SPOILER ALERT: This piece contains spoilers for the entirety of Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 1 (the first four episodes). Though Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) has had her own previous encounters with elements of the supernatural Upside Down dimension haunting Hawkins Indiana since Season 1 of Stranger Things, nothing compares to what is in store for the youngest Wheeler sibling in Season 5. As the first episode opens, Holly can be seen greeting a mysterious figure after setting the table for breakfast at the Wheeler house, where Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) and her two sons Will (Noah Schnapp) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) are staying. She later talks to the same invisible “imaginary friend” at school, summoning her mother Karen (Cara Buono) to talk with her teacher. Her older brother Mike (Finn Wolfhard) finds her waiting outside the classroom reading A Wrinkle in Time before he encourages her to be her own savior from “monsters in Hawkins” that her invisible friend warns her about. “As we just broke Season 5, we realized that Holly playing a larger role, that’s really when the season started to take shape. What we really wanted to do, and what that scene with her and Mike is talking about is, obviously our cast is older now, but we wanted to bring back the show full circle to Season 1,” Ross Duffer Told Deadline. “And to really do that, we needed kids in there again, so it felt like the best way to do that was through Holly.”” The imaginary friend, whom Holly calls Mr. Whatsit modeled off the character Mrs. Whatsit from Madeleine L’Engle’s Award-winning novel, makes himself known to some of Holly’s classmates as well, and they use the same name for him because they’ve all read the book. “A Wrinkle in Time was one of our favorite books growing up. And so as we were talking about Holly’s storyline, just as how our kids in Season 1 and in later seasons, use [Dungeons and Dragons] as a way to help explain and understand these crazy going-ons, for Holly, she doesn’t play D & D, but she needed something else to help explain what is going on in her world, in her storyline,” Ross said. “As we looked at various books and we looked into, we went back and reread Wrinkle in Time, we’re like, ‘Well, this is perfect,’ because she can use it to help understand and comprehend all these weird goings on.” Turns out Mr. Whatsit is actually Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), but in his human Henry Creel form. After the Demogorgon takes her, she somehow ends up with Henry in the Creel mansion, glistening like the day Henry’s parents first rolled up to the house. He makes Holly breakfast and knows her favorite fruit as well as her favorite song. “This super refined, very nice version of who he is. It’s this very warm, nice, natural way of being that hopefully makes them feel at home. It’s so icky,” star Jamie Campbell Bower said of Henry’s persona. “But hopefully it makes them feel at home enough for him to do what he needs to do, which is just disgusting, really, if you think about it.” Bower, who cited A Wrinkle in Time and Mr. Rogers from A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood as inspiration for the layers of Henry Creel versus Vecna, had his own reasoning for the connection between the two and why the villain would target Mike and Nancy’s (Natalia Dyer) youngest sister. “I’d considered my father’s relationship to alcohol, and interestingly enough, Karen Wheeler’s relationship to alcohol as well. Holly is a very smart and bright child. Somebody asked me the other day. ‘Why her? Why her first?’” Bower told Deadline. “And I think that where I got to with that was, I was like, well, yes, there’s a connection between the fact that we’re both bright. I think Henry’s always seen himself as quite bright. But also that presents a challenge as well. If I can win you over, then the rest of them will come easy.” For the fifth and finale season, Fisher took the reins to portray a grown-up version of Holly, who was played by twin sisters Anniston and Tinsley Price in the first four seasons. In Season 1, Holly followed a trail of glowing lights in Joyce’s house in Season 1, and she sensed the foreboding Mind Flayer in the trees on the Fourth of July in Season 3. “She was so young, she probably doesn’t even remember following the lights, but we like that she’s been on the outskirts this whole time, and to finally bring her into the fold was one of the joys of the season,” Ross Duffer said. “The youthful energy of her and her group of friends every day on set, just how amazed they were by this whole production we’ve been doing this for 10 years and to see it through their eyes again, it really brought us back to that feeling of when we were making Season 1.” Katie Campione contributed reporting to this piece.
