Having fought Demogorgons, the Mind Flayer and a bunch of villainous Russians in previous chapters, Eleven and the gang find themselves up against a powerful new big bad in Stranger Things season 4: Vecna.
Each of the chapter's trailers gave us a good look at the antagonist, but Netflix has made sure to keep who he is, and what he's doing exactly, under wraps. Turns out, Vecna has a history with Hawkins and the Upside Down, too, and it's his backstory that we're set to dive into here.
In true Stranger Things style, the youngsters steadily sniff out clues about their adversary across Volume 1, from the connotations of his Dungeons & Dragons-inspired name to the mysterious way in which he claims his victims. But it's not until the seventh episode, which flits between the past and the present, that said pieces suddenly come together – and the info dump is a little overwhelming.
If you're reading this, then you've presumably watched the entirety of Vol 1 already and want to make sense of the story that's just unfolded in front of you. That, or you want to know what happens without having to commit to a whole weekend spent indoors, binge-watching. If you're still making your way through Vol 1 and don't like to know things ahead of time, however, then you should probably know that things are about to get VERY spoiler-heavy below. *We mean it... Consider this your final warning!*
Right, now that's settled, let's get into Vecna's game-changing origins then, shall we? Scroll on, mouthbreather, to find out all the details...
So, first up, what is Vecna's deal?
Stranger Things 4 wastes no time introducing Vecna and by the end of the very first episode ('The Hellfire Club'), he's already claimed his first victim: Chrissy (Grace Van Dien). Prior to his remote, fatal attack, he'd broken the cheerleader – who is dating jock Jason (Mason Dye), and struggling with body dysmorphic disorder – down mentally, plaguing her with confusing, increasingly terrifying visions. Her attempt to stop them with drugs inadvertently left her more vulnerable to the dark being, and he crushed her.
Vecna went after Max (Sadie Sink) next, knowing she was in a bad place following the death of her stepbrother Billy (Dacre Montgomery). Thankfully, the group worked out that a target's favorite music – Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill', in Max's case – can bring them back from the brink of despair before Vecna can take them for good. Hawkins High Schoolers Patrick (Myles Truitt) and Fred (Logan Riley Bruner) weren't so lucky.
When Eddie (Joseph Quinn) describes Chrissy's mysterious, violent death to Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), the latter dubs the baddie "Vecna" after a character Dungeons & Dragons. In the game, Vecna is a "dark wizard" and "undead creature of great power", who casts spells on his enemies, so the nickname is pretty fitting.
Later in Vol 1, Dustin, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Erica (Priah Ferguson) get to talking about Vecna's potential motives, and how he seems to be creating new portals to the Upside Down with each one of his kills. The former notes that Eleven opened The Gate by psychically connecting to a Demogorgon, that it's entirely possible Vecna is doing something similar with his victims, and that each link could be "powerful enough to rip a hole in the fabric of time and space."
Then, they get onto the Mind Flayer, who was defeated at the end of season 3. "If the Demogorgon was just his foot soldier, Vecna's his Five-star general," Dustin argues. "A Five-star general with the power to open gates."
Who is Vecna?
Unlike the Demogorgons and the Mind Flayer, Vecna looks somewhat human-like, and there's a reason for that. Towards the end of Vol 1, it is revealed that Vecna was once just a boy. What's more, he was the first youngster to be experimented on at Hawkins National Laboratory and, in a former life, went by 'One'.
Before he was subjected to tests by Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine) and his colleagues, Vecna/One was known as Henry, the superpowered, supposedly deceased son of Victor Creel (Robert Englund), the conflicted, convicted murderer Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Robin (Maya Hawke) visited in 'Dear Billy'.
While credited as Peter Ballard, an orderly at Pennhurst Mental Hospital, the place where Victor resides, Jamie Campbell Bower actually plays the older version of Henry, who reveals his true identity to Eleven – and Nancy in the Upside Down, too – in episode 7. It's an exposition-heavy scene, so we don't blame you if you missed something. Let's recap...
He admits to being a troubled child, and recalls how he used to collect black widows. Explaining the "kinship" he felt with the "solitary, deeply misunderstood" creatures, he says: "They are Gods of our world, the most important of our predators. They immobilise and feed on the weak, bringing balance and order to a unstable ecosystem. But the human world was disrupting this harmony. You see, humans are a unique type of pest."
Henry/One continues: "As I practiced I realised I could do more than I possibly imagined. I could reach into others, into their minds, their memories. I became an explorer. I saw my parents as they truly were." (This references 'Dear Billy', the episode in which Victor tells Nancy and Robin that he was responsible for the death of a baby during World War II).
In the late '50s, Victor had believed that he and his family were being tormented by an invisible spirit in their new Hawkins home, unaware that it was Henry forcing them to see "living nightmares". His wife Virginia suspected it had something to do with their son, though, and she "despised" him due to his odd behaviour. When she eventually called for a doctor, Henry killed her. Later, he murdered his sister Alice as well, but the act almost cost him his own life. The police arrested Victor and he went down for the crimes, while Henry got sent to Brenner. When Brenner realised he could not control the boy, he elected to "recreate" him instead, and the programme that Eleven became to be a part of was born.