Characters / Stranger Things: The Upside Down

aka: Stranger Things The Mind Flayer

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Main Cast (The Party | Adults | Teens) | Supporting Cast | Hawkins | Hawkins National Laboratory | The Upside Down | Outsiders

The Upside Down

General

An alternate dimension existing in parallel to the human world. It contains the same locations and infrastructure as the human world, but it is much darker, colder and obscured by an omnipresent fog.

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• All There in the Manual:
  • The Duffer Brothers apparently have an entire 30-page document that intricately explains the Upside Down and all of its inhabitants. They've stated that they want to give most of the details to the audience through the perspective of the characters as they themselves learn so as to preserve the mystery & horror around the place, but won't give the audience everything so as to keep some stuff as Riddles for the Ages. Furthermore, they've stated that they're quite willing to deviate from their current "rules" for the Upside Down if they deem it necessary for the story as the show goes on.
  • The location's canonical name is "The Nether". However, that name is never used by any of the characters, and has only been utilized in supplementary material.
• Alien Kudzu: Most of the Upside Down's ruined buildings and trees are covered in disgusting fungal/fleshy "vines" that can even spread out into Hawkins if connected through a Gate (like the one underneath Hawkins National Laboratory and the ones briefly created by the Demogorgon).
• Alternate Universe: In season 4, Nancy discovers that the Upside Down only resembles Hawkins exactly as it looked the night Will Byers went missing. But interestingly, flashbacks involving Vecna show that the Upside Down used to look very different, as Vecna first travelled through an inhospitable, formless void without any structures, then landed in a desolate world resembling a mountainous desert, populated with demogorgons.
• Always Night: The sky, let alone the Sun, is never seen in the Upside Down during Season 1, with the region perpetually shrouded in a dense fog and darkness (aside from a few streetlights and the glow from some flickering machines, like those seen in the arcade). While Season 2 does show us more of the sky, it's portrayed as perpetually stormy with only arcs of red lightning and the Mind Flayer visible in the darkness.
• Ambiguously Evil: Season 4 reveals that all of the Upside Down's incursions into Hawkins have more or less been at the prompting of Vecna, a human serial killer that was banished there by Eleven. As far as we know the Upside Down had no interest in Earth or any of its inhabitants until Vecna started to manipulate its creatures, casting some doubt onto just how malicious the proto-Mind Flayer or the Demogorgons were before they became hooked to the Hive Mind of a nihilistic murderer with the psychic powers to force them to follow his will. The First shadow adds more to it by revealing the Mind Flayer was the one who manipulated Vecna, not the other way around.
• Atomic Hate: Not a literal case (for as far as we know, anyway), but the Upside Down has some thematic elements lifted from the common ideas associated with a nuclear holocaust. Notably, the Upside Down generally looks like a blasted atomic wasteland (albeit one covered in fungus and Alien Kudzu), and the constantly drifting spores in the air even looking like falling radioactive ash. Additionally, the place has a higher environmental radiation count than what is normally seen on Earth. Quite appropriate for a series taking place during the height of the Cold War, isn't it?
• Dark Is Evil: As befitting a Dark World, of course, with the place being Always Night as just the tip of the iceberg in terms of creepiness. Season 4 further reveals that it is suffused with "shadow particles (which Vecna used to create the Mind Flayer), and overall everything associated with this realm carries gothic themes of depression and decay in opposition to happy memories and brightness.
• Dark World: The Upside Down mimics the geography and infrastructure of the real world, but covered in perpetual darkness and decay, with any buildings severely dilapidated and covered in Meat Moss. The Upside Down specifically mirrors the night Will went missing. Before then it was a bare rocky landscape.
• Deadly Gas: The Hawkins Lab indicated that the atmosphere of the Upside Down is not meant for humans to breathe nor be exposed to for long periods of time, and Will himself barely seems to have survived when he's saved at the end of Season 1. This appears to have been retconned in later seasons however, as Steve, Robin, Eddie, Nancy and Dustin are shown walking through and breathing in the Upside Down without showing any negative effects, and Henry Creel manages to survive within it for years (although he does become a Humanoid Abomination in the process).
• Death World: In hindsight, it's downright miraculous that Will Byers survived on his own for an entire week when he was stuck here. First off, scientists at Hawkins National Laboratory claim that the Upside Down's atmosphere is toxic and even lethal with prolonged exposure, and the environment is also generally more radioactive in comparison to that found on Earth. Furthermore, no bodies of liquid water have ever been found there (fresh water or otherwise), the world is covered in a freezing Always Night and shrouded in perpetual fog, and the closest thing to "living" organic matter seen in the Upside Down outside of the Demogorgon (and the rest of its species) is a toxic Meat Moss/Alien Kudzu covering virtually everything. Even worse, that aforementioned Alien Kudzu becomes Combat Tentacles when threatened. And of course, that's not even getting into its inhabitants all consisting of highly predatory monsters under the command of an actively malevolent Hive Mind. Heck, the mere fact that the Demogorgon is forced to cross over into Hawkins to find prey throughout Season 1 can be seen as implying that there isn't even much edible food left in the Upside Down.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In Season 1, the scientists at Hawkins National Laboratory note that the Upside Down's atmosphere is lethal to humans, and that anyone is in danger of dying if they remain exposed to the radioactive area for an extended period of time. By the time of Season 4 however, several members of the main cast are able to traverse through the Upside Down without any problems with breathing in the air around them.
• Eldritch Location: It's a very strange dimension seemingly filled with nothing but Eldritch Abominations.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: The place is frequently described as "cold and dark," and Weak to Fire seems to be the only consistent weakness shared by the Upside Down's inhabitants.
• Genius Loci: Season 2 all but states that the entire dimension and its inhabitants are linked into the Hive Mind of the Mind Flayer, but who is revealed to be actually Vecna.
• Homage: Word of God has stated that the Upside Down's overall design was heavily inspired by the Xenomorph hives in Alien, the Otherworld of Silent Hill, the results of the Cordyceps fungus from The Last of Us, and the works of FromSoftware / Hidetaka Miyazaki (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne).
• In Name Only: Not the dimension itself, but its inhabitants. They tend to get names related to Dungeons & Dragons, but similarities tend to only be surface level, and based entirely on the characters' attempt to give a name based on what they know.
• Meat Moss: A disgusting fungus-like fleshy substance covers nearly everything in the Upside Down. Season 4 later reveals that this substance is actually part of Vecna and his hive mind.
• Merged Reality: The finale of Season 4 shows that Vecna's success in opening up the Gate using the deaths, of Chrissy, Freddy, Patrick and Max allows him to start merging the Upside Down with the real world, starting with Hawkins.
• Mordor: Season 4 reveals that the Upside Down wasn't always a Death World version of Hawkins, but was actually a hellish, mountainous wasteland filled with supernatural lightning and floating rocks. After Henry Creel was banished there by Eleven, he used his psychic abilities to shape the dimension into the Upside Down that we see in the present.
• More Predators Than Prey: Every example of Upside Down fauna we have seen appear to be aggressive carnivores. The Mind Flayer is a possible exception, but only because it is so alien in its biology it is difficult to apply such definitions to it.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Zig-zagged. The Demogorgons are native to the Upside Down, yet are capable of traversing the real world as well whenever they're able to get in. Meanwhile, the Mind Flayer is only able to enter our own world by constructing an avatar made of human bodies, and Vecna never enters the real world, instead entering people's minds. For humans, the atmosphere of the Upside Down is supposedly toxic, which is shown with Will being barely alive when Joyce manages to finally rescue him in Season 1. However, this slowly becomes an Informed Attribute as other humans are able to traverse it without suffering any negative consequences, including Vecna himself.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Very little is known about this alternate dimension, and that just makes it all the scarier. The Duffer Brothers have said that they do have details of the area planned out, but are only going to reveal it a little bit at a time. And even then, they're not going to reveal everything.
• Prison Dimension: Though not necessarily by design, Eleven is capable of using it to seal away (the man who would later become) Vecna... for a while, anyway.
• Shout-Out: Aside from the above-mentioned Homages, the Upside Down was heavily inspired by the works of the Polish painter Zdzislaw Beksinski, whose works the Duffer Brothers described as often depicting (to them) "...an otherworldly, hellish world, surrounded by a thin layer of something we can't quite make out."
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: The Demogorgons are dangerous, but for the most part are no more malicious than any other predator. The Mind Flayer takes things up a notch by displaying a clear sense of malice, wanting to cause destruction for its own sake. Vecna is even worse than the Mind Flayer in that he's committed to his villainy on a philosophical level and while the Mind Flayer went straight to murder and torture, Vecna gets inside his victim's heads to make the last moments of their lives a living hell.
• Tentacle Rope: The vines in the tunnel which almost kill Hopper.
• The Virus: Around the Gates linking the Upside Down and Hawkins, the Meat Moss covering most of the former has been shown spreading out into the latter, corrupting and destroying everything it touches. Even worse, the resultant Alien Kudzu can act as Combat Tentacles if threatened.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Despite fire being very useful (as noted immediately below), water is anethema to it and its creatures as well. One, none exists there naturally. Two, Bob spots that its tunnels avoid all of Hawkins' water features completely in Season 2. Three, in the Season 2 finale. After Bob restarts the Labs computer system he's about to be attacked by a Demodog. He runs back to the system and sets the sprinkler system off. This, as Dr Owens says himself with some surprise, ... works.
• Weak to Fire: Fire seems to be the only reliable counter against the creatures of the Upside Down, with it even being used to help stem the spread of The Virus into Hawkins.

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The Shadow Monster, a.k.a. "The Mind Flayer"

The Mind Flayer

The Shadow Monster, a.k.a. "The Mind Flayer"

"You... let us in. And now... you are going to have to let us stay."

Debut: "Chapter One: MADMAX" (2x01)

"And now it's time. Time to end it. And we are going to end you. And when you are gone, we are going to end your friends. And then we are going to end... everyone."

A colossal monstrosity that Will glimpses as he flickers back and forth through reality. It's the will driving every living thing in the Upside Down.

