Psychology of Henry Creel Part 2: Childhood and Adolescence
I'm Back. Typical disclaimer that everything below is my personal, unprofessional opinion as someone who has both a Bachelor's in Psych and something deeply wrong with them. Also, a warning that the subject matter and content of this post is pretty awful, as this is not a happy story and Henry's narrative is particularly tragic.
So we have the basic outline of Henry's story in Part 1. Now I'm gonna go into some specifics. With some characters, I like to organize my thoughts by topic or area, but for Henry I'm finding it easier to do it by timeline because his life is split into such distinct periods: Before the Lab, During the Lab, and After the Lab. Each of these periods of time are marked by drastic environmental, emotional, and behavioral changes. The entire study of this character's psychology is also hindered by the fact that his mind and body are being encroached on by an eldritch entity (known colloquially as the Mind Flayer). So I'm gonna do my best to address that when it comes up, which is also why I think it's important to break my analysis up into these three periods; this entity has a different role in and relationship with Henry in each one.
We've also learned, through various means, that Henry is somewhat of an unreliable narrator. We can't trust everything he says, especially because he's not always the one saying it. We as the audience don't fully know the relationship between him and the Mind Flayer, and that's the point. We can only speculate.
Warning: I'm about to speculate.
Two thesis statements I'm going to make about Henry are that 1) he's neurodivergent, and 2) he's been extremely, intensely traumatized.
Personally, I think he's autistic, or at least autism-coded. In the show, his whole speech to Eleven in the lab centers around him being different from everyone else and being referred to as "broken" by adults. He talks about feeling confused, frustrated, and hurt by society and humans, and exhibits an attachment to spiders instead. In the play, both the writing and Louis McCartney's performance point to him being autistic. Some details I noticed from the play include:
he stims (comfort object (radio), vocal stims/echolalia, occasional thumb-sucking, listening to or humming music)
his posture and tone of voice are stereotypically autistic (stiff posture and atypical prosody)
he has special interests, at least one of which is seen as "childish" (Captain Midnight, spiders, radio/music, code-cracking)
he's socially awkward and is seen as "creepy" by other students
he has sensory sensitivities (touch, sound, eye contact)
he exhibits self-injurious behavior when overwhelmed
He has also, even at the time of the beginning of the play, suffered at least one extremely traumatic event, and probably more if we read into implied incidents. This is a very important point because many of the above symptoms can also be explained or exacerbated by childhood trauma. Common symptoms include:
behavioral changes (aggression, fear, clinginess, tension, avoidance)
personality changes (withdrawn, quiet, distrustful)
difficulties relating to or forming attachments to others
depressive or anxious symptoms
emotional volatility and/or difficulty regulating emotions (meltdowns, panic attacks, outbursts)
high arousal (easily startled, hypervigilant, restless)
regression or loss of previously-acquired skills (thumb-sucking, bedwetting, tantrums)
nightmares and flashbacks
physical symptoms such as headaches or stomachaches
feelings of guilt or self-blame
trouble sleeping and/or eating
changes in memory, speech, or learning (stutter, selective mutism, brain fog, poor memory, possibly even amnesia)
lack of eye contact or seeming "spaced out"
So, as we can see, much of Henry's presentation in the play can be attributed to the effects of trauma. In fact, nearly all of the symptoms I mentioned in support of autism can also be explained by trauma. The reason I hesitate to scrap autism altogether is because I think there are some parts of who Henry is as a person that I think align more with neurodivergence.
The third thing we have to take into consideration here is that Henry's case is a supernatural one and there is literally another entity attached to him. Unlike most children, whose feelings of guilt, anxiety, fear, and trepidation are just a stress response, Henry really is being stalked and harassed by a primordial entity that uses his body to enact its desires. This means that some of his symptoms may not be organically psychological and could be the effects of the Mind Flayer. It also means that his body is not entirely his own and he has to deal with the consequences of actions that may not have been of his own volition. The relationship between himself and his body has become fraught and dissonant, which would naturally result in feelings of guilt, anxiety about social interactions and attachments, and fear for his and others' safety.
Henry's parents also play a significant role in his psychology. They both badly want him and their family to be "normal." Like Henry says in S4E7 of ST, both of them seem to want to retain a good social image more than anything else. His father is an alcoholic veteran who wants to break Henry's radio because he finds Henry's attachment to it strange and annoying, and his mother is a '50s housewife who, although still caring for her son, is deeply unsettled by him and mainly worries about him hurting others instead of others hurting him. Something I noticed from the very first scenes of the play is that Henry has seemingly regressed to seeking out his mother's touch, wanting to be near her and have her hold him, but his mother is visibly hesitant to touch him and does so with barely-concealed trepidation. Henry definitely picks up on this and it doesn't help his psychological state; having your own mother be scared of you and reluctant to touch you in the ways you need as a child removes your sense of both physical and emotional comfort. When Henry and Patty start hanging out more during the play, Henry's dad's response is positive, seeing it through a lens of Henry becoming more socially normal by being interested in girls. Henry's mom's reaction is the opposite: she is immediately concerned for Patty's safety, even going so far as to demand of Henry at one point, "Did you hurt that girl?" The opposite reactions are probably very confusing to Henry, and neither of them reflect his actual reality.
