A Troubled Henry Creel Moves to Hawkins. 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.
Vecna's alignment was changed from Lawful Evil to Neutral Evil in Third Edition, and no in-game explanation has surfaced. Vecna's role in the 3rd edition Greyhawk setting was defined in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (2000). Vecna is detailed in Deities and Demigods (2002).
Henry Creel, also known as One, Vecna, or the Mind Flayer, is the main antagonist of the Netflix original series Stranger Things, serving as the unseen overarching antagonist of Season 1, the unseen main antagonist of Seasons 2 and 3 (as the Mind Flayer), the main antagonist of Season 4 and the main protagonist of the ...
Stranger Things' Upside Down Was Always Shown To Be An Evil Place. At the Hawkins lab in the first season, while Eleven harnesses her psychic abilities, she makes contact with a demogorgon, from another dimension, accidentally opening up a gateway.
He developed a hatred for humanity, believing humans are "a unique type of pest, multiplying and poisoning our world, all while enforcing a [cruel, oppressive] structure of their own." He also found a connection with black widow spiders, who prey on weaker species and keep them from overpopulating.
According to the helpful folks over at the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms fandom wikipedia, Vecna was once a human king who became a lich (a powerful undead wizard). Over time, Vecna grew in power enough to ascend to godhood.
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. However, the show itself doesn't confirm this.
Vecna's obsession with time appears to be linked to his hatred of humanity. He views time as a human imposition on the natural world; an attempt to impose order on nature.
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.
Eleven has a memory during this episode and realizes that 001/Henry Creel (Jamie Campbell Bower) wants her to join him on his evil journey, and she banished him to the Upside Down. 001 then transformed into Vecna, the horrifying Stranger Things villain.
While intending to get his revenge on Eleven and Brenner, Vecna also goes after victims who have dealt with traumatizing experiences in the past (reminiscent of his childhood and his time at the Hawkins lab).
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.
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).
Then, as he was falling through the Upside Down, One became the creature Vecna after lightning struck him in such a way that it changed his skin and made him into the monster he is now.
Patrick was targeted due to his father's abuse of him. Finally, Vecna targets Max for her trauma from witnessing Billy's death and uses Barb's (Shannon Purser) death as a way to use Nancy.
She opened a portal to the Upside Down, which sucked Henry Creel in. There the dark mirror world ripped apart his skin as it began to remake him into something sinister and twisted. But it was a transformation Henry Creel welcomed.
After focusing on positive memories, Max braced herself and pulled at a vine in Vecna's neck, causing him to accidentally release her from the vines' grasp. As Max dashed towards the window, a disgruntled Vecna regained his composure.
However, within the red smoke of Vecna's Mind Lair, it wasn't the song itself that saved her, but the memories it conjured up. What broke through to Max was the happy, loving memories of her friends, particularly Lucas and Eleven, and these were what truly allowed her to break free of Vecna's grasp and escape.
Netflix Vecna has plans for world domination. 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.
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. Though they're clouded with cataracts, Vecna in Stranger Things has both of his eyes.
Played by Jamie Campbell Bower, each prosthetic was glued to his skin with medical adhesive by prosthetics designer Barrie Gower and his team. For the finishing touch, Vecna was covered in "glossy slime to make him really, really glossy and wet looking," according to Gower.
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.
It's revealed that Vecna is actually Victor Creel's son, Henry. After realizing he has powers while feeling alone in his own home, Henry decides to attack his own family and kill them to test his power. Victor is framed for the murders at Creel House, while his son is taken away.
At the height of his empire Vecna was betrayed by Kas. Kas managed to destroy the Archlich before his own death, with the Sword of Kas, a lethal blade of the Undying King's own make, leaving only Vecna's left hand and left eye behind. Vecna eventually returned and by 581, had risen to godhood.
In D&D, Vecna is not, in fact, the strongest villain – the honor is given to Borys, the Red Dragon. He is the greatest danger that players could face; and it just so happens that there is a character in season 4 who already acknowledged that – Will Byers.