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• Aliens Are Bastards: A malevolent extradimensional entity which is attempting a hostile takeover of our realm through horrific means.
• Ambiguous Gender:
  • Will refers to the Mind Flayer as "he", meaning it either identifies as male or this is simply how Will makes sense of its existence and connection with him. It's very likely the latter, as all the other characters (unless talking about it with Will) refer to the creature as "it", it is a hive mind of several entities and is also described as a "virus", which typically lack gender, and the Duffers have stated its true nature is impossible to comprehend.
  • In addition, in the after-show, Beyond Stranger Things, the Mind Flayer is referred to interchangeably as "he" or "it", suggesting either its gender is weirder than we understand, "he" is simply a sort of nickname, or it's up to audience interpretation.
  • Further complicating matters is that in Season 3, the sole time we hear it speak for itself in Eleven's vision, it refers to itself with plural pronouns such as "we" and "us" after beginning its monologue by using "me and "I," singular pronouns. In the early stages of Billy's Flaying, however, Billy hallucinates Heather telling him to "Bring me to him", twisting this into a full circle.
• Ambiguous Situation: In the Season 4 finale, it's revealed that the Mind Flayer was nothing more than an amorphous black cloud before One gave it its spider-like shape. Does this mean that One took control of it and the Mind Flayer (and all of the monsters within its Hive Mind) is acting as an extension of his will? If so, does it have any will or agency of its own, or was it just an Almighty Idiot that One imprinted his personality onto? They both share a predatory, "Might Makes Right" worldview, so is this all One or do they just have this in common? Or did the Mind Flayer somehow contact him from beyond the veil — One as a child drawing him as a spider — and cause his Start of Darkness, Vecna his Unwitting Pawn?
  • The First Shadow shines a bit more light on this, and without almost any ambiguity outright confirms the latter. From the moment Henry disappeared and ended up in Dimension X, he's been under the Mind Flayer's corrupting influence. Not only that, but Brenner knew the whole time and actively nudged Henry into giving in to the darkness, even seeing him kill and torture animals as a proactive way to go about it, knowing full well than it was making him more powerful by the second. Turns out Dustin's theory about Vecna being the Flayer's general was right on the money.
• Arch-Enemy: To the Party and especially Eleven. At the end of Season 2, it became evidently clear that this creature is the most dangerous and most personal enemy the Party has faced for now, and in Season 3 its entire plan revolves around creating a means to end them itself.
• Assimilation Plot: The entity explains its goal as merging with everyone and destroying everything while possessing Billy.
• Ax-Crazy: A genocidal creature willing to annihilate an entire planet. When Joyce tries to kill it, the Mind Flayer-controlled Will totally loses it and starts to strangle her. When controlling Billy, it goes even crazier and proceeds to viciously brutalize the Party when they try to smoke it out in a sauna, and its last moments in its flesh form consist of a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Party.
• Bad Liar: It at least manages to trick the Hawkins Lab personnel into a suicidal attack through its control of Will. But the more deeply it takes control, the less it's able to pretend it's human. By the time Mike figures out what's going on, all it can do is shriek that he's lying over and over.
• Berserk Button:
  • Try making things the slightest bit hotter than it prefers, and you won't survive much longer.
  • Any general act of defiance infuriates it, but it especially seems to hate when its "favourite" host resisting, enduring as much pain and heat as it possibly can in a vain attempt to keep Will under its control.
• Big Bad: From Season 2 to Season 3, the Mind Flayer is the main antagonist of the entire series, as the monstrous overlord of the Upside Down and the Greater-Scope Villain behind the Demogorgon of Season 1. It's first properly introduced in Season 2 controlling Will and the Demodogs as part of an attempt at an Alien Invasion. In Season 3 it begins infecting people to become its "Flayed", using their corpses to create an avatar so it can get revenge on the Party (although it has to share the spotlight with the Russians). The First Shadow further reveals that it was responsible for corrupting the young Henry Creel into becoming the monstrous Vecna, solidifying the Mind Flayer's role as the series' true main antagonist.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The Mind Flayer remains the greatest threat in Season 3, but a secondary antagonistic faction is revealed in the Soviet forces who are constructing a Gate to the Upside Down.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: It is, near as can be sussed out, a hundreds-of-feet-tall sentient virus cloud that usually takes the rough shape of a five-legged crab with a Xenomorph-esque head (somewhat resembling the Female MUTO from Godzilla (2014)). Also, it is connected to all living things in the Upside Down and all parts of it feel pain when one part does. This is to its advantage as it can use its Demogorgons and tentacles to retaliate.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: According with Word of God, its mind is completely alien to that of any human. It doesn't seem to have any problem with Mind Rape and inflicting horrible pain, for one. The only thing that really makes it genuinely angry is heat and pain directed towards it. So, to the extent that it even has any moral agency, it seems that it breaks everything down into two categories — things that help it spread = Good, and things that stop it from spreading = Bad. Which basically makes it a biological version of the paperclip maximizer.
• The Chessmaster: It forced Will to say he knows its weakness when it was really a trap to kill the soldiers that hurt it, and then used the lines to lead its Demogorgons back to base. In Season 3 it also nudged the flayed Tom into preventing news about its rat-related schemes from getting to the public, and while it never met the Soviets personally, it still played them like a fiddle by allowing them to keep the Gate open.
• Child Hater: It hates just about everyone that does not serve a purpose to it, but it especially hates the younger cast members. Come Season 3, most of its hate is focused on Eleven in particular, becoming hell bent on killing her before taking over the world.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: The Demogorgon was a simple animal that only cared about food and reproduction, while the Mind Flayer is an intelligent and malevolent adversary with a highly sophisticated cross-dimensional invasion plan... which also happened to be in control of the Demogorgon.
• The Corruption: It can possess other beings and its vines cause plants on the surface to decay. Its powers seem to affect non-living objects too, as the scientists at Hawkins Lab discover that even the soil samples taken from the area react to heat exactly like the monster.
• The Corrupter: Its constant possession and manipulation is the reason Henry Creel turned into the monstrous Misanthrope Supreme that is Vecna.
• Dark Is Evil: A giant, evil extra-dimensional alien out to wreak havoc on our dimension is black-colored and associated with shadows.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Eldritch Abomination. Yes, the Mind Flayer is an immensely powerful, enormously intelligent being, but because it's so powerful and thus so used to getting what it wants, it essentially has the fortitude of a toddler. It doesn't know how to deal with resistance or setbacks to its plans, only being able to throw tantrums in response. And since it's so unique and self-reliant, it has no idea how to interact with and blend into a social species like humans, to the point where it has to effectively leave its hosts on autopilot most of the time, because when it takes them over directly, it can't act in a way that doesn't immediately clue every human in to what it actually is. Furthermore, since its sheer power makes it used to easy victory, whenever it is significantly harmed, or especially defeated in one of its plans, it will launch into a full blown petty revenge mode from which it will never leave, even when the petty revenge is detrimental to its long-term goals, such as when it blows its cover when possessing Will just to get revenge on some Mooks. In short, while it is powerful and dangerous, it also showcases all the ways that existing as an Eldritch Abomination would limit a person psychologically.
• Demonic Possession: Of Will, making the child its unwitting spy. The Mind Flayer also forces Will to carry out its plans, such as tricking the soldiers at Hawkins Lab into walking into a deadly ambush. The only way to expel it from Will's body is to expose him to extreme heat, in a manner very reminiscent of an exorcism. It later does the same thing to Billy, although in this case he is less of a spy and more of a proxy for the Mind Flayer, with his will being directly overridden by the creature itself.
• Eldritch Abomination: It is a towering, shadowy thing that inflicts extreme Mind Rape, created and controls the Demogorgons as its foot soldiers, and may be responsible for turning the Upside Down into a desolate Eldritch Location. After learning of our world, it's trying to find purchase on Earth and terraform it to be more hospitable for itself, starting with the town of Hawkins. The protagonists never figure out its motives for all this, but speculate that it sees itself as inherently superior to all other forms of life and thus wants to make everything like itself. In Season 3, it goes on to make itself a body out of rat and human flesh, bones and organs in semifluid form, with an enormous mouth with bone shards for teeth and numerous tentacles.
• Eldritch Transformation: In Season 3, the Mind Flayer begins infecting ordinary people and rats in Hawkins to allow itself a physical presence in our world. When it decides to take a personal hand in hunting down Eleven (the only one it perceives as a threat), it melts down and assimilates its hosts into a single horrific, arachnid-type body.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: "Deathly" might be an overreach, but the Mind-Flyer really does not like heat, and seems to like the cold. It doesn't appear to like water all that much, but an ice bath is acceptable, further lending this theory credence.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • The Mind Flayer's tendrils get damaged by humans. It uses Will to lead a squad of soldiers into an ambush as a result just because the soldiers had damaged one of its tendrils. The end of the season shows that it now wants revenge against the Party, particularly Eleven.
  • At the end of Season 3 Eleven is helpless before it and all it has to do is kill or assimilate her and its biggest threat is eliminated. Instead, it takes the time to slowly kill Billy for physically and mentally defying it, giving Joyce enough time to close the gate and sever its connection to its body. Prior to this it uses a psychic contention with El to do some Evil Gloating, tipping the Party off that it knows where they are and that its Avatar is on its way.
• Evil Learns of Outside Context: Played for Horror; it's chilling to watch as the Mind Flayer, an entirely alien entity with initially no understanding of Earth, slowly gains more and more knowledge of human behavior and the larger situation, employing increasingly intelligent tactics as a result. It's especially frightening when the creature figures out that El and The Party are its primary opposition, learning to single them out specifically and make the kids suffer.
• Evil Overlooker: The poster for season 2 shows the Mind Flayer looming over the cast of heroes. In the season finale, it does the exact same pose while looming over Hawkins Middle School, showing that the Mind Flayer is watching the Party and plotting its next move.
• Expy: A pretty blatant one of Pennywise, aka IT. Much like the evil clown, the Mind Flayer is a spidery Lovecraftian creature that bullies children, has its own consciousness, and is extremely sadistic and sociopathic. Similarly, both take control of a bully and their archnemeses are a group of children. The only big difference is that the Mind Flayer has no sense of humor. Additionally, whilst the Mind Flayer embodies the alien and overpowering monstrosity that Pennywise really was behind the forms it took on, Henry/Vecna embodies the human forms IT took, playing mind games and overall being the personal and emotional nemesis to the kids, taking on multiple forms to emotionally damage them and drive them deeper into despair for his own satisfaction, besides the alien and otherworldly power he is connected to. He even drags Max into a mental recreation of the Snow Ball and has the various party ballons explode into blood to drive the comparisons home.
• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: How the mind flayer creates its human minions. Shown graphically with Billy, and Heather's parents.
• The Faceless: Its Xenomorph-esque head is devoid of any features. When it takes on a flesh form it develops a mouth with two rows of teeth.
• Fantastic Racism: Dustin speculates that it views itself as superior to all other races, which could play a hand into why exactly it wants to exterminate humanity. As an extension of One, it turns out Dustin was right.
• Fatal Flaw: Underestimating humanity. In Season 2, it loses because it underestimated the idea that the person who opened the gate to its world could also close it, and in Season 3 it loses because it underestimated Billy's ability to care for other people, and Eleven's ability bring out the humanity in him.
• Faux Affably Evil: Deconstructed. It tries to act normal friendly when possessing Will and Billy. Unfortunately, it has practically no understanding of humanity's emotions or how they act, meaning that the loved ones of its victims see right through the façade.
• Final Boss: In Seasons 2 and Season 3, as well as the Soviet storyline in Season 4.
• Forced to Watch: Makes a point out of glancing at the Party while using Billy to choke Eleven to death, implying that this was its intent.
• Giant Spider: It vaguely resembles a colossal arachnid of some kind. That's because it was created by Henry Creel, who is obsessed with spiders.
• Glamour Failure: The Mind Flayer's outline shows up as a distortion on Bob's video camera.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of Season 1 — the Demogorgon was basically its attack dog, and hardly the only one of its kind.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: It has pretty much a zero tolerance policy for any sort of setback, and seems to become increasingly tenacious and aggressive the more its plans are spoiled, throwing violent and disproportionate tantrums whenever it's hindered in any way.
