With Stranger Things season 5 already hinting that it'll explore big plot points from the stage show Stranger Things: The First Shadow going forward, fans of the hit Netflix show have been wondering just how closely the two productions are linked.
Now, Vecna actor Jamie Campbell Bower has added fuel to the fire, admitting that the Henry Creel-centered prequel play directly "informed" his performance in season 4 and the final chapter. He assures viewers, though, that he was already "thinking about [his character's] childhood" – and his, presumably, unhappy home life – long before he plonked himself down in a seat at London's Phoenix Theatre.
"It's difficult to say this without sounding like a prick, because I'd spent so much time thinking about his childhood during filming," the British actor laughed in the latest issue of SFX magazine. "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."
In 'Sorcerer', the fourth episode of Stranger Things season 5, Max, who's currently trapped in Henry/Vecna's mindscape, reveals to young Holly Wheeler that she's spent the first few months there being forced to walk through significant moments in Vecna's life. The unwelcome trip down memory lane always had her end up back at the Hawkins Lab on the day of the Massacre, but we get a tease of another interesting "flashback" set in 1959: when Henry was at school with Joyce, Hopper, and co and was preparing to put on their version of Hammerstein's Oklahoma!
The First Shadow revolves around this, with shy, troubled Henry signing up for the play after moving to town from Nevada. Elsewhere, he can be seen struggling to control his psychokinetic powers, which he got after encountering a shadowy entity before his arrival in Hawkins. We've already seen a nod to this, too, with Max hiding out in the caves on the outskirts of Henry's mindscape, in which he lives in an idyllic-looking Creel House.
"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."
Stranger Things season 5 Vol. 1 is streaming now, with Vol. 2 set to drop on December 25. Never miss an episode with our Stranger Things season 5 release schedule, or check out our list of the best Netflix shows if you're all set and in need of watchlist inspiration.
