Stranger Things Season 5’s biggest twist, that the Mind Flayer was the real villain all along, was pretty well signposted. The end of Season 4 had apparently turned the entire story upside down, with Vecna claiming he was the show’s real villain and that he’d created the Mind Flayer. Stranger Things Season 5’s opening scene doubled down on this retcon, weaving Vecna into Season 1 by revealing he was there when Will was finally captured by the Demogorgon.
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All this turned out to be misdirection, because Vecna was deluding himself; he had been the Mind Flayer’s puppet all this time. There was no Darth Vader-style redemption for Vecna, though, because he was too far gone, and he insisted he and the Mind Flayer were now one. But the clues were there all along, both in the Stranger Things Broadway show and in the main TV series itself.
7. The Mind Flayer First Encountered Henry Creel When He Was Eight
Let’s start with the biggest clue of all; The First Shadow, the official Stranger Things Broadway show. Now, it’s worth noting that not every official tie-in has really been recognized by the main show; a lot of the tie-in comics were effectively erased from canon by Season 4’s Vecna reveal. But the Duffer brothers themselves were part of the writing team who worked on The First Shadow, meaning it was always safe to assume this was a little more consequential.
According to The First Shadow, an eight-year-old Henry Creel living in Nevada encountered a Soviet spy who’d stolen material from Dr. Brenner’s interdimensional experiments. He was transformed to Dimension X (called the Abyss in Season 5), where he was exposed to the Mind Flayer. This is the true origin of Vecna’s powers, because Henry returned with a unique blood type and superhuman abilities.
You’ll notice that this directly contradicts Vecna’s claims in Stranger Things Season 4. There, Vecna insisted he had been banished to the Abyss by Eleven, where he encountered the hive mind and used his powers to take control of it, crafting it into the Mind Flayer. The contrast between these two versions immediately hinted that Vecna was either lying… or being consciously manipulated by the Mind Flayer, his memories altered.
6. The Mind Flayer was Present in Henry Creel’s Childhood
In truth, Stranger Things Season 4 had itself suggested there was more to this story than Vecna was telling. We saw an image of the young Henry – now living in Hawkins, having moved there after the events in Nevada – drawing a sketch of the Mind Flayer. It already seemed a little too coincidental that he’d be drawing an entity that he’d later be able to create. The scene also paralleled Will in Season 2, hinting that Henry had suffered something similar to Will, and was influenced if not possessed.
The First Shadow supports this interpretation, clearly establishing the Mind Flayer as a presence that was stalking Henry. In one scene, Bob Newby’s father was blinded and seriously injured when Henry’s powers flared out of control around him, and Mr. Newby later claimed Henry saved him from a monster. The creature he described was clearly the Mind Flayer.
5. Vecna Was Terrified of Returning to the Cave Memory
Supporting this, Season 5 quickly revealed there was one memory Vecna was reluctant to return to – a memory of Nevada, that immediately felt as though it was tied to his origin story in The First Shadow. Max and Holly were completely safe from Vecna’s attention so long as they stayed in the cave, because Vecna did not dare face his first memory of the Mind Flayer. It was one that would have destroyed the story he’d told himself, one in which he was in charge and the Mind Flayer was his puppet.
4. Vecna’s Spyglass Was Always a Major Clue
Exploring the Camazotz recreation of Vecna’s childhood home, Holly discovered a spyglass. This, too, is a reference to The First Shadow; there, Henry accidentally left the spyglass in the Nevada tunnels when he fled in panic, and it helped Dr. Brenner identify him. Unsurprisingly, the memory-recreation of the spyglass turned out to be a helpful clue that led Max and Holly into the tunnels.
3. Dustin’s D&D Lore Claimed Vecna Was the Mind Flayer’s “Five Star General”
Stranger Things has always riffed on Dungeons & Dragons, and the games are often symbolic. The opening of Season 4 featured one D&D game that mentioned “the Cult of Vecna” (foreshadowing the next season’s children, who initially chose to follow Vecna). Even the Stranger Things series finale ended with a game that set up Eleven’s possible survival. All that makes one detail from Season 4 seem odd; Dustin’s knowledge of lore meant he considered Vecna the Mind Flayer’s “five star general,” not its master.
2. Camazotz Alluded to the Mind Flayer as the Real Villain
Max and the kidnapped children had found themselves trapped in a realm Holly called Camazotz, a name inspired by Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. That in itself was a major clue, because Camazotz was secretly ruled by a shadowy entity known as “It.” In the same way, Vecna’s very mind is secretly ruled by the Mind Flayer, which presides over the entire place.
1. Vecna Implied a Part of Him was Afraid of the Shadow
The final clue to the Mind Flayer’s true role is perhaps the most subtle. Speaking to the kidnapped children, Creel told them he was recruiting them to fight against the Shadow. He was lying, of course, but it’s striking that he instinctively considered the Shadow – a clear image of the Mind Flayer – to be something terrifying. This was a major hint that the relationship between Henry Creel and the Mind Flayer was much more complicated than Creel liked to recognize.
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Courtesy of Bones Film
