With the prequel play The First Shadow confirmed as canon, one immutable truth is established: Dimension X is the source of all psychic abilities in Hawkins. If an individual possesses supernatural power, that strength unequivocally stems from The Upside Down.

However, the specific manner in which each individual received this energy created a distinct hierarchy among the three entities: Henry, the Flawed Template; Eleven, the Perfected Subject; and Will, the Perfect Heir.

I. Henry Creel / Vecna / 001: The Flawed Template

Henry is the pioneer, yet, as he himself stated, his abilities are a flawed template. Henry doesn’t truly possess the power but is, rather, seized and controlled by it.

Henry is described as a sensitive, isolated child carrying deep-seated hatred and psychological trauma from his family before gaining his powers. This precisely made him the perfect vessel for the Mind Flayer to exploit and manipulate. Since being infected, Henry has never been fully master of himself; he is a slave to rage, and the Mind Flayer is what bestowed that power upon him.

Based on the events of the play, the source of Henry’s power stemmed from his contamination with Mind Flayer particles from a stolen box in Nevada. This occurred when he was eight years old, a time when his human personality and nervous system were already well-developed. Therefore, this power operates like an external tumor rather than an integrated part of his body. Henry constantly suffers from nosebleeds, exhaustion, and collapses after using his powers, because his ordinary human body is perpetually trying to resist and reject the Mind Flayer within.

A detail in the play exposes this weakness through the words of Dr. Brenner: the sensation of “euphoria” 001 feels with each kill is not his intrinsic emotion, but a biological reaction used for recharging (since Henry cannot naturally replenish energy like El through rest and food). He is compelled to take lives, absorbing life force to sustain his power and grow stronger.

II. Eleven / Jane Hopper: The Perfected Subject

In Season 4, during the memory dive, both Brenner and Henry affirm: “El is stronger than all the other children.” And El is the only one who defeated Vecna twice (once in the real world and a second time in his Mindscape). So, why is she stronger than the host who “ceded” the power to her? The reason lies in how El received her powers.

Unlike Henry, who was “infused” with the ability when he was already older (at age 8), El received her powers (via Henry’s blood transfusion) while still a fetus, essentially granted the power “in utero.” This ability developed concurrently with her nervous system. It is not an external object added later, but a natural component “integrated” into the formation of El’s brain. Consequently, El never had to struggle against an entity to use her power, unlike Henry.

Furthermore, El was raised in isolation in the lab, guided by Brenner, nurses, and Henry, and her full potential was unlocked by 008. Therefore, El’s power is pure and focused, and she is the true mistress of that strength, uncorrupted by the constant manipulation of the Mind Flayer like Henry.

El’s mother (Terry Ives) was deceived by Dr. Brenner into participating in the MK-ULTRA experiments (a real-life event) and was injected with numerous potent neuro-stimulants (high-dose LSD, chemical sensory-deprivation drugs, and brain-activity expanders) while pregnant with El. All of these factors directly impacted the fetus, synergizing with Henry’s blood, causing Eleven’s brain to develop superiorly. She is extremely sensitive to psychic signals and capable of dimensional connection more easily than the original template, Henry.

In other words, if the power for Henry resembles a mechanical arm grafted onto his body, El possessed an extended arm containing the power from birth—something that is perpetually a part of her physical self.

III. Will Byers: Vecna’s Perfect Heir

If we view El as the perfection of purity when someone possesses power from Dimension X, Will possesses immense potential to become the perfection of pure darkness—something Vecna attempted to mold him into, his ultimate perfected version.

Therefore, Will’s selection in Season 1 was no accident. He is a perfect replica of the 1959 Henry: sensitive, introverted, and isolated. Vecna did not and never intended to kill Will like Barb; he abducted Will simply because he wanted to assimilate him into The Next Vecna.

In Season 1, Will was taken to the Upside Down library and attached to the “breathing tube” for a week, much like Henry was contaminated by Mind Flayer particles from the box. After successfully implanting the essence, Vecna allowed him to easily return to the real world, just as he himself had done.

In Season 2, that very “breathing tube” granted Will true sight (the ability to perceive both worlds) and sense the Mind Flayer. This is the rudimentary ability of a Hive Mind commander.

But Vecna was unaware that Will possessed something Henry never did, and this is why he was not corrupted: love and connection with those around him. Despite being fully possessed in Season 2, Will retained enough consciousness to tap out Morse code, proving Will’s will is far stronger than Henry’s. It proved that even when chosen as the Mind Flayer’s host, he could still control his body. That is why in Season 5, upon awakening his powers, Will can easily use the authority of a “Perfect Host” to hack the Hive Mind and remotely destroy every Demogorgon sharing the psychic network.

I believe that in Volume 2, Will could even command the monsters to turn and attack Vecna or expel him from the shared consciousness network without dying himself, because he has learned to master the darkness instead of letting it consume him, as Henry once did. And if there is one person who can execute “The rightside up” maneuver, the person who reverses everything and turns the tables in the finale, it absolutely must be Will.