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.
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).
Arming himself with a sword and a spiked shield, Kas betrayed Vecna and attempted to slay him, taking Vecna out of his physical body before the evil lich eventually returned.
Eleven didn't kill Vecna, but that doesn't mean she won't beat him in Stranger Things season 5. “Piggybacking” into Max's consciousness gave her a chance to fight him, but it's hard to say if it was ever possible for her to kill him without being in proximity to his physical body.
Billy's death at the end of season three made Max feel guilty about herself, negatively affecting everyone close to her, causing Vecna to use that to his advantage when trying to break through Hawkins.
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.
Yeah, Bower says Brown was crying real tears during that scene. “She was terrified and freaked out. And Caleb [Heymann], our DP, was very smart and saw that she was having this reaction in the beginning of rehearsal and decided to shoot her first. It's so pure and beautiful,” Bower said.
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.
The fan-favorite character ended the season in a coma with her bones broken and eyes blinded at the hands of Vecna. Max technically died for one whole minute before Eleven revived her friend, but Eleven's powers weren't enough to bring Max fully back to life.
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.
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.
It is believed that his wife and children betrayed him in some way, and that Vecna saw their deaths as a way to get revenge and assert his dominance. Finally, it is possible that Vecna's decision to kill his family was simply a result of his own madness and thirst for power.
All in all, Henry Creel/Vecna has directly killed at least 28 people, give or take. Not including Max, of course, who remains alive but in a coma. You could also argue that Vecna low-key killed everyone who died when the cracks ripped through Hawkins, too.
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.
What is the significance of 4 for Vecna? 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.
Well, based on the injuries she sustained, it's likely Max will be blind going forward. Additionally, the Duffer Brothers actually confirmed during a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast that Max is blind and brain dead.
In episode 4 of season 4 of Stranger Things, "Dear Billy," Vecna tries to kill Max. Her friends use the beautiful power of music, specifically "Running Up That Hill," to bring her back.
The reason that Eleven couldn't find Max is actually pretty simple -- Max had already died. That means her soul had already been absorbed into Vecna's consciousness. So, while Eleven restarted Max's heart and brought her body back to life, she was trapped inside of Vecna's hive mind.
In his twisted mind, Vecna believes that he his helping the world by wiping out humans, as a "predator, but for good." When Vecna asks for El to join him, it's because he also sees her as a predator, "better" than humans. He offers her his path as a sort of freedom, as they reshaped the world in their image.
He is terrifying because he has access to secrets and the guilt that accompanies those secrets. Vecna's use of his victims' guilty conscious to terrorize his prey is an obvious tool in his arsenal.
(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.
"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."
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.