On that note, one of the most important parts of Henry's psychology during the play is that he is experiencing what outsiders would see as worsening psychosis. (Because the story is supernatural in nature, these experiences are actually real, but they operate functionally as hallucinations and/or delusions because nobody else experiences them.) A very important psychological effect of chronic hallucinations is a distrust of one's own senses, which is fundamentally destabilizing because our senses are our connection to the world and reality. Henry is unable to trust his own experiences of reality because a) nobody else experiences them, and b) he doesn't understand them himself. (It's also unclear at this point how much he remembers, if anything, from Nevada.) He first believes his strange experiences to be vivid dreams or nightmares, which he tries to fend off with his mother's mantra (it's not real, I'm normal, etc.). When he discovers that his "nightmares" have an effect on other people's reality, it's extremely shocking and distressing to him, and he says to Patty that he's "trying to figure out if [he's] just crazy or if [he's] actually the devil." Both options suck, and he now doesn't have the coping mechanism of denial that he's relied on so far. This is the point where things start going rapidly downhill, and the point where I want to get into some more detail.
Before the Lab: Key Moments and Details
What I found especially poignant about the experience of seeing the play was Louis's performance as Henry. It was honestly hard to watch. The role is extremely physically intensive (like continuous screaming/crying/convulsing/possessed) as well as emotionally intensive (nervousness/terror, rage, vulnerability, desperation), and he handled it so convincingly that I heard people crying at some points in the theater around me. Like, damn. Actors amaze me. Anyway, his ability to handle the versatility of the role was crucial to the play as a whole and made Henry's deterioration that much more impactful. As the Mind Flayer pushes more and more into his head and makes him see and do awful things even while he's awake, Henry goes from nervous and awkward to downright terrified and overwhelmed.
A quick note about the Mind Flayer: this monster is basically a parasite. It wants only to control and feed. As an extremely dimensionally powerful entity, it has very advanced methods at its disposal to claim and keep its hosts, i.e. psychic manipulation. It seems to require either emotional/mental destabilization or voluntary surrender to completely possess its hosts. I say this because its M.O. in the play seems to be a combination of tormenting Henry with terrible sensations and visions and plying him with supernatural knowledge and abilities. The specific visions that the Mind Flayer forces on him are reflections of his deepest fears, the strongest of which is hurting or killing Patty.
This point is made vividly with two adjacent scenes near the end of Act 1. These two scenes demonstrate the process of Henry finally caving in from the stress of his situation and trusting Patty to try and help him, which was kind of one of my favorite parts of the play and their story.
(Before I go on, I have to say that Gabrielle Nevaeh was also amazing as Patty, and her role is also very intensive and important to the story as a whole. I have to mention this because the acting in the first of these two scenes is very difficult and extremely crucial to the believability of the scene, and she absolutely pulled it off, which was incredible to experience live.)
Okay. So. In the first scene, Henry experiences a Mind-Flayer-induced hallucination in the school bathroom before play rehearsal. He's already on-edge, trying to self-regulate with his "I'm normal" mantra, when mirrors start breaking and lights start flickering. Realizing what's happening, Henry cries out, "Go away!" before the entity attacks him and he struggles for control of his body. Then, suddenly, the lights come on and Patty comes in looking for him. (Spoiler alert: it's not really Patty.) Henry's body language is indicative of barely-controlled distress -- he's grabbing the sink with one hand and covering his face with the other, starting to sink to the floor. "Patty" comes and crouches next to him, starting to ask questions like "Are you afraid?", "Do I make you nervous?", and "Why won't you touch me?" She gets to the real questions: "Don't you want to get closer?" and then, finally, unsettlingly, "Don't you want to let me in?"
This is a great psychological moment. Henry's response to this is to draw his arms close and step away from her while stuttering, "Yes--no--what?" This is the direct physical representation of his conflicted ambivalence towards intimacy. It continues in the next moment as "Patty" says, "She's right, you know. Your mom. You're going to hurt me," voicing and confirming his worst fear. As she turns back to the mirror, we can see Henry reach out to her and then quickly pull back, bringing his other hand to his hair instead. He almost begs, "No, I'd never hurt you, Patty." The fact that he doesn't even question how Patty would know what his mom said suggests that this is a fear so deep, persistent, and familiar that he has to denounce it immediately, just like his "I'm normal" mantra. I'm normal. I'd never hurt you.
She continues, insisting that he's going to kill her and "a lot of [other] things." When she starts pulling out her hair, Henry finally realizes the obvious and points at her while backing away in the other direction. "Y-you're not Patty," he says. "What are you?!" He demands to know where the real Patty is, but the fake Patty just starts singing in a distorted, messed up voice as the lights begin to flicker again. This is the Mind Flayer switching tactics from persuasion to torment. It's much more effective; Henry starts begging her to stop, clearly starting to be overwhelmed, alternating between trying to reach for her and pulling back to clutch at his head.
Henry succumbs and the monster wins. "SHUT UP!" he screams. The lights go out and we hear a struggle and Patty screaming. He's hurting her. The lights come on again and she's slumped against the lockers on the floor. The spell seems to be broken for a moment as Henry, on the other side of the stage, sees what he's done. His worst fear has seemingly happened. Horrified, he starts towards her with outstretched arms, saying, "Oh my god, no, oh my god, Patty, I'm so sorry--"
But she snaps her head up and turns to him. "Feels good, doesn't it?"
