This post contains major spoilers for Stranger Things 5, Volume 1, and what new things it revealed to us about Vecna. If you want to avoid them, watch the episodes first and then return here faster than a demogorgon chasing a child and read our spoiler-free review of Stranger Things 5 instead.
In Stranger Things 4‘s finale, Vecna told Eleven and her friends that they had not won. He said their encounter was the beginning of the end and that they had already lost. We then saw what he meant. Even though they had stopped him that night, the temporary death of Max allowed him to open huge portals right through Hawkins, Indiana. Only, Vecna was nowhere to be found at the start of Stranger Things 5, Volume 1. Some even questioned if he was still alive. They got their answer when he emerged in the MAC-Z.
Even before he did, though, we had discovered a lot more about him, his plans, his past, and his future. Stranger Things 5, Volume 1 might have held Vecna back until its final moments, but we got plenty of Henry Creel before that during four dense episodes full of new information, flashbacks, and lore about Henry/Vecna/One. And that’s why, despite everything we learned so far on Stranger Things, we might have more questions about Vecna than ever after Stranger Things 5, Volume 1.
If You’d Like to Jump Around Vecna’s Story in Stranger Things 5, Volume 1, You Can Do So Below
- Who Is Mr. Whatsit in Stranger Things 5, Volume 1 , and What Does He Have to do with Vecna?
- Where Did Vecna Physically Take Holly in the Upside Down?
- What Is the Upside Down’s Flesh Wall in Stranger Things 5 ?
- Where Did Mr. Whatsit/Vecna Leave Holly’s Mind in Stranger Things 5, Volume 1?
- Why Is Max Locked Inside Vecna’s Memory Prison?
- Why Won’t Henry Enter Max’s Cave in Stranger Things 5 , Volume 1? What is Henry’s Worst Memory?
- What Did the Stranger Things Stage Play The First Shadow Reveal About Vecna?
- Is the Upside Down Different from Dimension X?
- How Did Will Byers See Through Vecna’s Eyes in Stranger Things 5 , Volume 1?
- Why Does Vecna Want Exactly 12 Kids on Stranger Things 5 ?
Who Is Mr. Whatsit in Stranger Things 5, Volume 1, and What Does He Have to do with Vecna?
Stranger Things 5, Volume 1 revealed that Holly Wheeler—along with 11 other children in Hawkins between the ages 9-10—had been communicating with an imaginary friend. Only, he wasn’t actually imaginary. Henry Creel/Vecna was appearing to them (invisible to anyone else) in his human form, wearing dapper clothes from the 1950s. Henry was kind and genteel with the kids. He also warned them monsters were coming to Hawkins and he alone could keep them safe. The children, including Holly Wheeler, all believed and trusted him.
Any child who had read A Wrinkle in Time would have certainly trusted his name, but Henry Creel/Vecna was the total opposite of the character he borrowed that moniker from in Stranger Things 5.
What is Mr. Whatsit’s Connection to A Wrinkle in Time?
A Wrinkle in Time is a classic 1962 young adult sci-fi novel by Madeleine L’Engle. It’s a wonderful, creative story about a battle between good and evil taking place across the universe. In Stranger Things 5, Vecna/Henry Creel takes his name, Mr. Whatsit, from A Wrinkle in Time‘s benevolent character, Mrs. Whatsit.
In the novel, Mrs. Whatsit is a strange, older neighbor who is secretly one of three supernatural immortal beings. She, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which can traverse huge swaths of space-time and lead three kids on a journey to find the main character Meg’s missing dad. He’d been working on some incredible technology, a tesseract. During their journey, the kids learn about how a dark evil, called the Black Thing, is attacking the light of the universe. The kids eventually end up in Camazotz, a planet referenced during Stranger Things 5, Volume 1. It’s a creepy, soulless planet drained of any individuality and uniqueness. A disembodied brain with telepathic powers called IT rules the planet, though IT is under the control of the Black Thing. (Although Henry Creel/Vecna clearly wants to see himself as A Wrinkle in Time‘s Mrs./Mr. Whatsit, we know he’s really more of the IT of the situation on Stranger Things 5.)
The obvious connections to Stranger Things don’t end there. After leaving Camazotz, Meg returns to the planet to free her captured brother, who remains hypnotized by IT. She frees him with love, much like Max’s friends freed her from the Upside Down.
