#henry creel is the victim

[messrsbyler]

if you understand that brenner was el's abuser and el was his victim, then you can't not understand that brenner was also henry's abuser and henry was his victim. is henry still the villain? yes. is he a monster? 100%, that's not the question here. we are talking about the origin story, if you will, and that's not henry himself who was born rotten and broken. someone has to break the jar in order for it to be broken. thinking henry is naturally bad like that actually takes the blame away from the abusers (virginia and brenner).

[thevillainsfangirl]

This is gonna ruffle a lot of feathers, I’m sure, but...

If you're going to love a fictional villain, LOVE THEM AS A VILLAIN! Stop trying to make them into some Good Person™ that they’re not. What is it that you even like about them? You think they're hot?

Quit being a pussy! THEY'RE FICTIONAL. It's not some moral dilemma if you love a villain AS A VILLAIN.

(Remade this old post because I had some characters to add.)

[0aurelion-sol0]

(So before we start with this theory & new post of mine for a long time since my semi-hiatus, I want to repeat that I do not want any new informations about season 5 or anything related to it whether true or not, same for any leaks, set photos whether true not. I ESPECIALLY DO NOT WANT THOSE!!!!! or interviews that are the slightest bit too revealing UNLESS I haven't looked at it myself and even then, easy on any of these. I know something minor about this season & have seen two things about it but that's it, nothing more.

These theories & analyses might be proven wrong or false already or in the future but I don't care, I do this for fun & as a way to explore different possibilities about the story that can be interesting or could have been at least. I hope everyone understands this & will not be a party pooper towards me just to have a "GOTCHA!!!" moment... With that said, let's get into it, shall we ?)

_________________________________________

The Thessalhydra:

Back To The Future &... The Beginning.

_________________________________________

For this first post, I wanted to go back to season 1 as I found it was fitting to explore one of the earliest major fandom theories of Stranger Things since it's final season is on it's way.

"The Thessalhydra as the final threat from the Upside Down."

And while at first everyone at the end of Season 1 thought, obviously, that this creature would be the next threat in it's second season, the Mind Flayer poked it's head and said "not yet!", "I need to experiment with my minions first!" with a Vecna also slowly planning his own armageddon as well. And as much as I don't like him (& his season... 😒), he's here and he proves to be useful from time to time when it comes to theories or analyses because he still part of the show & can help up in terms of parallels, themes & plot.

But now, let's remember the last episode of season 1! The boys playing their new campaign about the Thessalhydra taking a similar turn to the one they did at the beginning of the first season (*wink wink*) & this time Will does a 14 (*wink wink*) & kills the Thessalhydra with a fireball. (*wink wink*)

Now if this wasn't a tv show with multiple seasons, I would tell you that the boys obviously staged the whole thing for Will to win so that he can be happy and because they're all very nice friends & also not repeat the same game at risk of making him vanish again especially if the monster this time is the size of the Empire State Building, (sorry with the luck these characters have, I simply can't believe they can have a happy ending such as this one. WILL HAD UD SLUGS INSIDE HIS BODY, WTF GUYS???!!!) but this is a tv show with multiple seasons. And now, it has definitely become foreshadowing for what's to come.

Especially since in it's fourth season now, we basically have Nancy having an apocalyptic vision of Hawkins with a large creature which is describe by having a "gaping mouth".

And if you look at her face here, she definitely did not find that thing beautiful in the slightest, though she is probably more terrified about the fact that she saw most of her family dead. 🤭

But would you look at that ?! What creature in ST fits that description ? Quite a lot actually but obviously you know which one I'm talking about, yes The Thessalhydra! And oh my god, look at what I've found on the Forgotten Realms Wiki:

"Thessalhydras were hideous and terrifying creatures. They had a large, reptilian body with a long tail, 18 feet (5.5 meters) in length, which ended in a pair of large, sharp pincers. It had no head, instead eight hydra-like heads, each about 6 feet (1.8 meters) in length, surrounded a gaping mouth filled with teeth and acidic saliva."

Well well, after that, it's difficult to argue what else could that large creature be!

End of theory! Bye guys! Thank you for reading!

...

Except I also can do that... 😅 Because I have reason to believe that this future Thessalhydra is a creature we have seen before. One whose campaign mirrors another campaign from the same season.

Yes. I have reasons to believe that the Thessalhydra and The Demogorgon from Season 1 are one and the same.

Do you remember this ?