• Hell Is That Noise: Much like its servants, its main vocalizations consist of demonic screeches and wails.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Only glimpses of the creature are ever seen in Season 2, with there being only one prolonged shot of it there. Season 3 doesn't take this route, and instead has it out in the spotlight.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Initially, it's unclear what exactly the Mind Flayer is or what it plans to do once it gets to Earth, with the closest explanation being Dustin's theory that it wants to spread its influence like a parasite and Take Over the World. Come the end of season 3, Dustin turns out to be completely correct, and the Mind Flayer itself gleefully explains its goals to slaughter the Party, wipe out humanity, and conquer Earth for itself.
• Hive Mind:
  • It is connected to every Demogorgon in a hive mind. As well as Will in Season 2, and Eleven in Season 3.
  • Later on it starts possessing townsfolk, which are referred to by the Party as "the flayed".
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Its corruption/possession of Will turns out to be a double-edged sword. The more it takes over, the more Will forgets, and the less it can use his memories to manipulate the others. By the last two episodes of the second season, the jig is up; it recognizes it has no hope of blending in again. The Mind Flayer gets around this by simply using Will as a tracking beacon for the Party. Fortunately, the humans manage to counteract this by bringing Will to places the Mind Flayer doesn't know the location of. Also in Season 3, Will's former connection to the Mind Flayer allows him to sense its presence and warn the Party.
• Hostile Terraforming: This is something it (or its extensions, rather) is capable of and seems to be a goal; it wants to turn our Earth into a realm like the Upside Down, which is friendlier to it as a lifeform.
• Implacable Man: It is a persistent and ruthless being that will stop at nothing to see its goals through.
• I'm Melting!: Inverted; more like "You're Melting." Season 3 has it showcase the ability to cause those who it has flayed to literally melt into gory masses of flesh, which it can then shape into crude monsters, as well as a tangible body for itself.
• In Name Only: Like all inhabitants of the Upside Down, he's named after a D&D enemy and thus rarely have any similarities, but the Mind Flayer is the biggest case of this, being a looming Eldritch Abomination with no physical body, instead being a spider-shaped cloud of shadowy particles rather than a human-sized squid-faced humanoid, and the only similarity is its use of a Hive Mind and being a dimension-travelling threat. In season 3 at least, the way it operates (infecting hosts with Puppeteer Parasite to act as foot soldiers while also having these hosts merge with itself) is somewhat similar to the Elder Brain, the Mind Flayers' "boss", but in practice, the "Flayed" are more akin to the Mind Flayers themselves.
• In-Series Nickname: The boys name it "The Mind Flayer" after one of the monsters that they use in their Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. Prior to that, they dub it "the shadow monster". The creature's real name (if it even has one) has not been revealed, so it's referred to as such for the sake of convenience.
• Ironic Nickname: The nickname of Mind Flayer isn't particularly unfitting, since it does have a lot of traits in common with the Mind Flayers of Dungeons & Dragons, especially the Elder Brains that lead the species. What makes it ironic is that the Stranger Things Mind Flayer seems to be the top dog of the Upside Down, with absolute power over the Demogorgons. In D&D lore, the Demogorgon and Mind Flayers are not connected, and Demogorgon (which is actually his personal name) is far more powerful than any elder brain, being the outright Prince of Demons.
• It Can Think: Unlike the Demogorgons, which seem to be animals, the Mind Flayer is capable of reasoning and deception, and uses Will to lure the scientists that hurt it into its trap. It's also intelligent enough to operate and screech into Dustin's walkie-talkie as a warning while it corners his friends at Starcourt, and is capable of fluent speech through a host of its choosing.
• It's Personal: It lures the soldiers that injured it into a trap, where it arranges to have them slaughtered by demodogs, as retribution for their earlier attacks. Also implied by the final shot of Season 2, which shows the banished Mind Flayer looming over the Snow Ball in the Upside Down, hunched far lower to the ground than normal and generating so much lightning that it's almost like a maelstrom. In Season 3, it even goes so far as to make killing Eleven a higher priority than the invasion of Earth, becoming hellbent on revenge.
• Kaiju: It is enormous, towering over Upside Down Hawkins. Its physical form is smaller, but easily fills a shopping mall.
• Kingpin in His Gym: While the heroes work to investigate it in Season 3, it is hard at work building itself a body so it can personally relish in the destruction of Hawkins.
• Knight of Cerebus: Its scenes are among the darkest, most macabre moments of the series. In fact, any scene involving it is pure terror and is remarkably the most dangerous creature to date.
• Kryptonite Factor: Like the Demogorgon, only heat can hurt it. It doesn't appear to like water, either, although it will accept it if it's in the form of an ice bath.
• Logical Weakness: Its Bizarre Alien Biology is so far removed from any earth animal that even basic sensations like pain or warmth are completely foreign to it , so it has a lot of trouble processing its unfamiliarity whenever a human connected to its Hive Mind experiences it.
• Leitmotif: Season 3's trailer, as well as its monologue, associate it with Philip Glass' "Satyagraha: Act II (Tagore)".
• Motive Rant: Its only lines of dialogue can be summed up as a manifesto for it - that it's gotten comfy after being invited into a new world, and doesn't intend to leave... but first, it has some children it needs to turn into sludge.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: This Eldritch Abomination has at least four arms and can sprout smaller ones for searching small spaces.
• Multiversal Conqueror: The plot of Season 2 is its attempts to conquer our reality. Even Eleven sealing the gate at Hawkins Lab for good doesn't stop it from trying to advance its goals.
• Mysterious Watcher: In most of its appearances, the Mind Flayer is a barely-visible shadow looming over the Upside Down's version of Hawkins and watching the main characters. Its exact goals aren't even revealed until the end of the season 3, further adding to the "mysterious" part of the trope.
• Neck Lift: Uses Billy to perform this on Eleven by proxy.
• No Name Given: "The Mind Flayer" is just a nickname The Party gave them. The creature's actual name, if it even has one, is unknown.
• Noodle Incident: The Soviets managed to secure a chunk of its particle form. How this was accomplished is never explained.
• Omnicidal Maniac: It makes it perfectly clear in its dialogue that it wants to annihilate everything and everyone. Unless you're useful to it, it will not hesitate to get rid of you.
• Power of the Storm: Before the Mind Flayer showed up, the Upside Down had pretty calm "weather". Now, the place is chock-a-block with red lightning.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Type C. Although it's still a dangerous creature cunning enough to manipulate others into somewhat complex schemes, it isn't above throwing manic tantrums and causing mindless destruction when it doesn't get its way.
• Puppeteer Parasite: It takes control of Will after entering his body as a host, leaving him Fighting from the Inside. It's apparently already done this to the entire Upside Down, and now it wants to do this to our world, as well. The First Shadow reveals that the Mind Flayer has been doing this even longer than initially thought: its first human puppet was Vecna.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Played with. The words of the possessed Will and Billy in regards to the Mind Flayer have been noted to sound eerily similar to those of sexual assault victims, but it defiles its victims in all ways except in the sexual manner.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Its body provides the black, while its storm clouds provide the red. Its physical body, on the other hand, settles for a palette of meaty burgundy.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In the third season. The moment its fleshy body is fully prepared, it spends the rest of Season 3 doing nothing but attempting to kill the Party. It even puts its goals of Hostile Terraforming on hold because it wants the Party dead that badly.
• The Speechless: It's entirely unable to conduct human speech on its own. The only time it directly speaks to anyone is through people that it has direct control over.
• Starfish Aliens: The Mind Flayer is an immense creature with a form and intelligence utterly alien to any of the people dealing with it. The best way in which Dustin can describe it is to compare it to the Mind Flayer of Dungeons and Dragons.
• Tranquil Fury: In the finale of Season 2, its seen in the Upside Down looming over the school where the protagonists are celebrating in the normal world, quietly observing them as it expresses its rage over being foiled by generating a massive lightning storm. In Season 3, its voice and actions when acting through Billy are eerily calm, calculated, yet full of barely restrained savagery and menace, in contrast to its meaty avatar, which acts like the feral, insane and furious beast that the Mind Flayer is behind the veneer of calm.
• Unstoppable Rage: The Mind Flayer has very little sense of subtlety as is, but when it gets angry, it gets really, really angry. All subtlety is thrown out the window as it goes on a violent rampage against those who have slighted it, shrieking and roaring insanely as it goes.
• Viler New Villain: In the first season, the primary threat from the Upside Down is the Demogorgon. While it kills a fair amount of people, it's ultimately a Non-Malicious Monster driven by hunger. Season 2 introduces the Mind Flayer, an Eldritch Abomination that has a twisted intelligence, and possesses Will Byers, leading to the death of many people, including Bob. It's far more malicious and intelligent then the animalistic Demogorgon (who is revealed to be its minion). It gets even worse in Season 3, where it "flays" multiple people to create a body.
• The Villain Knows Where You Live: The final shot of "The Gate" shows the Mind Flayer is watching the Hawkins Middle School in the Upside Down, where the Party (including Eleven) is currently attending the Snow Ball, showing that it knows who thwarted its invasion and wants revenge. In Season 3, t can also track down El and the Party when she tries to locate his host Billy, eventually rampaging to her and Hopper's cabin to wreck the place.
• Villain Song: The infamously creepy "Every Breath You Take" seems like an odd choice for a slow dance... until we see the Flayer looming over Hawkins Middle in the Upside Down as it plays. Season 3 also gives it a moment with "We'll Meet Again" as it sets its plans into motion.
• Villainous Breakdown: Whenever put in significant danger, it becomes extremely frantic and temperamental.
  • Whenever the possessed Will is in peril, Will resorts to screaming the same phrase over and over again. The Mind Flayer's also been shown to have not much in the way of pain tolerance. When Eleven is banishing it, its movements become increasingly fast. After the Ball Scene, it can be seen looming over the kids' location while seemingly seething with some form of anger or hate.
  • A minor example, but in Season 3's finale, it seems so infuriated by Billy coming to resist its influence that it kills him with much more force than necessary, distracting it from Eleven long enough for Joyce to pull the keys and close the gate. When the gate is closing, it can do nothing but scream and thrash in one last hateful attempt to cause harm as it's foiled once more.
• The Virus: Probably the only analogue that can contextualize its "motivations" in a way humans can understand; all it wants is to make more of itself, and to do any less is completely offensive to it. While it's actually a form of psychic, shadowy, ...thing, Owens describes it like this, a creature that spreads parasitically and can theoretically be cured. This is shown by how it actually takes a while to completely possess Will, not unlike a disease slowly growing in strength. It has evidently corrupted entire species, like the Demogorgons, with its viral taint.
• Voice of the Legion: Billy's voice gains a guttural and demonic undertone when the Mind Flayer speaks through him to Eleven.
• Weaksauce Weakness:
  • After the rather rational aversion to fire, the Mind Flayer's second greatest weakness seems to be that it simply can't handle pain well, reacting to even small portions of its web being burnt with screeching and agony as well as being banished exorcism-style from Will simply by exploiting how heat hurts it. Considering it's otherwise an eldritch and conniving monster, being weak to possibly the most basic of animalistic sensations is quite notable.
  • Although Will refusing to get into the bath after his possession is framed as its aversion to heat, it appears to not like water, either. Bob immediately notes in a throwaway line that none of the tunnels in Will's map cross a single body of water in Hawkins.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Despite being the Big Bad of the series, the Mind Flayer is conspicuously absent from the first part of Season 4, with Vecna taking the role of Arc Villain for the season. Dustin theorizes that Vecna is the Mind Flayer's "five star general", and by opening gates between the Upside Down and Hawkins, Vecna would be helping it, but up to that point the Mind Flayer hasn't made any attempt to restart its Hostile Terraforming or make a move against the Party. It does eventually appear in Volume 2, where a fragment is discovered within the Soviet gulag that Hopper is being held at, before finally appearing in full during Vecna's flashback.
• Worthy Opponent: Sees Eleven as this, declaring that it wants to have a showdown with her.
• Would Hurt a Child: It is more than willing to use a child for its macabre plans. In Season 3, it controls and later absorbs several children into its body, and it attempts to outright kill the younger members of the main cast multiple times, either through Billy or its physical body, all out of blind, unadulterated hatred.