Henry flinches back and grabs the sink behind him, having no more defenses left from the mental and emotional whiplash of the assault. This is his breaking point. Wedging himself between the sinks and holding out his hands protectively, he pleads, "If you want more, I can get you more, more animals!" This confirms that the animal killings weren't of his own volition and he's been essentially performing sacrifices to attempt to sate the monster's hunger.
It clearly hasn't worked. She ignores him. "We want the same thing, Henry! Don't you want to know what Patty's like INSIDE?" (A cruel taunt from the Mind Flayer as it jokes about perverting intimacy into violence -- more on this in a minute.) She moves closer in jerky movements. Henry has lost the ability to speak, absolutely terrified, hyperventilating and cowering under the sinks as fog starts to seep from their drains. "Let me in and I can SHOW YOU! We can peel her open...TOGETHER!"
Another blackout fight ensues, this time with Patty's face turning to a demogorgon. We're not sure who's winning. Suddenly, the lights come on again, and Patty -- the real Patty -- is entering from across the stage with an innocent, "Henry? Where have you been? Everyone's waiting."
(Right? Like, what the hell. That was insane. Give them both every award. Anyway,)
Henry is still in fight-or-flight, panting and clutching at his chest and face, almost sobbing when he tries to speak. "Waiting for what?"
We find out in the next scene when they move to the auditorium. They're waiting for him to rehearse the scene where he and Patty kiss. This is literally the worst timing ever for poor Henry, who's just barely made it through a waking nightmare about this very relationship and is hanging onto his emotions and sanity by a thinning thread. Patty gets onstage, but Henry can't, still holding back tears as he protests that he can't do it, this is bad, it's not safe, she's going to die, etc.
(This scene may be one of the most impactful ones I've ever witnessed live. You could literally hear a pin drop in the theater.)
Henry's body language here is painfully, desperately protective, one arm held tight across his stomach and the other hovering around his mouth like he might have to muffle a sob. He's literally holding himself together. This is heartbreakingly ironic because he's pleading for Patty to stay away from him while clearly wanting nothing more than someone's touch. Luckily, Patty doesn't give up so easily. "I know you think you're bad," she starts, and he fires back with "You have no idea," which, okay, is kind of funny, but mostly sad. He starts to leave the auditorium, hugging himself tightly, but she calls out, "I do. I do, okay? My whole life, I've been the girl from nowhere. The one no one wants. But then I met you, and I swear to God, for the first time, I felt--"
"Connected." He's stopped, no longer leaving.
"That's right. Connected. Whether you like it or not." This is huge. This is Patty offering her hand to him and saying that it's okay if it hurts her when he takes it.
And he does. He lets her in. And this is the very moment that he lets everything else in, too; he drops the walls, the denial and the avoidance and all of the coping mechanisms that obviously haven't been working. His body language reflects this: he drops his arms, starts coming over to her, and stops trying to hold in his tears. As he approaches the stage, Patty kneels down to sit on the edge with him, physically bringing herself to his level and beside him as an equal. It's a safe assumption that no one has ever done that for him, at least since he first made contact with the Mind Flayer. I repeat: this is huge.
Henry sobs, "I'm not normal. There's something wrong with me. Something really, really wrong." He's finally saying it out loud. He's lost his composure entirely, gasping and crying and wiping blood from his nose onto his shirt. Now that he's admitted his secret, there's nothing left to protect or hold onto, and we can see this in his body language. His hands are shaking and he starts rocking slightly while assuming his distressed position of grasping something solid with one hand and covering his face with the other. This is an automatic emotional regulation technique to calm and anchor the nervous system. While Patty gently tells him that being a weirdo doesn't have to be wrong or bad, he grips the edge of the stage, grabs at his pant legs, and curls his fingers near his mouth like he's going to bite his nails or suck his thumb, trying very hard but unable to either calm himself or let someone else calm him. He's stuck.
This is a pivotal moment for Patty. She sees what's happening to him and recognizes it as overwhelming panic and loneliness. And she, endlessly brave and determined, tells him, "I'm not afraid." Henry turns and hugs the side of the stage, hiding himself behind it, still crying and shaking. She doubles down, standing up. "I'm not." Then, she says, "Kiss me."
This is the second, more powerful moment where we physically see Henry become overwhelmed with conflicting drives and external feedback. He turns back and looks up at her, starting to maybe move towards her before making a helpless gesture with his hands that seems to say I can't, I don't know what to do. He leans over and lies on the floor of the stage, curling up in a fetal position where he's almost sucking his thumb in an overt display of regressive behavior. (Remember that this is common in survivors of child abuse and trauma, especially when triggered.) His whole body is saying I want to, but I don't know how to.
Patty says it again: "Kiss. Me." She sees now that he needs her to be more forceful. Again, he looks up at her with a helpless expression, raising his hands and spreading his fingers in a classic sign of what's happening is new and scary but I don't exactly want to stop it. She takes the cue and kneels down. He doesn't stop her. She moves her hands like she wants to cup his face, thinks better of it, and then leans down gently and kisses him.