Of you course you remember this, what a stupid question. It's part of a series of trauma that affected us deeply as a fandom, for different reasons (at least for me) but it proves to be an even more important parallel than we originally thought.

I don't need to tell you about the thematic importance of the parallel or what it means for the characters, we've all already gone through that already, I am more interested in it's significance for the plot.

So El kills The Demogorgon & Henry the same way. By disintegrating them. But that action doesn't seem to end the same way for the both of them & El herself.

What is interesting is that the three of them dissapear in some form, Henry into an Upside Down gate but ends up falling forever through the Hellscape (a different dimension than Dimension X/The Upside Down though likely connected, the same way that Dimension X & The Upside Down probably are the same thing but it's not fully confirmed yet.) before ending into Dimension X/The Upside Down in some way. And we all know what happens from here on out, at least what we know of it since Season 4.

I have a theory for why he ended up there, what is the nature of that place and did not simply disintegrate like The Demogorgon who I also do not think simply disintegrated but we will not go fully through that in this post.

El though ends up in the Upside Down after being taken by the disintegrated part of the Demogorgon or by disintetrating herself (though it didn't really seem that way to me) which I think is probably because the Demogorgon used it's powers on her since he could open gates or send anyone to the UD in season 1. (We will also get into that but not in this post, same for why he was so different in Season 1, both physically and in the way he behaved.)

But the Demogorgon, from what we saw simply disintegrated and we never heard or saw any significant clue of it's existence again. Which again leads me to believe, if we follow the logic of what happened to Henry & to El in some way, it is still alive, somewhere.

And I believe personally that it is in the Hellscape right now, and in the same way that Henry got electrocuted while free falling in that place which marked the start of it's transformation as Vecna, I think the same is happening to The Demogorgon and is slowly being transformed into the Thessalhydra.

I think that El when she disintegrate something, she sends them into the Hellscape which is connected to Dimension X/The Upside Down as some sort of passage for someone who didn't enter via a gate the "original" or "right" way per say. Because being launched into Dimension X/The Upside Down in a state or in a way such as this one could be fatal so it's some sort of transition in a way.

And while Henry technically went through a gate, he was disintegrated before it's opening & that gate couldn't last more than a few seconds which I think is a result of the barrier between the worlds not being thin enough. Plus I think El gave way more strength into Henry than she did the Demogorgon with her powers which in turn also opened a gate behind him.

So as a result, he went into the Hellscape as some sort of "safer" transition between the two dimensions since as we know, and I hope, no gate before that has been opened in Hawkins before.

And as for the Demogorgon, again I think it's a point of it fighting back against El & using it's own powers against her plus again El didn't seem to launch the same type of strength of her power as she did onto Henry since she was standing much closer to the Demogorgon than she did Henry while also using an important memory of hers to defeat him.

Now as to why we haven't seen that Demogorgon or Thessalhydra in ST again, I think it's because the Hellscape was connected to the original version of The Upside Down, Dimension X in a way that it's not anymore with The Upside Down because what happened November 6th, 1983 changed more than just the environment but also the workings of those dimensions since the barriers between the dimensions are now thinner.

So I see 3 possibilities for the Demogorgon, to me it is still free falling through the Hellscape being slowly turned into the Thessalhydra or somehow ended up in Dimension X instead which is still connected to The Upside Down but is seperate it's own plane in some way since The Mind Flayer still come from there or is in a version of The Upside Down that is still Dimension X outside of UD Hawkins.

But still, some things are still up for speculation for how exactly it all works out in the end.

As I said at the beginning of the post, you take Nancy's description and apply to other creatures in ST like the Meat Flayer/Spider Monster (whatever you wanna call it) of Season 3, a gaping mouth with multiple hydra-like heads who in a way also gets defeated by fireballs via Lucas and it's fireworks which we see Will throw with him but the Demogorgon also fits that description with it's own gaping mouth blooming like a flower whose petals could look like different mouths coming from it.

And in a way, it would be ironic for The Demorgorn from season 1 to be The Thessalhydra because if we follow the boys' campaign, the very thing that took Will back then, that he couldn't defeat would also be the same thing he will defeat in it's final season as some sort of karmic consequence for The Demogorgon & The UD as a whole but also as a way to tie it's final season with it's first season in a more concrete way.

It started with Will and it will end with Will.

