Vecna (2024)

Henry Creel, also known as One, the Mind Flayer or Vecna, is the main antagonist of the Netflix original series Stranger Things. He will also be the main protagonist of the upcoming video game Stranger Things VR.

He is a mysterious psychic and the ruler of a supernatural dimension called "the Upside Down", acting as a hive mind for every entity and creature originating from it, such as the Demogorgon, Demodogs, vines, and Demobats. In his goal to conquer the world, he goes on a murder spree in the town of Hawkins in order to start a full-blown invasion of his world on Earth so he can destroy all human life and reshape it for himself. He is also the former mentor/friend turned archenemy of Jane "Eleven" Ives and the archenemy of Will Byers and Max Mayfield.

He is portrayed by Jamie Campbell Bower. As a child, he was portrayed by Raphael Luce. While impersonating Will Byers, Susan Mayfield, Billy Hargrove and Lucas Sinclair, he was portrayed by Noah Schnapp, Jennifer Marshall, Dacre Montgomery and Caleb McLaughlin respectively.

What Makes Him Pure Evil?

In General

• Although he states that he was treated as an outcast by other children and that his doctors and teachers dismissed him as "broken", any hope of this being a valid Freudian Excuse is immediately destroyed to show that Henry was simply a For the Evulz sad*st who brought suffering to the living beings around him due to feeling that life is a game to play with.
• He has an affinity for black widows and similar living creatures only out of a morbid, very superficial fascination of them being creatures who feed of death like him.
• Although Eleven tries to sympathize with him initially due to both being raised under the rough treatment of Dr. Martin Brenner, Vecna dismisses her theory by affirming that Brenner didn't make him become what he is; in his words, he was always that, which just ultimately cements him as downright unsympathetic no matter what terrible experiences he's had.
• When murdering his victims, he prefers to traumatize them first and kill them in a brutal fashion which involves, wasting their limbs, snapping all of their bones and jaws, and pushing their eyes into their sockets.
• Lets Nancy go upon exploiting her regret on inadvertedly causing Barb's death simply so he could warn Eleven on his apocalyptic plans for the world and lure her to a trap.
• Most, if not all, of the events lead back to him. Which easily makes him the most heinous character as he is the reason for the show's atrocities, and most of the characters pain and trauma are caused by him.

Past

• Tortured his family under the belief that they were naïve because they were unaware of his powers or because he thought that they despised him for having such powers, accusing them of acting as if they loved him when in reality that was actually true, with the reason they moved to Hawkins being so he could possibly start fresh there and try to make friends, proving that he never reciprocated that love as he spent his time torturing his relatives:
  • Killed rabbits, squirrels, chickens and dogs before leaving their corpses for his sister Alice to find.
  • Made it look like the house's bathtub was being filled with spiders instead of water to scare his mother, Virginia, supposedly because she hated him for his powers.
  • Tricked his father Victor into believing that a baby's crib with a baby inside was on the chimney's fire to scare him, finding it mockable that his father thought that it was a demon that was the one doing that.
  • Having subjected Alice to mind-rapes by giving her nightmares.
• Murdered his mother and sister after Victor hired a priest to exorcise the "demon" haunting his house and Virginia contacted Dr. Martin Brenner to check Henry's problems. Not only that, but Henry losing consciousness to trick his father into finding himself in a World War II-esque hallucination led to Victor taking the blame for his family's murders, leading to his unfair arrest and institutionalization at the Pennhurst Mental Hospital, for which Henry showed no remorse.
  • To make matters worse, of all his victims, Victor was the sole one Vecna spared, living out his days with the survivor's guilt and trying to commit suicide by blinding himself so he could join his family in death. Although it's assumed that he spared him to torment him for not saving his family, Vecna himself assures that it was because he was "busy", likely killing other people after Victor's imprisonment.
• After Eleven removed the device Brenner had put on his neck to restrain his powers, he used them to brutally massacre through Brenner's lab and butcher all the security guards, the nurses, and the other child subjects one-by-one and knocked out Brenner to prevent him from saving them.
• Tried to kill Eleven after she declined his offer to join forces to ravage the world and rule it together, proving that he was only interested in using her for her powers, leading Eleven to banish him to the Upside Down.
  • Years later, when he meets up with Eleven again, he makes it clear that his interest in recruiting her for his crusade is gone and he now wants to kill her to prevent her from stopping him and to get back at her for deforming him when she sent him through the portal, so whatever care he had for Eleven (if it was once genuine at all) was definitely shredded the moment she banished him to the Upside Down.
• Once he was sent to the Upside Down, he took the Hive Mind of that world, shaping the shadow of the cloud into what would become known as "the Mind Flayer" and the Upside Down into his own image of an ideal world. While he is initially a badly injured human when he finds the cloud, he somehow uses it to give himself a fearsome and inhuman appearance and a deep and malevolent voice to scare his victims even further.
  • It makes him the one responsible for absolutely all the horrors from the Upside Down faced by the protagonists in the previous seasons, also showing him as the one responsible for all the deaths the Upside Down creatures caused, as he controls the Hive Mind and made it clear that all the events since the Demogorgon arrival in season 1 until the Mind Flayer's proxy in season 3 were part of his plan to dominate the world, and he is the real one behind "the Mind Flayer's genocidal plot".
    • It's also implied that the Demogorgon and other Upside Down creatures weren't homicidal before Vecna took over the Hive Mind since they didn't attack him when he came, making him responsible for corrupting a realm. It also makes his misanthropy hypocritical, since he accuses humans of corrupting the natural order of the world to the end of being rather unique pests, when the one who does that is actually him, corrupting an entire realm to his own image so he can harass and eventually obliterate human civilization. This proves that Vecna is nothing more than an egomaniac with a strong God-complex and a hate for everything who refuses to be what one man would like them to be, not a well-intentioned extremist wanting to free the world from a "plague".

