Stranger Things: What Was In The Briefcase? How Did Henry Get His Powers?

So, the second volume of Stranger Things Season 5 finally revealed the reason why our antagonist, Henry Creel, aka Vecna, was so scared of revisiting a memory that turned his entire world upside down. And nah, that’s not even a pun. If you remember, in the previous volume, Max, stuck inside Henry’s world of memories, told the new visitor, Holly, that for some reason, Henry was afraid to step into the caves, but she didn’t know exactly why. However, the latest volume of this season has an answer for us. And yes, it’s connected to the damned briefcase.

Spoiler Alert

I think you might already be aware of the fact that the Duffer brothers, the creators of the Netflix show, have also developed a stage play, titled “The First Shadow,” which serves as a prequel to the original show and delves deeper into the early life of young Henry Creel. Before moving to Hawkins, Indiana, the Creel family lived somewhere in Rachel, Nevada, which is the same location that we see in the memory world, where Henry has kept the 12 kids hostage. Mind you, not their physical bodies, but their subconscious minds. Their physical bodies are locked in a lair in the Abyss, while their consciousnesses are trapped in Henry’s memory world, where he’s manipulating these kids so he can further his grand plan to merge the two dimensions and remake the world in his own image. So the house we saw in the memory world is the place where the Creel family lived before they moved to Hawkins in 1959. And it was during this time that a young Henry stumbled upon a paranoid scientist who shot the young kid on his left palm to stop him from coming near him as he believed he was there to steal his precious briefcase. Okay, so what exactly was in this briefcase, and how did it change Henry’s life completely?

Well, according to the stage play, Dr. Martin Brenner, whom you remember as El’s “Papa” (not her biological father, by the way), was working on a classified project, the Nevada Experiment, trying to create a force field that could make objects disappear and be untraceable to the enemy. His father had witnessed a similar miracle with the USS Eldridge, which was later found to have been transported to the Abyss, where the Demogorgons killed each and every crew member, except for Brenner’s father, who somehow managed to return to the human dimensions, but not in the state you would imagine. Things were no longer normal with him, but that didn’t stop Brenner from replicating this experiment so he could finally find the answers that had been haunting him since his childhood. Now, the device that Brenner had been working on was stolen by a Russian spy, who was none other than the person whom we saw with young Henry inside the cave in Nevada. And the briefcase he held tight had the fabled device, which you could say is the root of all conflict in the Stranger Things universe. The Netflix show hasn’t yet revealed if it was the same device that was mentioned in the stage play or if it was an anomaly that Brenner’s father brought back from the Abyss. It could also be possible that the briefcase contained blood samples of Brenner’s father, who was infected by the silver-black particles after he was transported to the other dimension. What I am trying to say here is that the stage play had its version of a device that transported young Henry to the Abyss for 12 long hours before bringing him back to the human world, just like Brenner’s father. But the show could retcon the aforementioned events, and, instead of a device, the briefcase could contain something totally different, for example, the vial of the infected blood or a sample of the extraterrestrial particles that infected Henry’s bloodstream. If you revisit the scene where young Henry opens up the briefcase in Season 5, Episode 6, then you might notice a red-glowing object inside it, which I believe could be a rock sample from the Abyss, which most likely Brenner’s father had brought with him, and when young Henry, whose palm was already bleeding from the gunshot, came in contact with the dust particles inside the briefcase, it immediately contaminated his body with the extraterrestrial anomaly, thereby giving him his extraordinary psychokinetic abilities. It is also to be noted that Henry had most of his powers in his left hand, which as I stated earlier, is the one which likely got infected with the black particles. 

Well, back to the story, I don’t think that the show’s version of young Henry was ever transported to the Abyss after he came in contact with the content of the briefcase. But it did indeed take a toll on his mental health and shook him to the core, because of which his life was never the same again. The encounter with the Russian spy and the extraterrestrial particles turned him into a monster, both mentally and physically; however, this didn’t immediately change him into Vecna, that is, his ultimate form. It eventually happened years later, when a young El sent an adult Henry to the Abyss, and this was the first time he was transported into the other dimension. If you remember Season 4, Episode 7 centered around the Hawkins Lab massacre, then you might know how El opened the gateway to another dimension and banished the evil Henry into the Abyss, believing he wouldn’t be able to escape this prison and would die there, but the exposure to an abundance of these particles increased Henry’s powers and transformed him into a more ruthless and menacing monster whom we now know as Vecna. However, it has yet to be confirmed whether it is Henry who controls this extraterrestrial anomaly or if it is the other way around. So these are my thoughts on what was really inside the briefcase, but like I said earlier, only the finale of the show can confirm if these theories are correct or not. So stay tuned.