this time. 


Agility

One of their more notable traits is their high agility. Demogorgons have extremely muscular legs that make them great jumpers and allow them to move at high speeds, especially on all fours. They’re also expert climbers and can even cling to objects while upside down. It’s showcased in the show and the comics that Demogrogons are very adept at climbing trees and swinging from branches in pursuit of their prey.

 

Resistances


Death Angel


Extraterrestrial Physiology

Death Angels are very mysterious creatures. They appear to be blind and originate from a lightless planet, and what they lack in sight they more than make up for in acute hearing, being able to hear sound thousands of times greater than humans. John Krasinski, the director of the movie, has stated that these creatures are “evolutionary perfect machines” with armored skin that lets them tank bullets and even survive the destruction of their homeworld, which implies an ability to also survive in space. They have large limbs and huge claws that can slice through human flesh, walls, and metal with ease. They’re also hunters, but they do not consume their prey, but rather use the bodies of humans to farm a fungus that they ingest that is native to their home planet. 


Minor Technology Manipulation

While it appears to be the typical horror light flickering monster, there’s actually a lot of explanation for the Death Angel’s ability to make technology go haywire. Apparently, the creatures interact with the electromagnetic spectrum, which can cause a huge range of issues as small as electronic interferences to large-scale power outages. This is consistent, as it was believed in one of the newspapers to be responsible for a magnetic pulse that crippled Wall Street. The range of this is quite potent, as them just entering the atmosphere made someone’s radio at a ball game not work. It can make strings of light flicker, cause a blackout in a house, make monitors go static, take out a lighthouse beacon, scramble a boat on autopilot, and even trigger Regan’s cochlear implant. 


Heightened Hearing

Death Angels have an acute sense of hearing that is thousands of times more powerful than humans. By opening their pedal faces, they can hear things at a great range, from the loudest of noises to the quietest ones. Anything from shouting, to people or objects falling, bells ringing, alarms, or loud toys will attract it very quickly. On the flipside, even the quietest of noises by human standards can attract their attention, such as small gasps, shirts tearing, pushing a drawer slightly, and even a water droplet dripping into a bucket. In the video game, they can pinpoint their prey even amongst ambient noises if they focus hard enough. Due to how deadly their hearing is, the Abbott family has to use leaves of lettuce as plates and frequently communicate with each other via sign language. Even in a soundproof basement, the Abbotts have to keep their newborn baby in a crate to muffle his cries. 


Agility

Death Angels are very agile, capable of leaping several feet in the air to the point where they can cover sea walls worth of gaps. They can easily scale tall buildings and lighthouses or climb down them as well, and can also crawl upside-down.


Resistances


Support


Demogorgon


Demodogs

Demos also have an incredibly fast growth cycle. They are somewhat amphibious and start out in a sort of tadpole-like state before the next step, which is seemingly painful for the young polywog sprouting four legs. The will then enter a juvenile state dubbed the “Demodog”, a smaller, sleeker and more pack reliant stage in its life. They usually travel in groups of three, as seen in season 2 and 5. But there are cases of more traveling together. These young Demos may not be as powerful as their adult counterparts but they’re seemingly more nimble and quick in short bursts. They have the unique skill of burrowing, as shown with Dart here, they can dig tunnels through the ground to escape or traverse the surrounding area.


Demobats

Demobats are an off-shoot species in the Upside Down and are only semi-related to Demogorgons. They’re about as big as a large fruit bat and are incredibly strong. Able to overpower some of the physically strongest human characters in the series like Steve Harrington and Eddie Munson. They are equipped with small mouths filled with razor sharp teeth and around four tentacle-like appendages that they use to restrain their prey and strangle them to death. They typically travel in groups of seemingly hundreds of Demobats and will swarm around their targets, circling around them to confuse and take them by surprise. 


