Barb's death implied that whatever the slug does didn't take, so the Mind Flayer reached out to Will instead. It could be that the Mind Flayer needed a younger host, or Barb may have simply died while the Demogorgon was attempting to infect her.
Barb is incredibly innocent and dies because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and trying to be the best friend she could be. And that proves how well Stranger Things crafts its friendship stories.
Unfortunately, her loyalty to Nancy resulted in her disappearance and demise, forcing fans to demand justice for the character. Barb was concerned about Nancy's emerging popularity, especially when it came to her budding relationship with Steve Harrington (Joe Keery).
It was revealed in Stranger Things season 4 that Vecna has been pulling the strings behind the Upside-Down's incursion throughout the show's events, so he may have intentionally kept Will alive in the Upside Down.
He went on to explain that the point of Barb's character was merely to illuminate how vulnerable everyone actually was to the Upside Down and the Demogorgon. Matarazzo continued: "That was what the character was, and I think that bringing her back would kind of defeat the purpose."
A few days later, Eleven, while immersed in a deep psychic state, scoured the Upside Down to find Barb and Will Byers. She discovered Barb's body, witnessing a slug-like creature slithering from Barb's mouth and across her face.
The Demogorgon Tried (& Failed) To Use Barb
Barb's death implied that whatever the slug does didn't take, so the Mind Flayer reached out to Will instead. It could be that the Mind Flayer needed a younger host, or Barb may have simply died while the Demogorgon was attempting to infect her.
Vecna was the one who originally kidnapped Will in season 1.
Brown is likely right in saying that no one created the Upside Down and that the parallel dimension has always existed. And if the boys' science teacher was right in saying there are “infinite variations” of our world in alternate dimensions, there could even be several versions of the Upside Down out there.
They are connected because Will was the first victim. That's it. Eleven is Vecna's true foil, an anti-Vecna, if you will. We learned a lot about Eleven's connection to Vecna and how their brutal fight in Hawkins Lab manifested the Upside Down.
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.
Many theorized she was—spoiler alert—still alive and would make it out of the Upside Down, and they had pretty convincing evidence to back the idea up. But unfortunately, Justice for Barb isn't going to happen.
The Demogorgon
This is the monster that originally took and feasted on Barb (RIP), attacked Nancy through the tree gateway, and tormented both Will and Eleven.
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.
It uses Will because of the connection Will has to Eleven, who would be able to open further gateways to parallel universes so the Mind Flayer would be able to continue this cycle nearly indefinitely. As the Redditor continues, it becomes clear why Will could be the Demogorgon.
Rafael Barba returns for the season finale. Law & Order: SVU will see a familiar face returning to the series for the upcoming season 23 finale as Raúl Esparza returns to reprise his role as Rafael Barba.
Jamie Campbell Bower plays 001 in Stranger Things 4.
He gets punished with electrocution after telling Eleven that Dr. Brenner lied to her about her mother dying during childbirth.
The orderly, who befriended Eleven because she was the most powerful subject, tricks her into removing a chip in his skin. It turns out that the orderly is the mysterious Number One, a man named Henry Creel who came under Brenner's care after killing his parents.
As well as befriending Eleven in order to gain her trust so she would remove his Soteria implant, we learn in the final episode that 001 initially spared El because he wanted her to join him. He viewed her as an ally rather than an enemy because they were "alike".
At his empire's height, Vecna was betrayed and destroyed by his most trusted lieutenant, a vampire called Kas the Bloody-Handed, using a magical sword that Vecna himself had crafted for him, now known as the Sword of Kas.
In previous seasons, Will touching his neck always implied that something bad was going to happen.
Vecna draws power from sad and angry memories and that is the main reason he targets traumatized teens. Those teens are a well of power just there to be absorbed. This is not just a theory, Vecna himself told Eleven about the power that angry and sad memories hold.
For starters, she's a girl, one of the few teen girl characters in the first season. And many LGBTQ+ viewers saw Barb as a closeted queer character with an unrequited crush on Nancy.
After getting pushed around by Steve (who is clearly threatened by Jonathan's obvious crush on Nancy), Nancy sees the Demogorgon in the photo with Barb. Together the teenagers start their own hunt for whatever took both Barb and Will.
Will Byers: Will was found in the Upside Down with a tendril extending down his throat following his capture by the original Demogorgon (see Stage Six below). A month after returning home, Will coughed up a larva and washed it down his bathroom sink drain.