Stranger Things Season 5 Requires Knowledge of the Spinoff You Probably Haven’t Seen

This article contains spoilers for “Stranger Things” season 5, episode 5, “Shock Jock.”

“Stranger Things” is finally coming to an end with season 5, and the series is doing its best to tie up all its loose ends before the finale. This is going to be a difficult task, however, because there is a tonne details to tie into a show so rich in tradition. A flashback in episode 5 confirmed that season 5 is directly linked to “Stranger Things: The First Shadow”, the show that not everyone will have seen. This means that there is required reading if you Really I want to understand the final season of “Stranger Things,” which frankly feels like a terrible move on the part of the Duffer Brothers.

Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ Play Explores Origins of the Upside Downwhich was both exciting and a bit disappointing for fans who didn’t want to buy expensive theater tickets just to learn an important piece of the show’s history. “The First Shadow” was conceived by series creators Matt and Ross Duffer and written by Kate Trefry, debuted in December 2023, and served as a prequel to the Netflix series, telling the origin story of Henry Creel (played in the series by Jamie Campbell Bower). In the series, Henry eventually becomes Vecna, the disfigured big bad who, in season 5 of “Stranger Things”, is deadlier than he has ever been. In the play he starts out as little Henry Creel.

“The First Shadow” reveals how Henry is effectively patient zero for all the telekinetically gifted children in the “Stranger Things” verse and how he gave birth to the Eleven (Milly Bobby Brown) we all know. If you haven’t seen the play, however, “Stranger Things” Season 5 Episode 5 might be a little confusing.

“Stranger Things: The First Shadow” chronicles how Henry Creel struggled with his telekinetic abilities as a child and was plagued by visions of the mind flayer, which at one point led him to harm his own father. After that, Henry’s mother sends her son to Dr. Martin Brenner, who in the series was played by Matthew Modine (who hates his character). The doctor grew up obsessed with paranormal phenomena following an incident his father experienced and was part of a project in the 1950s known as the Nevada Experiment, which aimed to recreate the events of that earlier incident. Ultimately, Brenner attempts to harness the power imbued in his own father and ultimately Henry through their exposure to an alternate dimension known as Dimension X. That’s already confusing, isn’t it?

In the play’s epilogue, we learn that Brenner eventually took Henry’s blood and infused it into test subjects as part of his experiments at Hawkins. This is how Milly Bobby Brown’s Eleven gained her powers in the first place, and we even get a glimpse of a young Eleven meeting Henry for the first time.

Now, the series itself has made a direct connection to the room via Kali Prasad’s (Linnea Berthelsen) episode 5 flashback, in which she recounts how she escaped from Dr. Kay’s (Linda Hamilton) lab and discovered rooms with pregnant women filled with blood. She then confirms that Dr. Brenner injected Henry’s blood into Eleven’s pregnant mother, meaning Henry/Vecna ​​essentially created Eleven. But if you haven’t seen the play, you might have wondered what all the talk about “pregnant women being injected” was about.

It’s always a drag to have to do a lot of homework just to figure out how things are supposed to happen in the world of your favorite show or movie. This is part of the reason the MCU has become such a grind, with multiple streaming series piling up that often force fans to watch mediocre shows just to be able to fully understand the films. Unfortunately, the Timeline of “Stranger Things” now practically requires this type of homework – especially if you haven’t seen “The First Shadow.”

The show was already getting pretty complicated before Season 5 arrived. Over the previous four seasons, we’ve learned so much about the mysterious goings-on in Hawkins that it’s a lot to ask the audience to keep it all together between seasons, no matter how many quick recaps you do at the start of each season. This also means that characters are constantly repeating things and saying out loud what’s happening, resulting in some unimpressive writing. Now, we also need to have some knowledge of the play in order to understand Kali’s flashback and fully understand what is really happening in season 5? That would be bad enough, but the play itself is also a maze of history, spanning multiple time periods and introducing a whole new dimension that’s similar to the Upside Down but not really the same.

If you’re a die-hard “Stranger Things” fan, there’s no doubt that this is all exciting. But if, like the majority of viewers, you’re into ’80s nostalgia and big-budget sci-fi horror adventures, it’s probably just tedious, and Season 5 doesn’t really help in that regard.

“Stranger Things” season 5, volume 2 is now streaming on Netflix.