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Today we’re unpacking Stranger Things: The First Shadow — the 1959 prequel stage play — and exploring how it secretly sets up the final season of Stranger Things.

Season 5 isn’t just a sequel to Season 4…
It’s the completion of a story that began with Henry Creel in 1959.

Let’s dive in.

Season 4 told us Henry Creel became Vecna after Eleven blasted him into the Dimension X.

But the play shows something deeper:

• Henry already had powerful psychic abilities.
• A force called the Dark Shadow was influencing him years before.
• His massacre in 1959 fractured reality before Eleven was ever born.

Vecna isn’t just a villain — he’s a symbiotic creation of Dimension X.
Season 5 appears to follow this thread by focusing on how Vecna and the Upside Down formed, and what Henry truly became.

This gives the final season a mythology that starts long before Hawkins Lab.

We also unpack the green dragon theory, the school counselor having a connection to Vecna, and Vecna having a ton of similarities to Darth Vader. 

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