The Mind Flayer's Avatar (Spoilers for Season 3)

The Mind Flayer's Avatar

"All this time, we've been building it! We've been building it... for you. All that work. All that pain. All of it, for you."

Billy: What do you want?!

"To build. I want to build."

Billy: I don't understand. Build what?

"What you see here."

A massive aggregate form the Mind Flayer created from the bodies of its Flayed to seek revenge on Eleven and destroy the world in person.

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• Attack the Mouth: The Party are able to keep it occupied by lobbing fireworks right into its mouth.
• Bloodier and Gorier: As a contrast to its true form being a mass of darkness in Season 2, the avatar is a beast made of the pulverized corpses of rats and humans in Season 3.
• Body of Bodies: The Mind Flayer builds the avatar by using the fragment of itself that got trapped in the real world to gather and liquefy a bunch of rats, melding the remains together into a crude avatar for it to inhabit and work through. And when it figures out where the Party is located, it melts down and assimilates the bodies of its Flayed to build up its form and deal with the heroes personally. The construction takes place over all of Season 3.
• Combat Tentacles: It's packed with at least seven of these, ideally for Flaying and impaling those who would oppose it. Though given their behavior and seeming response to sensory stimuli, they may actually be akin to heads.
• The Comically Serious: It's mostly played straight as a terrifying threat with zero comical traits, but gets a moment of this when it mistakes a mannequin for one of the kids, grabs it, before realizing the mistake and chucking it away in obvious frustration. It also latter takes a moment to roar into Dustin's walkie-talkie for annoying it.
• Evil Is Visceral: A giant monstrosity made of the melted and reformed corpses of rats and humans.
• Eyeless Face: It has no eyes on its head, making it all the more alien and unnerving.
• Faster Than They Look: Fast enough to keep up with a vehicle going full throttle, despite its size.
• Feed It a Bomb: The downside of giving itself a mouth is that people can now lob projectiles in it, such as all the fireworks Lucas stocks up on.
• Flesh Golem: The Mind Flayer's earthly form is made up of the combined biomass of the Flayed.
• Foreshadowing: The avatar itself turns out to be foreshadowing that the Mind Flayer itself is a similar crafted form, shaped into an unnatural state from native materials by the actions of a powerful outside influence to suit its will and intentions in its plans — in the Flayer's case, the powerful psychic Vecna/One shaped it into its current appearance from an amorphous cloud based on his long-standing fascination with spiders.
• Fighting a Shadow: Type Four, taken almost literally. Destroying the avatar by disconnecting it from the brain is simply an inconvenience, as the Mind Flayer's real shape of a living shadow is tethered in another dimension.
• Giant Spider: It moves around using six massive legs that mimic the arms of the Mind Flayer, giving it a surprising amount of agility and speed. Since Vecna/Henry Creel has an obsession with spiders to the point he literally shaped the Mind Flayer itself into a facsimile of one, this makes sense.
• Guest Fighter: As a skin for Sylvanus in Smite.
• Healing Factor: It regenerates the tendrils that were cut off during its first encounter with the Party. It only has a finite amount of flesh from the Flayed it absorbed, however, which means it may have melted a few more life-forms off-screen...
• Hell Is That Noise: As the physical vessel of an Eldritch Abomination, this is to be expected.
• I'm Melting!: It showcases the ability to cause those who it has flayed to literally melt into gory masses of flesh, which it can then shape into crude monsters, as well as a tangible body for itself.
• Implacable Man: Its physical form is never truly wounded during its battle with the Party - only slowed down. Even mentally ripping its face in half and multiple firework bombs fail to kill it. Since it's little more that a literal meat puppet for the Mind Flayer, it doesn't have any actual week spots to fatally injure it. Indeed, its main purpose seems to be providing a physical threat against Eleven that she has no choice but to use her powers to hold it off despite the strain and the side-effects, whilst also being capable of recovering from any damage she manages to inflict upon it. By the tail end of season 3, it's still in one piece and a massive threat towards everybody whilst Eleven has apparently burnt out her powers holding it off.
• Lightning Bruiser: Despite its imposing size and mass, it's frighteningly agile and can maneuver its tentacles to strike lightning quick.
• Living Weapon: Explicitly called a weapon, with Steve even commenting on how it's formed from flesh and bone rather than nuts and bolts.
• Mini Mook: Uses one of its tentacles to bite Eleven and plant a parasite in an attempt to kill her with internal injuries.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: It has a giant mouth in the center of its face with multiple rows of teeth, as well as a tongue that doubles as another flaying tendril for good measure.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: It has at least four arms and can sprout smaller ones for searching small spaces.
• No Ontological Inertia: When the gate to the Upside Down is closed the avatar's link to the Mind Flayer is cut off, killing it. Justified, as the avatar is not anything close to a functional biological entity without the Mind Flayer to control it cell-by-cell.
• Parasitic Horror: The Mind Flayer manages to leave a bit behind when it injures El, which starts wriggling and painfully crawling around under her skin later. Jonathan has to cut her leg open and try to dig it out with his fingers while they're all hiding from the Mind Flayer.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The moment it is fully prepared, it spends the rest of Season 3 doing nothing but attempting to kill the Party, especially Eleven.
• Robot Me: Although it's made of meat instead of metal, it functions as this to the Mind Flayer, being an artificial duplicate of the creature.
• Villainous Breakdown: A minor example, but in Season 3's finale, it seems so infuriated by Billy coming to resist its influence that it kills him with much more force than necessary, distracting it from Eleven long enough for Joyce to pull the keys and close the Gate. When the Gate is closing, it can do nothing but scream and thrash in one last hateful attempt to cause harm as it's foiled once more.
• Villain Override: The Mind Flayer puppeteers the avatar directly, with the avatar effectively acting as a physical body for the fiend.
• Would Hurt a Child: This is the very reason it exists - so the Mind Flayer can personally take revenge on the Party without using proxy forces such as the Demodogs. Also, at least one of its Flayed is a young teenager or preteen.
• Xenomorph Xerox: Mostly because of its elongated head, huge drooling mouth full of teeth and a tentacle coming out of its mouth that reminds of the Xenomorph's mouthed tongue. The comparison is reinforced in one scene where Nancy finds herself with one of its tentacles mere inches from her face, similar to Ripley's confrontation with a Xenomorph in the infirmary in Alien³.

Demogorgons

General

Carnivorous beasts that are indigenous to the Upside Down.

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• Animalistic Abomination: The Juvenile and Adolescent phases of Demogorgon development resemble that of a tadpole and canid in body structure.
• Back for the Finale: Largely absent over Season 3, until the epilogue reveals that the Soviets have captured one and feed prisoners to it.
• The Blank: Its "face" is actually the monster's mouth, which unfolds like a blossoming flower when it's feeding. It does indeed seem to be blind as a result, it passes right by Nancy when she's quiet and standing still despite seemingly walking right past her.
• Conditional Powers: Only the Hawkins Demogorgon has shown psychic powers (crossing dimensions, telekinesis etc.). Presumably with the Demodogs they're too young to use such powers, but the Soviet Demogorgon presumably does not have its powers if it can be caged and subdued^note although this could be because it's been conditioned (probably from a young age) not to use them.
• Flower Mouth: A Demogorgon's entire head can split open into five petal-like mandibles.
• Guest Fighter: A Demogorgon appears as a playable Killer in Dead by Daylight, as a skin for Bakasura in Smite, and as a skin in Fortnite.
• Humanoid Abomination: An extra-dimensional predator which lives in a Dark World and can teleport between there and here anytime it likes, but when it does manifest, it's a faceless, roughly humanoid monstrosity.
• In Name Only: The only real similarity these creatures have with the Dungeons & Dragons Demogorgon (or as the children call him, "the Demogorgon") is that they are relatively dark looking and are monsters.
• Kryptonite Factor: Of all the things the muggles in the story throw at one, only fire does any significant damage, being the only thing that has caused the Hawkins Demogorgon to retreat back to the Upside Down to lick its wounds. And it even regenerates from that surprisingly fast.
  • Season 4 reveals this weakness is affected by age, when Murray blasts a flamethrower at a pack of Demodogs and the adult Soviet Demogorgon. The Demodogs all die within seconds, but the Demogorgon is left stunned for several seconds, slowed and weakened to the extent Hopper can kill it easily with just a sword.
• Lamprey Mouth: Have this inside in the center of their petal-like mouth flaps.
• Lean and Mean: Tall, scrawny, and absolutely vicious.
• Made of Iron: Bullets and melee weapons can cause them pain, but not any lasting damage. Even having a spear thrown thrown through the mouth of a Demogorgon isn't shown to kill one, as the Soviet Demogorgon simply breaks off the spear-head and screams in pain and rage. Decapitation will however put one down.
• Metamorphosis Monster: The Demogorgons start out as little tadpole like creatures, before growing legs and starting to look sort of salamander-ish, and then develop their signature horrifying Flower Mouth as they grow to sort of resemble a creepy hairless dog. As adults they're tall Monstrous Humanoids.
• Monstrous Humanoid: Too tall (roughly nine feet) and gauntly-muscled to be human, with disturbingly long arms and hands, a mouth like a five-petalled carnivorous flower, and a tendency to stalk and kill any human that cross their path regardless of whether or not they're hungry or have been attacked (at least, judging by how it chased after the kids in the finale despite them neither being wounded nor having previously attacked it).
• More Predators Than Prey: The only ambulatory lifeform seen in The Upside Down, forcing them to invade Earth to hunt. They only started doing so recently when Eleven accidentally attracted it to Hawkins, before which they subsided on the eggs that dot the landscape. Beyond that there's no sign of prey in their presumably native dimension, not even what laid the eggs. Season 2 reveals that there are in fact other entities in the Upside Down, notably the far more powerful Mind Flayer, who may have been controlling the Demogorgon's actions right from the start. Season 4 also presents more Upside Down native lifeforms, including snake and bat-like organisms, but they are under Vecna's control so it's unclear if the Demogorgons eat them.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Its face is basically nothing but teeth.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The boys name the monster "Demogorgon" after one of D&D's most powerful adversaries. A powerful demon prince known as the Prince of Demons, Demogorgon was also named as one of the greatest villains in D&D history. Notably, Will refers to it as Demogorgon on his own, without the rest of the group describing it as such.
• Nonhumans Lack Attributes: Entirely naked and completely hairless and yet they don't appear to have anything resembling sensory organs, visible genitalia, or even an excretory system in the places you'd expect to find them. The way one uses Will as an incubator for a slug-like creature revealed to be its larva implies that they can reproduce, though.
• Non-Malicious Monster:
  • Vicious as they are, Demogorgons are really just hungry animals that happen to work outside our human understanding of physics and biology. They show no sadism or genuine evil unlike the Mind Flayer. They are also implied to be controlled against their will by the genuinely evil Mind Flayer — something confirmed by the Season 4 finale.
  • Nancy and Jonathan essentially treat the first one as a dangerous predator that needs to be put down for the good of everyone else, not a sadistic monster who enjoys killing for fun. The Soviet Demogorgon, however, does not get the same excuse, and willingly feeds upon a prisoner while serving as a sort of pet to the Soviet prison wardens (although its emaciated appearance implies they were deliberately starving it).
• Slave Mooks: The true nature of this species, revealed in Season 2.
• Starfish Aliens: Interdimensional creatures with eyeless faces and five-lipped mouths, that sure as hell doesn't look or act like anything from our world.
• Those Were Only Their Scouts: As much of a threat as the first Demogorgon is, it's nothing more than a scout and breeder for the Mind Flayer, who has hundreds of baby Demogorgons at his disposal.
• To Serve Man: They'll eat animals and the eggs around the Upside Down, but seem disproportionately focused on humans, either for food or what seems like reproductive purposes.
• Xenomorph Xerox: They are a species of eyeless extraterrestrial — or in this case, interdimensional — predatory endoparasites that reproduce by forcing fleshy tubes down a host's throat and inserting larvae into their bodies. They emerge as limbless creatures and metamorphose into towering humanoid monsters with unusual mouthparts. For bonus points, Season 4 reveals they were turned into hive-minded bioweapons by a misanthropic sociopath desiring humanity's destruction and his own godhood.

