Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 1.
A running theme throughoutStranger Thingshas been the battle between good and evil. Taking influence from its various references and allusions —Lord of the Rings,Star Wars,Stephen King’s stories, and Marvel Comics — the Netflix series has pitted Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), who is basically a superhero and is called one by her friends, against the various evil creatures of the Upside Down seeking to enter our world and take it over. Although Dr. Brenner (Michael Modine), his lab, and a covert crew of Russian scientists have trained Eleven and a number of other children to become super-powered, telepathic assassins as part of a secret government project, it is Eleven’s new friends and found family that constantly pull her towards the good side. With friends like Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Will (Noah Schnapp), and Max (Sadie Sink), as well as her adoptive father Jim Hopper (David Harbour) and mother Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder), Eleven has found something worth fighting for rather than becoming a government-funded weapon of mass destruction. Never before has Eleven found an equal on the dark side — until now.Stranger ThingsSeason 4 finally gives our superhero in Eleven a proper super villain, not in some faceless monster from the Upside Down, but inJamie Campbell Bower’s Vecna — Dr. Brenner’s first child experiment and a dark reflection of what Eleven could have been.
In past seasons ofStranger Things, the primary antagonists have been faceless monsters trying to find their way from the Upside Down into Hawkins. In Season 1, there was the Demogorgon, which wreaked havoc on the town, taking the lives of innocent citizens such as Barbara Holland (Shannon Purser) and whose corpse still haunts the Byers’ swimming pool in the Upside Down. The Demogorgon would make a minor return in Season 4 Volume 1 when Hopper and his new Russian friend Enzo (Tom Wlaschiha) are forced to fight one in a prison, using fire which is its weakness. Since Season 1, it’s been established that the Demogorgon is one of the lesser creatures of the Upside Down. In Season 2, it is revealed that the Demogorgon’s earliest form is a slug, as Dustin would learn from his pet Dart. The slugs would eventually evolve into “Demodogs” before becoming full-fledged Demogorgons. All the creatures from the Upside Down are ultimately connected to the “hive mind” — the Mind Flayer. It looms over the Upside Down and, using its various psychic connections to other creatures, uses people as parasites in the world above. Billy Hargrove (Dacre Montgomery), Max’s brother, unfortunately, becomes one of these parasites and has to ultimately die for Eleven and the crew to keep the Mind Flayer in the Upside Down.
From the Demogorgon to the Mind Flayer, and every other creature in between, the monsters of the Upside Down have served their role as threats to Hawkins and its citizens. But these monsters have never had such personal stakes in their quest to take over our world. Though Billy does raise the personal and emotional stakes for the series, especially as his death affects Max into Season 4, the Mind Flayer remains, still a looming, absent shape in the Upside Down. This season, however,Stranger Thingsneeded more than alien-like monsters as antagonists to raise the stakes.
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Enter Vecna, a humanoid creature from the Upside Down who uses his psychic powers to torment the tortured minds of teenagers in Hawkins. An homage toA Nightmare on Elm Street— whose Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) actually appears in a cameo and red herring — Vecna claims his victims through their past traumas: Chrissy Cunningham (Grace Van Dien) has bulimia due to her mother’s criticisms about her body, Fred Benson (Logan Riley Bruner) hangs on to the guilt of causing a fatal car accident, and Patrick McKinney (Myles Truitt) has an abusive father. Later, Max becomes one of Vecna’s victims, but is ultimately saved by her friends andKate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill.” While these victims and their traumas might seem like generic negativity fueling the evil powers of Vecna, there is actually more to Season 4’s Big Bad than harnessing his victims’ bad vibes. Vecna, too, has his own traumas. He’s not just another creature of the Mind Flayer, but a person with a past.
If Eleven is the superhero ofStranger Things, Vecna is the supervillain — and in classic comic book fashion, their origins are intertwined and explored by the end of Season 1, Volume 1. Reminiscent of Dr. Manhattan’s origins fromWatchmen,Philip Glass' “Pruit Igoe” plays as Vecna tells of his traumatic childhood under his father: Victor Creel. Labeled as different and difficult, Vecna had been known as Henry Creel by his family. He was a lonely, isolated child who sought solace with spiders. He developed powers and practiced by killing animals in the backyard. When his parents began to think their house in Hawkins was cursed, they blamed Henry. Having had enough, Henry killed his family but spared his father Victor, who would be locked away in prison for the murder of the Creel family. Henry, however, is taken in by Dr. Brenner as the subject of his experiments. He is One — the first super-powered child raised by “Papa.” But when Henry gets older and Dr. Brenner enlists more children into his program, such as Eleven, he takes on a more superficial role as a worker.
Bower, from his performance in his very first scene, gives us the creepy, albeit human, portrayal of a lab worker who befriends Eleven only to betray her. He convinces her to use her memories of anger and trauma to fuel her powers, and he manipulates her in his ultimate scheme of killing the other children in the Hawkins Lab. When Eleven finds out that she’s been tricked, she sends Henry through a portal into the Upside Down. His body becomes malformed, turning him into the grotesque Vecna. It’s the kind of villain backstory that Bower wasn’t given the opportunity to explore as a young Gellert Grindelwald in theHarry PotterandFantastic Beastsfilms where he appeared in brief scenes and no lines.
For the first time,Stranger Thingsgives us a villain with layers. Through Vecna, Bower explores a compelling, more complicated villain than the monsters that came before. From his traumatic childhood as Henry Creel to the abusive experiments he went through as One and finally to his role as the Mind Flayer’s top general, Vecna is the perfect villain to pit against Eleven. Sure, the Demogorgon and its various forms are still scary, but Vecna is nightmare fuel that makes anyone wish for the perfect song to wake them up.
