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.
Nancy, Steve, and Robin torch and shoot Vecna's physical body to smithereens. Before he dies, Vecna taunts Eleven, telling her that although she believes she and her friends have won, “This is only the beginning.” As it happens, Vecna was able to do enough damage to Max that she does die.
Out of all these monsters, Vecna does have heightened intelligence along with personal motivation, which makes him the most dangerous. He also has the power to cause harm from a distance, and that makes him seem more powerful than the Mind Flayer.
While both are powerful beings from the Upside Down capable of taking over Stranger Things' lesser monsters like Demogorgons, Demodogs, and Demobats, the heightened intelligence and personal motivation Vecna possesses likely make him more dangerous.
Vecna had his own strength, combined with the strength of everyone he had killed and absorbed. That means that he wielded his own power, combined with the power of all Brenner's test subjects and the various monsters he had dominated in the Upside Down.
Despite his Pure Evil status, Vecna's actor, Jamie Campbell Bower, stated that he sympathizes with his character, as he believes he snapped due to feeling disenfranchised by society and that he did have some genuine care for Eleven until she rejected him.
(All of which have been cited by show creators the Duffer brothers as inspirations for the villain.) But he does have a surprising weakness: music.
The trio gets upstairs and find Vecna strung up on his vines, unconscious while he deals with Eleven in the mind palace. They torch him with Molotov cocktails, and when he wakes up, Nancy shoots him with a sawed-off shotgun.
Vecna's Hand
This is a reference to the D&D character Vecna, for whom this Vecna is named; the D&D Vecna has a monstrous hand infused with dark magic. The design of Vecna's hand is also a nod to Freddy Krueger, the Nightmare on Elm Street villain who had a huge influence on this season in general.
Physically, yes. Lucas tells his friends that Max is in a coma, and we see her wearing casts on her arms and legs. The Duffer brothers have also confirmed that at the end of Season 4, Max is alive yet "brain dead, blind, and all of her bones are broken." The big mystery is where the redhead is mentally.
As Vecna continued to go after young victims in order to open more portals, he set his sights on Max Mayfield, since she was investigating the deaths of Chrissy and another student named Fred Benson with help from her friends (including Dustin, Steve, and her boyfriend Lucas).
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.
In the D&D realm, a defining feature of Vecna is that he's missing his left hand and left eye. This is because his trusted accomplice, Kas the Bloody-Handed, betrayed him and used the sword Vecna created himself to chop off his left hand and remove his left eye. This ultimately destroyed Vecna.
Eleven was able to overpower Vecna once Mike explained how much he loved her, suggesting she truly did have enough strength to kill Vecna, but the encouragement came too late.
Max has escaped Vecna, so she is safe from Vecna. But you don't just beat depression once and go about the rest of your life. Vecna is still around every corner, and Max has to keep focusing on the things she loves—her friends, her favorite song, her inner strength—because this is a long-haul battle.
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. The entire town opens up to Upside Down, with all portals dissolving.
Kind-hearted cheerleader Chrissy Cunningham (Grace Van Dien) is the first character to be cursed by Vecna, and she dies in season 4, episode 1, "Chapter One: The Hellfire Club." After feeling ill, Chrissy sees the clock and begins picturing her mother, who has always been cruel, saying harsh things about her physical ...
Upon each execution, the psychic connection between Vecna and the victim is powerful enough to tear open a gate between Hawkins and the Upside Down, created in the exact location of the murder.
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.
The character is a longtime D&D villain, one who used his abilities as a mage to turn himself into a lich (an undead magician) in order to avoid a mortal death. Despite achieving immortality, Vecna's physical body was almost completely destroyed by his follower, Kas.
From the beginning, Vecna was a long-vanquished lich—a wizard who used dark forbidden magics to keep themselves effectively immortal but in a perpetual state of undead decay—and while DMs were free to use their imagination and flesh him out into a proper villain, his only official existence in the old D&D books was as ...
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.
Vecna got his start as a couple of magic items
Vecna first appeared in 1976's Eldritch Wizardry, a supplement for the original Dungeon & Dragons rules. Co-author Brian Blume named two artefacts in the supplement: the Hand of Vecna and the Eye of Vecna.
Vecna was not always a hideous beast of the Upside Down. He was once a troubled child in the real world named Henry Creel. Henry's “problems” caused his family to move to Hawkins in 1959. However, the exact issues that led to the relocation are unclear.