How The First Shadow Shaped Vecna’s Dark Path in Stranger Things

With the much-hyped fifth season of Stranger Things teasing links to the stage production The First Shadow, fans are left wondering just how much the two stories overlap. Jamie Campbell Bower, who brings Vecna to life, has now weighed in, revealing that the Henry Creel-focused prequel play had a direct impact on how he approached the role in both the fourth and final seasons. He’s quick to point out, though, that he’d already spent plenty of time mulling over his character’s early years and less-than-rosy family life, well before he ever set foot in London’s Phoenix Theatre.

In a recent chat with SFX magazine, the British actor joked,

“It’s difficult to say this without sounding like a prick, because I’d spent so much time thinking about his childhood during filming. We were in lockdown before we started shooting season 4, so I had six months to stew on this. I would ask myself questions about the parental relationship, about this relationship with the primary caregivers... When I went to the stage show, and I saw that moment where [his mother] Virginia hits Henry, I was like, ‘Of course that happens, and of course the father being an alcoholic creates a distance. This is a child screaming for love, just wanting to be loved, wanting to be nurtured. Unfortunately for the two actors who played my parents, the first and only thing I could say to them when I met them was, ‘I hate you.’ So it does inform those thoughts that I’ve been thinking, the work that I’ve been doing. To have that be qualified was good for me.”

Piecing Together Henry Creel’s Past

In the fourth episode of the new season, titled ‘Sorcerer’, Max finds herself stuck inside Henry’s mind, forced to relive key moments from his life. She’s been wandering through these memories for months, always ending up back at Hawkins Lab on the day of the infamous massacre. But there’s a new flashback thrown in: a scene from 1959, when Henry was at school with Joyce, Hopper, and the rest, gearing up for their own version of Oklahoma! The First Shadow dives into this period, showing a shy, troubled Henry joining the school play after moving from Nevada. He’s also seen wrestling with his psychokinetic abilities, which he picked up after a run-in with a mysterious shadowy figure before arriving in Hawkins.

There’s a nod to this in the series too, with Max hiding out in the caves on the edge of Henry’s mind, where he’s recreated a picture-perfect version of Creel House. The choice to rebuild his family home in this dreamscape raises questions about what he’s trying to fix or reclaim.

Inside Vecna’s Mind: Home and Hurt

Bower found it fascinating that, given the freedom to create anything in his own mental world, Henry chose to bring back his childhood house. He reckons it’s about trying to heal old wounds, making the place finally feel like his own.

“I thought it was really interesting that in [season] five, of all the things he could have created – because this is not the real world – of all the choices he made, he decided he’d recreate his family home. Why? What needed to be healed within that space? I came to this idea that, ‘This place never felt like mine, and now I can make it feel like mine, and I can make it feel like home again, if I choose to’. Those pervasive thoughts were always with me as I was carrying through on the journey, even with Vecna. When it comes down to it, he has bitter, twisted resentment: ‘You took everything from me, so I’m going to take everything from you.’ It is monstrous at the end of the day, with Henry, but I mean, poor boy. Just, poor boy.”

For Bower, these insights from the play and the show’s scripts have helped him dig deeper into what drives Henry. The pain, the longing for love, and the sense of loss all feed into the monster he becomes. It’s a grim story, but one that’s given a bit more heart thanks to the layers added by The First Shadow.