you see i don’t like the first shadow’s obvious retconning of henry creel, but i also think there’s an incompleteness to henry’s story in season 4. like it’s half finished. i don’t like the first shadow retcon because i think it’s cheap and cliché for henry to be merely corrupted by an evil stone. too easy. but i also don’t buy that henry just decided to be evil one day. i think his monologue about the tyranny of time has this germ of humanity that honestly resonated with me as someone with undiagnosed mental disorders. obviously, his storyline in s4 is an ableist horror cliché where the autistic-coded character must be some kind of sociopath. but henry was the first of his kind and it would’ve been interesting to see how his abilities (and disabilities) conflicted with the world around him. how he was treated potentially as a psychiatric experiment. or a spiritual case. an exploration of how neurodivergent kids in the 60s were treated by society. not only does it connect well to el’s story, it’s more human and emotionally grounded.
