Stranger Things Creators Break Down the Deadly Vecna and New Monsters

The most recent trailer for Season 4 of Stranger Things featured a variety of exciting and unsettling elements, including our first look at a humanoid monster, which has been dubbed the “Vecna” by the series’ creators Matt and Ross Duffer. Fans of Dungeons and Dragons quickly picked up on this fact, given that Vecna is an established figure in that lore, though in traditional Stranger Things fashion, the series has drawn inspiration from the fantasy game and put its own spin on it. For those curious about the new creature, the minds behind the series broke down how the beast came to exist. Season 4 of Stranger Things is set to premiere on May 27th.

Over the years, fans of the series have been introduced to all manner of unsettling elements, including the Upside Down dimension, which is linked to Hawkins, Indiana yet has still remained a mysterious realm. In this new season, audiences will meet Robert Englund’s Victor Creel, a figure directly connected to the Vecna, who moved to Hawkins in the ’50s and his life descended into chaos.

“What occurs in [Creel’s] house is pivotal to understanding what has been happening in Hawkins all of these years,” Ross Duffer pointed out, per Entertainment Weekly.

Given Englund’s built-in fan base in the horror genre, his involvement alone was enough to warrant excitement, with the connection his character has to the frightening new figure only having us more excited for the beast’s debut. As if the Vecna itself wasn’t frightening enough, the creature also brings with it some unconventional sentries.

“We always like to introduce a new demo-creature, as you will, and so we were excited about introducing demo-bats,” Matt Duffer detailed. “Maybe one of them alone is not very dangerous, but when there’s hundreds and hundreds of them coming to you at the same time, they’re very, very deadly, and they also have the ability to act as spies, so you may not even see one in the tree, and it spies you, and then suddenly because everything is a hive mind in the Upside Down, every monster in there knows that you’re there.”

Stranger Things Season 4 premieres on Netflix on May 27th.

Are you looking forward to the new season? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!