Death Angel


The Queen

Little is known of the Death Angels leader, but she’s real. Presumably crash landed on Earth with the rest of her kind, the Queen was found in New York when Frodo and Eric tried to rescue Sam’s cat at an abandoned construction site. It was from the Queen that we learned that the Death Angels use human bodies to harvest spores native to their homeworld to eat, and the Queen summons some of her goons to eat with her, before attempting to find Eric when he made a noise.

Feats


Demogorgon


Overall

  • Kidnapped Will Byers and sent the entire town of Hawkins, Indiana into a panic 

  • Made contact with the real world from Hawkins National Laboratory

  • Was responsible for disappearances and deaths across town such as Barbara Holland, Phil Larson, and Bob Newby

  • Ransacked the Soviet facility Kamchatka Peninsula

  • Kidnapped over eight children, including Holly Wheeler and Dipshit Derek

  • Wreaked havoc upon the MAC-Z military base

  • Stood its ground against Ted Wheeler WITH a golf club 


Power


Speed


Durability


Death Angel


Overall

  • Took over the planet Earth within a mere three month span. 

  • Laid waste to Millbrook, New York, Mexico, and Shanghai

  • Survived the destruction of their homeworld

  • Collapsed the US military and destroyed all the world’s superpowers

  • Killed Lee Abbott, the main character of the first movie


Power


Speed


Durability


Scaling


Demogorgon


Prey

Plot armor aside, the Demogorgon has shown to easily be capable of overpowering humans, and they have to resort to exploiting its weaknesses in order to truly harm it, so the Demogorgon naturally upscales the cast. For a more in depth look into the human cast, go take a gander at Laurie Strode vs Steve Harrington. 

  • In the video game these blasts can seemingly reduce other humans to ash. (0.05 - 0.06 Tons of TNT)

  • For causing a blackout, since specific power usage data from the 1980s is unavailable, you could generously compare this to modern settlements (0.08 Tons of TNT)


Other Upside-Down Monsters

Demogorgons are considered the “foot soldiers” of the Mind Flayer, making them the best of the best of what the Upside-Down has to offer, so they should comfortably be above most other monsters shown in the series aside from the Mind Flayer itself or the various psychic beings like Vecna. 

  • Demodogs


  • Flayed Billy


  • The Vine Blights (Tales from ‘85)


  • Other Monsters

  • They also had Hopper pinned to the ground in season 2.


Death Angel


The Silenced

Death Angels in every capacity are superior to humans, and frequently one-shot them, so the Death Angel easily upscales the few feats performed by humans in the series.


Earth Wildlife

While it's more implied than outright stated, the Death Angels wiping out almost all life on Earth means that all the animals on land were more than likely wiped out too. We see this when the Death Angels kill a mere mouse and raccoon, and one can infer that animals are far less strategic then we are in our capacity to not make a sound, so any roar or howl means that even the biggest of apex predators were taken down. 


Weaknesses


Demogorgon

Demogorgons might be the Mind Flayer’s preferred foot soldiers, but they do have many shortcomings. Notably throughout the series fire is usually the protagonists’ main method of dealing with these things. Such as when Nancy, Steve and Johnathan were able to lure one into an elaborate trap and caught its ass on fire, sending it fleeing for its life. Murray in season 4 also instantly kills an entire group of Demodogs with a flamethrower, leaving the main Demogorgon on the drink of death as a result. Electricity, such as stun rods or tasers, have incapacitated them before as well. Another thing to note is that their very own hivemind can be used against them, notoriously as shown with Will Byers for example, attacking the hivemind directly will cause those who are linked to it to feel that pain and Demogorgons cannot stay out of range of their hivemind for any extended period of time without slowly beginning to die. 


Demogorgons are also just animals at the end of the day. They do show some cleverness from time to time, but for the most part they run on pure animalistic instinct. Which has been their downfall on more than a few occasions. There’s been at least three separate occasions where the human cast has set up elaborate traps for these things and they’ve fallen for it just about every time, so a more intelligent or coordinated foe could reasonably just out smart them. It’s also worth pointing out that despite them being able to throw electronics haywire, the crew is able to plant a tracker on one in season 5 and have no issues tracking it. Thanks Duffer Brothers. 


