Who is Mr. Whatsit? Stranger Things reference to Wrinkle in Time explained

The first four episodes of Stranger Things Season 5 have finally dropped on Netflix, and they introduce a mysterious new character to Hawkins called Mr Whatsit. Needless to say, there are major spoilers ahead.

In the first episode of the binge-worthy season, Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) keeps talking to an imaginary friend, Mr. Whatsit, which gets her in trouble at school when she’s seen talking to thin air.

It’s implied early on that Mr. Whatsit is the Demogorgon when Holly sees a slim, gray figure watching her from behind a window. But when confiding in her brother Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Holly explains that Mr. Whatsit warned her that there are monsters in Hawkins. 

Obviously the Demogorgon only communicates in deafening screams, rather than eloquent conversation… So who is Mr. Whatsit, and why is Stranger Things referencing A Wrinkle in Time?

Mr. Whatsit is Vecna in Stranger Things Season 5

Netflix

In Chapter Two “The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler,” Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Nancy (Natalia Dyer) manage to speak to their gravely injured mother in the hospital to learn the truth about Mr. Whatsit. She writes down that Holly described him as being tall and well-dressed.

The scene then shows a smartly dressed, human version of Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) walking with Holly in an idyllic version of Hawkins. He takes her into a polished, perfect version of the Creel house, before he promises that he’ll save all of her friends from the monsters. 

To Holly, it seems like he’s taken her somewhere that’s protected from evil. The same episode also saw Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Hopper (David Harbour) look for Holly in the Upside Down. By tracking the injured Demogorgon, they find a giant gooey wall that is seemingly impenetrable. 

It seems highly likely that Vecna’s perfect version of Hawkins lies behind the giant wall, and it’s clear that the Duffer brothers have borrowed a page from A Wrinkle in Time.

Mr. Whatsit is a reference to A Wrinkle in Time

Anyone who’s read A Wrinkle in Time will likely recognize Mr. Whatsit as a reference to Mrs. Whatsit, a key character in the classic 1962 science-fiction book written by Madeleine L’Engle.

In that story, Mrs. Whatsit is a creature made out of stardust and can change her shape at will, and even transformed into a centaur when she arrived on the planet Uriel, which is a safe haven from evil forces. She’s described as living in an old abandoned house, not unlike Vecna and the Creel house in the Upside Down. 

The comparisons don’t stop there, it’s implied she has some sort of telepathic ability and correctly “guesses” all the food in the fridge at the Murry home. In the third episode of Stranger Things Season 5, Vecna says he “had a hunch” that Holly likes blackberries, and that he knows her classmate Derek likes chocolate chip pancakes.

It’s also worth remembering that the main villain of A Wrinkle in Time is a disembodied brain called IT (no, not Stephen King’s Pennywise) which controls people on the planet Camazotz in a similar way to Vecna and the Upside Down. Did we mention that the sixth episode of Stranger Things Season 5 is called Camazotz? Yeah, the Duffer brothers are definitely big fans of A Wrinkle in Time, but fans will have to wait for Volume 2 to discover more.

Until then, check out our rankings of the best Stranger Things characters, discover the surprising theory about Eleven’s “real” father, and check out the 50 best TV shows of all time.