As soon as their lips touch, the lights start buzzing and Henry starts to rise from the ground, bracing himself on the floor and turning so they're both facing each other on the floor of the stage. When they part, they both stare at each other, holding the gaze even as their classmates react loudly and enthusiastically around them. They don't break eye contact for the rest of the scene. They're entranced with each other and the connection they just shared -- the first real one for both of them -- and suddenly neither of them feel alone anymore.
I painstakingly recounted these two scenes in vivid detail both just to yap about them and also to demonstrate the key point that Henry's primary drive for touch has been corrupted with fear, resulting in a state of perpetual anxiety where he can't initiate or accept physical contact and is forced to self-regulate with increasingly unsuccessful results until he completely breaks down. Deciding to trust Patty in that moment thankfully leads him to get some of the support he needs, and within the next few scenes, he even asks her to hold his hand.
Unfortunately, Henry and Patty's attempt to psychically reach her mother fails horribly. After this incident, which gravely injures Patty's father, Henry's mother contacts a specialist: Dr. Martin Brenner.
Before the Lab: Dr. Brenner
Dr. Brenner becomes Henry's primary abuser throughout most of his life. He is functionally an extension of the Mind Flayer because he uses the same tactics and wants the same goals, albeit only to witness and study them for himself. The last part of this period of Henry's life is marked by Dr. Brenner's entrance into and subsequent destruction of it.
Abuse is a broad term that can refer to multiple levels and forms of harmful behavior towards people. It's most often used to reference intentional patterns of behavior intended to cause injury, distress, or fear to others, and/or to gain power and control over them. However, there are some forms of abuse that can be less intentional, such as neglect. There are also different contexts or domains of abuse, such as domestic or institutional. Dr. Brenner's abuse of Henry before the lab is mostly mental and emotional with a touch of physical.
The older Dr. Brenner we're introduced to in the show is mostly a mystery, only shown for parts of S1, some flashbacks, and then for a few episodes in S4. The few things we know about him from this source are that he's conscientious, driven, controlling, powerful, amoral, and has a strange attachment to his subjects that could be described as possessive. We don't get a clear idea of his background, primary intentions and interests, or true personality. In the play, however, we get a look at the younger version, presumably somewhere in his 30s at the time, giving us new and important information about all of these things.
Young Martin Brenner is a clear example of an abuser. The traits that we get a glimpse of in the older Brenner are on display in their raw, amplified, untempered states; if older Brenner is formidable, younger Brenner is straight-up dangerous. He's obsessive almost to the point of zealousness, horribly entitled, relentlessly manipulative, and startlingly lacking in empathy. He is presented as someone with a singular, all-consuming interest who will do anything to achieve his goals and already has the power and authority to do so. The abuse he perpetrates against Henry is both interpersonal and institutional. His primary domains of power at this point in the story are scientific and governmental, making his primary areas of abuse medical and legal. (One could argue that the medical domain is intertwined with the legal domain, but because of Brenner's government affiliation, he also has powers that most medical professionals don't.) In short, the Dr. Brenner we're introduced to in the play is a scientist driven by pure curiosity whose domineering nature helps him go to great lengths to satisfy it. These lengths almost always consist of the mistreatment of living beings, whom he doesn't respect and seems to regard as means to his own ends.
Brenner's goal in the play is to get Henry to give himself to the Mind Flayer so he can more closely study it and its effects on humans. To meet this goal, he needs to first achieve the subgoal of getting control of Henry. He uses a multi-pronged approach to this subgoal, working on multiple fronts to gather intimate information about Henry, isolate him from his family and the outside world, gain his trust or attachment, and ultimately have him indefinitely committed to the lab under his care. The first two objectives are met through his relationship with Henry's mother, whom he prescribes tranquilizers to and then probes for information about her son while convincing her that Henry is dangerous and needs to be remanded to his care. The third objective is met through his sessions with Henry at the lab, which we see in the play.
From his very first meeting with Henry, Brenner uses the same push-pull tactics that the Mind Flayer uses, but in a more calculated and controlled way. He combines the emotional destabilization with some operant conditioning, a method of behavioral learning developed by B.F. Skinner that trains a subject to associate certain behaviors with rewards or consequences. (Positive reinforcement involves adding something good as a reward, negative reinforcement is taking away something bad as a reward, positive punishment is adding something bad as a consequence, and negative punishment is taking away something good as a consequence.) First, he probes and overwhelms Henry with questions and information. Then, he gets harsher, berating him and calling him names like sloppy, weak, and pathetic while physically intimidating him and refusing to let him leave. When Henry gets overwhelmed and lets the Mind Flayer in, killing the lab rat that's in the room with them, Brenner immediately drops the aggression and praises him, expressing awe and telling him "very good, Henry, very good indeed." This approach includes 3 of the 4 forms of reinforcement and consequence: when Henry resists the Mind Flayer, he adds a punishment of aggression and cruel words; then, when Henry does as he wants, he rewards him by both taking away the cruelty and giving him verbal praise. It's extremely effective: Henry literally jumps into his arms, so dysregulated and starved of unbridled praise and comfort that he throws himself at the first person who gives it to him. (It's also worth mentioning that Henry's mom has reported that Henry has barely eaten or slept since the incident, which diminishes basically all body and brain functions, and he is also seen sucking his thumb in an earlier scene, which indicates some regression. These things are also working in Dr. Brenner's favor at the moment.)
