The fifth and final season of Netflix’s flagship series “Stranger Things” is meant to be a culmination of everything that came before – including, incredibly, the stage play based on the series.
That’s right, “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” is a surprising important text for the fifth season. It’s like when you were watching Showtime’s “Twin Peaks: The Return” and realized that “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me,” the controversial feature film, would be essential to unraveling David Lynch’s return to the show. Who knew?
We’re going to walk you through the play’s connection to the new season and beyond. But we must first issue a very strict spoiler warning. If you haven’t watched the new batch of episodes yet (now streaming on Netflix), then please turn back around. This article will still be here when you’re done.
What is “Stranger Things: The First Shadow?”
It’s a very cool, sometimes quite scary stage play that debuted in London on Dece. 14 at the Phoenix Theatre in the West End, after a string of previews that began on Nov. 17, 2023. It moved to Broadway at the Marquis Theater on April 22, 2025.
The play has a story by Matt and Ross Duffer, Jack Thorne and Kate Trefry. Trefry, a writer on “Stranger Things,” also wrote the play. It was directed in London by Stephen Daldry and in New York by Justin Martin.
Keep in mind that Trefry has an episode in the second batch of season 5, entitled “Escape from Camazotz.”
What is the connection to season 5?
So far, it’s been brief, but it’s there – as Max (Sadie Sink) is explaining her time in a dreamworld quickly referred to as Camazotz (a reference to “A Wrinkle in Time”), she describes walking through pieces of Henry Creel/Vecna’s (Jamie Campbell Bower). At one point she steps through some doors and is in Hawkins High School in 1959, on the eve of a big stage production.
This is directly out of “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” which is centered around the parents of the “Stranger Things” kids and their run-in with Henry Creel.
Max is also hiding out in a cliff wall, which ties into Henry/Vecna’s troubled backstory.
Will “The First Shadow” pop up in “Stranger Things 5” again?
Yes.
We spoke with Matt and Ross Duffer about the integration of the play into season 5. They are well aware that only a small amount of people have seen the play, but that it was still important.
“Obviously a limited number of fans have seen it, but for those who’ve seen it, I think it’s a fun Easter egg. And those who are going to see it, I think it’ll be fun because it ties it all together in a way and it gives those particular scenes a little bit more context,” said Ross Duffer.
Ross then teased, “We do even a little more with the play in a later episode.”
In other words: stay tuned.
Is there any way to watch the play on Netflix?
No. Or we should probably say “not yet.”
But earlier this year “Behind the Curtain: Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” about the creation of the play and its Broadway run, was recently released on Netflix. You can watch it now.
What happens in “Stranger Things: The First Shadow?”
Again: we must issue a very strong spoiler warning, this time for a Broadway play.
After a brief prologue set in 1943, set around the rumored Philadelphia Experiment, in which the US Navy was attempting to turn a ship invisible, we jump forward in time.
Most of “The First Shadow” takes place in 1959 — 24 years before the events of “Stranger Things” season 1. That’s when the Creel family moves to Hawkins, Ind., after inheriting a small fortune from a late uncle. At first glance, the Creel family seems like a perfectly average American family composed of the family’s patriarch Victor, his wife Virginia and their children, Henry and Alice. But while Alice is shown to be a sweet and fun-loving little girl, Henry — as every “Stranger Things” fan knows — is far more reserved.
The play follows Henry as he grapples with controlling his psychic powers, which are fueled by a growing uncontrollable darkness, while balancing the challenges of being at a new school. Slowly, he becomes friends with Patty Newby. Yep, that last name looks familiar for a reason. Patty is the daughter of Principal Newby as well as the sister of Bob Newby (played by Sean Astin in the series).
After Henry shows Patty his powers, she convinces him that he’s not evil and that he should try to control his powers and use them for good. As they become closer, their relationship becomes more romantic. Patty opens up about wanting to find the mother who abandoned her, and Henry creates a vision for her that shows Patty singing and being adored by those around her.
But when Henry is alone, he has a much more difficult time controlling his powers. He kills several animals around Hawkins, is haunted by a vision of a human-like monster and becomes convinced he will one day kill Patty.
Henry never fully opens up about his inner turmoil and how difficult it is for him to control the darkness from the Upside Down. So when Patty asks him to track down her biological mother, she doesn’t realize what she’s actually asking him to do. Despite Henry’s protests, he eventually agrees to try. But while he’s using his psychic abilities he loses control and almost kills Patty’s father, who walks in at the worst possible moment. Patty is able to talk Henry down but not before Henry blinds and seriously injures her father.
When Principal Newby eventually wakes up in the hospital, he tells his daughter that Henry didn’t attack him. Rather, Henry saved him from a far more sinister entity in the Upside Down, drawing something that resembles the Mind Flayer. But that revelation comes a beat too late. Virginia, horrified by her son’s powers, has already brought him to Dr. Brenner (played by Matthew Modine in the show), the same scientist Eleven knows as Papa.
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.
It turns out that Brenner has spent years trying to track Henry down. He tries to force Henry to use his powers to kill a prisoner, but Henry refuses. Correctly surmising that someone in Henry’s life is keeping him from fully embracing his darker side, Brenner vows to kill Patty.
When a drained and hostile Henry returns home, he uses his powers to read his family’s mind. Once he realizes they don’t want him to be there, he’s overcome with fury and lets the darkness overtake him, resulting in the murders of his mother and sister. Those are the crimes that his father, Victor Creel, is later accused of committing.
In the play’s finale, Henry and Brenner face off during Joyce’s play (Oh, there’s a whole play-within-a-play subplot. Just like normal “Stranger Things” there are a LOT of subplots in this one). As the two fight over Henry’s humanity or his inner darkness, Patty is thrown from the rafters. Henry gives up once that happens and agrees to join Brenner at Hawkins Lab. That’s how he grows up to become the sociopath who both teaches and haunts Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) in “Stranger Things.”