Where Did Vecna Physically Take Holly in the Upside Down?
After posing as Mr. Whatsit and gaining her trust in Stranger Things 5, Volume 1, Vecna sent a demogorgon to take Holly Wheeler into the Upside Down, just as he once did with Will Byers. The next night, he had his monsters take three more children he’d visited as Mr. Whatsit. (Those abductions triggered the military’s plan to put all Hawkins kids aged 9-10 in the MAC-Z.)
After the initial attack in Stranger Things 5, Volume 1, Vecna took Holly into his giant flesh wall of vines, giant organ-like bulbs, and other gross entities and attached her to a spire in the Upside Down. Dustin, using the power of algebra, figured out that Vecna’s flesh wall is a massive circle that runs around the Upside Down’s Hawkins. The center point of that circle/wall is Hawkins National Laboratory, where Eleven first made contact with a demogorgon, opening up a portal between worlds.
When Will saw through Vecna’s eyes during the barn attack, he saw all four kidnapped victims attached to (what appeared to be) the inside of the flesh wall in the Upside Down. That lines up with what we learned previously. Vecna took Holly Wheeler into the wall. Eleven even found her boot there on the outside. But Eleven and Hopper failed to get past or even inside Vecna’s flesh wall in the Upside Down.
What Is the Upside Down’s Flesh Wall in Stranger Things 5?
Vecna controls every part of the Upside Down because the hive mind is his mind. Now we might know how and why. It seems as though Vecna created the Upside Down as an independent realm separated from the dimension Eleven sent Henry Creel to years earlier in Stranger Things. (More on this to come.) If that’s the case, the flesh wall is likely the limits of the Upside Down’s domain. Does this Upside Down wall exist to keep the other dimension out? People and monsters inside? Both? We don’t know much about Vecna’s flesh wall just yet, even after watching Stranger Things 5, Volume 1, only that it’s impenetrable by anyone who isn’t Vecna or the creatures he controls. Additionally, we know that Vecna is dragging his kidnapped children into it and attaching them with spires to its flesh.
In addition, the internal part of the flesh wall is incredibly important to Vecna, that’s where he’s keeping Holly and the other children he intends to take on spires. Only Vecan and his demogorgons can enter it. And no one is supposed to see know or see it exists.
The military is not intimidated by the wall, though. One soldier not only peed on it without worry and Dr. Kay was seen dissecting one of its organ-like bulbs.
Where Did Mr. Whatsit/Vecna Leave Holly’s Mind in Stranger Things 5, Volume 1?
Holly doesn’t know her body is physically attached to the inside of the Upside Down’s flesh wall. Her mind is in a world made from Henry Creel’s memories. A friendly Mr. Whatsit left a grateful, happy Holly there while he went off to continue executing his master plan. Holly is staying inside the beautiful Creel home as it looked in 1959 before the family’s massacre.
That seemingly idyllic realm is where she encounters Max, whose body remains in a coma in the real world.
Why Is Max Locked Inside Vecna’s Memory Prison?
Max told Holly they are inside a “memory” which exists “inside a world of a thousand memories.” But while Holly thought she was living in a beautiful home, Max said this entire place is ultimately a prison. “Henry’s prison.” Holly Wheeler and Max’s consciousnesses have ended up in a prison of Vecna’s memories in Stranger Things 5, Volume 1, while Holly’s body is physically in Vecna’s flesh wall, and Max’s body is physically in the real world.
Later, Max explains exactly how she ended up there. She says Vecna’s Curse “never goes away” and “never leaves you.” Also, with each victim he took, Vecna opened another gate. When Max briefly died that opened the fourth and final gate, the one that split Hawkins apart.
Max says she should still be dead. (She does not appear to know Eleven brought her back.) Everything that happened after she died and came back took place in a nebulous time period, almost as though time itself doesn’t really exist inside the Upside Down or Henry’s memory prison. “I don’t know how long I was gone,” Max says, but she felt something call her. When she did, she woke up in Brenner’s lab in the Rainbow room with all the dead kids Vecna killed that fateful night.
She then walked down a hallway and opened a door into an older memory of Vecna’s. She found herself, merely as an observer, in a high school in 1959. There, teenage Joyce (voiced by Ryder) was handing out flyers for the school play, Oklahoma. It was set to take place on November 6, the very same day Vecna took Will decades later in the first season of Stranger Things.