[gayhenrycreel]

what is wrong with this fandom. Will is not buff. neither is Mike or Eddie. and bloody hell that noodle armed twink of a man named Henry obviously has no muscles. its Henry Honkers not Henry Big Pecs. hunks of meat wont feed the lab children. they need real milk

[ibelonginarkham]

Let's talk about some facts that keep us up at night! I'll go first-

Henry was taken in 1959 by Brenner, meaning he was twelve, Eleven was also twelve in the first episode meaning that if we're to believe that it's true she's Henry's daughter he'd have been 21-22 when she was conceived. And if he was forced to have a kid with someone by Brenner that's awful enough.

But if we're also to believe that the other children are siblings to Eleven then we need to take a step back and remember one crucial and gut-wrenching fact;

Some of those fucking kids are more than 4 years older than Eleven.

[henrysglock]

Angels are never to blame for an act of God.

You can tell the difference between God and an angel…right?

(ft. Will “Always an Angel” Byers and Henry “Never a God (blamed like one all the same)” Creel)

[runninguplenorahills]

They just called the thing that is keeping Vecna alive a soul jar in st puzzle tales…

[will80sbyers]

Connected to THIS POST

Also note that the lynx eats:

Rats-> the rats in s3

Hares-> he kills a bunny or a hare in the flashbacks

Birds-> all the birds in the background around the victims

Deer-> the Hopper Byers have been associated with deers because of the paintings in the home

Reindeer-> at Suzie we have Reindeer on the carpet when her sister pretends to die like Eddie dies later

raccoons-> in season 1 there are multiple posters of racoons in the classroom of the kids

and foxes -> if I remember correctly it was one of the animals Henry killed when he was a child but I have to check again

[nebulousfishgills]

I could just be a dumbass who came to this conclusion after everyone else did and I just don't realize it, but I was mindlessly drafting a one shot and the thought occured to me.

There's a lot of mystery around the Massacre of Hawkins Lab and Henry's past that I think we're all trying to piece together. Weird inconsistencies, time gaps, missing information, and the like. I don't really have a coherent way of saying this cleanly, so I'll just dump it out.

I'm pretty sure that there's a lot of us in the "The Mind Flayer Was Behind It All" camp, but we all end up looking like Pepe Silvia in "It's Always Sunny" because of those missing pieces we're trying to drag together. I'll probably sound the same way, but here we go.

What I think is part of what's going on is that the Creel House is just a location in Hawkins where the barrier between both worlds is extremely weak, like how some haunted locations are more prone to paranormal activity than others. One might argue that Hawkins Lab is another one of these weak spots, but I wanna focus on the Creel House.

The Mind Flayer had always existed as a shadow-y soup of chaos for god knows how many years and as we can see, it's what connects the Hivemind together. It's like Bluetooth, really.

It's an entity on its own and I think it's goal is to control all things, in the Upside-Down and in the Overworld. What I think happened was that it was looking for a vessel to get into the Overworld it's been locked out of. Henry comes along, already disillusioned and dissatisfied with society for probably several reasons that we can't yet confirm nor deny, yet are implied (is he gay, is he neurodivergent, both, who knows).

These things will probably reveal themselves in The First Shadow, one of many reasons it's going to be a very important piece of lore...

The First Shadow... Shadow... Shadow Monster... Mind Flayer.

The Shadow Monster started to invade Henry's mind, stoke his worries and hatred to eventually link itself with him. That's how Henry's powers developed. It's a tired parallel at this point, but it's easy. The Flayer is Emperor Palpatine, Henry is Anakin Skywalker (and El is Luke). "Join me and together we can rule the galaxy/world, here are cool powerups to boot."

Once Henry's taken to Hawkins Lab, he's separated from the weak barrier that his house was, but the Mind Flayer has still infected his mind.

"The particles went inside them" is what Murray said about the Demo-creatures in the Russian prison, and I think somehow the Mind Flayer got particles/its influence/Bluetooth into Henry. He's constantly simmering, just waiting for the day he can escape and take his revenge. Which is where the Massacre comes in.

I can't explain every weird detail or inconsistency, but I can explain two things:

-I don't remember who said it, but I completely agree with it: Henry's monologue makes so much more sense if we look at it like someone possessed by an ancient evil eldrich being.

-Henry *absorbs* his victims. Remember how in Season 3 the Meat Flayer *absorbed* residents in Hawkins to grow stronger? I think the Massacre started as Henry clearing a path so he and Eleven could escape, but eventually the Shadow overtook him, telling him to keep going, keep killing, get him/it stronger by absorbing everyone, all those kids with powers like his.

I think the same thing happened at dinner in 1959.