The Hawkins Demogorgon

The Monster, a.k.a. "The Demogorgon"

Played By: Mark Streger

A nigh-indestructible, superficially humanoid carnivore in a relentless pursuit of any and all victims in sight.

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• Big Bad Ensemble: With Dr. Brenner in Season 1. Brenner is the one responsible for unleashing the Demogorgon and spends the entire season trying to cover it up while hunting Eleven, while the Demogorgon kidnaps Will Byers and terrorizes the town on its own accord. It completely takes over the role of Big Bad in the finale when it (seemingly) kills Brenner and becomes the Final Boss.
• Bizarre Alien Senses: It can somehow sense blood from across dimensions.
• Conditional Powers: Is extremely attracted to the scent of blood and only attacks actively bleeding victims outside its dimension; in some cases he will transcend the barrier if he gets even the tiniest whiff of blood. One of the reasons it doesn't immediately kill Will is because he's not bleeding.
• The Dragon: To the Mind Flayer, as revealed in Season 2. The Mind Flayer sent it to our dimension as a scout and a method of breeding an army for its takeover. Season 4 would further imply that the Demogorgon was also either working with or for Vecna in regards to capturing and killing Barb.
• Electromagnetic Ghosts: Its appearance makes lights flicker in the real world.
• Expy: According with Word of God, it was based on the Shark from Jaws.
• Extra-Dimensional Shortcut: Returning to the Upside Down doesn't reduce the travel time, but it does allow it to bypass anything that could detect or impede it.
• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: Although it's seen eating its prey, sometimes it cocoons them into a wall. The exact purpose of this is unclear, but seems like a means of reproduction reminiscent of those cocoon-loving rascals from Alien, as both Will and Barb have slug-like creatures emerge from their mouths afterwards. Confirmed in season two when we see the slug that Will coughed up eventually metamorphosize into a juvenile Demogorgon.
• Feel No Pain: Getting pumped full of bullets doesn't even slow it down, and Steve whaling on it with a bat seems to annoy it more than anything else. Getting caught in a bear trap and set on fire, and later, Eleven pinning and disintegrating it, seem to be the only things that cause it to vocalize pain.
• Final Boss: Of the first season. Dr. Brenner and the Demogorgon are in a Big Bad Ensemble for most of the season but it takes his spot as the final antagonist in the last episode, complete with seemingly mauling him to death right before launching itself after Mike, Eleven, and the other kids.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen:
  • Aside from a few blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments, it's rare to see the monster in full prior to the final episode, when it finally appears in force, and even then the flickering lights and jumpy camera angles ensure that you'll never really get a good look at it. All of this works to increase the thing's creepy factor.
  • Not so much with the Demogorgon that appears at the end of Season 3, which appears in a brightly-lit room.
• Implacable Man: This thing takes hails of bullets, a beating with a spiked baseball bat, is caught in a bear trap, and set on fire. But it still keeps coming. Interestingly, all of these attacks did draw blood and/or damage skin, but still weren't able to seriously maim it (and the bullets in particular barely slowed it down). This seems to imply that it has an insanely durable endoskeletal structure.
• Immune to Bullets: Nancy puts all six rounds from Lonnie's stolen .38 revolver into him at pretty much point blank range and it doesn't seem to be hurt at all. Later on, the Hawkins lab soldiers, who don't know this, try to shoot it with fully-automatic weapons, but they have little more effect than the revolver.
  • That said the Demogorgon was only shot with pistol rounds either from a revolver or a sub machine gun. We don't know how it would fare against a rifle or shotgun round.
• In-Series Nickname: The boys name it "The Demogorgon" after one of the monsters that they use in their Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. Presumably being kids they didn't realize that Demogorgon is supposed to be the name of a specific being. Suitably in the game Demogorgon infamously has a ridiculously unfair set of powers just as the monster in the show does. The teens and adults briefly refer to it as "the faceless".
• It Can Think: To a degree. It figures out how to open the lock on the Byers house, jumps Nancy and Jonathan from behind the second they stop fighting back-to-back, and quickly identifies Eleven as its most dangerous opponent during the Final Battle. Beyond that, though, it's usually not much more intelligent than an animal.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: The Season 1 Demogorgon chops off its own foot after being caught in a bear trap and set on fire in Episode 8 in order to escape back into the Upside Down and avoid burning to death.
• Lightning Bruiser: Incredibly fast, monstrously strong, and able to shrug off a hail of gunfire. Getting trapped in a bear trap, set on fire and pummeled with a nail bat barely slows it down. It takes Eleven pinning it to a wall and using her powers to tear it apart on a molecular level to finally kill it.
• Mind over Matter: Only blatantly shown when it unlocks a door from the other side. This may also contribute to how it can drag a deer with incredible speed, despite not being seen in the immediate area, and its incredible strength despite its lack of musculature. It may also contribute to its dimension-hopping abilities.
• Not So Invincible After All: It's no match for Eleven, who restrains and vaporizes it. Implying she atomically disrupted it along with herself, either destroying it, or jamming them in-between the two dimensions.
• Super-Persistent Predator: Zig-Zagged. After being burned by Jonathan, Nancy, and Steve it promptly escapes to recover and hunt different prey. However, it does seem to hunt Eleven in specific in the finale, whereas it was previously happy to eat its prey until bothered. Surrounded by a veritable feast of G-men, the monster follows El and the boys instead of feeding. This could be because it was her psychic abilities that drew it into the earth dimension to begin with, or that the Mind Flayer or Vecna was directing it. Notably, it's implied that Will's kidnapping and being dragged into the Upside Down in the first place was due to the Demogorgon mistaking him for Eleven, due to him being a small child who was in the area after Eleven successfully escaped from the lab. Mike and the others even meet Eleven in the woods for the first time whilst returning to the area to search for clues about Will's disappearance.
• Super-Toughness: Worked over with a spiked baseball bat? Pumped full of ridiculous amounts of lead. How ridiculous? It shrugs off being shot at point-blank range by Nancy multiple times. A whole platoon of highly-trained government agents armed with SMGs don't have much luck either. This thing shrugs it all off without any apparent injury.
• Suspiciously Stealthy Predator: Because it enters the real world only briefly to seize food, no one ever manages to catch clear evidence of its existence (except for one blurry photo by Jonathan).
• Thinking Up Portals: It tears portals between the normal world and Upside Down, apparently whenever and wherever it wants, which usually close in a matter on minutes behind it. It does have a penchant for drywall. However, it's implied that it can only do this as long as the original gate accidentally created by Eleven remains open, as this weakens the barrier between worlds.
• Uncertain Doom: It seems pretty dead considering Eleven disintegrated it onscreen, but come the reveal in Season 4 that this isn't 'disintegration' so much as 'exiling to the Upside Down' when she did the same to One and he survived, it's possible this didn't actually kill it. Though even if it survived, it's still effectively removed as a threat considering it isn't anywhere to be seen in the next three seasons,so the difference to our protagonists is minimal.

D'Artagnan

D'Artagnan / Dart

A small creature from the Upside Down who is adopted by Dustin, who initially confuses it for an exotic tadpole.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: Its death is portrayed in a solemn light — in spite of it eating Dustin's cat, the creature was a loyal pet.
• Androcles' Lion: It allows Dustin to pass when he feeds it Three Musketeers Candy bar due to Dustin taking care of it.
• Body Horror: It got into our dimension by gestating inside Will's body as a parasite.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Or rather, his hive mind. While Dart still became dangerous after maturing into a Demodog, he seems to remember the kindness that Dustin showed him when he was in the boy's care and behaves like a slightly tamed wild animal when Dustin gives him another Three Musketeers bar. Being enslaved to the Mind Flayer or not, Dart (and presumably the rest of his species) do have some sense of self outside of the Mind Flayer's control, which proved useful when it remembered Dustin enough to not immediately attack him.
• Irony: Dustin names him D'Artagnan, after the label of his Three Musketeers candy bar. However D'Artagnan himself was not one of the titular trio, either in the book, or on the wrapper.^note That was Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.
• Last Episode, New Character: It first appears at the very end of Season 1, being coughed up by Will.
• Line-of-Sight Name: Dustin names it after the first thing he feeds it, a Three Musketeers bar.
• Metamorphosis Monster: He starts out as a leech or flatworm-like creature which becomes something similar to an eyeless landbound tadpole with arms, eventually he grows larger and sprouts legs before growing into a cat-like predator with a Nested Mouth and then becomes bigger and dog-like who will turn into a full fledged Demogorgon.
• No Ontological Inertia: Dies alongside all the other Demodogs after the gate to the Upside Down is closed.
• Pet Monstrosity: He turns into a juvenile Demogorgon after a few days in Dustin's care.
• Starfish Aliens: It is from the Upside Down after all. It has no eyes, grows very rapidly in size and strength, and is averse to heat.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: After a few episodes of being a cute little creature, it grows up fast and turns out to be a juvenile Demogorgon.

The Demodogs

The Demodogs

The adolescent forms of the Demogorgon's species.

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• All Animals Are Dogs: They howl like dogs at night.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Hopper and the Hawkins Energy Lab staff don't have much luck with body shots, but when Hopper is defending Eleven from them at the Gate, he's forced to shoot the first one in the face, which takes it out quickly, and he switches to headshots after that.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: In the second season, the Demodogs are less formidable than the Demogorgon from the first season. A single adult demogorgon was a massive threat, but it takes an army of the adolescents to pose even close to the threat the original posed. Justified, since they are juveniles who, presumably, lack the tough hide and massive strength of a fully-grown Demogorgon. They also do collectively end up killing far more people than the one adult did, even if each juvenile goes down easier if isolated. They rarely are isolated, though.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: While not the main antagonists of Season 2, they do create a nice contrast to the Adult Demogorgon. While the adult was a Nigh-Invulnerable Lightning Bruiser capable of taking on entire squads of armed men without a scratch and required nothing short of complete telekinetic disintegration to kill; the Demodogs are much weaker and squishier, requiring only a few well-aimed bullets to put down. They make up the discrepancy with numbers.
• Degraded Boss: The Adolescent Demogorgons aren't nearly as tough as the Adults are, since they can be killed with normal bullets. However, there are inbuilt justifications for this; they really aren't as fully-developed, and they've not exactly been growing up solidly on home turf and have been subjected to way more sunlight and water than would theoretically be good for them, as a result. Even so, they're still tough enough to shrug off body shots.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Towards the end of Season 1, Eleven saw one of their slug-like larval forms crawling out of Barb's corpse.
• Flower Mouth: The Demodogs have mouths that split open into multiple petal-like mandibles.
• Fragile Speedster: Not nearly as tough as the adult, but just as fast.
• Lamprey Mouth: Just like the adult, they've got tons of teeth in the center of their mouth flaps that attach to a victim.
• Metamorphosis Monster: As they feed, they grow from a slug-like larval form to a frog-like instar stage where they grow legs. From this they mature to a cat-like instar form where they develop their Lamprey Mouth, growing into a larger dog-like form before metamorphosing into their humanoid mature form.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Has a ton of alien teeth, just like the adult.
• Primal Stance: Unlike the adult Demogorgon from season one, they do not seem to be capable of walking on two legs.
• Starfish Aliens: Just as bizarre as any fully grown Demogorgon.
• Would Hit a Girl: Has killed several Hawkins Lab scientists, including a few women.
• Zerg Rush: Their preferred tactic is to run and attack in groups. It's effective.

