Spoilers for the first four episodes of Stranger Things Season 5 lie ahead! Do not proceed if you haven’t watched yet!
- The Duffer Brothers explained the meaning of Max’s cave in Stranger Things Season 5.
- Vecna/Henry is seemingly afraid to enter the cave, and there’s some important lore fans of the show might not be aware of.
- The cave is a callback to The First Shadow, the Stranger Things prequel play.
We finally found out where Max is (at least, her consciousness) during the first volume of Stranger Things Season 5: trapped inside Henry/Vecna’s memories. And she’s specifically taking refuge in a cave that Henry appears to be terrified of and refuses to enter. So…what’s the deal?
Variety spoke to Ross and Matt Duffer about the first four episodes of the final season, and asked if the cave is a reference to The First Shadow (the Stranger Things prequel play)— where young Henry encounters a cave in Nevada “connected to the Upside Down.”
Courtesy of Netflix
According to Matt, Max’s cave is, in fact, the same one. As he put it, “When we were working on the play with Kate Trefry, we had Henry’s backstory worked out. There was always a balance that we had to find in terms of how much we were going to put in the play. [The director] Stephen [Daldry] and [the produce] Sonia [Friedman] were always pushing for more and we were pushing back and saying, ‘Well, we have to wait to reveal that in the show.’ You’ll see, especially as you reach the final episode, there’s more overlap with the play.”
He also confirmed that “you absolutely do not have to have seen the play to understand. They’re Easter eggs more than anything.”
It certainly sounds like the reason Vecna’s afraid of this cave is to do with his Upside Down origin story, but guess we’ll have to wait and see!
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