Who is Vecna, the villain of Stranger Things 5: the origin of the monster and the key to understanding the Netflix series
Season 5 of the series connects with the past and gives meaning to everything that has happened over the last ten years.
Now that the first volume of season 5 of Stranger Things is available and millions of people are preparing for the premiere of episodes 5, 6, and 7, it’s the perfect time to catch up and refresh our memories about everything that has happened in Hawkins and the Upside Down. And to bring order and meaning to everything we saw in the first four seasons, there is one key element we must address: who is Vecna, what is his origin, because only then will we understand the story of Stranger Things Season 5.
- Warning: for obvious reasons, spoilers for ‘Stranger Things’ are included below.
Who is Vecna and what is his relationship with Eleven?
Vecna is presented as a horrible humanoid monster who appears in season 4 of Stranger Things to torture his victims by making them suffer visions of childhood traumas. Then, when they are at their weakest in the face of their worst memories, the creature takes control of their bodies and ends their lives. However, his plans go far beyond murdering innocent people, as Vecna’s real goal is not to kill for the sake of killing, but to become more powerful each time he takes a life in order to continue expanding the Upside Down in Hawkins and open more and more portals to the real world.
As the fourth season progresses, some answers are offered about his identity, especially regarding his origins. Vecna is not a monster like the Demogorgon or the Mind Flayer; he was a flesh-and-blood person named Henry Creel, one of the children on whom Dr. Brenner performed his mind control experiments. He is a “brother” of Eleven, one of the protagonists of the series. In fact, Henry has the number 001 tattooed on him, so we can call him One.
When he was just a child, Henry Creel discovered that he had psychic powers. Henry felt that he was far superior to others, to the point that he became obsessed with the idea that the human race was inferior and that he was different from everyone else. With the help of his powers, he even began to torture members of his family, eventually killing his mother and sister. Although it was Victor Creel, his father, who took the blame for these crimes, Dr. Brenner knew the truth and decided to take Henry with him to conduct experiments on him. His name was forgotten and he became known as 001.
Brenner, aware of her incredible—and dangerous—powers, implanted a strange device capable of blocking her abilities and forced her to serve him for years while he experimented on other children. Later, in late 1979, Henry befriended Eleven, the most powerful girl in the group, and convinced her to remove his implant, telling her that Brenner was evil and planned to kill them all. She believed him, allowed him to regain his powers, and when it seemed they were about to escape together, she discovered that Henry had massacred all the children in the laboratory. The two faced off in a fierce battle in which Eleven discovered her true potential; she had such great power that instead of killing Henry, she caused a tear to another dimension and sent him there.
According to Henry himself in one of the final episodes of season 4 of Stranger Things, he became “an explorer of the realm who discovered something fascinating”: an enormous mass of energy that he molded at will, giving it the shape of that giant arachnid creature that Will Byers saw in his disturbing visions, the Mind Flayer. At that moment, Henry Creel became Vecna, obsessed with one thing: revenge.
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Vecna is able to increase his power and open more portals every time he kills someone. Chrissy Cunningham, Jason Carver, and Fred Benson were his victims in season four, but it’s worth remembering that Vecna was there long before that and that the creatures of the Upside Down follow his orders, so we can attribute every single death we’ve seen to him. Now, in the present, Vecna is preparing his final blow to Hawkins, although episode 4 of Stranger Things 5 has revealed something very important that the evil Henry did not count on...
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