The next time we see them, Brenner is drawing Henry's blood. He tells Henry that he has a completely unique blood type and that the "rush" he gets when he kills an animal is not psychological but physical: he's literally absorbing the energy into himself, getting stronger with each kill. He then says that he wants Henry to meet someone and then decide if he wants to continue. With someone like Dr. Brenner, this is absolutely a lie: he doesn't intend on letting Henry walk away, and if he does choose to, Brenner will not accept this choice. Until he has control of Henry, however, he needs to keep up the facade so Henry doesn't use his powers against him.
The person he introduces him to is a Navy captain who volunteered for the Project Rainbow experiment in the 1940s and was the only survivor. The captain appears to be in a vegetative state, and Dr. Brenner tells Henry that absolutely nothing they have done to him has produced any kind of brain response. He mentions medication, lobotomy, and shock treatment, adding that there's "not much" they haven't tried. He reveals that these experiments took place at the military base in Nevada, and that a Russian scientist stole some of the particles and was found dead right around the time and place of Henry's first incident in the cave. When Henry tries to insist that he wasn't there and he didn't see anything (the denial returns!), Brenner reveals that the captain is, in fact, his own father. Now we have a crucial piece of Dr. Brenner's story. His father was consumed by an otherworldly force, and he built his whole life around finding out what happened to him. This also means that he's spent years doing horrible experiments on his own father, which is a whole other psychological conversation, but tells us at the very least that he's able to hold two seemingly contradictory truths at once: he can believe that he loves someone and still hurt them repeatedly for the sake of scientific advancement.
When Henry makes contact with the Mind Flayer through Captain Brenner while wearing imaging equipment, we see a portal open up and a Demogorgon nearly come through before the technician shuts down the machine. As soon as the machine is shut down, Captain Brenner flatlines. When a nurse tries to tell Dr. Brenner that his father is dead, he barely even looks at them. "Doesn't matter," he says, looking at Henry instead. "He was weak. Not like you, Henry." He picks Henry up from the floor, who is still spasming, and tells him that he's the key. Together they will open a gate, and whatever comes through, he will help Henry control it. "You and me together," he says. "Father and son."
So that's, like, super weird. Now we know a bit more about why he calls Eleven his daughter and has her call him Papa in the show. There's so much that any Freudian could say about that whole thing, but alas, we're moving on.
At this point, Henry has been broken down and is starting to be built back up by Dr. Brenner, becoming more accustomed to letting the Mind Flayer in. We don't know how long it's been since he's seen his family or Patty. Patty, on the other hand, has been investigating, and has found out from her very injured father that, despite how it appeared, Henry actually saved him from the monster that night. He tells her that Henry can stop the monster from coming through by refusing to let it in, but that he needs her help. She finally realizes where his powers come from and what's truly happening inside him. Like the queen she is, she devises a plan to contact him psychically using a radio, and a very important scene ensues.
Before the Lab: The Final Events
Alright, guys. This is the sequence of events that changes Henry entirely and leads to the story of Stranger Things. First, he realizes that the monster and Brenner aren't the only sources of power in his life, that he's being manipulated by them, and that Patty still loves and believes in him. Next, he stands up to Brenner and escapes from the lab, planning to run away with Patty before they can catch up. Then, upon returning home to get his things, he finds out that his mother betrayed him to Dr. Brenner, resulting in the murder of his mother and sister. Finally, he goes to the school to meet Patty but is confronted by Brenner, who forces him into using his powers on the catwalk, making Patty fall. Here we go:
The scene where Patty psychically talks to Henry is powerful. He's in a comatose state with Dr. Brenner giving him cortisol to try and establish contact with the monster. Now knowing that the Mind Flayer and Henry are separate and that Henry has the power to resist it, Patty tells him, "That thing isn't you." Henry responds with, "It is now." He tells her that the monster shows him fears and secrets and that it's shown him Patty's father's secret. His brain and body begin to respond as the Mind Flayer connects. He tells Patty unkindly that her father lied about her being adopted and that she was the child of an affair with one of his high school students. He tells her that her father is ashamed of her. This pattern of taunting and berating is what's been done to him over and over as a display of power, so it's what he does to feel powerful. He's giving in to the Mind Flayer's influence and starting to internalize its presence, even starting to express appreciation for its power by telling her that it "doesn't have to" lie. The scans indicate that they've almost made contact. The monster's voice starts to come through him as he tells her that her father hates her, that she's not the Girl from Nowhere, she's less. She's nothing.
For him, this would be the kill shot. This is exactly where we've seen him break and give in to the monster every time. Now he's on the giving end, all that power coursing through him, finally directed at someone else. He and the monster, in sync, step towards her.
But Patty says, "Is that all you've got?"
He physically stumbles back. The readings start to lose intensity. Brenner asks what's happening. Patty turns and faces Henry. "You destroy with secrets? Well, I have a secret too. I know what that thing wants!"
The Mind Flayer doesn't like this at all. "You know nothing!" Henry's body starts to spasm.
"It doesn't want you, Henry! It doesn't care about you! It's using you! And it's gonna keep using you until there's nothing left!"
Brenner demands to know what's happening and the technician says, "I don't know! He's rejecting it!"