I don't know what Henry's beef with Alice was or why he killed her, and I don't think he knew either. I think the Shadow Monster clouded his mind and judgement so he would kill everyone unimpeeded. His mother went first, the sticking point. The Flayer promised Henry it would help him deal with her, but once he did that, it was essentially Doctor Faustus signing his soul to Mephistopheles (if you'll excuse the too-appropriate reference). Too much power comes at a price, and that price is Henry's autonomy.

Oh, the Mind Flayer lets Henry shape it into the spider-like creature he'd visualized oh so long ago to let him believe he's the one in control, but he's not. The Shadow keeps poisoning him, his mind. How else do you think Henry decayed so throroughly?

I expect if you were to banish the Mind Flayer from Henry like they did Will in season 2, everything would go back to normal. He'd be human again. Powerless, sure, but he's no longer a pawn with his distaste for humans exacerbated to the point of serial murder. It would take effort, but I think it's possible.

Show Henry that he was loved as a child. Victor loved him, Alice loved him, Virginia... tbd. Eleven showed him kindness in Hawkins Lab, that kindness she showed and those past memories might be the key to ending this...

Oh wait!

Boom.

[bylerism-bible]

HUGE TW FOR CSA ALLEGORY IN STRANGER THINGS

The way some ppl will just totally deny the unavoidable allegory for CSA in Stranger Things when there's literally Freddie Kruger and Alien references and inspiration in the show. References that are clearly allegory for SA in both the original context and the context of ST.

Say it with me:

Fiction depicting something that makes you uncomfortable in a subtle way doesn't mean you can just deny the clear meaning.

Henry/Vecna/001 is a serial rapist and murderer via the coding of his actions. He literally has murdered underage people by forcibly penetrating their bodies with tentacles and making slug spawn much like facehuggers in Alien. Will SURVIVED this.

It's MEANT to be uncomfortable. That's the POINT. I'm a CSA survivor w OCD. I don't LOVE thinking about this shit, I get that. However-- it is IN the show. It is right there.

Ignoring it misses a huge point to be made, especially with Will and how acts of SA against queer people (esp queer kids like him) goes unacknowledged and denied, and how surviving something like that can affect something like your sexuality, which is openly declared to be a very important portion of Will's character development.

This isn't just accidental. Like, yeah. It's not fun, it's grotesque and sickening and that's exactly the feeling it's supposed to evoke. So please don't ignore it for what it clearly is.

It's not even just subtext y'all there are canonically tentacles and reproductive cycles involved. Is it disgusting? YES.

That's the point. Just like it was the point in ALIEN. Henry openly declares himself a predator and quite literally stalks, manipulates, and violates a bunch of teenagers. It's cinematography, not rocket science.

Please pay attention.

[elekinetic]

ok revising my stance on the whole “who is the real big bad of stranger things, henry or the mindflayer” conversation:

they both are.

i like to think about it as a metaphor for how no, people are not inherently evil, and there are social structures in place that lead and manipulate people to do malicious things. however, those people can also utilize those structures to inflict further malice.

[aemiron-main]

And again just to be Crystal Clear: this is not me being a dick to people who didn’t realize that Henry wasn’t always evil or who genuinely misunderstood it- this is me having an issue with people willfully ignoring parts of the show and digging their heels in when spreading the EXACT same, verbatim rhetoric that’s used to justify child abuse and blame victims in the show AND irl. It’s one thing to not know or to not understand, that happens to me all the time!! It’s another to choose to ignore & then ALSO go on to spread terrible, factually untrue and morally dogshit rhetoric about victims & reinforcing victim blaming.

​‘Henry was inherently evil and bad and broken from the start” that’s absolutely not what the show is telling us, and again, it’s one thing to not understand or to miss this, it’s another to willfully ignore it and then go on to make absolutely tone deaf and harmful and untrue statements about it/about victims of abuse.

[autistic-katara]

yk rewatching st4 i can kinda understand where Henry stans r coming from, he does have some serious blorbo vibes

[wheelercurse]

well tomorrow we’ll know more about the play

[henrysglock]

How are you going to look at him, a child…

And tell me he deserved any of it.

(screencaps 1-4 (w/ captions) from the lovely @heroesbyler)

[wheelercore]

Anyways ignoring the fact that Will was dead when Joyce and Hopper found him (teehee), I'm also adding "Henry wanted to recreate Brenners experimentation to try to create more 'predators for good' like him with psychokinetic abilities hence why Will was found with the vine down his throat and Barbara was most likely a failed test subject" on my s5 crack theory bingo card