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figureone · 5 months

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All my posts about Henry aged like fine wine but I was digging through some just now and found this one and decided to share it again. This is an analysis on Henry's childhood / the flashback scenes from the lab and Nancy's vision that I was tagged in.

In regard to the post you tagged me in: I am actually am gonna probably be boring and predictable here and say I don’t think it means Henry’s hiding anything at least not about his mother and while you know I came out here with the whole "Virginia’s cheating" thing and believe that is canon and MIGHT be addressed somehow next season, yeah I don’t think those scenes relate to anything about Virginia – they’re all about HENRY himself. I think we were meant see that basically Henry started getting… Really weird during his time in the Creel house. Like concerningly weird, like there is way more going on here than we know weird. ( If that makes sense. ) I think the scenes in question are suppose to show us that for whatever reason Henry was collecting up spiders and scurrying his little ass up to the attic where he kept a weird little shine to them and this has significance. Loving spiders is one thing, but this entire set up and the things Henry says about them is suppose to clue us into other things going on that we cant be told or explicitly shown at this time.

For me its suppose to highlight his unusual behaviors and how he didn’t go into that house acting that weird. Not in the normal realms of just an autistic kid who really likes spiders but the ‘abnormal’-weird STARTED in that house.

Also side note, I think Henry’s weird and secretive about this not just for the fact this is just weird in general but he probably doesn’t want his parents to know that he’s chilling out with about 5 jars of black widow spiders and thats something hes doing - going around collecting these spiders and keeping them. Those are dangerous, I’d probably stop my kid from jarring them up and playing with them too and I don't think adult Henry could fully explain everything to Eleven in the scene with them. ( Maybe he didn’t even know how to explain it himself, which is kind of what I think. )

This also kinda goes back to the scene in Victors memory for me and why Victor's flashbacks are directly paralleled with Nancy's Vecna vision here. We get the intentional impression that Henry was pretty much instantly “affected” by the house. Victor notes Henry “knew something was wrong.” Thats how he described Henry’s behaviors shortly after they moved in which tells me that Henry either TOLD THEM something was wrong or he behaved differently shortly after getting to the house and this seems to line up because we are shown this.

We’re shown when the Creels first arrived at the house everyone seems pretty happy, this looks and feels totally normal, a family excited to arrive at their awesome new home. When they’re shown walking in the front door for the first time everyone is looking pretty pleased and in awe but suddenly Henry starts looking troubled. The scene with little Henry and the weird thing with the lights in Victor’s memory seems to take place not long after this ( maybe a day or two ? ) because in the background we can see Henry is sitting surrounded by a bunch of boxes. This is presumably the belongings of the family because they were still in the process of unpacking. Now this is probably all headcanon but I’m mentioning it anyway because it seems like Victor also got pretty suss of the house pretty quick because he took the time to explain HENRY perceived something was wrong and he noticed that.

We do also know from canon it was VICTOR that took it upon himself to get a literal priest to exercise the house. I feel like thats a big thing to do, keeping in mind that this is the 50s, people would be AFRAID of looking "insane" and moreover the Creel's ONLY lived in the house for ONE MONTH max. ( So it seems like Victor was the only one that wanted to heed whatever Henry told them or just took the time to actually acknowledge his sons discomfort and think that was important, while I feel like Virginia probably shut it down as nothing and interpreted it all as just Henry trying to ruin things for them particularly before the “visions” start and those don’t start until way closer to the murders. And even then, it seems like Virginia didn't want to blame anyone except Henry and Henry does explain she literally hated him. — Personally I think this all kinda mirrors season 2 in a way when Will was infected by the MF and he very quickly started acting odd but he had a mother who actually cared, took notice, and tried to help in a better way than deciding to throw her kid in the looney bin and blame him for everything bc fuck him. )

We also saw Victor noting the attic stair door open and feeling compelled to go up there but during this time there is no trace of Henry up there, its just a bunch of old stuff that I PERSONALLY don’t think even belonged to Victor and his family. I think a majority of the shit up there was left there from whoever lived there before because we know they didn’t live there long enough for everything to be looking that dusty and old, and there's just some weird things up there like a pram and a piano. ( Again, they only lived in the house for a month and canon does tell us this. )

So we can probably assume due to Henry’s lack of appearance up here at this time Victor’s inspection of the attic was fairly close to the time the Creels moved in, maybe after the first weird light scene with Henry. But, anyway, for some reason Victor got the weird idea to go up to that particular spot and look around. He was compelled to do this which is very odd. He also – for some reason – mentions that the “demon” he could “feel” had cursed not JUST their house but the entire town. Its odd that he chose to mention the entire town. Where did he get this info ? Why would this be said if it wasn’t meant to clue us into something more than we could currently be shown in these scenes or maybe in this season itself ? Its 100% foreshadowing something because we already know theres a special connection with Hawkins and the UD.