Death Angel

Death Angels have a few exploitable weaknesses when it comes to their sound-based hearing. Most obviously, acute hearing more often than not means sensitive hearing, and the main drawback to this is they are consistently disoriented and staggered by high-frequency sounds, such as Regan’s cochlear implant. This actually led to the discovery of its weakness, when Regan uses the implant on a microphone and broadcasts the frequency to every surviving radio station so others can weaponize it too. This is especially detrimental because the disorientation causes their pedal-mouths to open and expose the flesh under its armor, which is far more vulnerable to most conventional means of killing it such as a mere headshot. Death Angels are also unable to swim, so drowning them is a means of killing them.


Another thing to note is that Death Angels are animalistic. While they show some degree of intelligence, for the most part they are very easy to outsmart or plan against with the right misdirection. Throwing an object alone is enough to do the trick, and gunshots can sometimes be hard to pinpoint where they came from. Louder sounds can drown out the Death Angels ability to hear quieter sounds, such as when Marcus set off fireworks to cover his mother while she gave birth. And while Death Angels can hear extremely quiet sounds, some sounds are simply out of reach, such as walkie talkie communication or listening to music with earplugs.

Before the Verdict


Demogorgon’s Inconsistency

The Demogorgons have a lot of misinformation spread about their powers and physical capabilities, so we felt the need to break down some of the more notorious examples and try to clear up some things.


Piercing Durability: This is a pretty simple one. No, Demogorgons are not actually bullet proof, but are rather just unfazed after being shot. If you look closely in some of these scenes, the bullets very much do actually penetrate their hide. The most clear case of this would have to be during the prisoner fight in Season 4, where a man is unloading an entire AR clip into a Demogorgon’s chest, along with Season 5, when the military unloads bullets into the Demogorgon. In both instances, its skin was breached, the explanation for it surviving is simple; Demogorgons have stupid high pain tolerance. Hell, Karen Wheeler was able to stab into one’s chest with a broken bottle and Steve Harrington was able to harm one with a spiked bat. It stands to reason that Demogorgons, while they do possess some impressive durability, do struggle to protect themselves from piercing weaponry. Although, it’s not like they let it slow them down regardless as they have some very scary endurance for pain. 


Mach 50 Speeds: Something that is pretty consistently passed around in general discussions is a moment in the Stranger Things comics. Where Will Myers, armed with a hunting rifle fires at a Demogorgon and then it seemingly completely disappears in the next panel. Some argue this as a point blank bullet dodge but there are some rather obvious issues with this. Namely, with the fact that how the show itself interprets this moment. The bullet hits the demogorgon directly in the mouth and doesn’t dodge it at all. One could argue that this could be a difference in canons but even then, in the very next issue, the same Demogorgon is put into a similar situation, is shot repeatedly and then disappears. Simply just adding to the idea that the Demogorgon was just shot then disappeared, rather than showing off some insane speeds. 


Portal Shenanigans: Probably the biggest question here is if Demogorgons should physically scale to their portal creation. Mr. Clark’s quote about the power necessary to create a portal to another dimension brings up that a massive amount of power would be required to pull this off, which holds up with what we see with the Russians in season 3. As they needed to drain an entire town’s power supply, fuel it with radioactive canisters and required a massive amount of resources to even attempt to do this, having several failed attempts in the process while already exploiting a sealed up portal. However one can argue that Demogorgons are not scientific creatures and have a plethora of otherworldly powers, potentially meaning that they don’t necessarily need to produce that much energy. On the other side of things, we do see that creating portals in canon does require them to physically tear these portals open, so one could argue that this isn't a showing of hax, but rather pure power. Although this is rather done casually, and you can argue this isn't too consistent with their general feats.


Death Angel Planet Destruction

The inciting event of the entire franchise is the destruction of the Death Angel’s homeworld. According to director John Krasinski himself, the Death Angels survived the explosion of their planet, and survived in space on meteorites that eventually crash landed onto Earth. The question at hand has always been does this mean the Death Angels have planetary level durability? Well not exactly. 


