Hot take: The First Shadow being canon doesn’t make sense.
it’s not just the shitty timeline that makes me believe TFS shouldn’t have been canon but also THE CHARACTERS!!!
The first time Will goes missing, strange occurrences begin to happen in the town. Despite investigating together when the animal killings were occurring and witnessing strange things with their own eyes, Joyce and Hopper genuinely believe Hawkins is a normal town. They never suspect anything else could be happening.
Oh, and don’t get me STARTED on the fact Hopper and Joyce knew Henry but they didn’t have an official scene of them TELLING anyone? It’s almost as if the first shadow didn’t have to be canon since the duffers treated it as it wasn’t important and ran with the idea of Henry being this irredeemable and evil man. (Which if they were going to go with that idea why not at least write it better and give him some sort of closure?)
I know it’s stretchy to say but why make something canon if you aren’t going to treat it as such? Because if it were so important, why not include those details in the show itself so that everyone could have a better understanding of Henry’s character? This isn’t me hating on the first shadow; I absolutely love it—But even without the mind flayer, the Henry we know in the show is so much different from the one presented in the first shadow.
..And yeah, that’s most likely because in the first Shadow, he was an innocent kid who got corrupted while in the show, we are witnessing his corrupt version’s actions.. But the timeline between the show and the play doesn’t add up because in the show, Henry is portrayed as way younger, and we see clips of him rather independently cursing his family while in the play, he doesn’t do that. (It’s canon Henry is an unreliable narrator and the first shadow is there to reveal the truth of it all but it didn’t show the parts that took place in the show in the first shadow nor did they explain it in the finale either and THATS what ticks me off!) The timelines and general events that took place between the two absolutely make zero sense and I was hoping they would be able to sum that up in the show and really elaborate to us what was going on and add more to Henry’s story, but instead, they left it off “ambiguous,” which also made it the biggest plot hole ever. Even in the first Shadow, there are plot holes, so that’s why I think it shouldn’t have been canon. the first Shadow only explains why Henry did what he did, and that may be me answering my own question, but we did witness some very crucial parts of Henry’s backstory in Season 4 that weren’t included in the the play whatsoever (see? so it just doesn’t add up) nor do they connect to Season 5 either due to how bad the writing was.
Because on the show it’s made out that Henry is the one “pulling the strings” and during his infamous monologue in season 4, there aren’t any signs (at least to me) of him being FULLY possessed or that the Mind Flayer is spewing through him. It’s just a theory to believe that that was the case, but it’s confirmed that the monologue is Henry’s explosion of negative emotions after everything that’s happened to him. As for him killing the other numbers—that was because he GENUINELY thought it was right. It was the Henry after he was conditioned by not only the Mind Flayer but also everyone else in his life (his parents, his bullies, Dr. Brenner). All of these horrible influences made him into a monster, and he was aware of that and didn’t want to be good for a world that hated him. He simply didn’t know how, and I hate how they didn’t dive further into that in TFS or the series finale itself. I genuinely believe this is the case rather than just “Henry was being controlled the entire time and doesn’t have his own ideology or autonomy” because SOMETHING had to be there, you know?
it’s really stupid that it was left up to viewer interpretation. how can you be so lazy that you let the viewers decide?
Anyway!! my personal interpretation is that Henry was only half influenced by the Mind Flayer. That’s only because I don’t like the idea of him being a forced, mindless puppet. (That’s just a boring and stereotypical twist in my opinion and gives off Henry getting the Will Byers treatment.) I have always viewed Henry as this whole anti-conformist guy who possesses a disdain towards humans even without the Mind Flayer’s direct influence. The Mind Flayer only conditioned and fed off what was already there and Henry’s worldviews were definitely an unhealthy coping mechanism.
- Does what I’m saying make any sense at all? I worry I sound dramatic. 😅 I don’t want to come off as someone with “hater energy” cause I’m really not trying to be like that. I only just hate how the Duffers handled and treated Henry’s character. I’m a pretty strict person when it comes to writing, and while the show both supports the idea that Henry is either evil independently or just the Mind Flayer’s puppet, I feel like it should’ve been confirmed to be one or the other rather than leaving it open for debate because it further complicates things. (I’m just bitching at how unprofessional all of it is)
(btw this is not beta read so pardon if there are any mistakes or if i worded anything incorrectly!)