It wouldn’t be hard to imagine that Henry, a “sensitive boy” who was able to develop such incredible psychic powers, specifically from his time in that house, was also drawn to the attic and whatever was up there – whatever feeling, whatever essence – whatever it was that was a little beyond Victor's normal perception, wasn’t beyond Henry’s. What we’re shown is Henry starts spending a LOT OF time alone up in that weird, cold, dusty, dark attic. Which he preserves. He does nothing to make it more comfortable for himself. The only thing he adds to it is the weird spider shrine and we’re basically shown him building it. Thats what those scenes are actually about. There is a light in the attic, we know that from Victors flash back. But Henry wont even utilize that to spend time up there drawing. He uses the dim light of candles instead. Theres a reason for this and you probably know where I’m going with this already because its me but we already know of something that can manifest itself as “a feeling” and that likes the dark, likes the cold and likes “to hide”.

What Vecna shows Nancy was the “progression of how Henry’s behavior’s began to change.” From “normal” boy, to boy who notices something weird, to boy who is “consumed” by whatever this weirdness is. ( Presumably because his parents, or his mother in particular rather, didn’t listen to him or dismissed his feelings or behaviors as just him being weird when this particular weirdness only started in that house. ) Nancy’s “visions” of young Henry start with Henry curiously walking around the house, like he’s looking for something, like something is luring him even, and indeed, Nancy starts to notice the lights flickering again when Henry is walking around curiously ( Again, this is framed like Henry isn’t the one flickering the lights, he isn't tapped into his powers yet, but he might be 'looking’ for whatever is causing the lights to flicker. It calls back to season one where Holly is following the weird acting lights in the Byers house and is led to the Demogorgon. )

Then Nancy turns and sees into the bathroom and is shown a vision of little Henry finding the spiders in the vent. Over top of this we have Adult Henry saying he “Found a new sense of purpose” ( Like this is very weird- like what does he mean ? Worshipping spiders ? Why does he think its his purpose to be worshipping spiders suddenly ? Also note Henry’s clothes have changed again so this is a different day from the day Henry was 'looking’ for something and the lights were flickering around the house. Which means the lights did this weird flicking thing a lot. ) This then cuts again to little Henry running past behind Nancy which startles her. We’re being shown another day here again, another vision. Henry’s wearing a different outfit and he has a jar in his hand, he seems to be heading up to the attic. This is also where he starts relating spiders to GODS and also note we’re then shown adult Henry as he’s explaining this and I don't know how else to explain his expression other than with the “ I've seen some shit ” meme like:

64.media.tumblr.com You ok Henry ? Nope. Hes not. Hes not ok. A lot of this fandom's breakdown of Henry's monologue scene is BIZZARE and doesn't reflect whats actually going on at all. They talk about Henry being emotionless and calculated when the reality is he's shown as the complete opposite of emotionless and calculated. Hes shown as haunted and distressed. He's very emotional. He even seems to look like his eyes are clouding with tears when he talks about his parents and how they weren't the good people they pretended to be.

Henry's clearly recounting something terrible he experienced that he doesn't completely know HOW to explain and worse he's pretty much been systematically gaslighted into believing somehow this was all HIS fault. Straight into the following scene little Henry’s now shown with a fully built spider shrine, complete with candles. He’s drawing the spiders. This is a different day again. Then we go back to adult Henry and the weird king just keeps giving. He says “The human world” specifically and ok… Maybe we can think he’s talking about the human world vs the animal world but he isn’t just talking about spiders as animals. He’s actually not talking about spiders as animals at all. Hes talking about them literally as gods. Then he switches from being kind of haunted and freaked out to some sort of look of realization, and then he switches again to something thats kind of cold and dark and it frightens Eleven. This is when he starts talking about humans as pests, “disrupting” the harmony of the god-like apex predator’s and their feeding- But imo- its not actual spiders he’s talking about here, not the way we know them.

Henry is a smart guy, he likes spiders, and I bet he knows a lot about them, and he knows spiders are animals, not gods, and they’re not the only "predatory animal” on earth yet he only speaks about spiders specifically in this way because he’s began to view them as an avatar of something divine. There is a reason the spiders are shown whenever Victor talks about the "evil force" hiding in the house. The spiders are displayed as analogs to this. The scene swaps again, we’re at a different day in Henrys childhood now. ( We’re literally going through a slightly condensed version of the month in the house from Henrys pov. ) His clothes have changed again. He’s standing in front of the grandfather clock. Back to adult Henry he starts to express his own anger with the “human world” from his own expereinces with his ostracization from it. But he’s angry, he’s now ranting, his voice even becomes distorted, and naturally Eleven starts to get more scared. But he calms down as he starts to approach her. He continues to explain, even though its obvious he's becoming more and more emotionally distraught. His hand is raised, kind of gesturing to his head and its trembling, his voice starts to tremble too and this is while he's explaining that he couldn’t pretend to fit in with everyone.

