
He was a lonely, isolated child who sought solace with spiders. Labeled as different and difficult, Vecna had been known as Henry Creel by his family. Manhattan's origins from Watchmen, Philip Glass' "Pruit Igoe" plays as Vecna tells of his traumatic childhood under his father: Victor Creel. If Eleven is the superhero of Stranger 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. He’s not just another creature of the Mind Flayer, but a person with a past. Later, Max becomes one of Vecna’s victims, but is ultimately saved by her friends and Kate 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. An homage to A 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. RELATED: 'Stranger Things' Season 4: Who is ?Įnter Vecna, a humanoid creature from the Upside Down who uses his psychic powers to torment the tortured minds of teenagers in Hawkins. 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. It looms over the Upside Down and, using its various psychic connections to other creatures, uses people as parasites in the world above. All the creatures from the Upside Down are ultimately connected to the “hive mind” - the Mind Flayer. The slugs would eventually evolve into “Demodogs” before becoming full-fledged Demogorgons. In Season 2, it is revealed that the Demogorgon’s earliest form is a slug, as Dustin would learn from his pet Dart. Since Season 1, it’s been established that the Demogorgon is one of the lesser creatures of 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. 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. In past seasons of Stranger Things, the primary antagonists have been faceless monsters trying to find their way from the Upside Down into Hawkins. Brenner’s first child experiment and a dark reflection of what Eleven could have been.

Stranger Things Season 4 finally gives our superhero in Eleven a proper super villain, not in some faceless monster from the Upside Down, but in Jamie Campbell Bower’s Vecna - Dr. Never before has Eleven found an equal on the dark side - until now. 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. 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.
#Stranger things creature series#
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. Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 1.Ī running theme throughout Stranger Things has been the battle between good and evil.