Patty continues. "All your power, all your magic? That's just a drug to keep you distracted while it eats you alive!"
The readings have dropped. The monster is retreating.
Patty know's it's working. "And deep down, you know it's true! And that's why you're terrified. But I'm not. I'm not afraid."
At those words, the Mind Flayer leaves. It can't sustain a connection anymore with Patty giving Henry her courage. "We lost it," says the technician.
When Brenner leaves, the other scientists briefly question the ethics of what they're doing, but maintain that they have to follow orders unless they want to be "the one on the table." This is a great indication of Brenner's tyrannical authority and helps explain why nobody who works for him has done anything to stop this. They're all too afraid.
Henry, free from the monster for now, asks Patty why she wasn't afraid. Patty replies that she already knew her dad was ashamed of her, even if she didn't understand why. What she didn't know was that her mother wanted her, that she loved her. "And that's why I wasn't afraid," she tells him. "Because I am loved. And so are you."
This is the key to the entire Stranger Things universe. This is the theme that they've shown over and over: the antidote to fear and powerlessness isn't anger or domination, it's love and connection. Love is what makes the monster go away. And in a perfect story, that would be the end, and Henry and Patty would live happily ever after. Unfortunately, this is a tragedy.
Patty tells Henry she's leaving to find her mom and she wants him to come with her, but that she doesn't need his powers to do it and neither does he. She tells him to pack a bag and meet her at the play so they can catch a train after in all the chaos. Henry has reverted back to fear and distress, telling her he's scared and he doesn't think he can do it, but Patty insists and tells him he can. The psychic connection is broken as the scientists wake Henry with adrenaline.
Dr. Brenner, as we've established, doesn't give up easy. He brings Henry to another lab room with a hooded man behind a glass panel. He tells him there was an unexpected reaction in his hypothalamus earlier, but he knows how to fix it. He goes on to mention a very important facet of psychology and science in general, which is the ethics of research. Thousands of animals die every year for research purposes, he says, and the only difference is that they can't sign a consent form or a confidentiality agreement -- like his father and this man in the room with them did. (This is an example of the legal part of his abuse of people: he has the power to functionally take away people's rights through legal means.) Consistent with what we know about his psychology, he tells Henry that "whether people can stomach it or not, this is how we move forward. We have to take that next step." This is a microcosm of his whole character -- he simply doesn't care about causing harm to living beings if it's in the name of what he considers progress. He tells Henry that the only limit to his power that he can see is fuel.
Henry starts to understand what Brenner wants him to do: kill a human being to absorb his energy. Now armed with Patty's bravery, he tells Brenner he doesn't want to do it anymore and he's done. Brenner asks him what he does want and he replies that it's something Brenner can't give him (real love and connection). When Brenner hears this, he realizes that there's someone else in his life who was responsible for derailing the procedure earlier and is stopping Henry from submitting to the Mind Flayer.
Once he knows this, he starts in on Henry yet again, trying to get the Mind Flayer back by triggering him. "You want to be normal, Henry? Go to prom with some stupid girl?" He comes closer and takes Henry's face in his hands. Henry reaches back, still starved of affection and taking any crumbs he can get. But Brenner isn't being kind. "Don't be a child," he tells the literal child in front of him. "Don't be weak." And he shoves Henry to the ground.
This works. Henry screams in anger and the lights start to flicker. This time he's at least aware of what Brenner's doing to him, although it doesn't help much. "I know what you're doing," he shrieks. "You're trying to upset me! This is just another one of your mind games!"
"Oh, you think this is a game? You can't outrun the shadow, Henry! You are the shadow!" (Roll credits.) Seeing that it's working, Brenner continues. "Sooner or later you'll come crawling back to me, because you want to do it. You want to kill! Look at you! You can't help yourself!" He turns up the intensity on the lights, giving the monster more electricity to use. Then he starts pulling out the big guns. "I'm the only friend you'll ever have, boy!"
Henry/the Mind Flayer snarls, "I'm not your boy." (Ooh, that's good.) But he's still screaming and flailing, and the hooded man's eyes are starting to bleed.
Brenner reaches his biggest bomb and drops it. "Even your own mother hates you, Henry! She told me herself! She tells me everything. Her biggest regret. Ask her, Henry, ask her! She hates you!"
The lights spark and explode. Henry stops spasming, stops fighting the monster, and reaches out, telepathically lifting Brenner in the air by his throat. To his credit, Brenner shows that he doesn't even consider his own life to be more important than progress, as he insists, "Do it! Do it, Henry!" Instead, Henry sends him up through the ceiling. He takes out the next three guards who try to stop him, incapacitating them and making the last one's eyes bleed. Then he escapes. Brenner makes it back to the room too late, but he doesn't seem too bothered. "No, let him go home to his mother," he says. "We can't force him to kill. He has to choose it."
A little note I have here is that this is the first time we see Henry attack someone in a similar way to how Vecna later kills his victims, breaking their limbs and making their eyes bleed. This happens as a result of someone saying that his mother hates and regrets him. To me, this is a sign that that specific wound or fear, emotional abandonment from his mom, was the first and biggest. The next scene confirms this.
Henry arrives home and packs a bag. He's about to leave when he hears from his little sister that Dr. Brenner came by the house earlier and talked to his mom. He tells Alice to go to dinner and psychically enters his mother's mind to see what she told Brenner.
