Henry Creel

“

You've... broken... everything. Your time... is almost... at an end.

„

Henry Creel, also known as One, or Vecna, is the main antagonist of the Netflix original series Stranger Things.

He is a mysterious serial killer with psychic powers who is the son of Victor and Virginia Creel, the younger brother of Alice Creel, and the ruler of a dark dimension called "the Upside Down", acting as a hive mind for every entity and creature originating from it, such as the Demogorgons, Demodogs, Demobats and Vines. In his goal to conquer the world, he goes on a killing spree in the town of Hawkins, starting in 1959 in order to start a full-blown invasion of his world on Earth so he can destroy all human life and reshape it for himself.

Roles[]

He serves as the unseen overarching antagonist of Season 1, the unseen main antagonist of Seasons 2 and 3 (in his Mind Flayer form) and the main antagonist of Season 4. He will return in the upcoming fifth and final season in some capacity.

He is also the overarching antagonist of Stranger Things Volume 1: The Other Side, an unseen antagonist in Stranger Things: The Game, and the main antagonist of Stranger Things 3: The Game and Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales. He is also an unseen antagonist in Dead by Daylight, a playable character (through a skin) in Smite, and the main antagonist of "The Vanishing", a crossover mission/DLC for Far Cry 6.

Appearance[]

As a human, Henry Creel was a tall and slender individual, with pale blue eyes and blonde hair, and while combed neatly and short as a child, as an adult it grew past his ears.

As Vecna, he is a monster which, from a distance, resembles a man that has been flayed of all skin (much like the original), but on closer inspection, it is revealed his whole muscular body is now at least partially compromised of many writhing tendrils, while his right hand remains fairly normal, the left has become a massive clawed paw capable of fully enveloping a human head. His face is now akin to a skull, lacking a nose or hair, and his eyes now give off an unnatural glow in certain lights.

Personality[]

As a child, Henry Creel was described by his father as a "sensitive boy” who didn’t fit in with other children. He was born with supernatural powers, and when he spotted a nest of Black Widows he found comfort. The following month, Henry grew to hate human civilization, most specifically its structure of time and evolution. Henry did not want to be a part of society doing a "mindless play" of eating, sleeping, working, reproducing, and dying, but realized he didn't have to, thus bringing Henry into a nihilistic view of the world. So after watching a Grandfather Clock, he began to have telekinesis and used his powers to torture rabbits, dogs, rats, and other animals to test his abilities, but he went too far using his abilities by killing his mother and sister and attempting to kill his father, as well, but failed due to falling into a coma from exceeding his powers too much.

Henry was also incapable of feeling anything other than rage and sadness, which he later advised Eleven to use to fuel her powers. Due to this, Henry (even as Vecna) is unable to comprehend positive human values, which leads to his defeat every time.

Vecna-Stranger-Things-4-b36005b — Henry after being transformed into Vecna

Henry both idolizes and feels a deep rapport with spiders because, like spiders, he is a superbly adapted killing machine and does not depend on others, being quite solitary. On top of this, a world without spiders would be flooded with flies, and likewise, Henry sees humans as being like flies who, until now, did not have a predator to keep them in check. Seeking to rectify this, he believes it is his destiny to become Earth's apex predator and devote his powers to hunting and culling humanity's numbers.

He also believes it is an inevitability that the strong will always prey upon the weak and that such predatory social Darwinism purges the world of inferior lifeforms, keeping it pure. Vecna does understand notions of good and evil, but in his rationalization, morality is meaningless, the simplest form of insanity ever devised, and so Vecna chooses to be a cold-blooded serial killer because at the end of the day, it's all he wants to be, and no reasoning can divert him from his dream.

After being transported to Hawkins National Laboratory, being experimented on by Dr. Martin Brenner, and growing up to adulthood, he met other children with the same abilities but took interest in one child, a girl named Jane Ives, which he was kind and caring to at first, but after she witnessed him murdering the other children, he became dangerously deranged and even offered Eleven to join him so they can "reshape" the world. After she refused, he attempted to kill her but she fought back and transported him into the Upside Down.

By the time he was eventually transported to the Upside Down and thus reborn as Vecna, he became extremely malevolent, delighting in the torment that he brings to those that he curses, just like Max. In his mind space, the corpses of his victims are displayed in a horrific fashion similar to how a spider keeps its prey in its own web, showing that Vecna is proud of the unspeakable crimes that he has committed. Even when Eleven tried to sympathize with him, he rejected her and considered himself as always being superior to humanity before trying to kill Max in front of her.