The Soviet Demogorgon

The Soviet Demogorgon

A demogorgon that the Soviets were able to capture. They feed it prisoners.

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• An Arm and a Leg: Hopper slices off one of its arms before finishing it off.
• Arc Villain: The biggest threat in the Russia storyline of Season 4.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Hopper, Dmitri and several other prisoners stand together with some weapons hoping to put up a fight. Within a minute, only Hopper and Dmitri are left alive.
• Determinator: Not even its sole weakness is enough to make the Demogorgon back down. Murray sets its whole body on fire and it continues on its rampage completely unfazed.
• Dragon Their Feet: The one in the Soviet Union only shows up several months after the Mind Flayer's Avatar has been killed, though the Mind Flayer itself is presumably still alive in the Upside Down.
• The Dreaded: The Demogorgon's existence is considered something of a myth among the prisoners. A few of them feel confident knowing they can fight it with sheer numbers, but then Hopper tells them that he's dealt with one in the past and describes how dangerous these things really are, which causes everyone to break out in a cold sweat and lose their appetites.
• Evil Is Visceral: In contrast to the Hawkins Demogorgon, this one has an even more emaciated build, to the point where its skin is nearly transparent.
• Fed to the Beast: The Soviets execute their prisoners in this way.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Takes a spear through its throat, courtesy of Hopper, not that it stops the monster.
• Irony : It is known as the "Soviet Demogorgon", and it ends up suffering a Rasputinian Death, as detailed below.
• Lightning Bruiser: Possibly more than the Hawkins Demogorgon was, as it destroys the group of prisoners fed to it in moments.
• Made of Iron: Even after getting immolated and shot at, the Demogorgon doesn't so much as back down. Hopper has to chop its head off to stop it.
• Monster Is a Mommy: It's implied the Demodog specimens the Soviets are keeping are the offspring of this particular Demogorgon. While its first massacre could just be written off as a predator fulfilling its natural urges, it becomes downright enraged after finding out what happened to its kin. Then when they're all killed the Demogorgon loses all concern for its own self-preservation and continues attacking Hopper despite being severely weakened.
• Off with His Head!: How Hopper finally finishes it off.
• Rasputinian Death: Takes a spear through its mouth, gets shot at by Soviet guards, set on fire by Murray, gets shot again multiple times by Hopper, loses an arm, and then is finally finished off by Hopper when he chops its head off.
• Roar Before Beating: It attempts to intimidate Hopper by roaring at him before their duel, but Hopper has none of it. Later on, it tries it again mid-fight after Hopper successfully wounds it. Again, it doesn't work, and leaves the Soviet Demogorgon exposed just enough for Hopper to cut its head off and kill it for good.

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Flayed

The Flayed

The Flayed

"You shouldn't have looked for me. Because now I see you. Now we can all see you."

Billy: "She could have killed me."

Heather: "Yes, but not us."

People and animals infected by the Mind Flayer. Largely left to operate on their own, the Mind Flayer can "activate" them to serve its ends.

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• And I Must Scream: The Flayed are fully aware of what they're doing under the Mind Flayer's influence and are helpless to stop it, up to and including their own bodies melting down into a raw, contaminated, bloody liquid to make up the main body.
• Body Horror: The Mind Flayer can use its control over the Flayed to melt them into a sludge of raw materials that it can shape into monstrous forms.
• Extreme Omnivore: The Flayed have a craving for random things like fertilizer and cleaning fluids, ammonia appearing to be the common factor. It might be to preemptively destroy their organs to give the Mind Flayer more malleable materials to work with.
• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: How they became Flayed. The proto-body of the Mind Flayer's Avatar shoved something down their throat to infect them and turn them into its slaves.
• Hive Mind: Flayed in close proximity seem to have a connection to each other, this backfires on them as physical damage done to one affects others nearby.
• Made of Iron: Flayed are stronger and more durable than normal humans, Flayed! Billy survives and is able to run away after Eleven telekinetically blasts him through a brick wall. They can also eat caustic chemicals with seemingly no adverse effects. Justified as Lucas points out just because they appear human they may no longer be human on the inside, so normal physiology may no longer apply to them.
• Our Zombies Are Different: They're not shambling corpses, they don't eat people and their bite isn't contagious. Nevertheless, they're for all intents and purposes undead.
• Removed Achilles' Heel: As part of being Taught by Experience by its first defeat, the Flayer seems to have removed their ability to feel pain to render them immune to being purged of its influence the same way Will was.
• Swarm of Rats: The Mind Flayer isn't just limited to controlling people, as it shows by hijacking the rats of Hawkins.
• Tainted Veins: They display this at times of stress or when the Mind Flayer is taking more direct control.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Outside of their eating habits, the Flayed show no signs of being under the control of an Eldritch Abomination. Billy, Tom, and Heather all behave inconspicuously under its influence.
• Villain Override: When the Mind Flayer decides that simply influencing its puppets isn't enough, it can take direct control over them.

The Hospital Monster

The Hospital Monster

A creature made from the remains of two humans after they were Flayed.

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• Blob Monster: As a mass of liquid meat held together only by the will of the Mind Flayer, it can discorporate back into a blob to ooze under doors and through vents.
• Body of Bodies: The result of two Flayed (Bruce and Tom, to be precise) forming a creature independent of the Mind Flayer.
• Evil Is Visceral: It can be described as an arthropod with (and of) skin.
• Failure Gambit: As implied by Flayed!Billy, the Hospital Monster's other purpose is to test whether or not the Mind Flayer's main avatar (composed of many more bodies) is ready to take on El and the party, meaning it knew full well the Hospital Monster stood little chance against her.
• Giant Enemy Crab: It appears to be vaguely crustacean in shape.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Par for the course with any monster from the Upside Down.
• Spikes of Villainy: The surface of its body is occasionally lined with curved spikes.
• Was Once a Man: Made from Bruce and Tom.

Creel House Inhabitants

Vecna

Henry Creel / One (001) / Vecna

"Your suffering is almost at an end."

^{Click here to see Henry Creel / One} "To your papa, you are nothing more than an animal, a monster, a lab rat to be tamed. The truth is just the opposite. You are better than they are. Superior."

Played By: Jamie Campbell Bower, Raphael Luce (child)

Debut: "Chapter One: The Hellfire Club" (4x01)

"They can't help you Max. There's a reason you hide from them. You belong here, with me."

The psychopathic, deeply misanthropic son of Victor Creel. When Henry discovered his psychic powers, he used them to torment and murder his family. He was soon discovered by Dr Brenner and became the first in a series of psychic children gathered by Hawkins National Lab, being designated 001. Decades later, Henry/One massacred nearly everyone at the lab before being overpowered and banished to the Upside Down by Eleven. As a result, his body was hideously disfigured and mutated thereby turning him into the creature ultimately dubbed "Vecna" by the Party. Now, years after his banishment to the Upside Down, Vecna has begun killing teenagers seemingly at random, with Max being his latest target.

