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This year’s annual Stranger Things Day was held earlier this week and to celebrate the occasion, I had the opportunity to see Netflix's Stranger Things: The First Shadow. For those who aren’t in the know, The First Shadow is a play located in London’s West End which marks the streaming service’s first attempt at a stage production - and my oh my, it’s a triumphant success.
I’m always dubious when film and television properties are adapted for the stage. It’s just so hard to get such adaptations right and more often than not, they feel like tacky low-budget cash grabs. It’s for that reason that despite being both a fan of Stranger Things and live theatre, The First Shadow wasn’t particularly on my to-do list. Within minutes of the show starting though, I was proven incorrect in my judgement. This is by far the most impressive show I’ve ever seen on stage - and I frequent the West End often.
Stranger Things: The First Shadow is pitched as essential viewing that bridges the gap between season four and five of the Netflix series. It’s a prequel that takes us back to the year 1959, when the adult characters we all know and love - including Joyce, Hopper, and Bob - are students at Hawkins High School, as is new boy Henry Creel. Perhaps better known to us as Vecna, The First Shadow explores how Henry came to acquire his powers, filling in an important gap in his backstory.
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While the TV series delves into Henry and Eleven’s history in detail, there's less material that touches upon Henry’s origins. It’s via The First Shadow that we receive some of those answers, namely through the unfolding of a friendship, of sorts, between young Henry and new character Patty Newby, sister to Bob.
Of course, ‘essential viewing’ is a rather strong statement when you’re adapting a global TV series into a stage show that’s being performed in precisely one city worldwide - although The First Shadow will debut on New York’s Broadway next year. Even still, plenty of Stranger Things fans are going to be without the opportunity to see The First Shadow, making it very much an indulgence. That being said, if you are someone who is able to access the show and purchase tickets, I’d urge you to as essential viewing isn’t too far wrong.
Take a look at Stranger Things: The First Shadow in action below.
I was lucky enough to attend a panel with some of the cast and crew after the show, where associate producer Max Bittleston described The First Shadow as the most technically ambitious ever to be staged in the West End, and I can believe it. I’ve personally never seen effects like it. The Upside Down, or Dimension X as it’s referred to at this point in time, is brought to life before your very eyes - bringing with it the dimension’s various nasties, from demogorgons to the Mind Flayer. In fact, in parts, I felt like I was watching a TV series or film. I couldn’t quite believe that what was happening was live theatre.
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Louis McCartney is phenomenal as Henry Creel, and I’m not surprised he’s been nabbed to reprise the role for the Broadway production’s debut next year. To sustain such a physical and emotional intensity for nearly three hours, night after night, cannot be an easy task but Louis pulled it off with ease. He’s so compelling that you can’t help but become utterly immersed in the story. In fact, the whole cast excelled. Isabella Pappas and Christopher Buckley’s iterations of the younger Joyce and Bob, respectively, also stood out to me, with both actors capturing the mannerisms of Winona Ryder and Sean Astin.
But I don’t want to delve too far into review territory. The bottom line is that you should absolutely see the show if you can. You’ll be left amazed and thoroughly entertained, and I found myself just as impressed, if not more so, as I am when I watch the TV series. But what I really want to talk about is how The First Shadow sets up Stranger Things’ upcoming fifth season. Of course, I cannot do that without touching upon spoilers, so let this be your warning. If you’ve seen the show and want to delve deeper into its story, you’re in the right place. If you’re unable to see the show and want to find out what you’re missing out on, you’re in the right place. If you have plans to see The First Shadow and want to stay spoiler-free, you better look away now.
The Duffer brothers previously confirmed that The First Shadow would feature some Easter eggs for season five, and I’m pretty sure I’ve picked them out - so let’s address the elephant in the room, Henry Creel. The First Shadow reveals how Henry, the first of Brenner’s subjects, came to acquire his powers - and it all begins with something called The Philadelphia Experiment, undertaken in 1943. The play opens with a wartime ship, the SS Aldridge, running a government experiment that sees the crew try to activate a cloaking device to make the ship invisible. This is actually something military conspiracy theorists believe happened in real life.
