Why Stranger Things Season 4's Monster Is Different To Earlier Villains

At the world premiere of Stranger Things 4, the cast teased the Netflix show's new, calculatedly, psychologically, and evil villain in Vecna.

Why Stranger Things Season 4's Monster Is Different To Earlier Villains

Stranger Things’ cast teases Vecna as a new kind of horror at the worldwide premiere of season 4. The Duffer Brothers’ homage to ‘80s nostalgia, Stranger Things, has become a massive hit for Netflix since premiering in 2016. The series follows a group of high school friends in Hawkins, Indiana as they uncover a mystery involving secret government experiments, a telekinetic child, and the Upside Down: an alternate dimension inhabited by monsters such as Demogorgons and the Mind Flayer. Following a nearly three-year hiatus, Stranger Things season 4 will premiere later this month.

Last month, a trailer for Stranger Things season 4 teased the series’ terrifying new villain Vecna who, in true Stranger Things fashion, is named after a character from Dungeons & Dragons. It’s been revealed that the monster — who vaguely resembles both Game of Thrones‘ Night King and a spider — was created using 90% practical effects. That said, he’s the most human-like creature from the Upside Down audiences have seen to date. In the latest Stranger Things season 4 trailer, Vecna even speaks the words, “you’ve broken everything. Your suffering is almost at an end.” Now, the cast of Stranger Things have given their take on what could be their final foe.

In a recent interview with Variety at the world premiere of Stranger Things season 4 in Brooklyn, N.Y., David Harbour, Gaten Matarazzo, and the rest of the cast were asked about the show’s new villain. Harbour, who plays thought-to-be-dead police chief Jim Hopper, teased Vecna as a new kind of horror that will take fans by surprise. Matarazzo supported Harbour’s sentiment by saying the villain is completely different than what they’ve dealt with in the past. Read the full quotes below:

Harbour: “Vecna is a psychological horror that I don’t think we’ve really seen … The Upside Down has been this wild west world where there are creatures running around, there’s violence, but we’ve never seen something as calculatedly psychologically evil as this. That’s exciting because he is a true big bad that we’ve needed in the series. I don’t directly deal with [Vecna], my storyline’s a little different, but there’s a Demogorgon in a Russian prison that I got to deal with. It’s pretty terrifying.”
Matarazzo: “The craziest thing is just how new and fresh the villain feels compared to what we’ve had before … It’s something that brings a whole new vibe to how we deal with our villains in Stranger Things and how we will continue to do so going forward.”

Stranger Things season 4 will pick up six months after the events of season 3, with Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and their other friends still in Hawkins and a powerless Eleven, Will, Joyce, and Jonathan living in California. At the end of season 3, Eleven’s surrogate father seemingly sacrificed himself to the most recent Upside Down gate. However, season 4’s first trailer revealed Hopper is alive and being held captive in Russia, which means he likely won’t be returning to Hawkins early on in the season. Season 4’s early episodes are already being praised as Stranger Things’ scariest, darkest, and most mature yet. This will no doubt be exemplified by Vecna, who executive producer Shawn Levy told Variety “makes a Demogorgon look cuddly.”

In Stranger Things season 4 trailers, Vecna can be seen in what appears to be the Creel House either in Hawkins or the Upside Down. In addition to Vecna, horror legend Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elm Street) is playing Victor Creel, who will likely have some sort of connection to the penultimate season’s big bad. As theories that Vecna is Billy Hargrove incarnate circulate, very little is known about the monster or his motives. In D&D lore, is a once-human king that ascended to godhood and had the ability to alter reality at will. While the Demogorgon and Mind Flayer were certainly formidable, grotesque, and good for a jump scare, Vecna sounds like Stranger Things’ equivalent of the MCU’s Thanos. It remains to be seen how exactly this new horror will be dealt with when the first half of Stranger Things season 4 premieres on May 27th.