As showcased by the first five minutes of Stranger Things season 5, Vecna's dealings with our heroes began years before they faced him in the previous chapter. The Netflix show's overarching villain – move over, Demogorgons and Mind Flayers – made his big introduction in the Netflix show's fourth installment, which revealed his complicated history with Eleven, Hawkins, and the Upside Down, too.
In true Stranger Things style, the youngsters slowly sniffed out clues about their new adversary across Volume 1, from the connotations of his Dungeons & Dragons-inspired name to the mysterious way in which he claimed his victims. In Volume 2, armed with their newfound knowledge, they waged war against the murderous creature – though they didn't stop him for good, and he'll be back for blood in season 5.
Who is Vecna?
Unlike the Demogorgons, the Mind Flayer and other Upside Down-dwelling creatures, Vecna looks somewhat human-like, and there's a reason for that. At the end of season 4 episode 7, it was revealed that Vecna was once just a human 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'.
Jamie Campbell Bower plays the older version of Henry, though in the credits his name is Peter Ballard. Henry revealed his true identity to Eleven once he manipulated the young girl into helping him escape.
During the final scene of the episode, Henry admits to being a troubled child, and recalls how he used to collect black widow spiders; a character trait that was explored in greater detail in the stage play Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Explaining the "kinship" he felt with the "solitary, deeply misunderstood" creatures, he said: "They are Gods of our world, the most important of our predators. They immobilize and feed on the weak, bringing balance and order to an unstable ecosystem. But the human world was disrupting this harmony. You see, humans are a unique type of pest."
Henry/One continued: "As I practiced, I realized 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 2).
In the late '50s, Henry's father 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, and she "despised" him due to his odd behavior. 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, who was blamed for the crimes, while Henry got sent to Dr. Brenner. When Brenner realized he could not control the boy, he elected to "recreate" him instead, and the program that Eleven became a a part of was born. Brenner brands Henry by tattooing "001" on his arm.
It's interesting to note that while Eleven was born with telepathy and telekinesis, her mother Terry was being experimented on throughout her pregnancy, under Dr. Brenner, as part of Project MKUltra. Henry seems to have always had powers without any such tests.
What is Vecna's deal?
Stranger Things season 4 wasted no time introducing Vecna – and by the end of the very first episode ('The Hellfire Club'), he'd already claimed his first victim: Chrissy (Grace Van Dien). Prior to his fatal attack, he'd broken the cheerleader, who was dating jock Jason (Mason Dye) and struggling with body dysmorphic disorder, and plagued her with confusing, increasingly terrifying visions. Her attempt to stop them with drugs inadvertently left her more vulnerable to Vecna – and that was that.
Next, Vecna went after Hawkins high schooler Patrick (Myles Truitt), who ultimately met the same end as Chrissy. The villain then brought Max (Sadie Sink) to his Mind Lair, knowing she was in a bad place following the death of her stepbrother Billy (Dacre Montgomery). Thankfully, the group worked out that her favorite song – Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill' – could bring her back from the brink of despair in the nick of time, just like a song had helped anchor Victor Creel to the real world many years prior. Unfortunately, Fred (Logan Riley Bruner) was not so lucky, and the basketball player wound up being Vecna's third kill.
When Eddie (Joseph Quinn) described Chrissy's mysterious death to Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), the latter dubbed the baddie "Vecna" after a Dungeons & Dragons figure. 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 Volume 1, Dustin, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), and Erica (Priah Ferguson) got to talking about Vecna's potential motives, and how he seemed to be creating new portals to the Upside Down with each of his murders. The former noted that Eleven opened The Gate by psychically connecting to a Demogorgon and that it's entirely possible Vecna is doing something similar with his victims. Each link, he speculated, could be "powerful enough to rip a hole in the fabric of time and space." It's a theory that proved to be true, with each slaughter causing a gate to open between the real world and the Upside Down.
Then, they got 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 reckoned. "A Five-star general with the power to open gates." That theory, which assumes the Mind Flayer was in charge, is blown out of the water in Volume 2, though, as Vecna admits to Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) that he was behind everything bad that has happened in Hawkins over the last few years, including Will's abduction and the Mind Flayer's possession of Billy.
In the epic two-part finale, Max offered herself up to Vecna as bait while the others tried to "flambé" his body in the Upside Down. With the help of Eleven, who essentially beamed in her consciousness from a pizza dough freezer in Nevada, her plan almost worked, too, but Vecna managed to overpower them both, and killed Max in the real world. Frenzied, Eleven blasted him, as Robin, Steve, and Nancy threw Molotov cocktails at his body elsewhere. With Vecna incapacitated – not dead, more on that later – Eleven brought Max back to life using her powers. Even Eleven's powers couldn't heal Max's injuries, bring her sight back, or shake her out of a coma, though... A fact that sparked an interesting, but bleak, theory among fans.
What is Vecna's connection to the Upside Down?
