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Yes, Holly, this is what made Henry bad
Image: NetflixHolly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) and Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink) have spent most of Stranger Things season 5 trapped in a psychic prison that Henry Creel/Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) built from his own memories. Their search for a way out in episode 6, “Escape from Camazotz,” leads them to relive a moment that changed Henry’s life forever — one that could hold the key to finally defeating him. But to understand exactly what happened, you either need to wait until the series finale or have seen a Stranger Things story you can’t watch on Netflix.
[Ed. note: This article contains major spoilers for Stranger Things season 5, volume 2]
When Holly meets Max in the psychic realm she dubs Camazotz, Max is hiding out in a cave Henry is scared to enter. Later, when Holly accidentally leaves the lens cap on the spyglass that she took from Henry’s childhood home, she’s able to ascertain that what he’s afraid of isn’t in the cave but outside it. When she lines up her view of the cave to the shape cut into the lens cap, she and Max tumble into a mine shaft.
There they watch an 8-year-old Henry (Maksim Blatt) encounter an injured man with a briefcase. While Henry tries to help him, the man reacts with extreme paranoia and shoots Henry in the hand. Henry kills him with a rock to prevent him from shooting him again. “Is this what made Henry bad?” Holly tearfully asks Max. The answer is yes, but not just because of the trauma of killing a man in self-defense.
Image: NetflixLike so much of the plot of this season, what’s going on in the mine was first explained in the stage show Stranger Things: The First Shadow. The play opens in 1943 with the Philadelphia Experiment, which transported a U.S. Navy ship to the dimension that has been dubbed the Abyss. The vessel was attacked by Demogorgons and the only survivor was the captain, who returned in a vegetative state with a new blood type.
The captain’s son, Martin Brenner, sought to replicate the experiment in a remote area of Nevada near Henry’s childhood home. But one of Brenner’s employees stole materials from his lab to give to the Soviets, who were eager to start their own interdimensional experiments. Henry encounters that spy in the mine.
So what’s in the briefcase Henry opens? Based on what we know about Brenner’s experiments, it would almost assuredly have contained some of Captain Brenner’s blood. Henry is already bleeding from the gunshot wound in this scene, and he likely becomes contaminated with the infected blood, leading to the development of his psychic powers, which he would then pass down to the children Brenner experimented on.
Image: NetflixThe other thing that could be in the box is some of the exotic matter that would eventually make its way to Hawkins Laboratory, where it stabilizes the Upside Down. The First Shadow explains that young Henry wound up in the Abyss, reappearing 12 hours later with a different blood type and a changed personality. Throughout the play, he struggles with the influence of a dark entity pushing him to use his new powers to hurt people in a way reminiscent of how Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) acted under the Mind Flayer’s influence in season 2. Dark matter in the briefcase could explain how Henry wound up in the Abyss and was changed forever.
Henry’s refusal to go into the cave he associates with this moment demonstrates how terrifying he found this incident. While he seems in charge of the Hive Mind and is working to bring the Abyss crashing into Hawkins, part of him is still a scared little boy. Vecna uses fear as a weapon, and Stranger Things is setting up for a showdown in the finale between Vecna and Will, who has confronted his biggest fears to strengthen himself. Not only has Will taken a weapon away from Vecna, he now knows what Vecna himself fears, which could give him an edge in the final battle.
The first seven episodes of Stranger Things season 5 are available to stream on Netflix now, with the finale airing on New Year’s Eve.
English (US) ·