Despite being told this, we don’t really see the planet explode in the series on-screen or how it happens. This does matter, because we are missing a lot of key details. All we really know is that they inhabited a lightless planet, but we can’t account for its size, the surface area or where the explosion originated from, or how much the meteorites absorbed from this explosion as well. We don’t know if the core exploded from the inside or if some outside force sent a wave of destruction over the planet. Even if the former was true however, the core could still be thousands of kilometers away from the surface, and explosions weaken with distance, so even that might not be enough. We also don’t know where the Death Angels were in relation to this. Were they in the epicenter? Inside rock formations? Overall, there are too many assumptions we’d have to make to assume they’d scale to the full yield of a planetary explosion.


Obviously though, that doesn’t mean they’re nerfed into the ground durability-wise. What we do know for a fact is that they survived the crash landing onto Earth, of which the meteorite in Mexico was compared to the force of a nuclear bomb, meaning they still sit comfortably in the Small Town-City Level range of durability alone. It's pretty narratively consistent that nothing in the series can really harm its armor, being described as impenetrable even to military grade level weapons, so it's a very rare case where a character’s durability is better than their strength feats, as none of the strength feats shown in the series get anywhere close to this level, nor do we see any Death Angels fight each other or pierce each others armor directly.

Verdict


Chapter I: Brute Force

Naturally these two species are inhumanly powerful and are far above any regular person in their worlds. However in terms of raw stats, the Demogorgon is fairing a tad better. 


In terms of direct attack potency, Death Angels should easily be within the wall level ranges. They are easily able to tear apart their human prey, can knock around cars just by rushing into them and have torn holes in thick sheets of metal. Pretty impressive no doubt but compare this to Demogorgons, who can not only pull off similar feats to knocking around cars and ripping through metal, but are also just easily killing a much more impressive cast of human characters, who are ranging from 0.0002 - 0.08 Tons of TNT from the lowest possible end to the absolute highest possible end. With even the weaker members of Demogorgons like the bats and dogs being able to pose serious threats to characters like Steve Harrington and Jim Hopper. Lee is a cool guy and everything but he’s never shown anything on that level before. 


Things only get more serious when you account for the Demogorgon’s highest possible attack potency arguments. Being able to create portals to the upside-down requires an immense amount of power to accomplish and the Demogorgons can do this by physically clawing these portals into existence. Creating these portals requires more power than mankind was capable of producing within the early 1980s and this would make portal opening a 221 Tons of TNT level feat, though as pointed out in Before the Verdicts, this could also be interpreted as an ability native to the Demogorgon. To be fair to the Angels though, while not completely out classing them, they likely do have greater lifting strength. Demogorgons can be scaled to the Vine Monsters from Tales from ‘85, who could move around cars. Death Angels match this pretty easily, but an ambulance is much heavier than any car. Which can range from 5 - 7 tons in weight, more than double the weight a Demogorgon could be argued to affect. 


Travel speed between the two groups are likely similar, as both are able to somewhat keep up with vehicles moving at high speeds, though where reactions and attack speed are concerned, Demogorgons are again taking a decent lead. They should just heavily upscale what humans in the series can do, which are kicking around at 120 m/s or Mach 0.3 consistently and a Demogorgon itself has a moment of evading machine gun fire in the comics. The Quiet Place universe is notably lacking in any sort of scaling to begin with though one could argue that the Angel’s attack speed would scale off their travel speed, since they are just using those same limbs to haul ass and catch up to speeding vehicles. However, their reactions would not. Obviously they don’t even have eyes to react with, which makes sense since they sort of just ram into anything they’re rushing at, and given their insane armor, they’ve never needed superhuman reactions since they can easily tank things like bullets, but against an opponent with superhuman reactions, that’s quite detrimental in some scenarios.


The Death Angels may have a slight edge in lifting strength and have comparable travel speeds, The Demogorgons are taking this category thanks to their vastly superior attack potency, more well rounded speeds and superior scaling in general. 

