Vecna is the main antagonist from the fourth season of Stranger Things. He is portrayed by
Vecna was the original child studied by Dr. Brenner and the son of Victor Creel. He's the infamous Number One, but had his powers blocked and worked as an aide in the Hawkins National Lab.
One powerful reveal shows that Vecna was a boy called Henry Creel, who discovered he had powers such as telekinesis and a form of mind control, which he used to kill his family. His father, Victor Creel (played by horror icon Robert Englund), was blamed.
Vecna was not always a hideous beast of the Upside Down. He was once a troubled child in the real world named Henry Creel.
A 1959 flashback in the mid-season 4 finale reveals a 12-year-old One (Jamie Campbell Bower). That puts One, a.k.a. Vecna, as 24 when Eleven was born. "The theory is that Brenner knew that none of the kids, numbers Two through Ten, were as strong as number One," one of the podcast hosts said in the TikTok clip.
In episode 7, Vecna is revealed to be Henry Creel (played as a youngster by Raphael Luce), the son of Victor Creel (Robert Englund) and his wife Virginia (Tyner Rushing) shown in the 1950s flashbacks.
Hawkins has suffered a lot of trauma over the years - not all of which is connected to Hawkins Lab and the Upside Down - and Vecna's curse takes advantage of that. Vecna appears to carefully choose people who feel a strong sense of guilt or shame, particularly if those emotions are repressed.
Brenner (Matthew Modine) states in the Stranger Things episode "Papa" that Vecna "consumes" everything about his victims, Vecna targets traumatized victims because it builds for him a well of sad and angry memories to draw from. With each victim, he can become gradually more powerful.
Ultimately, it is revealed in Stranger Things season 4's finale that the reason why Vecna was killing Hawkins teenagers was to create a massive gate that merges the Right Side Up with the Upside Down - and he specifically needed four bodies to do so.
Stranger Things' Vecna is inherently evil and doesn't seem to have a personality outside his desire to eradicate living things (something that isn't necessarily a bad thing.) As Henry Creel, he has always looked down on people and deemed that he is of a superior form.
Next up, the viewers go on to theorise that One/Vecna is actually Eleven's dad. Yep, told you it was wild. The theory claims that Brenner wanted to create a child with stronger powers, so he waited until One was old enough to become a father.
In his twisted mind, Vecna believes that he his helping the world by wiping out humans, as a "predator, but for good." When Vecna asks for El to join him, it's because he also sees her as a predator, "better" than humans. He offers her his path as a sort of freedom, as they reshaped the world in their image.
Curiously, he also seems obsessed with time, projecting strange visions into his victims' minds—including of the grandfather clock from his home in the Creel House. Vecna's obsession with time appears to be linked to his hatred of humanity.
Eleven has a memory during this episode and realizes that 001/Henry Creel (Jamie Campbell Bower) wants her to join him on his evil journey, and she banished him to the Upside Down. 001 then transformed into Vecna, the horrifying Stranger Things villain.
While intending to get his revenge on Eleven and Brenner, Vecna also goes after victims who have dealt with traumatizing experiences in the past (reminiscent of his childhood and his time at the Hawkins lab).
Vecna was born as a human, centuries ago as a member of the untouchable caste in the Flan city of Fleeth on Oerth. He was initially trained by his mother, Mazzel, in the art of magic, before she was executed by the government of Fleeth for practicing witchcraft.
What is the significance of 4 for Vecna? The new season shows that the four chimes of the grandfather clock symbolize the four victims Vecna needs to claim in order to enter our dimension and take over humanity.
Nancy, Steve and Robin get freed too. They rush to find Vecna's body and burn it down. With this Vecna's soul turns to ash in front of Eleven. Max's dies in Lucas' arms, thus getting Vecna his fourth kill.
In episode 9, we see Eleven piggyback her way into Max's memories and battle Vecna from within his Mind Lair. Vecna eventually gets the upper hand and Eleven loses. Despite somehow saving Max from death, Vecna's masterplan worked as the Upside Down finally tore its way through Hawkins.
And while his usual modus operandi is to embody his victims' negative self-talk (another very real psychological phenomenon), this time he is telling Nancy his plans and then releasing her so she can report back to everybody—Eleven included—that the end is nigh, with the goal of discouraging and disempowering them.
Vecna's first big credited kill was Chrissy Cunningham (Grace Van Dien). He followed that murder with canonically terrible driver Fred Benson (Logan Riley Bruner) and basketball star Patrick McKinney (Myles Truitt). But wait, there's more.
By the time he was 12, his mother had decided to call Dr. Martin Brenner to help figure out her son's strangeness. This enraged Henry, who later murdered his mother and sister using his supernatural abilities.
Once he takes control of the mind, he traumatizes them by showing the visions of their dark past. He takes them to unknown places and gives them a glimpse of himself. The pain of his victims doesn't end here. Every single one of his victims experiences nose bleeding and severe headaches as well.
It seems that the reason why Vecna wasn't killing for the seven years after the Hawkins Lab massacre was because he was waiting to become more powerful as the Mind Flayer and Demogorgons took more victims, as he was likely weakened after being thrown into the dimension.
"Vecna really is a creature that has mutated in the last however many couple of decades during his time in the Upside Down," prosthetics designer Barrie Gower said. "This is where he has become more overtaken by the Upside Down world and become pretty much possessed and mutated."