That play was set to star James Hopper Jr., Karen Childress (the Wheeler mom), Patty Newby (Bob Newby’s sister), Alan Munson (Eddie’s dad), Ted Wheeler, and Henry Creel.
Max tried to escape Vecna’s memory prison, moving from memory to memory. But she got lost and turned around, eventually ending up right back at the beginning. But that’s when she heard Kate Bush. She followed the music—which she pointed out to Holly can pull you from the darkness—by punching a hole in the rainbow room. That took her back into Vecna’s realm, the same place she escaped from in Stranger Things 5, a place Max thought she was never supposed to see. (Yes, Will echoed similar sentiments this season.)
She could then see into a portal. It was a scene from earlier in Stranger Things 5, Volume 1, when Lucas was by her hospital bedside. That moment ended with Max’s heart monitor spiking.
Max began moving to the portal back to return to the real world when the cassette tape stopped. The portal then closed. That’s when Vecna appeared. Max fled back into the memory prison as One in his orderly whites chased her. But Vecna/Henry/One stopped when Max went into the rock wall in the same woods Mr. Whatsit had warned Holly to never enter earlier in Stranger Things 5.
Why Won’t Henry Enter Max’s Cave in Stranger Things 5, Volume 1? What is Henry’s Worst Memory?
Vecna/Henry/One would not follow Max into the rock wall where she has been living. Max told Holly what happened when Vecna arrived at the entrance to her cave in Stranger Things 5, Volume 1. “He was scared. More than scared, he was terrified. There’s something about this cave. This memory. He won’t come in. In here, I’m safe.”
This is Henry’s worst memory, a past moment so terrible it had Vecna himself on the verge of tears. And even though Stranger Things 5 didn’t tease why this specific memory is so bad for Vecna, we might already know from the Stranger Things stage play.
What Did the Stranger Things Stage Play The First Shadow Reveal About Vecna?
The (supposedly canonical) Stranger Things: The First Shadow stage play, based on a story from the Duffer Brothers, revealed more about Henry Creel’s past. It also showed how Dr. Martin Brenner used Henry’s interdimensional blood to create powerful kids like Eleven.
In 1943, the United States accidentally sent a warship to a parallel world it called Dimension X. Only Brenner’s father survived the monsters the crew met there, but he returned with a new, unique type of blood. Years later, Dr. Martin Brenner set up the “Nevada Experiment” to try to learn how to return to Dimension X. A Soviet spy in his lab then stole the technology and escaped to a nearby cave. No one ever saw him again, but at some point, a local boy exploring the caves with his spyglass found the powerful technology and disappeared into Dimension X for 12 hours. There, the child encountered a shadowy figure. Like Brenner’s father, the boy came back with a new blood type. He also came back with a darker personality.
Brenner eventually found the child thanks to a spyglass he’d left behind in the cave. It was a spyglass like the one Holly used in Stranger Things 5, given to her by Vecna. And that was no coincidence. The boy who vanished from the Nevada cave for 12 hours into another dimension was Henry Creel, destined to become Vecna.
Henry’s scared mother let the unscrupulous doctor study his son. That’s when Henry learned how to enter the Void, same as Eleven would one day do.
At first, the troubled Henry pushed back, though not always successfully, against the shadowy power manipulating him to perform evil acts. The evil force manipulating him was the Mind Flayer. Henry’s relationship with Patty Newby temporarily helped him from giving in to the Mind Flyer’s commands, but he did not fight back the night he killed his mother and sister.
The Mind Flayer wasn’t the only one pushing Henry towards darkness in Stranger Things. Brenner wanted Henry to kill people so his power would grow. He also took Henry’s blood and injected it into pregnant women to create more children like him. Eleven got her powers from Henry’s blood (just as Will partially got his power from being physically connected to the Upside Down and Vecna).
The stage play also revealed that Henry and his drama club (full of people directly connected to the events Hawkins in the ’80s) never actually put on Oklahoma. They instead put on The Dark of the Moon. But whatever did or did not go wrong with that play, it seems clear Vecna’s worst memory in Stranger Things 5, the one that scares him, took place in that Nevada cave introduced in the Stranger Things play, The First Shadow. His worst memory was the day he went to Dimension X and the Mind Flayer entered his mind. That memory is so painful and scary to Vecna, Max has been able to hide in there in Stranger Things 5.
