Stranger Issues: The First Shadow had fairly the shock in retailer for Friday evening’s viewers on the Marquis Theatre in New York Metropolis.
Jamie Campbell Bower, who performs Henry Creel a.ok.a. Vecna in Seasons 4 and 5 of the collection, made his Broadway debut to interchange Louis McCartney within the remaining scene of the stage play. The second connects the reside present on to the flagship Netflix collection, depicting a second that viewers instantly acknowledge from the fourth season: Henry assembly younger Eleven within the Rainbow Room at Hawkins Lab.
Within the scene, Henry takes Eleven’s hand and guarantees to assist her. Audiences, after all, know that plan doesn’t precisely pan out how Henry hopes it can, and his eventual falling out with Eleven serves because the catalyst for the complete collection. The Netflix collection explains the backstory between Eleven and Henry in Season 4, Episode 7, “The Bloodbath at Hawkins Lab.”
The swap served as a enjoyable method to convey the story full circle forward of the ultimate installments of the Netflix collection. Stranger Issues 5 Vol. 2 debuts on Christmas Day, and the finale follows per week in a while New Yr’s Eve.
That’s the solely scene within the stage play that comes straight from the collection, as many of the present seeks to fill in among the gaps about Henry’s backstory after he strikes to Hawkins in 1959.
Whereas The First Shadow doesn’t present a lot fully new details about Henry (playwright Kate Trefry needed to stroll a slim line as to not make the ultimate season inaccessible to Stranger Issues viewers who couldn’t make it to see the play), it does give some useful context about what the character had gone via earlier than we met him in Stranger Issues 4.
Season 5 additionally features a few callbacks to the play, together with a scene in Vol. 1 the place Max (Sadie Sink), whereas trapped in Henry’s mindscape, wanders right into a reminiscence from Hawkins Excessive College in 1959 as a younger Joyce Byers tries to publicize the college’s efficiency of the musical Oklahoma!
McCartney has performed Henry Creel since The First Shadow debuted on West Finish in 2023, making his personal Broadway debut this yr when the play opened on the Marquis Theatre.
