Stranger Things Creators Address Major “Plothole” Between the TV Show and Stage Play

The play within the show, The First Shadow, reveals that Hopper and Joyce knew Henry Creel back in school, deepening the connections between the characters and the events in Hawkins. While the season finale included a showdown with Vecna, this shared history wasn’t directly mentioned. According to Ross Duffer, the creators considered having Hopper and Joyce acknowledge this connection, but decided against it. They didn’t want to confuse viewers who hadn’t seen the play, as it would require prior knowledge to understand the significance of the conversation. However, the Duffers believe Hopper and Joyce likely did discuss it privately at some point.





![The model detector and electromagnetic field both exhibit predictable dissipation, decaying exponentially as described by the function [latex]e^{-\gamma(\tau)}[/latex] over time τ.](https://arxiv.org/html/2512.23888v1/Figures/EMF01.png)

