Using his supernatural psychokinetic abilities, Vecna can probe and influence the minds of others. Motivated by a cruel and misanthropic philosophy, Vecna targets particularly traumatized, mentally ill or insecure individuals.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
What was Chrissy's Trauma? Chrissy's life appears to be free from flaws on the surface, but in reality, she is struggling terribly to conceal her depression and self-image stemming. She was struggling with these issues, which resulted in her developing an eating disorder due to her mother's verbally abusive comments.
Vecna feeds off his victims' trauma and haunts them with their own darkest thoughts.
If Vecna can overwhelm their victim with fear, and keep them from resisting, their fate is almost certainly sealed. In the real world, he makes the victim levitate while in their trance, before snapping their bones and neck, and crushing their eyes.
What Does the Grandfather Clock in "Stranger Things" Mean? 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.
Vecna as a Means for Externalizing Trauma and Depression
Chaiken suggests that while Vecna is a source of horror in Stranger Things, the monster can also serve as a useful vessel for externalizing issues like trauma and depression.
6 Vecna Takes A Physical Toll
Vecna's power not only takes a mental toll but also a physical one. Much like depression, Vecna's victims experience physical symptoms such as exhaustion, lack of sleep, headaches, and nosebleeds.
Vecna's use of his victims' guilty conscious to terrorize his prey is an obvious tool in his arsenal. What is more subtle and powerful is that he uses shame to isolate and control. All of his victims, starting with Henry's father, believe that if people know the truth about them, they will face rejection.
His first victim was Chrissy Cunningham. Vecna targeted Chrissy by using her depression and eating disorder against her in his visions. Chrissy was killed in Eddie Munson's trailer, and the first gate was opened on the ceiling.
In simple words, Vecna needs a total of four gates to take over Hawkins and rule it. Now, you must be thinking, why is Vecna killing people if he can take over the complete Hawkins? Well, in one of the previous episodes, it was revealed that with each person Vecna kills, he creates an opening to the real world.
Realizing he had tremendous psychic power, he haunted his family with visions before ultimately killing most of them. His father was framed for the murders and locked away in a mental hospital as a disturbed serial killer. Henry then found himself in the care of Brenner, who decided he wanted more kids like the boy.
He was One, who eventually proved to be impossible to discipline. Because of that, Brenner put a chip in his neck to mute his powers and Henry became the lab worker who formed a special bond with Eleven when he realized that she was being ostracized by the other children.
As Vecna, he uses these mental abilities as a way to psychologically weaken and lure in his victims – much in a way that Pennywise, Freddie Kruger, and Pinhead do. (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.
Ready to see the prosthetics designer in action? Keep reading! Season four of Stranger Things saw its scariest villain yet: Vecna. Played by Jamie Campbell Bower, each prosthetic was glued to his skin with medical adhesive by prosthetics designer Barrie Gower and his team.
Essentially, Vecna hates humanity, and wants to take over their world. He had hoped that Eleven would help him achieve this goal. But when he realised she wouldn't, Vecna instead used her.
Together, their powers combined are the exact powers of 001/Henry. Fans are now theorising that the powers of both 011 and 008, who have the combined power of 001, is what is needed to finally match and defeat Vecna. To put it simply, 011 + 008 + [with the combined power of] 001 = 020, a.k.a. Erica's critical hit.
She breaks free, momentarily incapacitates Vecna, and runs with the determination to live toward her friends, dodging debris that Vecna throws in her path. Max hurls herself through the portal, awakes from the trance, and is held by Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin).
In one scene, Max (Sadie Sink) can hear her throwing up in the bathroom, and it's later revealed that she struggles with her mother's emotional abuse over her weight. Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
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.