The upcoming “Stranger Things” stage play titled “The First Shadow” may actually have ties to events that will unfold in the upcoming fifth and final season…
It’s probably going to be a long, long time before we get to “Stranger Things” season 5, which will be the final season of the hit Netflix series, but in the mean time there is a new stage play set to debut in London.
“Stranger Things: The First Shadow” is a story developed by series creators Matt and Ross Duffer that will travel back in time to Hawkins, Indiana long before the Upside Down was created. A new teaser trailer that was released on Wednesday showed flashes from past seasons of the show along with a hint that the stage play may hold clues to events that will unfold during the final season of the show.
Here’s the synopsis for “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” which will feature plenty of recognizable characters from the series but this stage play will be set in the late 1950s:
“Hawkins, 1959: a regular town with regular worries. Young Jim Hopper’s car won’t start, Bob Newby’s sister won’t take his radio show seriously and Joyce Maldonado just wants to graduate and get the hell out of town. When new student Henry Creel arrives, his family finds that a fresh start isn’t so easy… and the shadows of the past have a very long reach.
“Brought to life by a multi-award-winning creative team, who take theatrical storytelling and stagecraft to a whole new dimension, this gripping new adventure will take you right back to the beginning of the Stranger Things story – and may hold the key to the end.”
Of course we know the Creel family moved to Hawkins in 1959 and that’s when young Henry started to develop his psychokinetic abilities, which led to him torturing and killing animals before turning his attention to his own family. Henry eventually killed his own mother and sister with his father Victor Creel being blamed for the crime.
It isn’t until years later that we discover that Henry became the first test subject of Dr. Martin Brenner at the Hawkins Lab and he began working with other patients — including a young Eleven when she displayed even greater powers than him. In the end, Eleven vanquished Henry to an alternate universe that we know as the Upside Down with his skin ripped away and he became a creature later known as Vecna.
It will be interesting to see how this origin story could potentially tie back into the final season of “Stranger Things” when the stage play opens at the Phoenix Theatre in London in November. For more details check out the website for “Stranger Things: The First Shadow.”
As for the final season of “Stranger Things” — that may not debut for quite some time because the show hasn’t even gone into production yet and there’s no word on when that might begin as the writer’s strike continues in Hollywood. The Duffer brothers have promised that no work will start on “Stranger Things” season 5 until the strike is settled.
