This article contains spoilers from “Stranger Things” Season 5, Volume 1
“Stranger Things” Season 5 revealed there might be one thing Vecna is afraid of after all – a mysterious cave from his past that was the true start of all that has come since.
As seen in Episodes 3/4, Max shows up to help Holly who is also trapped inside Vecna’s mind prison. She explains that she has been roaming Vecna/Henry’s memories since she went into a coma at the end of Season 4. In doing so, she learned that there was cave system that even Henry was afraid to enter. She made it her home, but never really learned why the monster refused to chase her inside.
“He was scared,” Max told Holly. “More than scared, he was terrified. There’s something about this cave. This memory. He won’t come in. In here, I’m safe.”
The importance of the cave and Henry/Vecna’s connection to it could be key in beating the monster once and for all. Although much of the cave remains a mystery, there are certain things we do know about Henry’s history with it – and it all comes from the Broadway play, “Stranger Things: The First Shadow.”
Here is what we know about Vecna’s cave and what it could mean:
Where Max Has Been Hiding
After Max was targeted and attacked by Vecna in the Season 4 finale, the people in the Rightside Up assume she is brain dead, but she actually became a dream walker roaming the villain’s tangled web memories. Eventually, the monster catches on to what she’s doing and gives chase – that is, until Max finds a cave system in which to hide.
Vecna wouldn’t follow her in for some reason, so Max made it her home and resigned herself to living a life in this prison … until Holly arrives and the pair hatches a plan to get them both out.
Why Vecna Is Afraid of the Cave
Vecna/Henry’s fear of the cave dates back to his boyhood. Some of this origin has already played out in “The First Shadow” on Broadway. In the play, it’s revealed that Henry’s connection to Dr. Brenner and his father are much deeper – all because he explored a Nevada cave alone as a boy.
Brenner tells Henry that his father was the only survivor of the USS Eldridge experiment, one of the first voyages taken in the 1940s to explore the Upside Down. That encounter, which takes place at the very beginning of the play, left his father with serious injuries as well as a unique blood type. While trying to recreate that experiment, one of Brenner’s scientists stole confidential technology and stored it in a Nevada cave where it was then discovered by a little boy. Yep, you know where this is going; Henry was that boy.
He then spent 12 hours crossed over into Dimension X – the same place Eleven put him years later when he bonded with the Mind Flayer and became Vecna in full. During this first brief visit, Henry encountered a shadowy entity and came back a darker person with an altered personality.
The play doesn’t get too deep into what exactly Henry experienced in the cave, but it was clearly traumatic enough that even Vecna doesn’t want to relive it. Plus, Henry barely remembered being in Dimension X before being put their by Eleven. That kind of repression of memories means something truly awful must have happened to Henry – we’ll just have to wait and see.
