The Season 4 Stranger Things monster: Vecna, the curse, and the demobats explained
Season 4 · The monster · Spring 1986
The season 4 monster is neither a beast nor a shadow: it is a man. Vecna, a wasted sorcerer of the Upside Down, kills his victims at a distance after haunting them for days, and each of his deaths opens a gate under Hawkins. Here is who he is, how his curse works, and why a 1985 song saved Max.
The essentials
- Name: Vecna, after the wizard from Dungeons & Dragons
- Identity: Henry Creel, the lab's subject Number One
- Method: a mental curse, which ends by breaking the body
- Creatures: the demobats, bats of the Upside Down
Contents
The Season 4 monster: the clock, then the void
It all starts with a tick-tock. The victims hear a grandfather clock nobody else hears, bleed from the nose, lose their sense of time and see their worst memories take form: a dead brother, an accident, a guilt. After a few days, a trance carries them into the monster's mind. There, he lifts them, breaks their limbs, sinks their eyes, and the real body suffers the same thing.
Chrissy Cunningham, the cheerleader, dies that way in Eddie Munson's trailer. Then Fred Benson, Nancy's classmate at the school paper. Then Patrick McKinney, from the basketball team. At each death, a gate opens at the exact spot where the victim fell.
| Victim | Place | What Vecna used |
|---|---|---|
| Chrissy Cunningham | Eddie's trailer, Forest Hills park | Her mother, her eating disorder |
| Fred Benson | Road near the trailer park | A car accident he fled |
| Patrick McKinney | Lovers' Lake | A violent father |
| Max Mayfield | the Creel house | Billy's death; she survives |
The Hellfire Club T-shirt, Eddie's.
In the shopMen's Demogorgon Run T-shirt39,90 €See the product
Who is Vecna
Under the tentacles, there is Henry Creel. Born in 1947, the child moves to Hawkins with his parents and his sister in 1959, discovers his powers, and kills his mother and his sister; his father Victor, accused, is committed. Dr. Brenner takes the boy, tattoos him "001" and makes him the first subject of his program, before binding his powers with a chip.
Much later, having become the lab janitor, Henry has the chip removed by little Eleven and massacres all the other children. Eleven, terrified, throws him through a gate. On the other side, his skin burns and deforms: Vecna is born, and he spends the next seven years shaping the Upside Down in his image.
A name borrowed from the gameIt is Dustin and the Hellfire Club who name him: Vecna is a wizard turned lich in Dungeons & Dragons, immortal and missing his hand and his eye. The monster itself has no name for itself.
The demobats
The season's creatures are bats with petal mouths, that nest in the Upside Down Creel house and attack in a swarm, with a tail able to strangle. They wound Steve in the lake, then descend on Eddie, who draws them away from the house to cover his friends. He dies in the Upside Down trailer, under their bites, in Dustin's arms.
With them, the Upside Down of season 4 also fills with vines that form a single consciousness: touching one of them is touching Vecna.
The plan: four deaths, four rifts
The monster does not kill at random. Each death opens a rift, and it needs four of them for the cracks to join and Hawkins to open wide. Three are already there when the group understands: the trailer, the road, the lake. The fourth has to be Max, whom it chose for her guilt over Billy.
As soon as the link is established with the Upside Down, the Mind Flayer and its monsters appear as the tools of a single brain: Henry modeled that shadow on his arrival, and he is the one who sent it to Hawkins in 1984 and 1985.
The defense: a song
Max is snatched at the cemetery, at Billy's grave. Dustin and Lucas understand that music can bring her back: her happy memories, carried by a song, open a door in the trance. "Running Up That Hill" by Kate Bush, in her walkman, gives her the way out, and she runs toward her friends while the monster screams behind her.
That moment, in the fourth episode, sent the 1985 song back to the top of charts worldwide thirty-seven years after its release.
The Vecna figure, with his vines.
In the shopLego Vecna mini figure and his vines14,90 €See the product
The finale: the attack on the Creel house
The last episode's plan is called the “piggyback”: Max serves as bait to draw Vecna into his trance, while Eleven, from a Nevada pizzeria, enters Max's mind to face him. In the Upside Down, Nancy, Steve, and Robin burn and riddle the monster's body with Molotov cocktails and a shotgun; Nancy sends him through the window. But when they go down, he has disappeared.
Max, for her part, dies for a few seconds, limbs broken and eyes closed, before Eleven brings her back. Four gates meet, the earth opens in a cross in the middle of Hawkins, and the season ends on a rain of ash: the Upside Down starts to come over to our side.
How Vecna was made
Vecna is, unlike the monsters of the previous seasons, an actor in flesh and blood. Jamie Campbell Bower spent long hours in makeup every day to put on a full prosthetic costume, with no CGI for the body; only the tendrils around him and certain effects were added in post-production. The Duffers wanted a monster who speaks, who looks, and whose expressions you can read under the burned skin.
The character was kept secret to the end. Bower was presented as “Peter Ballard,” a lab orderly, in the first six episodes; the seventh chapter's reveal, Peter is Henry, Henry is One, One is Vecna, had been built to surprise even credit readers.
What Vecna wants, in 1986
Vecna's plan is explained by Nancy after her vision: four murders, four rifts, and the town opening. Each victim, killed at the end of the curse, leaves behind a gate to the Upside Down at the place of their death. Chrissy in the trailer, Fred on the road, Patrick in the lake, and Max at the cemetery. The four faults, lined up, are meant to join and drop Hawkins onto the other side.
That plan has a character logic. Henry Creel, exiled in the Upside Down in 1979, cannot come back alone; he needs the world to come to him. The victims he chooses are all haunted by a guilt, a mother, an accident, a brother, because it is through the wound that he enters. The last season will show what these four gates produced: a crack that cuts the town in two, the quarantine, and the army.
The four victims of the curse
-
Chrissy Cunningham
The cheerleader, haunted by her mother and her eating disorder. She dies in Eddie's trailer on March 21, 1986: the first gate.
-
Fred Benson
The high-school journalist, haunted by a car accident. He dies on the road, near the trailer park: the second rift.
-
Patrick McKinney
The basketball player on Jason's team, haunted by a violent father. He dies above Lover's Lake: the third gate.
-
Max Mayfield
Haunted by Billy's death. She escapes Vecna a first time thanks to Kate Bush, then dies for a minute at the cemetery in the finale, brought back by Eleven: the fourth gate opens anyway.
The Creel house poster.
In the shop44 mm Not Today Vecna pin9,90 €See the product
TakeawayVecna is Henry Creel, the lab's subject One. His curse: a clock, visions, then the body broken at a distance. Each death opens a gate; he needs four. Max is saved by Kate Bush, Eddie dies facing the demobats.
Frequently asked questions
What is the season 4 monster?
Vecna, a human become a creature of the Upside Down: Henry Creel, the lab's first subject, projected to the other side by Eleven when she was a child.
How does Vecna's curse work?
He picks victims eaten away by a trauma, haunts them with a clock and visions for several days, then takes them in a trance and breaks their bodies from a distance.
Who dies because of Vecna in season 4?
Chrissy, Fred, and Patrick. Max is saved by the music then brought back by Eleven after a death of a few seconds. Eddie dies killed by the demobats.
Why does music protect you from Vecna?
A song attached to a happy memory opens a door in the trance. For Max, it is Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill."
Is Vecna played by an actor or with CGI?
By an actor, Jamie Campbell Bower, under a full suit of prosthetics. Only the tendrils and certain effects are added in post-production.
Why does Vecna need four victims?
Because each death opens a gate to the Upside Down at the place where it happens. Four aligned gates have to meet and tip Hawkins over to the other side.