## Spoiler warning
This text discusses key plot points from Stranger Things season 5 and the stage play Stranger Things: The First Shadow, including Max’s condition, Henry Creel’s past, and the origins of Vecna and the Upside Down.
## Max’s flashback in season 5
In season 5 episode 4, “Sorcerer,” viewers see a de-aged Max Mayfield who looks like she did during her near-fatal confrontation with Vecna at the end of season 4. The flashback explains how Max’s mind is trapped inside Vecna’s memories while her body remains comatose in a Hawkins hospital.
Max’s perspective shifts from the familiar Rainbow Room carnage, where Eleven and 001’s clash left the other children dead and Vecna stranded in the Upside Down, to a distorted version of 1950s Hawkins. She walks from a darkened high school gym into a bustling hallway where people she knows as adults appear as teenagers, including a young Joyce Maldonado, the future Joyce Byers.
## How the play expands Henry’s story
The play Stranger Things: The First Shadow reveals that Henry Creel began as a seemingly normal boy whose life was radically altered by mysterious technology discovered in a Nevada cave. This equipment, abandoned by Russian agents stealing from a U.S. “Nevada Project” run by Dr. Brenner, sends Henry into a dimension the government calls Dimension X, later recognized as the Upside Down.
In Dimension X, Henry encounters the entity known as the Mind Flayer, an experience that both awakens his psychic abilities and deeply disturbs him. The play suggests that the Mind Flayer is a catalyst for Henry’s eventual transformation into Vecna, hinting that this creature predates and influences him rather than being merely his creation.
## Henry in Hawkins and his relationships
After the Nevada events, Henry moves with his family to Hawkins and tries to rebuild a normal life despite the growing darkness within him. He forms a fragile friendship with Patty, Bob Newby’s sister, and even joins a school production of The Dark Side of the Moon directed by a teenage Joyce.
At the same time, Henry is hounded by repeated attacks from the Mind Flayer and hunted by Dr. Brenner, whose own father was changed by an encounter with Dimension X during World War II. These pressures isolate Henry further and push him toward the monstrous persona he will eventually embrace as Vecna.
## Nuanced view of Henry/Vecna
The First Shadow emphasizes that Henry is not portrayed as purely evil from the start but as a troubled child shaped by trauma, fear, and other people’s judgment. The narrative underlines how external forces—the Mind Flayer’s influence, Brenner’s experiments, and the community’s fear—combine with Henry’s inner turmoil to create the villain seen in the series.
Max’s brief journey through Henry’s memories in season 5 only skims the events shown in the play, yet it gives her insight into his pain and the conditions that forged Vecna. That understanding may become crucial for Max, herself often misunderstood, as she searches for a way to escape his control and alter her seemingly doomed fate.
## How the play ties into season 5
Season 5’s flashback sequence is designed to work on two levels: it clearly signals to all viewers that Max is inside Henry’s mind while also rewarding those who know the play with extra context. For audiences familiar with The First Shadow, the high school hallway, young Joyce, and the sense of warped nostalgia are direct nods to the stage story’s 1950s setting and characters.
More broadly, the connections between season 5 and the play help establish a unified origin myth for the Upside Down, Vecna, and the Mind Flayer. By grounding Henry’s transformation in the Nevada cave incident and Dimension X, the franchise links government experimentation, foreign interference, and supernatural horror into a single, coherent backstory.
## Author’s summary
A tightly woven prequel, The First Shadow deepens season 5’s flashback by framing Max’s psychic prison inside Henry’s tragic, Mind Flayer–warped past, turning Vecna from a simple monster into the product of cosmic horror and human failure.
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Den of Geek — 2025-11-28