Chapter II: What Makes a Monster

Power isn’t the only thing that makes these creatures top tier predators. They’ve evolved a plethora of capabilities to make them exceedingly dangerous. For this category, we’ll discuss who has the better anatomy. 


Firstly, Demogorgons definitely have a few more abilities to call on compared to the Death Angels. Namely stuff like minor telekinesis and portal creation. They do also share a good few powers as well. Both have heightened senses, similar resistances, forms of technology tampering, high levels of agility but the Demos being able to create portals to the upside-down mid-fight is pretty handy, them to play more evasive and avoid damage if need be, or just utilize portals in a way to get the drop on an Angel. The portals also act as a workaround for the weakness a Demogorgon has of not being able to exist in the real world naturally, giving them the option to retreat to their home if needed, though for a fight like this, it won’t last very long to a point where a Demogorgon would die via this way, given the nature of these characters. Demogorgons being able to sense electromagnetic shifts would also allow it to track the Death Angel fairly easily, since it causes electromagnetic disturbances with its presence, eliminating stealth as an option for the latter.


However, the Death Angels, while they might have fewer powers to pull from, quality beats quantity here and they actually heavily counter a majority of the Demogorgon’s kit. The Death Angel armor is significantly tougher than anything a Demogorgon has ever been able to damage, even if you buy into Demogorgons physically scaling to portal creation, they can’t just beat through a thick shell that can protect from nuke level explosions. This shell would also just counter their venomous bite for obvious reasons as well. It’s also worth mentioning that Death Angels are suited for surviving immensely more harsh conditions than Demogorgons and have done so for far longer, likely hundreds if not thousands of years when they were traveling through space latched onto that hunk of their planet. Meanwhile the Demogorgons struggle to handle things like fire and the upside-down, while certainly a harsh environment to live in, isn't really comparable to being able to thug out your planet exploding and hurdling your ass through space for centuries until you crash on some random planet.  


Another thing is the Angel’s immensely sensitive hearing. Which would just shut down many of a Demogorgon’s go-to tactics or abilities. It’s so precise that a Death Angel can hear a single drop of water from dozens of meters away, let alone a big ass lanky monster like a Demogorgon stomping around and clawing its way into their dimension. Demogorgons are also just naturally loud in general when engaged in direct confrontations, so it’s unlikely a Demo could realistically stealth away or land a successful sneak attack on a Death Angel, especially when even the people who adapted to living around these things struggle to not alert them themselves. Sure, using portals makes them more mobile, but they aren’t going to be getting the drop on a Death Angel since even those require a little bit of sound to make. 


Quality ultimately triumphs over quantity here. The Death Angels just have the right counters, the far superior senses and the armor to take this category rather cleanly.

Chapter III: Evolved to Hunt

In a fight such as this, strategy and intelligence are important to go over. These are two highly bestial and savage monsters on the surface, but they have some traits of intelligence to them, so lets compare. Demogorgons are stated repeatedly to be apex predators, being directly compared to real world animals such as bears and sharks, using their environment and surroundings to help them detect prey with no real challenge to them. And as shown in the ransacking of the US military base scene, Demogorgons have shown to be capable of working together, legitimately comboing attacks as they juggle humans around. They’re also fairly stealthy, taking numerous victims into the Upside-Down without a trace in season 1.


Comparatively speaking, Death Angels don’t have as much showings or descriptions to their strategies. We know that they can communicate with each other, and in some cases have attacked victims in groups, but for the most part they operate solo. They have a good showing of working around their weakness to water, hitching a ride on a boat in order to reach an island, which was supposed to be a safe haven for humans, and they are more than capable of stealth attacks if they know that a victim is near. 


In a direct comparison, Demogorgons show a few more feats for intelligence and strategy, being able to work in groups and hunt more efficiently, giving them the edge in this category. 

