Warning: This article contains major spoilers from Stranger Things season 5, episode 4, “Sorcerer.”
While many fans may have been hoping (and theorizing) that Stranger Things would reveal that Will’s connection with the Upside Down and the show’s big bad Vecna has given him similar powers to Eleven’s, it’s safe to say they didn’t expect everything that goes down in the reveal during the final episode of Volume 1. Unless, they happened to spot the teaser foreshadowing the secret in plain sight all along; that is on the Stranger Things 5 poster.
According to Noah Schnapp, who has played Will since the show’s first episode in 2016, the key art for the fifth installment of Netflix’s monster hunter series hints at the big secret unveiled in that action-packed episode that sees Will finally tap into what felt inevitable for the character.
“It’s always supposed to kind of feel the vibe of the season and give an essence of where everyone’s characters stand in that era and chapter of our story,” Schnapp told Glamour of the poster of season 5 in a recent interview.
‘Stranger Things’ season 5 key art.
Netflix
He continued, “So yeah, you can see a strength in him on there. And obviously, they didn’t want to spoil it with any blood or anything, but as close as you can get. Everything is very intentional that we do.”
The poster in question depicts the key characters in the fight against Vecna, who hovers menacingly in the background above them all. While Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven is notably in the middle of the poster, posed in her signature gesture when using her abilities with her arms outstretched and a single trail of blood leaking from her nostril, Will is featured above her and slightly to the background, directly beneath Vecna’s head.
Usually, Will is depicted as fairly fearful or apprehensive in key art, but this season’s art shows the teen with a similar expression as Eleven, a stare so intense it’s like he’s seeing into your brain. (Or trying to rip your limbs apart with his mind.)
It’s a bit of foreshadowing that fans might have missed, but emphasizes Will’s place since the show’s premiere: set apart from his friends in Hawkins because of his connection to the monstrous Vecna and the Upside Down that no one is able to understand, except Eleven.
Series creators Matt and Ross Duffer previously told Entertainment Weekly that Will’s power reveal was in the making since season 2. “Every time we got to a season, it just felt like, ‘The time’s not right now,'” Ross shared. “And then finally we hit the final season and we’re like, ‘If we’re gonna do it, this is our last chance to do it.'”
“The show started with Will’s disappearance,” Matt said. “So it made sense to center much of the final season on and around Will.”
Noah Schnapp as Will Byers and Jamie Campbell Bower as Vecna on ‘Stranger Things’.
Netflix
But the brothers clarified one crucial technicality to Will’s newly emerged abilities.
“He’s not a new Eleven, and that was important to us,” Matt explained. “In fact, he doesn’t really have powers himself. He’s channeling Vecna’s powers. Because he’s, since season 1, been connected to him and, in part, connected to the Mind Flayer, that is allowing him to tap into and use these powers if he’s in close enough proximity.
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As actor Jamie Campbell Bower, who portrays Vecna, also told EW: “The relationship between Vecna and Eleven, he very much saw them as equals. She was his sister. He genuinely believed that they could build a better world together. Whereas with Will, he’s just a toy, he’s just a plaything.”
Now that Will is able to channel Vecna’s powers, “It’s an irritating byproduct of the fact that he’s just a means to an end,” Bower added.