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Spoilers follow for <\/strong>Stranger Things Season 5<\/strong> and the Broadway\/West End play, Stranger Things: The First Shadow.<\/strong><\/p>\nWe only have four more episodes to go until Stranger Things is done forever, and speculation is running high. Who will die<\/u>? Who will live? And how important is the series\u2019 spin-off Broadway show, The First Shadow, to the end of the series? While we may not know the answers to the first two questions yet, we have a pretty good idea about the answer to the last one, based on what happened in the first half of Season 5. The answer is \u201cvery<\/em> important,\u201d particularly in explaining Will\u2019s (Noah Schnapp) power-up, where Max (Sadie Sink) is hiding, and even giving some serious clues about how the Hawkins gang might finally beat Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower).<\/p>\nThat\u2019s a lot to unpack, and if you don\u2019t live in New York or London, your first question might be: Wait, there\u2019s a Broadway show? There sure is, and the live-action play written by Stranger Things writer and co-executive producer Kate Trefry is crucially tied to the overall history laid out in the series and sets up a number of plot points in the final season.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nIn the play, we catch up with Henry Creel (aka, the kid who will eventually become Vecna) when he and his family move into what is later known as the Creel House in Season 4 of Stranger Things. Over the course of the play, we discover just how Henry got his psychic powers, how he met Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine on TV), and even get to see a tiny little version of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown on TV) meeting Henry for the first time.<\/p>\n
But the play doesn\u2019t even start with Henry. There\u2019s actually a prologue set in 1943 that depicts the United States performing experiments in what they call \u201cDimension X,\u201d as they attempt to turn submarines invisible during World War II. Unfortunately for them, they get attacked by Demogorgons, and then the action switches to 1959 Hawkins. Dimension X sounds like the Upside Down, right? Well\u2026 not exactly. There\u2019s actually a lot of debate<\/u> about the difference between the two, particularly because neither the stage play nor the TV show have been explicit about how it all works, though franchise masterminds, the Duffer Brothers, have promised<\/u> that all will be explained \u201cpretty early on\u201d in the upcoming batch of episodes.<\/p>\nThe Duffer Brothers have promised that all will be explained \u201cpretty early on\u201d in the upcoming batch of episodes.<\/div>\n
As far as we understand now, there\u2019s the \u201creal\u201d world; a place that\u2019s been called the Hellscape \u2013 aka the area Henry Creel was sent to between dimensions where he was electrocuted by lightning strikes and got real gross looking in Season 4; and Dimension X, which is where Henry met the Mind Flayer again. Meanwhile, the Upside Down is an as-yet undefined extra area \u2013 either a parallel dimension, or a bridge between the Hellscape and Dimension X, or something else entirely.<\/p>\n
Did we just say, \u201cmet the Mind Flayer again<\/em>?\u201d This is one of the wildest twists in the play, and has huge repercussions for the TV series as well. As you may recall from the first batch of episodes that dropped on Netflix for Season 5, Max Mayfield \u2013 or at least her mind \u2013 reappeared in a strange, sunny reality that seems to be made up of Henry Creel\u2019s memories. She\u2019s been hiding out in one of them \u2013 a cave that Henry is clearly too terrified to enter, which is where Max breaks down how she\u2019s alive and what happened to her to Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher). While we don\u2019t see that cave in The First Shadow, we do hear<\/em> all about it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n
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Stranger Things: The First Shadow Gallery<\/h3>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
Dr. Brenner\u2019s father was the only person to survive the submarine experiment in 1943, passing his knowledge on to his son. Brenner the younger established something called the Nevada Experiment, which was meant to try and access Dimension X, but one scientist went rogue, stole the equipment, and headed to \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 a cave in Nevada. Remember the spyglass Holly was using in Season 5? That\u2019s the same spyglass Henry used to explore the cave system, dropping it just like Holly does when she runs away scared in the TV episodes. In Henry\u2019s case, however, he and the rogue scientist are accidentally sent to Dimension X for 12 hours; there, Henry was infected by the creature later known as the Mind Flayer, and not only gained his psychic powers, but was tortured, corrupted, and driven insane by the cloud creature. So rather than Henry creating the Mind Flayer, as we\u2019re shown in Season 4 of the TV show, the Mind Flayer \u2013 or at least an aspect of it that exists in Dimension X \u2013 created Henry, and therefore Vecna.<\/p>\n
To be 100% clear: If you thought Henry had naturally occurring psychic abilities, you were wrong. It all comes from the infection that happened to him over those 12 hours he was missing in Nevada, which is why he\u2019s so scared of the caves. That\u2019s where he was driven insane. That\u2019s where he turned evil. That\u2019s where it all went wrong.<\/p>\n
The twists don\u2019t stop there, though. Thanks to Henry reconnecting with Dr. Brenner in the second act of The First Shadow, Henry\u2019s blood containing the infection from the Dimension X Mind Flayer is harvested and injected into prospective mothers as part of the MKUltra program codenamed Indigo. There are at least 10 psychically powered babies born in that program, including \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 Eleven.<\/p>\n
So again, to be ultra-clear \u2013 MKUltra clear, if you will \u2013 the world of Stranger Things isn\u2019t a Firestarter or X-Men situation where some folks are born naturally with psychic abilities. Instead, they all come from the infection Henry contracted in Dimension X. This also means that if the Mind Flayer in Dimension X was destroyed or cut off, there would potentially be no more psychic powers on Earth, including those used by Vecna and Eleven.<\/p>\n
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Stranger Things Season 5 Photos<\/h3>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
That said, it\u2019s possible there could be still another<\/em> twist, with Eleven being the lone exception. In the play, we\u2019re shown a family tree with all the program kids branching off from Henry, except Eleven, who he meets in the closing moments of the show. It\u2019s possible that Eleven could be something different than Henry and his \u201cchildren…\u201d or not. Who knows?<\/p>\nIn a roundabout way, though, this also explains how Will shockingly got powers in the final moments of \u201cThe Sorcerer.\u201d As we saw at the beginning of Season 5, young Will was pumped full of goop during his first trip to the Upside Down, connecting him to the Hive Mind that is ostensibly controlled by Vecna. But as explained in The First Shadow, Vecna\u2019s power comes from Dimension X. Will does not have powers on his own, because they all \u2013 Vecna, Eleven, Will, even Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) \u2013 come from the same central source. In Will\u2019s case, he is very specifically drawing from Vecna\u2019s power\u2026 but it all goes back to Dimension X.<\/p>\n
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