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Stranger Things Season 4: Who is Vecna?


After Netflix released the latest trailer for Stranger Things Season 4 last week, one of the big reveals shown in the trailer was a glimpse of the new villain named Vecna. In a recent interview, the creators of the hit Netflix show, Ross and Matt Duffer (aka the Duffer brothers) discussed the new villain.

Stranger Things Season 4: Who is Vecna?

Vecna
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Credit: Netflix
Vecna

For those who remember Mike and the gang’s favorite pastime, you might have recognized the name. In the game that they are playing, Dungeons and Dragons, Vecna, also known as the Whispered One or the Undying King, was a very powerful lich or in non-geek speak, an undead wizard.

However, in the world of Stranger Things, a Vecna is a slightly more terrifying concept than the one in the Dungeons and Dragons game. A Vecna is a human who mutated into a monster after spending too much time in the Upside Down.

In a virtual press conference back in 2021, the show’s production designer, Barrie Grower, talked about the terrifying new villain.

"The look for Vecna is, he’s humanoid but we are basically integrating lots of shapes and textures and form from The Upside Down, so there’s a lot of kind of roots and vines and very organic sort of shapes and fibrous sort of muscle tissue and what have you," Grower shared (via IGN).

To learn more about the upcoming villain in Season 4, Vecna, We must first understand the events that happened in the Creel House and what happened decades earlier with a man called Victor Creel. The actor portraying Victor is the horror legend behind Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street.

Victor Creel
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Credit: Netflix
Victor Creel

"What occurs in that house is pivotal to understanding what has been happening in Hawkins all of these years," Ross Duffer revealed.

"Part of the drive and tension of this season is that we have this big new evil emerge in Hawkins and for the first time ever, Eleven [Millie Bobby Brown] is not there," Ross Duffer continued. "And not only is she separated by distance, but at the end of season 3, she's lost her powers, so even when she learns about what has happened in Hawkins, she is unable to help them in the same way she has before."

To create this evil humanoid, Gower started with a life cast of the actor to make sure that all of the prosthetics would be skin tight. He and his team spent several weeks using both fiberglass and epoxy resin molds to make warped shapes around the form.

Vecna
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Credit: Netflix
Vecna

"It's still very much a human beneath it, and we still have panels of flesh which are very pale, almost anemic looking," Grower explained.

It was shown in the trailer that Vecna also comes with his own flying monkeys - called demo-bats according to the Duffer Brothers.

Matt Duffer revealed, "We always like to introduce a new demo-creature, as you will, and so we were excited about introducing demo-bats."

Demo-bats
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Credit: Netflix
Demo-bats

"Maybe one of them alone is not very dangerous, but when there's hundreds and hundreds of them coming to you at the same time, they're very, very deadly, and they also have the ability to act as spies, so you may not even see one in the tree, and it spies you, and then suddenly because everything is a hive mind in the Upside Down, every monster in there knows that you're there." Duffer continued.

We’ll be able to find out more about the upcoming villain, Vecna when Stranger Things Season 4 Part 1 hit Netflix on May 27, 2022.

Also Read: Stranger Things Season 4 Reportedly Has a Whopping Budget of $30 Million Per Episode

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