What did Henry find in the briefcase he opens in Stranger Things season 5? The answer isn't in the show
A misadventure turned Henry Creel's into a monster. Here's how the Stranger Things play explains a season 5 mystery.
Published 4 hours ago
Yes, Holly, this is what made Henry bad
Image: Netflix
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Holly 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: Netflix
Like so much of the plot of this season, what’s going on in the mine was first explained in the stage show . The play opens in 1943 with the , which transported a U.S. Navy ship to the dimension that has been dubbed . The vessel was attacked by Demogorgons and the only survivor was the captain, who returned in a vegetative state with a new blood type.