Season 1

• Since he is the one who controls all the creatures from the Upside Down, he is directly responsible for the Demogorgon's actions, such as the abduction of Will Byers, scarring Brenner's face and the murder of Barbara Holland, Shepard, an innocent scientist, two hunters, several agents and a deer, despite not physically appearing in the season, making him the direct cause of the entire show's plot.

Season 2

• Psychologically torments and then possesses Will to gain access to the real world.
• Nearly killed Hopper with the vines by strangling him to death.
• Almost killed the Party and Steve at the junkyard via the Demodogs.
• Commands his Demodogs to attack the Hawkins National Laboratory, ruthlessly slaughtering the scientists and agents there purely for amusem*nt, forcing Will to lie to allow the process to go smoother.
• Has his Demodogs devour Joyce Byers' boyfriend Bob Newby right in front of her, despite him posing no threat to his plans.
• Tries to attack Joyce and Jonathan Byers, Will's mother and brother, when they force him out of Will's body.

Season 3

• Enacts his revenge by brainwashing the Starcourt Mall rats which infected Doris Driscoll.
• Possesses Billy Hargrove due to his proximity to Max Mayfield due to both being step-siblings, who is a member of the Party whom Vecna wanted to make use of later on.
• Uses Billy to brainwash Heather Holloway and her parents, and proceeds to spread his influence to more innocent Hawkins citizens, essentially "flaying" them.
• Forces dozens of flayed individuals to consume dangerous chemicals like bleach and melt into nothing but disgusting flesh and organs so he can form a proxy avatar for himself out of meat in lieu of smoke, killing them in the process. To make matters worse, all of them were still conscious when they died.
  • Among the "flayed" whom he summoned to form his avatar, in addition to Heather (a teen) and Driscoll (an elder), there was Adam, a child who was attending the Roane County Fair with a friend of his, showing that Vecna is willing to go after children, teens and elders as long he could get enough flesh for his proxy avatar.
• Brainwashes Bruce Lowe and Tom Holloway at the hospital and has them go after the Party to let Doris Driscoll return to his spot, killing several hospital workers in the process.
• Almost kills the Party at the sauna while beguiling them to attempt exorcising the Mind Flayer from Billy some days ago, threatening to gut Max and nearly strangling Eleven to death.
• Assaults Eleven repeatedly until severing her psychic powers, rendering her vulnerable for an entire year until she managed to recover her powers thanks to the efforts of Brenner and Dr. Sam Owens in the following season.
• Grievously injures Eleven to absorb her powers to open portals.
• Has Billy knock out Max, Mike and Eleven and bring the latter to him.
• Kills Billy for betraying him and deciding to protect Eleven even though Billy was no threat to him. This happened right in front of Max, traumatizing her severely with guilt.
• Does all he can to kill the Party before Hopper and Joyce manage to close the Russian gate and shut down his proxy avatar, forcing the original incarnation of the Mind Flayer to return to the hellscape from whence it came.