(This was probably the most heartbreaking scene in the play for me. Be warned.)
Henry sees the conversation that happened earlier between his mom and Dr. Brenner. Brenner tells her that he escaped from the lab. "What are we going to do?" his mom asks. Brenner says he's hiding someone from them, a girlfriend, and all he needs is a name. "And then what?" asks his mom. "Then we'll take him in again. But this time, we'll be able to control him," Brenner answers. "You'll have your life back, a normal life. Don't you want that? You've been through so much, Mrs. Creel, your whole family has." Manipulating Mrs. Creel is easy for him because he 1) also sees how badly she just wants to be normal, and 2) has been plying her with tranquilizers while getting information about Henry and the family. He knows exactly what he's doing.
Henry's mom hesitates. "What do you mean, control him?"
"No one blames you for wanting to protect your son. But we have to think about innocent lives here. You don't want anyone else to get hurt, do you?"
That's the last thing she wants, and he knows it. She shakes her head. "No."
Henry has been circling the projection of his mother. Now he stands right beside her, looking up at her. He reaches up towards her, very reminiscent of the first scene of the play where he seeks out her touch. He knows logically that it isn't real, that it's already happened, but he can't stop himself from responding as if it's happening right in front of him. "Please, Mom, don't."
"Just promise me..." his mom says. Brenner fills in what he thinks she's asking, saying, "We'll take care of him."
But that wasn't it. "Promise me...promise me you'll lock him up and throw away the key."
Henry stumbles back in horror. That was it. What Brenner said was true. She does hate him, she wants him gone, she doesn't even care if he's treated well. This is psychologically shattering. There isn't a way back from this. As his mom tells Brenner Patty's name, Henry's body language returns to the nervous, self-soothing posture of before. Once again, he feels like he has no one else to help him. He's been betrayed by the one person who was supposed to love him no matter what, who's been telling him this whole time that she loves him and she just wants him to be okay. And now she's willingly handed him to an abuser who wants to keep him locked up forever.
You can probably already see how damaging this betrayal is. We all see it as the scene from S4 of Stranger Things plays out: his family sitting down to dinner, him letting the Mind Flayer in, the lights and radio flickering, his mother's body levitating and breaking. (This was literally insane to see live, by the way. They had to have a whole animatronic puppet and everything. It was awesome.) Henry leaves to find Patty, now aware that Brenner is coming after them both.
It's worth mentioning that my thesis from Part 1, that the Mind Flayer has been messing with Henry's mind over the years in order to disguise/erase itself from his memory, is supported by the contradicting versions of this scene in the play vs. the show. In the show, Henry states that he killed his mother and sister and then fell into a coma trying to kill his father, which he woke up from in Dr. Brenner's lab. This is obviously missing the chunk of time where he goes to the play to get Patty, is confronted by Brenner, watches Patty fall from the catwalk, and then is taken to the lab. So I'm going to amend my thesis a bit: not only has the Mind Flayer been covering its own tracks, it's also been erasing every trace of Patty from Henry's mind. This makes perfect sense, as Patty is the one person who had any real power against the Mind Flayer and whose love could have led Henry to reject it. The only way for the Mind Flayer (and Brenner) to have complete control over Henry is to remove Patty completely.
That's exactly what Brenner intends to do. Luckily, Henry gets to the school first, heading backstage to try and find Patty. He runs into Joyce first, whom he has a brief conversation with and almost harms when he thinks that she knows what he's done to his family. When he realizes she thinks that his father was the murderer, he spares her, revealing some of his changed worldview in the process. "It used to be that I could just hear the voices," he tells Joyce, who definitely doesn't understand what the hell he's talking about, "but now it makes me see. Now I can see everything."
This introduces an important point: a significant part of the change in Henry's psychology has to do with the visions and knowledge that the Mind Flayer is constantly feeding him. Because it feeds on fear, pain, and death, those are the only things that it shows Henry about other people. He doesn't see their goodness or their love or anything redeeming; he only sees their worst deeds and secrets, and it's started to seriously change how he views other people in general. "The wheels turn. No one changes. Nothing gets better," he says. "The truth is, Joyce, they're all monsters, and they deserve whatever they get."
That's a wild statement, especially coming from someone who had always tried to help and protect people before. He was a Boy Scout. He and Patty bonded over their love of Captain Midnight; a superhero, an agent of good, "justice through strength and courage." This new worldview (fatalistic and cynical, most closely resembling a Survivor worldview in cognitive psych) is a huge sign that Henry is not the same anymore. After discovering his mother's betrayal and allowing the Mind Flayer in to kill his mother and sister, something else has changed in him. That was the first time he willingly gave control to the monster and the first time he killed a human being. He's crossed a line that can't be uncrossed. He's also now eliminated two of the only people who ever loved him, leaving the third to be punished for a crime he didn't commit. Patty is truly the only person left in the world who actually loves and believes in him.
This conversation is also the first time we hear a sentiment that becomes a regular one by the time we meet Henry in the show: "No one made me anything. I made myself." This is an objectively untrue statement, almost akin to some kind of denial or reaction formation if it was purely psychological, but I personally think that this belief is a side effect of merging with the Mind Flayer. Everything about the Mind Flayer revolves around power, control, and rejection/perversion of love and connection. The "self-made apex predator" myth that Henry comes to believe about himself likely started right here, maybe even in this moment.
