Stranger Things season five has dropped, and naturally everyone is losing their minds trying to work out the timeline. One of the biggest questions so far: How on earth did Henry Creel, aka Vecna, go to high school with Joyce, Hopper, Ted, Karen and the rest of the Hawkins parents when he was supposed to be locked in Brenner’s lab as a kid? Turns out, the answer has been hiding in plain sight in the canon prequel play Stranger Things: The First Shadow.
Credit: Netflix
The Duffer Brothers and the writers have fully confirmed the play as official lore. The First Shadow is a theatrical prequel to Stranger Things, which explores the backstory of Henry Creel. It debuted in London’s West End in 2023 and New York’s Broadway in 2025. The play also features younger versions of Hopper and Joyce, who are dealing with their own high school lives and are drawn into the mystery.
Season five volume one has already started tying directly into it.
Henry Creel’s secret Nevada backstory
Before he ever stepped foot in Hawkins, Henry lived with his family in Nevada. While exploring cave systems on his own, he stumbled across a mysterious piece of scientific equipment. That device transported him to dimension X (the alien, desolate, and separate world) for 12 hours, and when he came back he wasn’t the same kid. His personality, his blood, and his abilities had all changed.
Shortly after, he used those powers to paralyse another boy. At the same time, the Creel family came into some inheritance money, and in 1959 they moved to Hawkins to start over. Spoiler: It did not go well.
Yes, Henry really did attend Hawkins High
Credit: Netflix
When the Creels arrived in Indiana, Henry enrolled at Hawkins High School, right alongside a teen Joyce, Hopper, Karen, Ted and the whole future parents’ club.
But here’s the twist: Henry had already been in covert contact with Dr Brenner back in Nevada, and Brenner quickly tracked him to Hawkins. By this point Brenner was experimenting on him in early versions of the sensory deprivation methods we later see used on Eleven.
Henry’s powers were growing, and so was his resentment. One night at the dinner table he used his mind-reading abilities and heard his mother secretly planning to send him back to Brenner’s lab. That was the final straw.
In a rage, Henry killed his mother and his young sister, Alice. He tried to kill his father too, but he overexerted himself and passed out. Victor Creel survived, traumatised and blinded during his own suicide attempt, and was eventually sent to the same psychiatric institution we see in season four when Nancy and Robin visit him.
Brenner takes Henry, and the timeline lines up
Credit: Netflix
When Henry regained consciousness, he was already in Brenner’s custody. From there he was taken to live at Hawkins lab, assigned the name 001, and kept there for the next 20 years. Everything after that, including Eleven banishing him to dimension X in 1979, follows the timeline established in season four.
The First Shadow fills in the gap perfectly: Henry Creel lived as a normal Hawkins teenager for a brief but crucial window, long enough to attend school with Hopper and Joyce, and long enough for the Creel murders to reshape Hawkins forever.
Now that season five is connecting directly to the play, the whole timeline makes complete sense.
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Featured image credit: Netflix