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• The Ace: All but stated to have been this among the children under Dr. Brenner's tutelage. Henry taught himself how to control his powers and is apparently the most powerful psychic, with the possible exception of Eleven. While Eleven is Unskilled, but Strong, Henry has perfect control of his powers. This means that when she catches him off guard, she is able to overpower him (which she has done twice), but in a direct fight, his greater precision allows him to easily dominate Eleven. Henry is also extremely manipulative, and was intelligent and resourceful enough to survive in the Upside Down in its primordial state. It's telling that Dr. Brenner has to make an electronic chip to suppress his abilities, and relegate him to being an orderly within Hawkins Laboratory just to keep the man under his control.
• Achilles' Heel: Nancy and Robin discover that Vecna's deadly psychic grip on his targets can be broken by playing the target's favorite song thus activating their mind's positive emotions and returning them to reality. It is also revealed that Vecna's physical form, during this phase, is in an idle position leaving him vulnerable to attacks.
• Allegorical Character: Vecna embodies the deepest traumas and regrets of his victims, reminding them of their guilt and shame while embellishing on the details as he hunts them down. Max and Eleven are the only one who have escaped his clutches, as the sound of Kate Bush, the memories of happier times with their friends and Mike's declaration of love gave them the strength to break free and escape the Upside Down.
• All There in the Manual: Billing information calls him "Peter Ballard", despite that name never being used in the show. This was done likely to avoid spoilers. In an interview, Campbell even stated that he had no idea where the name "Peter Ballard" came from.
• All Your Powers Combined: He demonstrates a mix of both Eleven and Kali's abilities including Eleven's telekinesis, ability to contact people across dimensions, and ability to create portals as well as Kali's power to induce hallucinations.
• Alpha Strike: He's on the receiving end after Nancy, Steve, and Robin track his physical body down. Robin and Steve ignite him with two Molotov cocktails followed by Nancy shooting him in the torso with a sawed-off shotgun no less than five times before the final shot blows him out the attic window of the Creel house in the Upside Down. Despite this, he manages to survive by either barely living and escaping on foot, or by dissipating his body to reform somewhere else as there is nothing left behind in front of the house save for a smoldering impact mark. Either way, Will confirms in the season finale that Vecna is still very much alive and now has a massive gate into Hawkins prepped for his armies to use.
• Ambiguous Situation: The full nature of the relationship between the Mind Flayer and Vecna/One. One is shown discovering the Mind Flayer as an amorphous cloud in the upside down and then forming it into the spider-shaped being seen in earlier seasons, establishing that One controls it and implying that it, along with all the other monsters from the Upside Down, are ultimately One's minions and even extensions of himself. This leaves quite a few questions remaining, though. Does the Mind Flayer have any awareness or will of its own? Why did One act through it in earlier seasons, but then seem to cast it aside in Season 4? What role did it play in completing One's transformation from human to monster, as when he first finds it, he is still shown in to be in the sort of half-human state that he was when he first arrived in the Upside Down? The First Shadow confirms the Mind Flayer manipulated Vecna into becoming what he is now, rather than the other way around as was assumed.
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: The end of Volume 1 in Season 4 leans heavily into this trope. Henry tells Eleven about the child designated 001 that Brenner has kept secret, only to reveal that he himself was that child. After killing everyone else he tells El about the ill-fated Creel family, revealing himself to be the son of Victor. And just in case it wasn't clear by the end of the episode, the last shot reveals that he became Vecna upon his banishment to the Upside Down.
• Animal Motif: Spiders. Henry developed an obsession with spiders as a child, believing them to be natural predators who prey on the weak, finding a kinship in them.
  • He utilizes spiders in the visions he casts into people's minds as one of his more general, less personal acts of fear, and the way he's raised up by the tendrils of his lair when hunting and killing is reminiscent of a spider at the center of its web. When someone enters his mental space, they even find the husks of his past victims stuck in a cocoon of vines, similar to how a spider will leave its past prey. Ironically his active hunting style is quite different from that of the spiders he makes appears, who make webs and wait for prey to come to them, unless one considers all of Hawkins his 'web.'
  • As Vecna later revealed to Eleven, he created the Mind Flayer himself. Given that it is a spider-like monster that — much like Vecna — is a vindictive misanthrope that seeks to destroy humanity, it makes sense in hindsight.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • To Eleven. While the rest of the cast oppose him to protect Hawkins, the enmity between him and Eleven is much more personal. He's not only her Evil Counterpart, but also shares a violent history with her. He initially befriends her at Hawkins Lab in order to corrupt her, which fails and results in Eleven using her powers to banish him to the Upside Down, in turn transforming him into a Humanoid Abomination. From then on, he's pretty much equally invested in tormenting Eleven and the people she cares about as he is in his grander scheme to destroy Hawkins and the world.
  • To Dr. Brenner. Having endured so much torture at Brenner's hands, and being forced to work for him as an orderly for the Hawkins Lab for decades, Henry hates Brenner even more than Eleven does, with one of his goals post-Vecna transformation being to specifically terrorize him out of revenge for what the man has done to him. In turn, Brenner considers Henry to be to be his greatest failure after losing all his test subjects at his hands, and wants nothing more than to find him in the Upside Down and kill him.
  • To a lesser extent, he also serves as this to Nancy as of the climax of Season 4. In Episode 7, he chooses to communicate with her specifically, and reveals that he was the one responsible for murdering Barbara back in Season 1. Furthermore, he takes particular pleasure in taunting her when he has her, Robin, and Steve at his mercy in the Upside Down. Nancy returns the sentiments after their talk, decides that Vecna needs to die brutally, and is the leader of the Hawkins front to do just that.
  • To the rest of the party in general, as he has done something to negatively affect all of them. As creator of the Mind Flayer, he was responsible for all of the trauma it caused Will. As soon as Will arrives back in Hawkins, he senses Vecna and fearfully tells Mike what he plans to do the world. He torments Max all throughout Season 4 with horrible visions, culminating in him briefly murdering her in the finale. Lucas undoubtedly hates him, because of trying to kill Max, and the fact that she died painfully in his arms begging not to die. Dustin despises him because in the finale his Demobat legion fatally wounded Eddie who was his hero. While he hasn't done anything to harm Mike personally, considering all of the pain and suffering that he's caused his friends, Mike probably hates his guts as well.
• Arc Symbol: Grandfather clocks. His victims always see one right when he's decided to kill them. This is because there was one in his house back when he was a human boy in Hawkins (and is present in the Upside Down mirror version), and he creates a mind-link with his victims when he attacks them. They're either seeing them because of his memory of the one he owned, or because of the one in his home in the Upside Down. His obsession with that particular clock stems from it being the first time he consciously used his psychic powers to affect the world around him, winding the clock's hands backwards as a symbolic defiance of the 'unnatural' laws that mankind force upon the world around them, as his 'Orderly' self explains to the younger Eleven that he considers units of measurement for time as one of the biggest examples of said laws that were 'restraining' his true self. The ritual he enacts to tear open a massive gate between Hawkins and the Upside Down and begin merging both worlds together seems to incorporate the clock in some respect, as its chiming is what signals the activation of the gate after Max temporarily dies.
• Ax-Crazy: An incredibly brutal and bloodthirsty sociopath with a level of sadism that matches the Mind Flayer which is appropriate considering he created the Mind Flayer. His proclivity for torture and murder has not faded over the years since he was sent to the Upside Down, and has instead spent it planning the eradication of humanity when not committing gruesome murders in Hawkins for fun.
• The Bad Guy Wins: He gets what he wants by the end of Stranger Things 4. He successfully killed all four of his targets (Max was dead just long enough for it to "count"), causing the largest gate to the Upside Down to open, devastating Hawkins and killing dozens. And despite the thrashing he received from El, Nancy, Robin, and Steve, he is still alive and the Upside Down is beginning to leak into our world.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: A flashback to his younger self shows him torturing a rabbit with his Psychic Powers.
• Bald of Evil: Once he assumes his final form as Vecna, Henry's vibrant blonde hair eventually falls out, leaving his new monstrous form completely bald.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Ken doll variant; although he presumably was anatomically whole when he was still human, his banishment to the Upside Down and subsequent transformation into Vecna seems to have eliminated his genitalia.
• The Beastmaster: When trapped in the Upside Down, Henry manages to assume control over the lifeforms that exist there, and direct them into being hostile against humans. He also is responsible for creating new creatures to inhabit the Upside Down, including the Mind Flayer.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: One wished to unburden the world of its unnatural order. Eleven banished him to the Upside Down, a parallel world where order is non-existent. He's horribly disfigured within moments. Though he spends quite a bit of time in agonizing pain as he's struck by supernatural lightning and falls for a very long time, Henry doesn't really seem to mind this fate in the present day.
• Big Bad: Of Stranger Things 4 and the upcoming Stranger Things 5.
• Bishōnen Line: From a visual aesthetic, Vecna — compared to the other residents of the Upside Down that are vaguely monsters with sectioned flower mouths and the Mind Flayer being a multi-limbed, colossal monstrosity that only communicate coherently through a host — looks like a skeletal-faced, humanoid corpse with Icy Blue Eyes that is able to converse with its victims fluently and his methods of hunting are much more refined — focusing on Mind Rape and demoralizing speeches. Justified as he used to be human -- specifically a former test subject like Eleven, called One.
• Body Horror:
  • His clash with Eleven drove him into the Upside Down, where his flesh was ruined by being pelted by lightning bolts as he was flung through the formless void the Upside Down used to be. Curiously, he survived with heavy scarring, but a still noticeably human appearance in the aftermath, and over the years in the alien environment seems to have mutated into a partial Meat Moss construct, with his body now apparently being partially constructed from the fleshy vines that cover the Upside Down Hawkins, and his left hand elongating into an animalistic claw. Though his appearance is horrific, it's shown his new body is much more durable than his formally human one, to the point of being able to survive being set on fire and blasted with shotgun rounds until he falls out a window.
  • Also describes the way he executes his victims: Burning the eyeballs to blind them, then snapping their limbs into obscene shapes, and detaching the jaw from the skull before caving it in. And the victim can feel everything.
• Boomerang Bigot: He vehemently hates humanity despite the fact that — although he has psychic powers — he himself is still a human.
• Break Them by Talking: Part of his M.O. is to appear as someone his victims know and bring up traumatic experiences, twisting things like they are the victims fault. When appearing to Max as Billy, he hits her with an especially cruel monologue after she reads her letter, even insinuating that a small part of her wanted Billy to die.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Vecna refers to his father as "old, blind, dumb Victor" while revealing himself to Nancy.
• Cold Ham: As Vecna, he speaks in a low, raspy voice, even while giving nihilistic speeches, telling his victims all about how he's going to "end their suffering", and showing Nancy his apocalyptic plans for Hawkins.
• Combat Tentacles: Vecna has a series of detachable tentacle which he uses these to restrain his quarry. Apparently they can't be resisted through raw strength, as any individual that's been restrained has required a rush of positive emotions to be able to break free.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
  • Unlike the animalistic Demogorgon or the intelligent but deeply alien Mind Flayer, Vecna is human-like in both appearance and mindset, and his understanding of the human mind is a key part of how he attacks. This is because, unlike previous villains, he isn't a native inhabitant of the Upside Down.
  • To Billy Hargrove. Billy was a delinquent who treated his stepsister like a chore, but his issues stemmed from having an abusive father who drove his mother away. Eleven was able to tap into his childhood memories and in the end he redeemed himself at the cost of his own life. Henry on the other hand had the facade of being well-behaved while being far worse than Billy ever was, acts kind to his "sister" Eleven, didn't suffer any kind of childhood trauma as his father was a good man, and murdered his own mother. He willingly shares his childhood with Eleven, which reveals he was always predisposed towards misanthropy and tried to kill Eleven when she stood up to him, which he survived but turned him into a literal monster from.
• The Corruption: All the evil within the Upside Down, right down to the dimension's appearance as a reflection of Hawkins and the Mind Flayer's spider form, comes from Henry's psychic powers and his sheer hatred for humanity.
• Creepy Blue Eyes: Henry has naturally-blue eyes that look much more unsettling after they go bloodshot from his massacre of Hawkins' Lab. He retains them even as the monstrous Vecna, which stand out against his horrific visage.
• Creepy High-Pitched Voice: One has a non-threatening voice that Eleven initially trusts. Then once he goes on his rampage and has his monologue it goes from sounding reassuring to unsettling due to One's belief that he's the hero in this scenario.
• Creepy Long Fingers: Has long talons which can be seen best during his showdown with Max.
• Cruel Mercy:
  • Henry didn't kill his father like he did to his mother and sister, and instead let him live, knowing he'll be broken both from the emotional shock and for being implicated in those crimes. It was probably the worst fate among all his victims. After Nancy spoke with Victor, Vecna casually mentioned that he's been planning to inflict even more torment on his father.
  • It's implied he intended a similar fate for his other father figure Dr. Brenner, as he noticeably spared him alone out of all the other psychics and staff members in the Hawkins lab despite having him at his mercy, and seems genuinely displeased at the news of his passing. That said, he still refers him with derogatory contempt and implies he intended to let him live only long enough to see everything he'd been hoping to achieve with his experiments come to naught.
  • After meeting Eleven since his banishment, Vecna decides to restrain her... only to tell her he wants her to watch him killing Max and the carnage he unleashes on the world as punishment for rejecting his offer several years back.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Downplayed. He claims he was rejected by other children, and the fact that he understands sadness implies that something bad happened to him, but we're given few details. While being a prisoner of Dr. Brenner that bonds with Eleven and is later revealed to be Victor's son all seem like they'd provide a sympathetic backstory, it soon becomes clear they had nothing to do with his turn to villainy, as One had a loving family and his acts of cruelty were done simply because he hates humanity and enjoys carnage, regardless of his rather flimsy justifications.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: The tendrils that fuse into him make it look like he is dependent on a life support system. As the Party and their allies deduce, this is actually Vecna entering a trance state every time he ensnares a victim, which makes him a sitting duck during such a period.
