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Season 5 of Stranger Things hinted at a tragic backstory for Vecna involving a traumatic experience in a cave — but what has already been revealed in the show’s offscreen play?
The final season brought back Max (Sadie Sink) while showing her stuck in a locked part of the Upside Down. She tried to escape but Vecna a.k.a Henry (Jamie Campbell Bower) chased her down — until she reached a cave.
The location was part of a memory manifested by Vecna and recreated in the Upside Down. Max mentioned it was the only place the villain wouldn’t enter because of a mysterious fear. In part 2, Max and Holly saw a flashback of Henry stumbling upon a man in a cave who shot him when the young boy tried to help. The man had a suitcase, which Henry opened but its contents were unclear.
Creators Ross and Matt Duffer confirmed that the scene was a reference to Stranger Things‘ prequel play, The First Shadow.
“When we were working on the play with Kate Trefry, we had Henry’s backstory worked out. There was always a balance that we had to find in terms of how much we were going to put in the play,” Matt, 41, told Cosmopolitan. “[The director] Stephen [Daldry] and [the producer] Sonia [Friedman] were always pushing for more and we were pushing back and saying, ‘Well, we have to wait to reveal that in the show.’ You’ll see, especially as you reach the final episode, there’s more overlap with the play.”
Matt confirmed that fans “absolutely do not have to have seen the play to understand.” The Easter eggs will presumably get addressed in the next two installments of the show but luckily Us has a breakdown of what the play revealed.
Stranger Things: First Shadow showed Henry as a child living near caves in Nevada. There was a military base nearby that was conducting an experiment where they tried to turn objects invisible. Henry ventured into the cave and stumbled across technology that resulted in him accidentally getting transported to another universe called Dimension X.
The incident shaped Henry, who became possessed by an entity that manipulated him into becoming the big bad. Vecna was introduced in season 4, which initially showed Bower, 37, in a more friendly role as One before Henry became the show’s biggest villain.
“I first got two sets of [script] sides, one from Primal Fear, and one from Hellraiser,” the actor told Variety in May 2022. “I had no idea what this character was. I wasn’t sent any material from the show.”
Watching the series put the mysterious character into perspective for Bower.
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“I went crazy for, like, two days. In my apartment, I put a picture of Will Byers [Noah Schnapp] in the middle, and then all the other characters around it, and then sort of made this Claire Danes-esque from Homeland mind-map of who I thought this person was,” he continued. “I stepped back from it after two days, and was like, ‘That feels kind of good.’ So I took a picture, and then I printed out all the pictures and put them in this little folder — and then I got a phone call saying Matt and Ross [Duffer] wanted to meet.”
From there, Bower showed the creators the vision he had for the role. “They were like, ‘This is literally perfect. Everything that you’ve gotten here is perfect. Your references are perfect. The inspiration is perfect. Do you mind if we show you some more visual references that we have and what we’re thinking, and tell you a little bit more about the character?’” he recalled. “I think, by that point, they knew I wasn’t completely insane.”
Bower previously noted that he was able to gain empathy for the character after playing him throughout season 4.
“Am I able to view him as a villain? I’m certainly able to view him as as a point of conflict. But in terms of, like, is he evil or villainous? I mean, I understand him, and I love him. And I relate to him,” he detailed to Variety in July 2022. “I just got a pain in my eyes as I was saying that — maybe I should shut up! Like, I understand him, and so I’m always gonna be on his side.”
Stranger Things returns with Volume 2 on December 25, and the finale drops December 31 on Netflix.