Season 4

Volume 1

• Kills Hawkins High cheerleader Chrissy Cunningham at the Munson family's trailer while vising her friend Eddie Munson after stalking her for a while, tormenting her with her visions of her emotionally abusive mother and taunting her for her eating disorder.
  • This act also horrifies Eddie and incriminates him from killing Chrissy, causing her boyfriend Jason Carver and his friends to hunt him and his Hellfire gaming club down under the suspicion that they are a satanic cult. Similarly, it causes Lieutenant Colonel Jack Sullivan to suspect Eleven to have murdered Chrissy, leading Sullivan to pursue Eleven and her friends throughout the season.
• Torments Hawkins High reporter Fred Benson by impersonating a police officer and later a child at a funeral while calling him a murderer due to a car accident that he was in after he and Nancy Wheeler came to interview Eddie's neighbors and uncle about what happened, then kills him after luring him into the forest and then to the highway, dropping his corpse there.
• Impersonates Max's mother while Max has a heartfelt talk with her, just so he can torment her and taunt her that everything, like Billy's death, is her fault.
• Tries to kill Max while she visits Billy's grave by taking Billy's form and trying to strangle her with eldritch tentacles summoned by him.
• Attempts to crush Max to death with wreckage pieces he drops while she escapes from his mental prison thanks to her favorite song being played back in the real world by her friends.
• Kills Patrick McKinney, one of Jason Carver's friends, while he swam with Jason to capture Eddie at the lake, targeting him due to abuse he suffers from his parents.
• Pulls Steve into the Upside Down and sent the Demobats to maul him to death, only failing due to the intervention of Nancy, Robin and Eddie.
• Traps Nancy Wheeler as she tries to escape alongside Robin Buckley and Eddie from the Upside Down through the portal created with Chrissy's murder, summons her to the Upside Down's version of Steve Harrington's pool, where he showed her deceased friend Barbara Holland's corpse and filled the pool with what was presumably Barb's blood to taunt her for leaving her friend alone when the Demogorgon was lurking through there that night.
• Planned to exactly open four portals over Hawkins with four murders, being this the reason he killed Chrissy, Fred, and Patrick, so he could bring the Upside Down into the real world, which would have brought the end of all life as we know it.

Volume 2

• When Max, as part of the Party's plan to defeat him, confesses that sometimes she did wish something bad happen to Billy (though justified, as Billy was an abusive, racist, misogynistic bully to her due to being abused by his father Neil), Vecna taunts her by posing as her boyfriend Lucas Sinclair, accusing her of being a bad person and that she deserves to be taken out by him in an attempt for her to surrender and let herself be killed, leading Max to realize that it isn't Lucas the one confronting her.
• Summons a hallucination of Billy being trapped inside a sauna to psychologically torment Max.
• After Max takes solace in a happy memory, which is when she and Lucas danced during the Hawkins Middle School's Snow Ball of 1984, Vecna scares her by popping out balloons filled with blood, stopping the music slowly and withering away her surroundings.
• Through his vines, he brutally strangles Nancy, Steve, and Robin for an extended period of time, intending to make them suffer as long and slowly as possible to torment Eleven further.
• Uses the Mind Flayer particles in the Soviet Union to take control of the Demodogs and the Russian Demogorgon, making them slaughter the guards and attempt to kill Hopper, Murray and Joyce.
• Feigns to be impressed by Max's courage, but dismisses her as weak and tries to kill her before Eleven comes to her rescue.
• Tries to kill Eleven for banishing him to the Upside Down in the first place, even swatting Max away when she tries to stab him to save her friend.
• Expresses his hatred for humanity, hints that he plans to kill all humans in his quest to recreate the world in his own image, and openly rejects Eleven’s offer of redemption.
• Restrains both Eleven and Max to pillars beside the ones where the corpses of Chrissy, Fred, and Patrick are adhered and announces his intentions to kill Max in front of Eleven before killing her just to spite her for deforming him when she sent him to the Upside Down even though that wasn't Eleven's intentions, prompting Eleven to use her happy memories.
• Despite that Eleven later does her best to undo the damage he caused, his actions leave long-lasting consequences, mainly:
  • Kills Max Mayfield just like his other victims, though he doesn't get to gouge her eyes (seemingly leaving her blinded), and while Eleven manages to resurrect her, she has been left in a brain-dead state (with most doctors assuring the Party that she isn't likely to survive) and her temporary death counted on Vecna's spell to bring the Upside Down to the Earth. It's also implied that she's still dead as Eleven couldn't find her when she searched for her in her mind.
  • Although his defeat apparently prevents him from causing as much damage as he intended, the Upside Down's portals cause an earthquake over Hawkins, destroying countless buildings, killing at least twenty-two people, including Jason, injuring countless civilians, and leaving many people disappeared, presumably dead. This, coupled with his actions against the Starcourt Mall last year, seems to have been the final straw for some of the local population, who have decided to leave the town for good.
  • By sending his Demobats after Eddie Munson while the Party tried to kill him at his lair, Eddie was mauled to death, preventing him from clearing up his name and leaving him to be remembered as the leader of a Satanist cult, with people most likely being glad that he is dead despite his heroic sacrifice, leaving his uncle Wayne all alone.
  • By opening the 4 gates and merging the real world and the Upside-Down together, he has deliberately put the entire Earth along with the entire human race under the threat of destruction and complete annihilation, as the merged gates would be allowed to continually spread and allow the Vines, Demogorgons, Demobats, Demodogs, The Mind Flayer, his proxy and possibly even worse creatures to enter our world and cause untold death and destruction allowing his dark vision of the world to be realized. This will also lead the Party and the heroes of the show to prepare for the final battle and war for the sake of not only Hawkins, but the world itself.