Thankfully, Henry leaves Joyce alone and finds Patty on the catwalk. He tells her to go right now, to not even wait for the end of the play, because Brenner is coming for them. He starts to free her from the prop wings, tells her the address of her mom's job in Vegas, and promises that he'll be right behind her; he just needs to stop Brenner first.
Unfortunately, it's already too late.
"I'm Henry's doctor, Patricia," Brenner tells Patty.
"Don't come any closer," she warns him. "I know who you are."
This is what makes Patty strong and brilliant. She does know who he is. She's extremely hard to manipulate, because she sees the truth and isn't afraid to search for and reveal it. Brenner finds this out very quickly as he goes through several methods of persuasion with no success. Henry's sick and needs to be in a facility; she knows what Brenner's been doing to him. He's been killing animals; she knows about the animals. Well, then, she's been playing dumb to get something from Henry, just like Brenner is; she's nothing like Brenner. He tries to get a rise out of her, calling her names and making jabs at her family life, but she doesn't respond.
Henry, however, does, and Brenner turns his attention to him. "Aw, did you actually think she loved you?" he taunts. "She's using you." Henry shatters the lights above his head.
It turns into a battle between Brenner and Patty as they both try to reach Henry. Patty tells him to stop, Brenner tells him to let it in. Henry tells Patty to move out of the way, but she refuses and says she won't let him hurt Brenner because that's what he wants. Brenner even attempts the legal angle: "That's not a boy, Patricia, it's a weapon, and it's the property of the United States Government."
That one definitely doesn't work. "The United States Government can go to hell!" she shouts back. (I cheered at that in the theater...lmao.)
He finally hits a piece of information that she doesn't have. "He's a killer, Patty. He needs to kill. I'm here to stop him before he kills you."
Henry protests, back to his mantra, "I'd never hurt you, Patty!"
An interesting thing happens here: the Mind Flayer's voice comes through Henry and he says, "She betrayed us." The Mind Flayer has referred to "us" before, but only when speaking through Captain Brenner. This is the first time, I'm pretty sure, that Henry refers to "us." Yet another sign that he's losing more and more of himself.
"His little sister," Brenner continues.
Patty resists, saying he's lying, but Henry confirms it. He doesn't want to lie to her: she's the only one who's ever heard the truth and still loved him. Maybe she'll still love him after this. "He's not lying. But-but I wanted to be better for you, but I can't, b-but I told you I'm not normal," he pleads, reaching out for her.
But this is too much for Patty. "Then what are you, Henry Creel?" she demands. "What are you?!" And she shoves him away, just like Brenner did, just like his mom did, just like everyone he's ever tried to reach out for.
That's enough for the Mind Flayer. Brenner senses its presence and urges Henry to let it in. Henry tries to keep it out, telling Patty again to go to the casino in Vegas and find her mother. He's trying incredibly hard to contain the monster. Brenner tells Henry that Patty's scared of him now, unhooking her from the harness and pushing her towards him, telling him to take her. Patty insists she isn't scared, but Brenner tells Henry, "She's lying! You can almost taste it, can't you? Take her!"
A portal opens in the ceiling, red and black spilling into the theater. It's too much. Henry has fed the monster with blood one too many times, been pushed away one too many times to reach out again.
Patty pleads with him one last time. "Henry, don't! You don't have to do what he says!" This time, we can hear the fear in her voice. She sees the monster, feels its presence, doesn't know if Henry can hold it back this time.
A horrible, deep voice answers her. "Don't be scared."
In slow motion, the catwalk tips. Henry reaches, but it's too late. Patty falls. The monster's tendrils stretch towards her. Everything crashes down, and Henry's life comes with it.
Without Patty, there is no hope. (She's not dead, just pretty badly hurt, but Henry doesn't know this. Brenner takes him away before he can find out.) There is no love. There is no one left to show him light. So he's dragged into the darkness.
Dr. Brenner has achieved his goal. His name is 001 now, and he's the pilot subject in a new program at Hawkins National Laboratory. It will be years before he's even allowed to walk around freely, and he will only feel the sun's warmth in his dreams.
Nobody ever sees Henry Creel again.
Henry Creel's childhood and adolescence leading up to his abduction and institutionalization by Dr. Brenner is characterized by a combination of extreme childhood trauma, underlying neurodivergence, supernatural terrorization, and medical abuse. He doesn't have natural urges to hurt others and only does so by accident or if forced to. At his core, he's a sensitive, curious individual who has a drive to lead and help others. All of that has ended up being twisted against him by an eldritch entity that has invaded his mind and body and forced overwhelm, confusion, isolation, and intense fear upon him. Dr. Brenner then uses those emotions and his manipulation of Henry's mother to convince him that no one wants him and he can only be special and loved by letting this monster in. Patty Newby almost gets him to see that he's being used and run away with her, but the rejection of his mother and Dr. Brenner's influence drag him back in. By the end of the events of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, his psyche and will have been frayed by the repeated torment and he has lost all hope and connection. After the murder of his family and Patty's (perceived) death, there's no longer any reason to resist the Mind Flayer, so he stops trying. He's now 001.
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