The biggest crime of Stranger Things Season 5 is that it expects you to hate Henry based on incomplete information.
The showrunners relied on a stage play (The First Shadow) to explain Henryās trauma, his grooming by Dr. Brenner, and his tragic love for Patty Newby. But then they refused to put any of that context into the actual show.
āThe Problem: If you are a casual viewer who hasn't seen the play, Henry is just a "psycho kid who killed his family."
āThe Reality: Henry was a sensitive, tortured 14-year-old who was manipulated by a cosmic entity and a government scientist.
By not including flashbacks of Patty or the lab torture in Season 5, the writers robbed the audience of the ability to empathize. They kept the audience in the dark so they would cheer for his death. That is not clever writing; that is manipulative writing.
The writers defend the ending by saying Henry "chose" to join the Mind Flayer. They use the line "I saw that man is broken... so I joined him" as proof of his pure evil. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of trauma.
āThere is a massive difference between choosing darkness because you agree with it, and choosing it because you have nothing left.
āAnakin Skywalker (Darth Vader): He didn't wake up wanting to kill younglings. He fell because he thought he lost PadmĆ© and had nowhere else to turn. The Dark Side was a reaction to grief.
āHenry Creel: By the time he "joins" the Mind Flayer, he has been isolated, tortured, and believes he destroyed the only person who ever loved him (Patty).
Henry didn't choose power. He chose survival. He accepted the darkness because the "light" (his family, Brenner) had only ever hurt him. To frame this as a "villainous master plan" instead of a desperate surrender is a betrayal of the character's psychology.
Why did Season 5 feel so empty compared to the psychological horror of Season 4 or the play? Because the writers stopped writing a character and started writing a video game boss.
āThe First Shadow: Used psychological terror, invisible threats, and the breakdown of a human mind. It was Lovecraftian.
āSeason 5: Turned the Mind Flayer into a giant physical Kaiju and Vecna into a generic general.
Why? Because it is easier to write. It is hard to write a redemption arc or a complex psychological defeat. It is easy to write "Hit the big monster with a fireball." They traded emotional depth for spectacle.
The most unforgivable moment is the execution. Joyce Byersāthe mother figure, the classmate who once cast Henry in a school playāhacking Henry to death 11 times.
āThe Hypocrisy: Joyce spent seasons fighting to save Will from the Mind Flayer. She knows what possession does. She knows Henry was a victim of the exact same entity.
āThe Cruelty: Yet, she shows him no mercy. No recognition. Just a "badass" one-liner and a butcher's axe.
āThe Behind-the-Scenes Truth: Jamie Campbell Bower (Henryās actor) wanted Henry to cry in that moment. He wanted him to beg, to say "Please, don't." The Duffers refused. They didn't want you to see the victim; they wanted you to enjoy the kill.
Stranger Things Season 5 tried to convince us that Henry Creel was the root of all evil, while ignoring that he was the story's biggest victim.
They ignored the parallels to Vader (who was redeemed despite his crimes). They ignored the tragedy of The First Shadow. They ignored the logic of their own universe (the Mind Flayer's influence).
āThey didn't kill a monster. They executed a broken man because they were too lazy to write a fitting ending for him.
There is a fundamental difference between choosing the Dark Side because you believe in its cause, and choosing it because you have absolutely nothing left to hold onto.
āAnakin Skywalker became Vader because he believed he lost everythingāPadmĆ©, his friends, his soul. His "choice" was a reaction to total loss. Henry Creel in The First Shadow follows this exact path. He didn't join the Mind Flayer because he wanted to be evil; he joined because the world (Brenner, his family, the loss of Patty) convinced him that he was a monster. He chose the darkness as a shield against further pain.
āThe failure of Stranger Things Season 5 is treating this desperate surrender as a "villainous choice." While Vader was given a chance for redemption through Luke's love, Henry was given 11 axe blows by Joyce Byers. The writers mistook a victim's total collapse for a leader's ambition. By killing him without acknowledging his trauma, they didn't defeat a monsterāthey executed a broken man who never got the chance to be the boy who loved Patty Newby again.
āThis isn't justice. It's a failure of empathy.
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