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In the world of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, the experiment is a success. The ship does become invisible, but not without dire consequences. I have to say, the opening five minutes of the play are astonishing. In triggering invisibility, the SS Aldridge actually transfers itself to Dimension X - canonically, the first time the dimension has been accessed in the Stranger Things universe. One by one, the crew are picked off by demogorgons - all except for a lone survivor, who lives long enough to pass on what he’s seen to his son … Martin Brenner.
That name should be ringing a bell because, yes, Martin Brenner is the Dr. Brenner we’re all very familiar with. It’s from this point on that Brenner dedicates his life to studying Dimension X although concerned over what they’re messing with, one of his scientists runs away from a facility based out of the Nevada Desert carrying a box teased with holding something crucial - and this is where Henry Creel factors in. Henry is living in Nevada at the time and is reported as missing by his mother, showing up 12 hours later. In those 12 hours, Henry somehow encountered the scientist and the contents of the box, and it’s whatever was in that box - clearly something from Dimension X - that ‘infected’ him, changing his status as an ordinary boy to someone who’d eventually go on to become Vecna.
How does this factor into season five? Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if this information is recapped in the upcoming fifth season as it seems like a pretty crucial slice of backstory that TV viewers aren’t going to be familiar with otherwise. What’s got my cogs whirring though is that The First Shadow is very careful not to reveal what it was that was actually in the box to infect Henry. Presumably, it was something carrying the, I suppose, life essence of the Mind Flayer? It’s simply not a question that was answered, but Henry was ‘infected’ by some kind of physical object or tangible thing. Could it be that whatever it was is the key to stopping all of this, sealing Dimension X off for good?
That’s not the only aspect of this part of the story that feels important. Let’s hop back to Brenner, because we’ve never really been told why he’s obsessed with Henry, Eleven, and the other experiments. The First Shadow provides an answer on that front: to avenge his father who was killed on the first (accidental) trip to Dimension X, but with Dimension X/The Upside Down still being a major threat, Brenner is yet to succeed. It’s a great way to flesh out Brenner’s character, because up until this point, I’d never really understood his cruelty and while it’s hardly condonable, you can understand his desperation.
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As with the mystery surrounding that aforementioned box, the unveiling of The Philadelphia Experiment also feels pretty pivotal. While the mysterious object was the first known instance of Dimension X actively affecting someone in the normal world, The Philadelphia Experiment marked the first time Dimension X was accessed. Going along the lines of what I said earlier, perhaps it’s in examining how the dimension was opened that Eleven and company will somehow figure out how to seal it away.
The First Shadow is far more concerned with Henry and Brenner than it is, say, with Joyce, Hopper, and Bob but there is one Hawkins student who closely ties into Henry’s story, Patty Newby. Patty isn’t in the TV show … yet - something else that’s sounding alarm bells in my head. Patty is the adopted sister of Bob Newby who’s always felt like somewhat of an outsider. It’s because of this - and a love of comic books - that Patty strikes up a friendship with Henry Creel. At first, it’s simply that, an innocent friendship - although after Henry partially reveals his powers, the ante is upped.
Patty asks Henry if he's able to use Dimension X to track down her mother after Henry confides that he can use the parallel plane to hear voices. Of course, as the play progresses, Henry grows more and more out of control, and using his power has disastrous consequences. I don’t want to unnecessarily spoil all of Patty’s story, but I will say that - to my amazement - she survives. Given the places the story goes, that’s not exactly something you expect, especially as fans of the show will be going into The First Shadow presuming she’ll die simply because she isn’t an adult character in the main TV series.
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But Patty does indeed survive. The last time we see Patty, she’s ventured off to Las Vegas, reuniting with her mom - a nightclub singer. The journey isn’t simply in aid of finding her mother though, so too is Patty putting some distance between her and Henry who’s gone full on villain by this point. Distance may not be enough though. As Patty hugs her mother in the closing moments of the show, the electricity flickers - a recurring happening throughout the show signifying the use, somewhere, of Henry’s powers. It strongly hints at the possibility that Henry is using Dimension X to spy on Patty.