Now we’re then back to the scene with little Henry focusing on the clock briefly, then we’re back to adult Henry who has started to clam down. He starts to become placid again. Note - at no point do I think Henry was trying to scare Eleven at all, in fact it seems that being in her presence is what clams him not because he’s manipulating her but because her being there, telling this to her - someone who he thinks is just like him - is comforting to him. Like he's finally able to express something in some way that he might not have been able to do before – or maybe he might have never been able to talk about this in the presence of someone he thinks would understand and believe him. My personal take is both.

He’s looking at Eleven with some sort of affection here and then we cut back to Little Henry who shows us he’s harnessed his telekinesis, he’s moving the hands on the clock with his mind. This is first time Henry is able to manifest his powers imo and I think thats the significance of this particular scene. ( Which probably confirms Henry was never the one making the lights blink when they first moved in and the lights were blinking in the EXACT way we have seen them do in the show when something from the UD is trying to make contact ) And adult Henry is now more optimistically explaining he didn’t have to be trapped in the cruel oppressive system he couldn’t fit within. He could change it because somehow he developed these powers. This makes him feel like he can be the master of his own destiny- this is when he says he wanted to be “A predator, but for good.”

And then we’re back to Nancy and the rabbit. Its another day again. Henry’s gradually learning how to use these powers. The rabbit is trapped in a snare, its doing the rabbit death squeal as it struggles against the snare; the kinda bad cgi rabbit is dying, going into shock ( and I know this because rabbits have been in my family since I was a baby. This rabbit was in shock and was gonna die whether Henry touched it or not so the fandom take on Henry and the rabbit annoys me so bad. ) Henry decides to use it to practise his powers which adult Henry is explaining to Eleven that “as he practised” he realized he could do more than he even imagined he could do. As the days continue, Henry quickly learns he can literally read people’s minds. So Henry explains that he explored his parents minds and this is where he grows contempt for them because he begins to become horribly aware of exactly how much of a lie their “happy family” – that he was always the black sheep within – was and how unfair and hypocritical toward him they have really been. Which adult Henry is very upset again about thinking back on it.

Nancy runs back inside to the living room and sees Victor and the baby burning to drive home Henry’s point about the “terrible things” his parents have done, with this being the representation of Victor’s ultimate “bad thing” in Henry’s perception. We’re also shown little Henry sitting in front of his spider shrine in the attic and using his powers to show his father this particular vision that Nancy is witnessing – again this is a different day to the day Henry killed the rabbit, and both Henry and Victor are wearing different clothes to the directly following scene which is another day again, where Henry explains that his mother hated him.

This moves directly to Nancy walking into the dining room of the house and being shown Virginia, sitting at the dinner table with Henry and Alice and over top of this Henry explains Virginia’s plan to get rid of him, to lock him away by giving him to Dr Brenner to be “fixed”. This is the terrible thing we’re “shown” that Virginia has done, this was the straw that broke the camels back for Henry, to Henry this is Virginia's worst action. ( Which is valid like imagine the betrayal of finding out that your mother hated you to start but add that to the fact she also and wants to condemn you to a psychiatric facility and the known horrors of them even in that time period. )

And this is when Henry explains he had no choice but to “break free” leading directly to the death of Alice and Virginia. Then we get the scene with Brenner having strapped little Henry to the chair and tattooing him, much to Henry’s pain and discomfort, and with Henry telling Eleven he was glad she was born and all the rest of that.

But all those scenes are connected and important to each other. Its a progression of time during Henry’s childhood and the build up of events in the Creel house surrounding Henry’s strange thoughts / behaviors and developing powers in particular during the month, which are important and imo, its meant to clue us into the fact something WEIRD did in fact actually happen at the Creel house and that there was something else going on with Henry, something even more than he is able to tell us – but it seems he’d like to tell us he just couldn’t because he either didn’t know to explain it any better than what he did when he was speaking to Eleven, or maybe he just didn’t know how to explain it better to ELEVEN in particular, given how young she was.

But even Vecna wants to tell us something. He wants to show us something, even, and he chose Nancy for this which was the entire point of Nancy’s encounter with him. “Now that you have seen where I have been, I would very much like to show you were I'm going”. This is all connected and theres a lot more we have left to see. ( The lab, maybe some more stuff about Alice, the upside down, etc ) We’re gonna find out exactly what was going on with Henry and how / why Vecna is what he is and I can almost promise its going to be a whole lot more than some supremely uncreative, basic shit like “hes just evil and always has been” because they completely misread and falsely represent all these scenes and this character in a way I have literally not experienced in any other fandom.

#henry creel #001 #vecna #stranger things #stranger things theory #the mindflayer #byler #The first shadow was really just a love letter to me personally and I'm tickled pink #Cant wait to watch it ugh

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