The ‘Stranger Things’ Broadway play’s connection with the series finale
Those who missed out on the prequel story, Stranger Things: The First Shadow, during its London and New York Broadway run and are brainstorming about how the Netflix series can end, this one’s most definitely for you.
The first volume of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things saw Will Byers taking centre stage with a plot twist we could barely wrap our heads around. But something else in the background caught the eyes of the theatregoers who had their chance to watch The First Shadow in the West End in 2023 or on Broadway last spring.
The Duffer brothers have already confirmed that with ‘Sorcerer,’ the last episode, which aired before volume two releases on Christmas Day, that The First Shadow’s plot is crucial to the ending of the Netflix sci-fi series.
Questions surrounding why Henry is scared to enter Max’s caves, and how Oklahoma! is important, the connection between Creel and the adults of Hawkins, and the traumatic past that brought Henry to Papa in the first place were raised throughout the stage play, which are now about to be addressed in the fifth and final season. So, let’s look at the possibilities with a spoiler-stricken recap of The First Shadow.
The connection between the Hawkins adults and Henry
The connections between the stage play and the series are most profoundly drawn when Max details to Holly Wheeler about her journey through Vecna’s memories. In one of the flashback sequences, viewers can also spot Max in the halls of Hawkins High School, holding a flyer for a production of Oklahoma! The First Shadow revolves around the famous musical, directed by Joyce Maldonado, who would eventually marry into the surname Byers.
But she’s not the only one who has an idea about the name on the flyer. James Hopper Jr, Karen Wheeler, Patty Newby, Alan Munson, Ted Wheeler, and Henry Creel can be spotted, which somewhat clarifies that most adults were acquainted with each other at Hawkins High School, where they shared the stage with Vecna.
How did Henry meet Papa, Dr Martin Brenner?
One of the main revelations in The First Shadow dates back to Hawkins, 1959, when the Creel family moved to the town. Back then, a tortured Henry, already powered with dark superpowers, fell head over heels for Patty Newby. As her brother Bob and Jim looked into the animal deaths at the hands of Henry, the Creel parents sent the troubled kid to Dr Martin Brenner, who just turned things for the worse.
The play reveals that Brenner’s father was the captain of the USS Elridge, a 1943 ship around which several urban legends surfaced about an attempted cloaking, which eventually came to be known as the Philadelphia Experiment. The First Shadow suggests that the experiments ultimately put the ship on a map of a very “tentacle-y place called Dimension X,” where Brenner has been trying to get back ever since.
What is the mystery surrounding Max’s caves?
The caves where Max seeks safety in Stranger Things’ first volume from the fifth season are also believed to be from The First Shadow. The reason behind Henry’s fears has probably a lot to do with the fact that it’s the very place where he evolved into the villain of this Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Act II from the play reveals that Henry discovered the caves when he was a child while living with his family in Nevada, where he also stumbled on a spyglass, which returns in the series. Henry also found stolen technology from the lab, which he used to transport himself into Dimension X. But there, the creatures of the Upside Down infected him.
The significance of the play within a play
Stranger Things: The First Shadow additionally reveals that it wasn’t the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that Joyce put on that made Lorenz Hart mad, but a drama called Dark of the Moon. That play within a play also has possible parallels with both Duffer productions, as it revolves around a “witch boy” who falls in love with a girl, reflecting, in a way, how Henry fell in love with Patty.
During the production of that play within a play, Henry was overwhelmed by the dark forces of Dimension X, which nearly proved fatal for Patty. But after the wreckage, Henry was taken back to the Hawkins lab, where he eventually came across Eleven. Although the play highlights Henry’s arc as that of a victim more than a villain, as was seen in season four, it also clarifies that it wasn’t exactly Eleven or Brenner who unleashed the big bad. It was the caves in which Max now lives in his mind.