Who is Stranger Things season five’s Patty Newby, and why is she so important to the plot?!

If you’ve already inhaled all four episodes of Stranger Things season five volume one and are now living inside a TikTok theory rabbit hole, congratulations, you’re one of us. There’s one theory that keeps coming up again and again, based on a character you could easily have missed: Patty Newby.

If you’re staring at your screen thinking “who?”, don’t worry, most people were right there with you until these theories dropped.

Credit: Netflix

Patty’s name first appears in Max’s memory sequence during Henry Creel’s high school years. She wanders past a poster for the Hawkins High musical, Oklahoma!, where several familiar names are listed as cast and crew. Joyce Maldonado (yes, Byers before becoming Byers) is directing. The cast includes James Hopper Jr. (a baby Hopper!), Karen Childress before she became Mrs Wheeler, Ted Wheeler, Alan Munson (who we now know as Eddie’s uncle), and Henry Creel himself. And then, there’s Patty Newby, a character who hasn’t shown up on screen… yet.

Here’s where the name starts ringing alarm bells. Newby. As in Bob Newby, the purest soul in Hawkins who met a tragic, demodog-related end in season two. People quickly clocked that Patty must be connected. And she is.

Although Patty hasn’t appeared in the series, she plays a major role in the stage production Stranger Things: The First Shadow, currently running on Broadway and the West End. The play is set in 1959 and dives into Henry Creel’s high school years which, as it turns out, he spent surrounded by younger versions of most of the parents we’ve come to know.

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Credit: Netflix

Patty is central to that story. She is the adopted daughter of Hawkins High’s Principal Newby, making Bob her adoptive brother. She and Henry become close, so close that they eventually start dating. Patty genuinely believes he’s capable of using his powers for good.

Just like Eleven, Henry learns to enter the Void. Patty watches him attempt to connect with her biological mother through his abilities, but it goes catastrophically wrong. When Principal Newby interrupts one of these attempts, Henry becomes overwhelmed by a dark presence we now know as the Mind Flayer’s influence, and nearly kills him.

Brenner swoops into the story soon after, eager to manipulate Henry’s powers for himself. Henry, increasingly under the shadow’s control, later tells Patty she can find her birth mother in Las Vegas. But the darkness takes over once again, and Patty is thrown off a rooftop in the chaos.

Credit: Netflix

She survives, but faces life-changing injuries and begins walking with a cane. After recovering in hospital, she travels to Las Vegas, where she finally reunites with her biological mother, while Henry, now slipping fully toward his Vecna destiny, watches from the Void.

So what does this mean for the ending of Stranger Things? The show has made a point of revisiting the traumas and relationships that built Vecna. Patty was one of the few people he ever cared about, and one of the first people he nearly destroyed. She’s a living reminder of the humanity he once had, and the pain that helped shape the monster he’s become.

Right now, Patty is technically out of Hawkins. But the writers have already placed her name into season five for a reason.

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Featured image credit: Netflix