Vecna's '86 victims include Chrissy Cunningham (Grace Van Dien), who suffered from her mother's body-shaming abuse. School newspaper reporter Fred Benson (Logan Riley Bruner) fled from a deadly car accident that continues to haunt him. Patrick was targeted due to his father's abuse of him.
In the real world, he makes the victim levitate while in their trance, before snapping their bones and neck, and crushing their eyes. The murder site then becomes a small gate into the Upside Down, as part of a long term goal to apparently bleed both dimensions into one.
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).
Vecna has a very specific m.o. throughout Stranger Things 4; he chooses a target, calls to them in their minds while causing headaches, nosebleeds, and other minor physical ailments, and eventually he makes them see hallucinations before finally brutally killing them.
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.
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 lives in the Upside Down and preys on people's past traumas and guilt. The monster curses its victims, making them relive their trauma in progressively more gruesome ways until it violently kills them.
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.
Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) clarifies that Vecna "consumes" his victims, as he isn't interested in simply killing them - meaning Vecna takes everything about and from a person.
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.
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 seems to be actually intrigued by Nancy being able to figure him out, to be able to get this close to the truth... I think this is more Vecna's narcissistic traits that pull him to Nancy, why he wants to give her this information."
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.
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.
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.
When One massacres the rest of the children in Hawkins Lab, Eleven banishes him to the Upside Down in the same way she banishes the Demogorgon from season one. One is sent hurtling through the Mind Flayer's lightning and is horribly disfigured, transforming into Vecna.
Vecna feeds off of the dark truths of people who don't show their full selves to the world, which makes anyone who has pain, grief, shame, or other secrets vulnerable.
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.
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).
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.
Whenever victims become entranced or possessed by Vecna, their eyes form a milky glaze, until they meet their demise as Vecna plucks their eyeballs out. Also, when Vecna's victims hallucinate — an early indicator they've been targeted by Vecna — the people in their hallucinations have milky eyes.
The latest series of Stranger Things is another brilliant blend of horror, sci-fi fantasy and drama. But new villain Vecna is a reflection of something very real: post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and grief.
For Vecna's voice, Henighan says they took Campbell Bower's performance and manipulated his voice so that “the clarity, the strength and the power was there. …
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.
Unlike the reporters at the Hawkins Post, Fred treated Nancy with respect. Though Fred appeared to be bright and level-headed, he harbored extreme guilt for his role in the fatal 1985 car accident, and believed many people look at him as a "murderer." This guilt and mental unrest made him a target of Vecna.