Stranger Things Season 5 is already a record-breaking hit for Netflix, and the hype is about reach god levels as the Christmas holiday arrives. Stranger Things Season 5 – Part 2 is about to drop (at the time of writing this), and there are a lot of fan and industry theories about what the Duffer Brothers have in store for us. Big, painful losses are expected, as well as some mind-bending twists that will set us up for what is (hopefully) one of the greatest finales of all time.
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There has been one potential twist in Stranger Things lore that a lot of fans were debating going into Season 5: who is the real big bad of this show? In Season 4 we learned how Henry Creel, aka test subject “001,” went psychotic with his psychic powers until he was stopped and seemingly destroyed by “Eleven” (Millie Bobby Brown). Instead, Creel was portaled into the dark dimension of “the Upside Down” and was transformed into “Vecna,” a monstrous and disfigured version of his former human self.
Vecna & The Mind Flayer: A Chicken-n-Egg Conundrum
The established lore of Stranger Things is that Henry Creel discovered sentient mass of particles during his exploration of the Upside Down realm and used his psychic abilities to control those particles, organizing them into a giant spider-like form that could help him exert his will across the dimensional barriers, possessing “flayed” victims like Will Byers or the various teens killed in Season 4, and acting as a hive mind that allows Vecna to control his army of Demogorgons and and the other nightmare creatures of the Upside Down.
However, the deeper origin story of Henry Creel (see: Stranger Things: The First Shadow) came with a big discrepancy: Creel had been influenced by the Mind Flayer hive mind long before Eleven banished him to “Dimension X” (the Upside Down). In the stage play origin story, Creel had first been transported to Dimension X by accident, after stumbling across some of the Hawkins Lab equipment a Russian spy had stolen and hidden. It was there that he was first corrupted by the shadow entity in the particles; that influence made a normal boy develop into an evil lunatic, who eventually slaughtered his own family. So when Eleven eventually faced Henry and sent him to the Upside Down, it was actually a reunion between puppeteer and puppet when Henry found the shadow entity and formed it into the Mind Flayer.
The origin story events of First Shadow created a new conundrum for Stranger Things fans: Who is the true “big bad” of this story? If Henry Creel was corrupted by the shadow entity, wasn’t he a tragic victim like Will? And was it ever really his “choice” to become Vecna? Or was he groomed by the Mind Flayer, who is really the one in control of this all?
Stranger Things Season 5 Confirms Vecna is THE Big Bad (Not the Mind Flayer)
Stranger Things Season 5 “Chapter Four: Sorcerer” finally brought the long-awaited rematch between Vecna and the Hawkins Gang – this time without their heavy-hitter, Eleven, to protect them. The scene happens when the Hawkins Gang (Will, Joyce, Mike, Lucas…) are caught in a brutal skirmish between the Demogorgons and the military unit led by “Dr. Kay” (Linda Hamilton), which has established a base in the Upside Down. Dr. Kay’s forces deploy flamethrowers against the Demogorgons, causing the familiar feedback effect on the hive mind, wherein every Demogorgon (both in the Upside Down and the real world) feels the pain of the creatures being burned – and so does Will, since he is connected to the hive mind. However, it’s at this same moment that Vecna steps out of a portal like the cavalry riding in, slaughtering all of the soldiers and reviving his monsters, while kidnapping the Hawkins children, whom he intends to use as his “perfect vessels.”
This moment didn’t seem very pivotal at first, but fans have picked up on a detail that most certainly is pivotal: Vecna isn’t affected by the hive mind. The Demogorgons are burning, and Will feels it too, but Vecna is a completely independent entity, unaffected by the painful feedback at all. It implies that while Henry Creel was initially influenced by the shadow entity, by the time he returned as an adult, his power had grown to the point where he was able to bend the entity to his will, forming it into the Mind Flayer and using it to influence and attack the real world. The Puppet grew to become the puppeteer.
Admittedly, The First Shadow has been a somewhat divisive addition to Stranger Things’ lore, for precisely the reason that it trips up the established canon of the TV show. However, the Duffer Brothers have now cut through any uncertainty to make it clear that this story is about the battle against Henry Creel/Vecna, and it doesn’t seem like some tragic backstory will be a source of redemption for the maniacal villain.
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Image Courtesy of Prime Video -
Image Courtesy of Netflix
