Vecna's first season 4 victim is Chrissy Cunningham (Grace Van Dien), who is targeted based on the trauma she carries due to her body-shaming mother.
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).
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's first victim is cheerleader Chrissy Cunningham, and it's meant to be a mystery at first as to why he's targeting her.
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 ...
After taunting her with incessant chiming from a grandfather clock and appearing before her in hallucinations, Vecna eventually kills her in an incredibly gruesome way. First, she went into a trance with her eyes rolling into her head, then she began to levitate before her eyes were removed and bones were snapped.
Seeing Stranger Things' Vecna Made Millie Bobby Brown Cry
She's a 10, but she cries when she sees Vecna? She's an Eleven.
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.
However, the fact that his '86 victims are all teenagers could be purely coincidental. Vecna chooses which memories he would like to have in his subconscious, and it's only by chance that the victims he wishes to absorb are all Hawkins High students.
This lead to Chrissy developing an eating disorder, most likely anorexia. This meant that Chrissy was afraid of gaining weight and wanted to be thin like the other girls. She also had bulimia, meaning she would purge or regurgitate the food she ate. That's why she threw up in the bathroom.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The 'curse' begins with the victim having severe headaches, nosebleeds and nightmares regarding any traumatic event in their past. Eventually, the cursed will have waking hallucinations, often of other people taunting them about their secrets.
Joe Manganiello's character Arkhan fought against Vecna with the adventuring party Vox Machina in the web series Critical Role. He then stole the Hand of Vecna and replaced his own hand with the artifact.
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.
Instead of being stricken by the death of a loved one like Max was, Chrissy's trauma stems from her troubled home life. She endures constant body shaming and emotional abuse from her mother Laura, which eventually drives Chrissy to bulimia—a development revealed when Max crosses paths with her in the bathroom.
The episode then cuts to Vecna in 1980s Upside Down, zooming in on his arm, where a tentacle slides away to uncover 001 tattooed on his wrist. So Vecna is 001, who is also Victor Creel's son.
He didn't name himself Vecna, the kids did. They named him after a DnD character who's a wizard, since Vecna's curse sounds like something a dark wizard would do.
"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."