Despite the tensions that arise between the duo as the story grows more grisly, it’s clear that Patty is, before s**t hits the fan, the only person who really treats Henry like, well, a person. It’s why Joyce, Hopper, and Bob - who eventually become caught up in the antics - use Patty as bait to attempt to lure Henry in. You may see where I’m going with this. If Patty is alive and those flickering lights show Henry is still invested in her wellbeing, could it be that she surfaces in season five to help bring him down once and for all?
I’ve got to admit, I’d love to see it. Patty was a great character, wonderfully portrayed by Ella Karuna Williams, and she’s the only one I could see attempting to reason with Vecna. I should add that Patty hasn’t seen him since he was a teenaged Henry Creel, so seeing the monster he’s become could prove to be a really special moment of TV, especially for those who have seen the play. And as I said, Patty is a classmate of Joyce and Hopper, so it just feels like an easy addition to see her slide in for this fifth and final season. No casting as such has been announced, but I’d imagine that - if I’m right - this is something the Duffer brothers would want to keep on the downlow.
The final element of the story I want to draw in on concerns the Mind Flayer. In episode nine of Stranger Things’ fourth season, Vecna reveals to Eleven what happened after he was originally banished to The Upside Down. “One day, I found the most extraordinary thing of all. Something that would change everything” he relays, as we see Henry come face-to-face with the Mind Flayer for the first time. As he reaches out, he speaks about becoming “the predator I was always meant to be”. It heavily suggests that Henry/Vecna assumed control of the Mind Flayer, thus increasing his power and turning him from a human-looking guy into a slimy tendrilled monster.
The First Shadow flips this totally on its head though. The Mind Flayer is integral to the show's iconography. When one character is attacked by Henry, blood drips from his eyes forming the outline of the Mind Flayer on a sheet of paper. When Dr. Brenner runs tests on Henry’s brain, lines of electricity spread across the stage in the looming shape of the being. In fact, the very first time we see Henry kill a person in the show - his mother and sister - the entire proscenium arch of the stage transforms into, you guessed it, the Mind Flayer.
I don’t think Henry Creel is controlling the Mind Flayer as a pawn in his army. I think it’s the other way around. The play is called Stranger Things: The First Shadow and the Mind Flayer is that first shadow, quietly appearing at every given opportunity, watching over the young Henry as he slowly embarks on his dark descent. When I go back and watch that aforementioned scene from the TV show, I don’t see Henry/Vecna speaking. When the character was banished to Dimension X, I think that’s when the Mind Flayer was finally able to take control of Henry as a human pawn, as he’d been hoping to do for years - evidenced by its omnipresence in The First Shadow.
His transition from Henry to Vecna is because, in my opinion, the Mind Flayer finally succeeded in its plan. When the phrase “the predator I was always meant to be” leaves Vecna’s mouth, that could be the Mind Flayer talking, with his control over Henry finally giving him the vessel he needs to assert domination outside of Dimension X, domination in the ‘normal’ world. Perhaps I’ll be sitting here in one year’s time after season five has aired with the Mind Flayer as its big bad saying, “I told you so”, or perhaps I’m totally wrong. But The First Shadow is full of subtle imagery that suggests the shadowy being is the one pulling the strings, so I simply can’t let the idea go.
Stranger Things’ fifth season is finally set to air in 2025, so it won’t be too long until answers come to light. I’ll have fun revisiting these speculative thoughts when it drops - but I think it’s pretty clear which strands of the play are intended to carry on over into the TV show. If I haven’t drilled it in already, do go and watch Stranger Things: The First Shadow if you can but if not, I certainly hope I’ve entertained you with a brief glimpse at what’s likely to come.
Stranger Things: The First Shadow is playing now at London’s Phoenix Theatre. It’ll open in New York’s Marquis Theatre in March 2025.
Topics: Stranger Things, Netflix, TV And Film