At the end of season 4 episode 6, titled 'The Dive', Steve (Joe Keery) got sucked into the Upside Down during the gang's quest to find an underwater portal in Lover's Lake. Without thinking, Nancy went in after him, then Robin and Eddie.
After fighting off a bunch of Demobats at the start of season 4 episode 7 'The Massacre at Hawkins Lab', the foursome set out to find the alternate version of the Wheeler house. Nancy remembered stashing some guns in her bedroom, and suggested that if they're going to make it out of the parallel dimension alive, they'd better arm up. When they got to the house, though, they discovered that the guns aren't there. With that, Nancy deduced that they were actually in the past. November 6, 1983, to be precise.
Up until now, it was believed that the first time Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) bridged the gap between our world and the Upside Down was when she accidentally made psychic contact with a Demogorgon on that fateful day in 1983. Then, though, it was revealed that she had already done so in 1979 – and Volume 1's sinister opening flashback, which suggested Eleven slaughtered several doctors and her fellow test subjects, gets turned on its head.
Back in 1986, a desperate Eleven continued to soak herself in the tank-like NINA machine in the hope of regaining her full powers. While floating, she found her consciousness trapped in a memory from 1979, reliving painful events that occurred at the Hawkins National Laboratory, like when she was picked on and beaten by Two and some of the other kids. She thinks her only ally is Papa/Brenner but Adult One warns her not to trust him. One guided Eleven to a secret passageway and instructed her to escape, before asking her to remove a device from his neck using her abilities. When the pair are interrupted, it swiftly became apparent that the chip was a power-dampener, and One viciously took out numerous guards.
The twosome lost one another for a little while, and when Eleven caught up with One in the Rainbow Room, she discovered that he was the one who actually killed their "brothers and sisters". After One explained how he came to be at the lab to Eleven, and confessed to murdering his family, he urged Eleven to join him. In the moment, it seemed as if Henry believed he was helping Eleven by freeing her from Brenner's control. Henry admitted that he wants to live a world where there is no binary control – where there is freedom, and that he sees himself and Eleven as predators, better than humans.
She refused his offer and the pair fought. At first, it looked like Eleven would lose, as One quite literally wiped the floor with her (hence her bloodied appearance in Volume 1's opener), but she eventually overpowered him after thinking about her birth mother, Terry Ives.
Eleven sent him flying through a mirror and pinned him to the wall with her mind. In her rage, Eleven looks to start disintegrating One, but instead sent him through to the Upside Down, opening her first gate to that other dimension. One burst into flames as he is struck by beams of crackling energy, and ultimately becomes Vecna. In Volume 2, Vecna explained to Eleven that he became somewhat of an explorer after being transported to the "other world", and was taken in by both its simplicity and brutality – which goes some way to explain why he looks to want to break the barrier between the Upside Down and Hawkins.
Something we're still curious about, however, is why the Upside Down is seemingly frozen in November 6, 1983, when Eleven first opened a gate back in 1979? What was it about 1983 that had such a major impact on this alternate dimension?
Is Vecna in Stranger Things season 5?
Vecna is definitely back in Stranger Things season 5, as evidenced by all its promotional material – he's still alive. Despite the villain being set alight and shot out of a window by Steve, Robin, and Nancy in the Upside Down, the trio discovered his body had disappeared when they went back to check on it. Later, Will confirmed that he could still sense Vecna in Hawkins.
In season 4's penultimate episode, the gang recalled how the spooky grandfather clock that appeared in Vecna's nightmares always chimed four times. They take that to mean that he must have to kill four victims in order to enact his grand plan of unleashing Demogorgons and the like in the real world. Turns out, while she may have only crossed over for only sixty seconds, Max's "death" counted, and it resulted in an earthquake that saw 22 locals lose their lives and glowing, wound-like gateways popping up all over town. It seemingly revived Vecna, too.
"Now that I'm here, in Hawkins, I can feel him," Will tells Mike, referencing his somewhat dormant connection to the Upside Down. "And he's hurt, he's hurting, but he's still alive. It's strange knowing now who it was this whole time, but I can still remember what he thinks, and how he thinks, and he's not going to stop... ever... not until he's taken everything and everyone. We have to kill him." All that indicates that the final batch of episodes is likely to revolve around our heroes stopping Vecna for good.
Of course, it'll be interesting to see how Eleven and co best Vecna in Stranger Things season 5. But we're equally as curious to discover why Vecna chose Will to assist him in blurring the line between the Upside Down and Hawkins – and how conscious Will was of said plan. The Byers boy has taken a bit of a backseat since season 2, but the Duffer Brothers promise he'll play more of a pivotal role in the final chapter. "William, you are going to help me one last time," Vecna says in the official trailer. We're itching to find out what that means.
Stranger Things 4 is streaming now. If you've already binge-watched all seven episodes, why not check out our list of the best Netflix shows for some viewing inspiration.
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