Is the Upside Down Different from Dimension X?
Dimension X, where young Henry traveled to after finding Brenner’s powerful stolen tech in a Nevada cave, does not appear to be the same place as the Upside Down in Stranger Things‘ world. It also seems possible that Eleven sent One back to Dimension X years later. (Why wouldn’t Henry remember his first trip to Dimension X from the Nevada cave? Brenner could make his kids forget past traumatic events. Eleven forgot about the massacre at the Rainbow Room for years.)
The world Eleven Sent One to featured the same kind of monsters as the Upside Down and was untouched by humans. But it had a yellow sky and no red lightning. The Upside Down is seemingly Henry’s creation, a world possibly made from Dimension X yet independent of it.
That would explain the need for the big circular flesh wall in the Upside Down, why Vecna controls everything inside it, and why it’s a mirror dimension of Hawkins specifically. It would also explain why he needed to create it. The Mind Flyer of Dimension X controlled Henry Creel. When he returned there years later, he seemingly took it over with his newfound powers. That’s what we saw in Vecna/Henry/One’s flashback during Stranger Things 4.
Only, it’s possible Henry has never been in control. He might always have been a puppet of the Mind Flyer since the day he left that cave. Holly compared the memory prison to Camazotz and Henry to IT, the leader of the dark planet. But while, like Vecna, IT was a powerful floating brain with telekinetic powers in A Wrinkle in Tim , IT was still under the control of the Black Thing, an entity of pure darkness. Henry was just a normal kid until he met the original Mind Flyer, the one event in his past that still scares him. It feels like Stranger Things 5, Volume 1, with the help of the Stranger Things play, is hinting that it is the Mind Flayer who is the true evil, controlling Vecna to some extent, or at least superceding him in darkenss.
Before anyone can find out if there really is an even more powerful darkness controlling Vecna, they have to deal with Henry Creel, though. Fortunately, Vecna’s own arrogance could be his undoing in Stranger Things 5. Instead of building an army to help him reshape the world, he might be building an army to defeat him.
How Did Will Byers See Through Vecna’s Eyes in Stranger Things 5, Volume 1?
The season opened with a flashback to when Vecna created a psychic connection between Will and the Upside Down by putting a vine down Will’s throat. Vecna controls everything in the Upside Down as a hive mind, and Will has been part of that since that scene. We first learned that during the first season’s final moments.
During Stranger Things 5, Volume 1, Will’s connection to the Hive Mind and Vecna grew stronger and more intense. He was tapping into the hive mind, and with it into Vecna’s own mind. When his brain signal was at its strongest, Will could see through the eyes of demorgorons, same as Vecna, who was controlling them. He could also see through Vecna’s eyes when Vecna was rooting around in the minds of Holly and other kids.
Vecna never expected Will to use that connection to access his own powers in Stranger Things 5, Volume 1. That arrogance could come back to hurt him if his newest victims realize what Will did in Volume 1’s last scene, that they, too, have powers given to them by Vecna, formed by their physical connection to him and the Upside down, especially since there will be so many more of them now.
Why Does Vecna Want Exactly 12 Kids on Stranger Things 5?
Will saw something he believes Vecna didn’t want him to see at the end of Stranger Things 5, Volume 1. It was a vision with the Boy Scout logo at the center. It then expanded out into twelve segments or spires, each destined to have a kid attached to it. Will’s painting looked like the flesh wall flattened out. As we mentioned, this flesh wall seems incredibly important to Vecna, and he is trying to keep it inaccessible to anyone else.
Vecna’s wall is round and centered around the first opening to the Upside Down in Stranger Things 5. Vecna is also obsessed with time and clocks, which have 12 numbers on them. Coincidence? Like Lucas, we don’t believe in those anymore. Not when it comes to Vecna, the Upside Down, and Hawkins.
What exactly could he have planned for these 12 kids? How does he plan to use them to reshape the world? Well, we have to find out when Stranger Things 5, Volumes 2 and 3 premiere.
Stranger Things 5, Volume 1 is now streaming on Netflix.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He’d escape the Upside Down if he heard Weezer’s “In the Garage Playing.” You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike.. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.