Chapter IV: Higher on the Food Chain

So Demogorgons are stronger and faster, but Death Angels are more durable, neither can pull stealth on the other, they have claws, tamper with electricity, have incredible senses, and show limited strategy and intelligence. So for the final and deciding category, let’s talk about adaptation, and how they can land the killing blow on one another.


When it comes to exploiting weaknesses, both of these creatures don’t have a lot of options for their direct weaknesses. Death Angels have no fire or offensive electricity attacks to use on the Demogorgon, and Demogorgons similarly don’t have any high-pitched frequency attacks that can exploit the Death Angel’s fleshy innards. Sure, the Demogorgons do let out a loud roar, but it’s not really an ear-shattering attack. If Holly Wheeler doesn’t have to plug her ears when it's roaring at her from a few feet away, then the Death Angel is probably fine. 


So when you narrow it down, how does either end the fight? The Demogorgon has to find a way to get its claws on the flesh inside the Death Angel’s head, and the Death Angel has to be able to wear down the Demogorgon before this happens. Given a Death Angel’s claws can shred through metal and far less such as broken glass can cut through a Demogorgon’s skin, both scenarios can indeed happen. The question then becomes, which one is more likely?


It doesn’t look too good for the Demogorgon, given it can’t exploit the sound weakness required in order to open the pedal-faced head. But is that really the only time a Death Angel opens its face, is when it's weakened? It isn’t. Death Angels when they need to really hear have to open up their faces to a degree so they can use their ears to hear, so there is an opening that can present itself. But can the Demogorgon catch on to this and act accordingly?

We believe the answer to be yes. Demogorgons are considered apex predators that are directly compared to bears and sharks, and in the animal kingdom, lots of predators such as birds, crocodiles, or even bears have enough awareness how to exploit the softer parts of prey and avoid the hard parts, as animals with shells like turtles are considered prey to animals such as crocodiles. And if the Demogorgon is fast enough to not take as much hits and win physical exchanges with its strength, its gonna catch on to the fact that the armor is not going to be dented, and unlike a Death Angel, Demogorgons have the sight necessary to also see this weakness play out. It won’t take a genius to realize that there is a weak point to be exploited, and the Demogorgon has the speed necessary to try and take advantage of this. Demogorgons may scratch and bite a lot, but they’re not above just stabbing down on an opponent, as shown many times in the US military base scene in season 5. The Demogorgons claws lodged into the flesh of the Death Angel would almost certainly injure it, making it all the more easy to eventually pry open further and kill, and if that isn’t enough, a venomous bite will almost certainly spell death for a Death Angel.


But what about the Death Angel? Can’t it wear down the Demogorgon before this happens? It could, but it would take far longer to kill. Demogorgons have stupidly high pain tolerance, and can continue to fight despite being covered in bullets by soldiers and even shot in the mouth with shotguns. While the Demogorgon in season 4 did die to Hopper in a swordfight, the fact that the Demogorgon was able to keep fighting despite missing an arm is also a testament that even a lucky stab or slash to that degree won’t be enough to put it down. Decapitation would certainly do the job, and Death Angels have the claws necessary to pull this off, but it’s not a strategy they’ve ever shown to do, it is almost always a straight mauling rather than going for any particular body part or targeting any specific weak point, as Death Angels need human bodies to harvest their homeworld fungi. 


So for these reasons, we believe the Demogorgon wins the adaptation category, and is able to quickly deduce the flesh beneath the petals once an opening is presented to it, combined with its venomous bite, speed, strength, and mobility, it can end the fight before the Death Angel can wear down the Demogorgon.

Summary



Advantages:

  • Much faster reactions and attack speeds and similar travel speeds

  • Higher physical attack potency, regardless of what you buy. 

  • Pain tolerance would let Demogorgon survive losing limbs or getting scratched and stabbed repeatedly

  • Being able to sense electromagnetic shifts negates stealth for Death Angel

  • More intelligent and work better in groups.

  • Venomous bite would mean game over if it bit into the Death Angel’s flesh.

  • Greater mobility via portals.