https://deadline.com/2025/11/stranger-things-5-holly-a-wrinkle-in-time-connections-1236626279/
Tag: supernatural
TOUGEN ANKI Crimson Inferno devs on adapting the anime & launching globally
TOUGEN ANKI is a highly popular anime overseas about characters who carry the blood of demons and can manipulate that blood into supernatural weapons, and developer Com2uS has taken on the task of adapting that anime into a game that will eventually launch on PC and mobile devices. When you’ve got a project that already has a fan base, you’d best be prepared to deliver on what those fans want. We recently talked to Crimson Inferno Art Director, Pil-Jong Kim, and Producer, Dong-Won Lee, about just that, as well as the task of introducing a global audience to the TOUGEN ANKI universe. The audience of TOUGEN ANKI was a major contributor to planning for the game’s availability and launch. The developers wanted to make sure that the game was not only as easy to access from a popular platform standpoint (hence planning for PC on Steam from the get-go), but also from a gameplay perspective. The deckbuilding aspect and encounter design allowed the devs to put a focus on letting the characters shine in their combat animations and story highlights. The combat of TOUGEN ANKI is broken up into a color-coded system where attacks have one colored attack or another, and using matching colors powers up abilities when taking your turn. Again, the team felt it was important to create a system that was accessible and intuitive to players, allowing them to easily understand how to get the best out of their characters in any given encounter in both mobile and desktop formats.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146877/tougen-anki-crimson-inferno-developer-interview-tgs-2025
Mother trusts her gut, makes hasty exit after stranger aggressively tries to give her $5 for her baby and won’t take no for an answer
Parents often have an almost supernatural instinct when it comes to sensing whether something’s off. Call it divine intervention or over-protectiveness, whatever it may be, it’s always better to be safe than sorry—especially when it comes to your own children. One mother on TikTok recently experienced this firsthand.
Jane Williamson was able to record part of a bizarre and frightening encounter from the relative safety of her car. In the video, she can be heard telling her children to “get buckled right now” while frantically yelling “no” at someone outside the window. In the moments afterward, she explains the strange situation, trying to rationalize her response despite the fact that, on the surface, it seemed like an innocent enough interaction.
Jane shares that she had been at the grocery store and was putting her kids in the car when an older woman in a red vehicle approached her. The woman told Jane that she had seen her baby and then proceeded to hold out a five-dollar bill, saying it was “money for your baby.” Naturally, Jane refused to take the money, but the woman was insistent.
The stranger claimed it was bad luck not to accept the money and kept trying to pass her the note. Jane continued to refuse. She also notes that the woman was about 10 feet away from the car, which meant Jane would have had to get out of the vehicle and leave her children unattended to take the money.
Despite Jane’s refusal, the woman lingered nearby, waving the money persistently. Thankfully, Jane and her children were able to safely leave the situation.
Not knowing the woman’s true intentions, Jane turned to the TikTok community for insight, wondering if it could have been some sort of scam. She commented, “there’s no way that was gonna pan out to be a good thing.”
Viewers were unsure what the stranger’s endgame might have been, but most agreed that her insistence and apparent aggression suggested something was off. One user speculated it could have been a scam involving a tracker stuck to the bill, although that seemed far-fetched. Another suggested the money might have been laced with drugs—again, unlikely. A few commenters thought it might have been just an old tradition where people give money to newborns, implying Jane had nothing to worry about.
Whatever the case, it’s probably for the best that Jane trusted her instincts. The worst-case scenario was being a little rude to someone who was genuinely trying to be kind. On the other hand, she may have avoided a potentially dangerous situation for herself and her children.
This encounter is a powerful reminder that a mother’s instinct to protect her kids is always worth listening to. When something feels wrong, it’s better to err on the side of caution—because sometimes, it just might save lives.
https://wegotthiscovered.com/social-media/mother-trusts-her-gut-makes-hasty-exit-after-stranger-aggressively-tries-to-give-her-5-for-her-baby-and-wont-take-no-for-an-answer/