Vecna (Stranger Things)
Vecna, born Henry Creel and later revealed as Subject 001, is a fictional character created by the Duffer Brothers for the Netflix television series Stranger Things. Portrayed by Jamie Campbell Bower and Raphael Luce as Henry Creel / Subject 001, the character made his debut in the fourth season, as a diabolic being from the Upside Down that haunts his victims with horrifying visions of their past traumas before killing them in a very brutal way. As the fourth season progresses, he is ultimately to be revealed the ruler of the Upside Down as well as the mastermind behind all of the events of the series that have terrorized the town of Hawkins, beginning with the disappearance of Will Byers. Before becoming Vecna, he was known by his real name Henry. He was born to Victor and Virginia Creel and had an older sister named Alice. After moving with his family to Hawkins, Henry discovered that he possessed telepathic powers and used them to kill his mother and sister, which caused him to fall into coma. Henry was taken by Dr. Brenner where the latter began to experiment on him, causing more children to get the same telepathic abilities. As the years progressed, he became the supervisor for the other children, where he befriended Eleven. However, after revealing his true nature as a misanthropic and nihilistic sociopath to Eleven, the latter succeeded to overpower him and sent him to the Upside Down, where he was gradually disfigured by its abnormal lightning and toxic atmosphere, triggering his transformation into the being known as Vecna. As Vecna, he eventually used his powers in order to control the monsters and became the ruler of the Upside Down, serving as the general and hive mind to all the creatures of the dimension. Since then, Vecna has pulled the strings behind the events and actions of the Mind Flayer and the other Upside Down's lifeforms during the previous seasons, with his role in Will Byers's connection to the Upside Down eventually coming to light. Since his first appearance the character has been well received by both critics and audiences, with strong praise to Bower's performance, make-up design, and the character's backstory reveal in the seventh and ninth episodes. For his performance, he received a nomination from the Best Villain in a Series award at the Critics' Choice Super Awards. Concept and development
Despite sharing the same name, Vecna is loosely based on the Dungeons & Dragons character of the same name much like the other antagonists of the series including the Demogorgons and Mind Flayer. Bower was cast on November 20, 2020, under the original name of "Peter Ballard"; a friendly orderly at a psychiatric hospital. In a 2022 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Bower said this about his role: The Duffer Brothers confirmed that they have planned to introduce Vecna since the development of the first season. They were offered the chance of introducing the character in spin-off comics or books, but they refused as they needed time to develop the character and figure out what role he would play in the series. For the creation of the character, the brothers were inspired by iconic horror movie villains such as Pinhead, Pennywise and Freddy Krueger. This was with the intention of creating a meaner, darker, and more menacing villain for the show, having the ability to traumatize its victims before killing them in a horrifying way by breaking their bones and gouging their eyes out. Suit design
Make-up artist Barrie Gower provided the look for Vecna and other Upside Down creatures. Bower had to wear a prosthetic suit for over 7–10 hours every filming session. The suit was designed with "anemic" skin hose integration with the toxic environment of the Upside Down was apparent through the inclusion of "lot of roots and vines and very organic shapes and fibrous muscle tissue." To achieve this look using mostly practical effects, Gower disclosed that he and his team took a full body cast of Bower, to later sculpt to meet their design needs:

Fictional character biography

Early life
Henry Creel was born in 1947 to Victor, a World War I veteran, and Virginia Creel and had an older sister Alice. The family moved to Hawkins, Indiana in 1959 after Virginia's great-uncle passed away, leaving a small fortune enough for them to move to a new house, in spite of Henry's pessimism. Throughout his childhood, Henry was treated as an outcast and the majority of his superiors considered him "broken" beyond repair. As he explored his new home, he found comfort in black widows living underneath his bathroom and considered them the "most important of the predators" for their role in providing structure for the weak. Henry also began to despise the daily routine of humanity of eating, sleeping, working, reproducing, and dying, saying it was only just a "mindless play" he wanted no part of. One day, Henry tapped into mysterious forces and managed to manipulate the hands of his home's grandfather clock, which became the first sign of Psychokinesis. He began practicing this ability by mutilating animals in his backyard which started to give Victor paranoia, unbeknownst to him it was Henry. He later developed the ability to see through people's past and haunt them their past actions as this ability was conducted on his father, who experienced a memory of the war in which he inadvertently set fire to a building with a crying baby in a cradle. This suspected Victor that a demon was living in their home but Virginia suspected it was all Henry's doing and was intent in sending him to an institution, which Henry deemed ridiculous due to his belief that he wasn't "the one who was broken." One night, Henry used his powers to kill his mother and sister and framed his father for their murder, who was sent to Pennhurst Mental Hospital, where he was driven insane and attempted suicide. Victor was told Henry was in a coma and died a week later as a cover up by Dr. Martin Brenner. Virginia had contacted Brenner prior to her death and gained full custody of Henry. In Hawkins National Lab, Henry became Brenner's first test subject and given the subject name of Subject 001. After numerous failures to keep Henry under control, Brenner ultimately removed him from the group, placed a chip on his neck that suppressed his powers, and replicated his abilities in other children in order to fight back against the Soviet forces. Subject 001, and becoming Vecna
Overtime, Henry became an orderly in the Lab and oversaw the activities and progress of seventeen children who shared his abilities. He took a liking into and befriended Subject 011 "Eleven". After witnessing Eleven being bullied by the other subjects, Henry believed they were alike and the sense that the world cannot understand them. Henry helped Eleven with her powers and later offering her a chance to escape the lab. Henry gave Eleven a key card and told her to meet him in the basement of the lab. There, Eleven removed the Soteria from Henry's neck after he explains he cannot leave because of it and learns Henry is Subject 001. Upon being caught by guards, Henry dispatches them and tells her to wait for him in a closet. Henry would then murder everyone in the facility with the exception of Brenner. After explaining his origins and crimes to a horrified young Eleven, she rejected his offer to join forces with him in order to wipe out humanity and thanks to the loving memory of her mother, she ultimately overpowered One and banished him into another dimension, later nicknamed the Upside Down. In the Upside Down, Henry began to transform into a mutilated and burned creature, later nicknamed "Vecna." For seven years, Vecna put the lifeforms of the dimension under his thrall by combining them all to a shared hive mind, in part thanks to his bond to a creature later known as the Mind Flayer, whose appearance he shaped into a gargantuan spider and who eventually became his vessel to act on Earth. Invasion on Hawkins

Reception
Critics praised Bower's performance as the season's villain. Patrick Caoile of Collider said "For the first time, Stranger Things gives 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. While Vulture's Devon Ivie wrote, "[Bower] has the distinction of embodying three characters, each more unsettling than the last, as the episodes unfurl: a friendly Hawkins Laboratory orderly; Henry Creel, aka "One"; and the most significant villain of the series thus far, Vecna." References

Stranger Things characters
Television characters introduced in 2022