Matt and Ross Duffer have promised that Stranger Things’ Broadway prequel, The First Shadow, was not only part of the Netflix series’ canonical plot but would prove integral to its final season. And with its newly released sixth episode, “Escape From Camazotz,” we finally know at least part of what they meant.
In the episode, Max (Sadie Sink) and Holly (Nell Fisher) are attempting to make their way out of Vecna’s mental landscape, where the former has been trapped for two years while her physical body lies comatose back in Hawkins. Max has stayed safe by hiding in a rocky cave that Vecna, aka Henry Creel (Jamie Campbell Bower), seems terrified to enter, although she’s never been able to figure out why. But Holly is a key part of Vecna’s final plan, and with his power growing, Max can’t be sure that he won’t grow strong or desperate enough to overcome whatever is keeping him out. (Plus, on-again-off-again boyfriend Lucas has been waiting for her an awfully long time, and even he must be getting sick of Kate Bush by now.) Being trapped in Vecna’s mind means they’re inhabiting his memories, and Max reasons that he must fear the cave because it embodies a bad one—and given that he has no trouble inhabiting the house where he murdered his mother and sister, it must be really, really bad.
In The First Shadow, we learn that before his family moved to Hawkins, Henry Creel lived in Nevada, where, when he was 8, he went missing for 12 hours and was found wandering in a daze, with a new, hitherto unknown, blood type and no memories of what happened. Nevada is also where a young Martin Brenner, the evil scientist played on the show by Matthew Modine, began his research into the existence of what he calls Dimension X, a term that, at least thus far, is too corny even for a show that names its antagonists after Dungeons & Dragons characters to speak aloud. Dimension X—sorry, every time I write that I have to resist the urge to give myself a wedgie—was, it turns out, first discovered by Brenner’s father, in what amounts to a reskinned version of the Philadelphia Experiment, the urban legend about the Navy’s attempt to make an entire ship disappear. In this telling, the ship was transported to an alternate dimension, which killed most of the crew and alerted the malevolent entity known as the Mind Flayer (ow, quit it!) to the existence of our world.
Sam Adams
One of Netflix’s Biggest Hits Is Now on Broadway. It Might Be the Worst Show I’ve Ever Seen.
Read More
This being the height of the Cold War, Brenner’s experiments in the Nevada desert were infiltrated by a Russian double agent, who escaped with a box full of particles from that other world. The young Henry, wandering off from a scouting expedition, somehow encountered that man, and when he returned, he was … different. The First Shadow picks up the story after a teenage Henry and his family relocated to Hawkins, Indiana, where he ends up going to high school with the younger versions of most of Stranger Things’ adult characters—Joyce, Hopper, Mike’s mother and father, even poor, doomed Bob Newby—which sort of makes you wonder why none of them ever talk about that creepy-ass kid they knew in the 1950s. But the play largely leaves open the question of what exactly happened in that cave, a question that Stranger Things is now getting around to answering in its latest batch of episodes.
Using Henry’s old spyglass, Max and Holly find their way to an abandoned mine shaft, where they follow a trail of blood and find the Russian spy, splayed out on the ground after what must have been a nasty fall. He’s still conscious, but unable to walk, and the revolver in one hand suggests he’s awfully protective of whatever’s in the briefcase clutched in to the other. As Max and Holly approach, he starts screaming at them, even though, given that he’s just a 30-year-old memory, he shouldn’t be able to see or interact with them. But it turns out he’s actually yelling at Henry, who has slipped into the mine behind them. Henry protests that he’s just lost, that he means no harm, but the spy is too panicked to listen, and he lets off a shot which goes straight through Henry’s left hand. The spy then starts to reload (although it’s not clear why a guy who’s been sitting in a cave and only gotten off one shot would need to reload his revolver), but a frantic Henry manages to wrestle the gun out of his hand before picking up a nearby rock to finish the job, bashing the spy in the head over and over, until the briefcase is covered in blood. At that point, Max and Holly have seen enough, and they turn their attentions to the other end of the mine shaft, where the strains of “Running Up That Hill” are faintly audible on the other side of a cave-in. Holly, returning to catch one last glimpse, sees a crying, blood-drenched Henry drag the briefcase away from the man and undo its latches, lifting it open as smoke begins to pour onto the ground. And that’s all we get, at least until the series’ final episode hits both Netflix and movie theaters on Dec. 31.
-
One of America’s Most Iconic Early Religious Cults Is Brought to Life in a Beautiful New Movie. But Did They Really Dance … Like That?
The most memorable moment in Behind the Curtain, the carefully non-revealing documentary about the making of The First Shadow, comes when the Duffer brothers inform the play’s novice writer, Kate Trefry, that a key plot point will have to be dialed back to “like 80 percent less,” because they’ve decided they want to leave whatever-it-is for the TV show instead. (The movie actually bleeps out a spoiler-y description, lest we get even a hint of an idea.) Could it be this violent origin story, which reveals that Henry was a killer even before he got a lungful of Dimension X’s evil black smoke? Or was there a hint of what’s become the biggest revelation of the series’ endgame: that the Upside Down is not, in fact, another dimension, but merely a bridge between our world and another—the place where Henry got his powers and lost his mind, where the Mind Flayer and the demogorgons hang out and do whatever they do? Exactly what this all means remains up for grabs, especially what difference it will make to Stranger Things’ ending, which presumably involves killing Vecna and sending the demodogs back to Dimension X with their tails between their legs. But for now, despite the Duffers’ insistence otherwise, The First Shadow still seems inessential, offering explanation but not much in the way of understanding—not to mention being one of the lousiest plays I’ve ever seen. Stranger Things watchers might suffer a few minutes of confusion while sitting down to this episode, but rest assured: It’s nothing a Wiki summary can’t fix.