Trivia

• Despite his Pure Evil status, Vecna's actor Jamie Campbell Bower has shared his own opinions about his character that paint Vecna in a not fully monstruous light or justify some of his actions, though Bower only did so in order to play his character (stating that he doesn't think he is sympathetic even if he sympathizes with him) and nothing in the show confirms Vecna has redeeming qualities.
  • He stated to Yahoo! Finance that he sympathized with his character in order to play him, believing that he snapped due to feeling disenfranchised by society, having some valid points about life and that he did care for Eleven until she rejected him, still respecting her like if they were siblings but selfishly wanting her to preserve her part of him and causing her all discomfort he can, in addition to never planning to redeem himself not even before being banished to the Upside Down.
  • He told to Variety that Vecna despised his father and his superiors for murdering civilian innocents during World War II while posing as "upstanding citizens" and still holds on some of his humanity, but since Eleven banished him much to his irritation, Vecna is full of rage and resentment because of all the things he lost that way. Bower even said that he views Vecna as a point of conflict, yet not as evil or villainous, and that he sides with him.
  • He explained to CBR.com that to get into character, he felt that Vecna as a very misunderstood boy that started out a journey of isolation as he felt removed from his society and lost in a strange way as he felt that world he grew up in was full of lies. Being raised later on by Martin Brenner didn't help him to do anything but feel resented as Brenner wanted to order him all the time and supress his powers, so when he met Eleven, he decided to use her so they could both escape from Brenner's clutches, but once he told her his true plans, Eleven ruined his life by sending him to the Upside Down, leading him to feel alone again, turn his resentment into fury and target Eleven for turning on him.
  • He further described to Tell-Tale TV his feelings on playing Vecna as him feeling that he counts with his own belief system that he considers true about the world being a brutal and savage place, either because of comformational bias or not, and that he is beyond a redemption arc as he is too rooted in his belief system after all those isolating years he spent resented in the Upside Down.
• It's implied that Vecna deliberately played a role in Jason Carver's fall to villainy. When it came to killing Patrick McKinney, he skipped his usual five days pattern and instead killed him only two days after selecting him, right in front of Jason and Eddie Munson, and didn't even put him in a trance while doing so. The timing of the murder almost seems to perfect to point to Eddie being the killer (as Mason Dye confirmed if Patrick had died at any other point, Jason would have believed Eddie's innocence).
• Before the release of Season 4, it was believed that the Mind Flayer was 001 due to its apparent past with Eleven, aside from the fact that it was behind the events of the second and third seasons. The theory later proved half-right as Mind Flayer is, for all its intents and purposes, the monstrous avatar of 001 aka Vecna/Henry Creel's will all along shaped from a mass of cloud particles he stumbled upon following his exile into the Upside Down after his defeat at the hands of Eleven.
  • On a related note, this revelation clarified Mind Flayer's Pure Evil nature is a reflection of 001's malice, something which presented moral agency issues unless it inherited its puppeteer's ability to comprehend or do things beyond being evil. As of this writing, the Mind Flayer is now considered just another alias of Vecna.
• Vecna is largely based on Freddy Krueger and It, two Pure Evil villains similarly, due to their abilities to create nightmares and horrifying visions.
  • His similarities to It are very fitting, because not only the Duffer Brothers originally expressed interest in directing the 2017-2019 two-parter film adaptation of It and taking inspiration from King's works for Stranger Things.
  • Ironically, Freddy Krueger's actor Robert Englund appears in the show as Vecna’s father, Victor Creel.
• Vecna is the sole Stranger Things Pure Evil to not be part of the Soviet Union, as Warden Melnikov and Dr. Karine are Soviets. He is also the only one to not be human but a monster, even though Vecna used to be human before his communion with the Mind Flayer redesigned his flesh and deepened his voice.
• In the upcoming Stranger Things: The First Shadow, the Duffer brothers mention Bob Newby's sister, Patty, having a romantic relationship with Henry. It is unknown how this will affect his status as Pure Evil (although given he personally murdered Bob it may by unlikely it could redeem him.)

External Links

• Vecna on the Villains Wiki
• Vecna on the Stranger Things Wiki
• Vecna on the The Ultimate Evil Wiki

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