Sadistic, cruel and with a complete lack of empathy toward others, he prefers to use subtle and painful ways to help his allies and reach his goals, like sending monsters from the Upside Down or possessing people to connect them to other monsters of the Upside Down, or to massacre them and form a powerful monster, not caring if they are men, women, children or elderly and brutally torturing and killing whoever he needs if this can help him to reach his goals, like kidnapping, hurting, possessing and killing dozens of people to form a monster so it could kill children and conquer Earth.

Vecna held mental control over the monsters of the Upside Down, being able to see through their eyes, feel their emotions and their physical state, and being able to rapidly assume total control over their minds. However, he seems not to care about their state, sending them in quantity to affront his enemies from his dimension and doesn't care if they die or get hurt.

Besides all, he is extremely intelligent, capable of manipulating and tricking other people using accurate strategies and rules to orchestrate many horrible crimes without being directly noticed. Despite his intellect, like most antagonists, Vecna is very arrogant, he only focuses on Eleven during his fights with her and focuses how her powers can get in the way of his goals when he should also be concerned about her friends get in the way too, plus because no matter how many times every ally including himself get defeated every time, he underestimates them and her friendship with them, and thinks ahead they already lost when they haven’t which led to each defeat of himself, the Mind Flayer and the Demogorgon that kidnapped Will.

Powers and Abilities[]

Harnessing psychic abilities, Vecna can detect humans in Hawkins, and just like Eleven, he can use telekinesis to kill his opponents. Unlike Eleven however, he can also use advanced telepathy and create false visions in his victims, which makes him even more dangerous. He appears to target humans who are suffering from some buried emotional trauma, suggesting his powers work more strongly on them. Humans who are more confident and well-adjusted may be more resistant to his powers. Also, music is an effective disruptor of his power, as it can guide one of his victims away from his influence and allow them to retake control of their own minds.

Mind Reading: As one of the most powerful psychics introduced in Stranger Things, Henry Creel is able to see into the minds of others and search their memories as a means to obtain personal and private information that he might later use to terrorize his victims. It appears that Henry has recently learned to connect himself to the Mind Flayer, which seems to enhance his abilities so greatly that he is now able to telepathically reach across time and space in order to haunt the residents of Hawkins, Indiana, in spite of existing within a completely separate dimension.
Mental Realm Creation: Vecna has the power to create mindscapes. Vecna's Mindscape, or the Mind Lair, is an imaginary location existing in Vecna's mind. Via his 'curse' power, Vecna could make other conscious beings hallucinate and bring them into the mindscape. Vecna's mindscape is enveloped in distinctive crimson fog and mist. Thunder and lightning rage in the skies above, which visually recall the storms that accompany the presence of the Mind Flayer. The ground consists of hardened black sludge, and is pocketed with scattered pools and puddles of unknown fluid; black widows could occasionally be seen scuttling across the surface. Organic black structures with a spike or spire-like appearance are prevalent throughout the realm. A deconstructed and fragmented version of the Creel House lies at the realm's center.
Mind Control: Henry has demonstrated a limited variation of mind control. Whilst he does not appear to exhibit any influence over the actions or behaviors of his victims, he is perfectly capable of manipulating their perceptions and causing them to hallucinate. Furthermore, once he has frightened his victims to the point of complete vulnerability, he is able to entrance them within their own minds which physically manifests as the victim being paralyzed with their eyes glazed over and retreated towards the back of their heads. Mentally, the victim will experience the most vivid and powerful nightmare that is often set in a place of terror that personally holds much pain and trauma for the individual.
Psychic Projection: Henry is able to cast his consciousness from outside of his physical body to explore the private lives of the people living in Hawkins. It is currently unknown if Henry can project his consciousness beyond the borders of this one city, however, it is more than likely that he can given the numerous times that Jane Hopper has astral projected across state lines and Henry is believed to be equally as powerful, if not more so, than his "sister" Eleven. Henry has the ability to develop a deep and powerful psychic connection with his victims. It is through this connection that Henry is able to open multiple wormholes between the Upside Down and Hawkins, Indiana due to the powerful expulsion of energy that is released through the ritualistic murders of his victims. As demonstrated in Jane Hopper's memories, psychics can resist each other's influence if their will is powerful enough. However, this resistance can be overwhelmed by whichever psychic has the stronger willpower.
Pain Inducement: Henry is able to inflict minor forms of physical injuries on his victims such as nosebleeds and severe headaches. Whether he is inflicting this pain intentionally or if this is merely a side effect of linking his mind to another remains unknown. However, because Henry seems to require a certain level of vulnerability from his victims in order to fully possess them, it is possible that this pain inducement is the first step to weakening his target in order to gain more and more power over them.
Matter Manipulation: Henry has the ability to telekinetically control and manipulate solid matter. At first, this power was limited to lightweight materials, such as small animals and the hands on a grandfather clock, but through practice and training, Henry is now powerful enough to influence objects as heavy as fully grown adults and solid steel doors. Henry famously uses this power to levitate his victims in midair before breaking all of the bones in their body and crushing their eyes into the back of their skull.
Regeneration: It appears that since his banishment to the Upside Down, Henry has developed the ability to rapidly regenerate his cells at will. This enables him to quickly heal from any and all non-fatal injuries as proven when his tentacles were shown to fully recover mere seconds after Max slashed him. Therefore, minor damages like cuts and flesh wounds will rejuvenate almost immediately, whilst greater injuries like broken bones or gunshot wounds will presumably take longer to heal but will still recover significantly faster than it does most humans. Even more so, his healing powers have apparently made him immune to most, if not all, forms of toxins and disease due to the fact that he has survived several years in the Upside Down in spite of the atmosphere becoming toxic to humans after prolonged exposure.