Disadvantages:

  • Inferior lifting strength.

  • Cannot directly exploit the sound weaknesses of the Death Angel.

  • Forgot to show up to the fight (they’re on vacation).



“If they hear you, they hunt you.” 


Advantages:

  • Higher lifting strength.

  • Superior senses and hearing counter Demo’s stealth. 

  • Armor is far too durable for a Demogorgon to damage physically.

  • Armor would protect from the Demogorgon’s venomous bite. 

  • Demogorgons cannot exploit their weakness to high-pitched sounds.

  • Similar travel speeds. 

Disadvantages:

  • Weaker in terms of attack potency

  • Lacks the superhuman reaction speeds the Demogorgon has.

  • Cannot directly exploit the Demogorgon’s weakness to fire or electricity.

  • Slightly inferior in experience and skill. 


Overall, this is a pretty close fight that comes down to a combination of speed, smarts, and being able to exploit weaknesses. The Demogorgon simply has the right tools necessary to make this happen, whereas the Death Angel has way less wiggle room to do much besides be a stonewall, which won’t work against a creature with extremely high pain tolerance. Neither can use stealth as an option, but the Demogorgons portals allow it to be more mobile. And when it comes to killing each other, the Demogorgon has the instincts necessary to detect a weakness underneath the armor, and with its superior strength, claws, and venom, it can end the fight much quicker before the Death Angel could hope to wear it down with brute force and sharp claws.

For a fight like this, it's very easy to look at it and say “how the hell did the monster that jobbed to teenagers beat the monster that nearly destroyed the entire planet?” We’ll use these next few paragraphs to talk about this not to spite anyone, but because it is a genuinely valid question, and we weren’t really expecting the Demogorgon to pull this off either. Admittedly this is a little extra but we found that it’d be neat to tackle how the Demogorgon can pull this off from a narrative standpoint.

But first off, if we wanna play the “loses to kids game”, then there are numerous scenes of the kids outsmarting the Death Angels in A Quiet Place, beating them by exploiting their weakness to sound such as Regan and Marcus using the implant/speaker combination to kill it with a headshot. Which in turn, is how the kids in Stranger Things fight the Demogorgons; by planning and exploiting their weaknesses. The traps laid out against them in seasons 1 and 5 were because they had an understanding of their limitations and wanted to lure the Demogorgons, but never did they really take them on head to head besides Steve, who only got a few good hits in and was helped by the trap already set by Nancy and Jonathan in the Byers house. In most normal and realistic cases, the kids would be dead. But we hear you asking “ok so why didn’t they kill the main cast half the time?”

Plot armor. Those who have seen Stranger Things can agree that there are a lot of moments where the Demogorgons have no issue mowing down groups of armed men but when they jump Mike Wheeler, they just stand there and roar. Now granted, sometimes the Demogorgons are under a command by the Mind Flayer to expressly kidnap children, but even when they aren’t and they’re back to normal hunters, they still just slowly approach the main characters and get saved last second by tethered Will Byers dismantling them. More often than not an unmoored Demogorgon makes small fry of any human it comes across. Even when Hopper killed one, it was a severely weakened one that had already been shot repeatedly and hit directly by a flamethrower, showing the lengths needed to go for a human to beat one.

And lastly, we can sit here all day and talk about scenarios and compare the nature of their franchises, but a fight like this eliminates all talks about prep time, planning, or fighting these creatures with traps or tactics. What sets the Demogorgon apart from a human is they can take on a Death Angel head to head, giving them more time then most human/Death Angel encounters to figure out how to sink their claws beneath the armor, as the Death Angels never encountered anything like a Demogorgon in the world of A Quiet Place. So in the end, the Death Angel’s chances were simply abysmal, and the Demogorgon turned its world upside-down.


The winner is the Demogorgon. 


Final Tally

Demogorgons (4)- Bang, Thicc Grimes, Yerm, Yuix


Death Angels (0)- Ough




Next Time…

Eleven vs Carrie White (April 30th)



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