Victims[]

1959 Creel Murder
Three Rabbits - 1959
Two Chickens - 1959
Two Squirrels - 1959
Two Dogs - 1959
Virginia Creel - 1959
Alice Creel - 1959
Victor Creel - 1959; (still) attempted

1979 Lab Massacre

Unnamed Hawkins National Laboratory guard - 1979
Peter - 1979
Thacher - 1979
Blackmon - 1979
Selee - 1979
Miller - 1979
Six - 1979
Dr. Ellis - 1979
Alec - 1979
Ten - 1979
Four unnamed Hawkins National Laboratory guards - 1979
Two unnamed Hawkins National Laboratory guards - 1979
Two unnamed Hawkins National Laboratory orderlies - 1979
Seven - 1979
Five - 1979

1983

Unnamed scientist - 1983
Barbara Holland - 1983
Shepard - 1983
Multiple unnamed Hawkins citizens and Government Agents - 1983
Will Byers (Attempted)

1984

Bob Newby - 1984
Multiple unnamed scientists - 1984

1985

Billy Hargrove

Heather Holloway

Doris Driscoll

Tom Holloway

Janet Holloway

Bruce Lowe

Adam Whitehead

David Anderson

1986

Chrissy Cunningham - 1986
Fred Benson - 1986
Max Mayfield (but revived by Jane "Eleven” Hopper) - 1986
Patrick McKinney - 1986
Nancy - 1986; attempted but let go
Jason Carver - 1986
22 unnamed civilians - 1986

Trivia[]

It was initially thought that the Mind Flayer was a non-human entity until it was revealed that Henry/Vecna/One was the true Mind Flayer, thus making him the real mastermind behind the events of the series and the one pulling the strings in the first place.
Up until the release of Season 4, a fan theory stated that the Mind Flayer was Experiment 001 (Hawkins National Lab's very first experiment), despite it not being human. The theory proved to be half-right throughout the events of Season 4 as Mind Flayer is, for all its intents and purposes, the monstrous avatar of 001 aka Vecna/Henry Creel's will all along, shaped from cloud particles he found in Upside Down following his banishment in courtesy of Eleven.
In Season 4, it was revealed that all evil beings which the characters encounter in the show are extensions of his will, despite being not created by him. This includes the demogorgon of the first season, and the demodogs, who he controls through the Mind Flayer hive mind.
Like the Demogorgon, Vecna himself is named after an entity from Dungeons & Dragons, in his case, the archlich and demigod Vecna. His Mind Flayer form is named after another Dungeons and Dragons monster, the Illithids.
Vecna, as the Mind Flayer, makes a cameo in the game Stranger Things: 1984. He can be seen in a drawing made by Will inside Castle Byers, and if the player interacts with the drawing as Will, he will claim that he saw the creature in the sky, while all other characters just say "Horrifying drawing".
He was titled as Peter Ballard before the release of Season 4 to avoid spoilers. This name, however, was never actually used in the show.
He is largely implied to be inspired by the villains, It/Pennywise, Pinhead and Freddy Krueger, who all use nightmares and horrifying visions to attack their victims.
- Ironically, his father, Victor, is portrayed by Robert Englund, who famously portrayed Freddy in the Nightmare on Elm Street films.
- In addition, Freddy Krueger was also mentioned by Dustin Henderson.
There's 4 references to Darth Vader in Vecna
Both of his human hosts share the same name.
Henry is loosely based on William Afton.