• Demon of Human Origin: Vecna was once a man known as Henry Creel, who was institutionalized after Dr. Brenner discovered his psychic powers and wanted to keep him under his control. After being banished into the Upside Down by Eleven, Henry is blasted by lightning and forced to survive in a dimension that clearly was not meant for humans to explore, where he gradually devolved into being a burnt, inhuman creature who further increases his powers tenfold by taking control of and/or creating new life forms while in there. Bonus points in that the Upside Down literally looks like hell when Henry is first sent there.
• Destination Defenestration: Is blasted out of a boarded-up attic window of the Upside Down Creel house by Nancy with a shotgun while on fire, though he survives.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Directed at his father. Victor did accidentally kill innocents in wartime, but it was a complete accident that haunted him for decades, and Henry using the memory to Mind Rape him and additionally killing his innocent mother and sister just because he had the power and the strength to and framing Victor for their deaths comes off as massive overkill at best. It's all but stated that Henry was simply looking for a justification to indulge in his sadistic traits and psychopathy against his family.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Henry's interactions with El can bring to mind sexual grooming, as his modus operandi involves speaking to her in a gentle tone of voice while taking advantage of her for his own benefit. He all but states that he wanted El to be his queen in their new world order. When he becomes Vecna, he convinces his prey they are unloved and that what he's about to do is for their own good. He even developed a habit of getting uncomfortably close to his victims.
  • Vecna relies on preying on his victims' previous traumas to target them before inducing dread and anxiety, which manifest initially as intrusive thoughts. As his stalking progresses, the victims also experience physical pain such as headaches and psychological difficulty such as nightmares among other symptoms of depression. When he finally closes in on his victims, they re-experience deeply traumatic life events. From the outside looking in, Vecna's victims appear to be experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, making him an allegory for it and the worst possible result: suicide. This is reinforced by Vecna claiming he is ending the suffering of his victims, and the way the Party carefully watches over Max after her ordeal with Vecna, similar to how someone's loved ones may act around them after a suicide attempt.
• Dragged Off to Hell: His banishment to the Upside Down plays out this way. He is sent tumbling through the hellish dimension while red lightning destroys his body, transforming him into a visceral monster. Of course in the present time, he seems to have accepted it as his home.
• The Dragon: This is Dustin's theory of what Vecna's role is in the Upside Down, being the Mind Flayer's "five star general". The fact that he is opening multiple gates to the Upside Down implies that he is at least helping the Mind Flayer advance its plans. However, Dustin's theory is proven to be wrong — Vecna is the Mind Flayer, subverting the trope altogether.
• The Dreaded: There isn’t a single person that has encountered Vecna that isn’t terrified of him, not just because of the brutal murders he commits in Season 4 and his menacing appearance, but also because of every horrific tragedy that was previously unknown to be the result of his actions. This includes the Creel family massacre, and anything the Mind Flayer has been responsible for.
• Electromagnetic Ghosts: Same as with the Demogorgon, flickering lights herald his presence in the real world.
• Emerging from the Shadows: He likes to make his entrances like this, making his first appearance in Chrissy's nightmare by emerging from the shadows.
• Enfante Terrible: Henry began torturing small animals as a child before tormenting his family with disturbing hallucinations. He eventually murdered his mother and sister while framing his father for the crime.
• Evil All Along: "The Orderly" is first introduced as an ally to Eleven who mentors her and tries to help her escape. Not only is he revealed to be the real killer of the lab children, it's also revealed that he's been terrorizing Hawkins in the past few years.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The only emotions he knows how to channel into his psionics are sadness and anger; he knows nothing about love. Even though Eleven had only one very brief and faint memory of love, that was enough to empower her to defeat him. Similarly, the tentacles he binds and crushes his victims with cannot be physically overpowered no matter how hard they struggle, but when both Max and Eleven are reminded of more positive emotions and use those to fight back against Vecna, the tentacles weaken and fall off them, as Vecna is literally binding them with their more negative doubts and emotions. He has no defenses against emotions he cannot comprehend, nor the power they give others, leading to him getting physically attacked twice when he seems to have won.
• Evil Counterpart: He is essentially what Eleven could've been if she had zero moral boundaries: an unstoppable, superpowered killer driven only by pure rage. Like Eleven, One was born with telekinetic abilities that were sharpened through Brenner's experiments. However, unlike Eleven who has killed only in self-defense or to defend her friends, Vecna kills because he likes it. Their tattoos even contrast each other's; El's is 011 while Henry's is 001 (when the two are shown side by side, their arms are positioned so that the ones correspond with the other's zeros.
• Evil Is Hammy: He's generally a Cold Ham, but he occasionally dips into outright over-the-top territory. His Motive Rant is the perfect example:
  "Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades! Each life a faded, lesser copy of the one before! WAKE UP, EAT, WORK, SLEEP, REPRODUCE, AND DIE!"
• Evil Is Not a Toy: He's the foulest, most wicked character in the whole series and Doctor Brenner seriously believed that — not only could he control him — but he could restrain him and use him to train more psychics. This backfired massively.
• Evil Is Visceral: He's as gory as the Mind Flayer's avatar.
• Evil Luddite: His motive rant has shades of this, seeing civilisation and social routines as unnatural. His wonder at how the Upside Down was "unspoiled by humanity" and worship of spiders implies he's pro-nature to some degree, but he's evidently not above killing animals like rabbits and rats.
• Evil Makes You Monstrous: He was already evil as a human, and twenty years after he murdered his mother and sister he was still as human as ever, albeit with special powers like Eleven. It wasn't until Eleven banished him into the Upside Down, after he killed all the other gifted children at the Hawkins Lab, that he became a Humanoid Abomination. In short, twenty years of being a murderer didn't make him nearly as monstrous as seven years trapped in the Upside Down.
• Evil Mentor: Although he clearly benefitted by manipulating her to remove his Restraining Bolt, he seems to have had a genuine interest in tutoring Eleven. Given who Brenner is, it's hard to blame her for trusting his advice.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Befitting of his demonic appearance, he speaks with a chillingly deep voice. This contrasts his higher, more soft-spoken tone as Henry.
• Expy: Vecna's gory flesh, long talon on his left hand, obsession with murdering teens and paranormal abilities involving putting his victims inside nightmares bring to mind Freddy Krueger. His voice sounds similar to the 2010 version of Freddy, and like Freddy, he also Was Once a Man. His father is even played by Robert Englund.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Prior to transforming into Vecna, Henry had the boyishly handsome face of Jamie Campbell Bower, disguising the misanthropic psychopath lurking beneath.
• Faux Affably Evil: Soft-spoken, polite, and friendly to Eleven. Even while slaughtering his way through the lab, he maintained a level of calm and politeness in his tone. As Vecna he keeps up this facade, speaking to his prey in a soft and reassuring voice, almost as if he's comforting them before they die.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: When One tells Eleven and Nancy about his childhood, he mentions being put in hospital and having several tubes hooked up to him. Just like the tendrils that fuse into Vecna.
  • Even further, as more details come out about his backstory so does his interest in spiders, which are also frequently seen in the visions of his victims. Which hints towards his role in literally shaping the Mind Flayer.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When he teaches Eleven how to use her emotions to empower her psionic gifts, he specifically tells her to channel her sadness and anger, foreshadowing that those are the only emotions he feels and/or understands.
  • Vecna's name alone actually gives away much of his backstory (see Meaningful Name). It also hints, ironically, at his role and position in the "pantheon" of the Upside Down, as Vecna in D&D is a much bigger threat than a Mind Flayer.
  • Before his attacks begin, we're treated to a flashback to a traumatic moment in Eleven's childhood where the staff and the children were brutally murdered, something we see a few times after. Blink-and-you-miss-it, but the method of their deaths appear to be similar to how Vecna's kills look, with broken bones, snapped necks, lots of blood, and missing eyes.
  • Dustin and Steve debate how Vecna could have been linked to Victor Creel and his family's murder given that contact to the Upside Down didn't happen until the experiments on Eleven, and thus those murders couldn't have anything to do with the Upside Down. Turns out they're right, because Vecna himself wouldn't be cast into the Upside Down until Eleven started opening portals to it, the first being used to trap him.
  • His "base" in the Upside Down is the old, abandoned house of Victor Creel which was Vecna's childhood home back when he was Henry Creel. It was first assumed to be due to Victor's assumption that there was a demon hiding within the shadows, but the fact that Henry was never shown being tormented by any hallucinations turned out to be a major hint that the real terror was hiding in plain sight.
  • Really, the way Vecna tortures and kills is quite different from anything else seen in the Upside Down. In fact, it more closely resembles the powers of Eleven/Jane and Eight/Kali.
  • Victor Creel, in both the news-clips as well as his interview with both Nancy and Robin, specifically stated that it was caused by a demon inhabiting the house who tortured them with visions. Eight's powers is a small-scale version of what the "demon" was letting them see, as well as cluing it's actually a new member of the family currently inhabiting the house who did everything. Victor Creel will also unintentionally foreshadow his son eventually becoming the demonic Vecna.
  • When Creel starts talking about the curse in his family, he first makes note of the fact he kept finding mutilated animals on or near his property. Killing and torturing animals is one of the most well-known early traits of a budding serial killer, which is more-or-less what Vecna started as. Related, during his exposition, he notably doesn't put much detail into describing his son, other than to say he was "sensitive", and thus doesn't give away the fact his son was clearly demonstrating early signs of psychopathy.
  • Also, when Creel describes how his wife and daughter were murdered, he states that Henry fell into a coma and died a week later. It doesn't make sense that the "demon" responsible for the murders would attack Henry in a different manner than the other two, or with less force - in reality, Henry had passed out from overusing his psychic powers to murder his mother and sister, just like how Eleven had sometimes passed out from overusing her powers.
  • His humanoid appearance, when nothing else in the Upside Down has a humanoid appearance, foreshadows the reveal that he Was Once a Man.
  • Vecna's gruesome flesh complete with tendrils looks similar to the Mind Flayer's avatar. He was the one who created the original Mind Flayer.
• For the Evulz: He ultimately had no real reason to do the awful things he's done outside of blind misanthropy.
• Four Is Death: Vecna's clocks all chime four times. His plan to bring about the end of the world also involves opening four gateways in Hawkins by murdering four people and he makes his first appearance in season 4, the 4th episode of which dives into his origins as a human and his first murders with his psychic powers (though this isn't actually clarified until episode 7, due to his traumatized father's lack of understanding of psychic abilities).
• Freudian Excuse Denial: Eleven tries to reason with him, saying that Brenner made him into what he is. But Vecna himself doesn't really agree, instead doubling down on having been above humanity always.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Henry was already an irredeemable terror, but at the very least he was subdued by Dr Brenner. After Eleven set him free, he went on a murderous rampage that was never completely sated. Stranger Things 4 ends with Hawkins being torn open so that the Upside Down can leak through and Will states that One is still alive, so he's ultimately claimed victory despite everything. Oh, and it's revealed Vecna is the creator (if not direct ally) of the Mind Flayer, thus responsible for every single tragedy in the show since Season 1.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Justified. Henry's prolonged exposure to the Upside Down destroys his once-vibrant lab jumpsuit and leaves it in tatters. His gradual transformation into Vecna causes those tatters to wear away until he becomes the completely naked monster as seen in the present. It probably helps that he has nothing to cover up anyway.
• Greater-Scope Villain: He was the first evil to target Hawkins, having committed his first murders here in the 50s. It was his existence that led to Martin Brenner starting the Hawkins Lab experiments in order to recreate his psychic powers, and it was banishing him that created the first portal to the Upside Down. Eventually, Vecna reveals to Eleven that he also gave the Mind Flayer a proper form based on a drawing of his, making him indirectly responsible for every paranormal terror that's been unleashed in Hawkins. It's also implied that he personally kidnapped Will and murdered Barb in Season 1, considering whatever did both those things had psychic powers, which the Demogorgons don't have. Ultimately subverted however, as The First Shadow confirms that Henry's own powers have their origin with the Mind Flayer, and that the malevolent entity never loosed its grip over him.
• Hannibal Lecture:
  • All the way along he's been pretty quiet, only telling Eleven exactly what she needs to know and no more, but in the climactic scene he talks, and talks, and talks, spelling out his life story and moral philosophy long after the audience has already put it together on their own.
  • And when One reunites with Eleven, he tells her what he's been up to in the years since they last fought.
• Hated by All: Everybody either hates or fears Vecna because nearly everything bad and tragic that has happened in the series can be traced right back to him. Even when he showed promise as a psychic back in his days as Henry, Brenner decided on keeping him monitored and restrained, aware that he was too dangerous to be given free rein. That said, the feeling is mutual for Vecna and he makes it clear that he will repay that in kind.
• Healing Factor: Zigzagged. When Max rips off one of his neck vines to distract him long enough to escape his mindspace, he's shown to regrow it easily to repair the damage in seconds, but that is his mental avatar, and not his actual body, thus it's unclear if, despite his altered and inhuman fleshy appearance, Vecna's physical body possesses the same regenerative powers. When Nancy, Robin and Steve attack him in the Upside Down and set him aflame, he's apparently tough enough to seemingly ignore being immolated at first, pretending their efforts are for naught as he pulls an Unflinching Walk towards them, but their follow-up attacks successfully stagger him and eventually blow him out the attic window. Whilst he survives and flees before they can finish him off, it's left unshown if their attacks did any lasting damage to his body, leaving it uncertain if his Meat Moss body can recover as easily as he could in the mental world.
• Hell Is That Noise: The first hint of Vecna's curse is the distorted chiming of a grandfather clock. In fact, there is a distorted chiming of a clock in the soundtrack of several pivotal scenes involving the Upside Down in prior seasons, ^note Will's abduction by the Demogorgon, Joyce first communicating with Will through the lights and nearly encountering the Demogorgon, Hopper discovering the Upside Down tunnels underneath Hawkins, Billy being confronted by the Mind Flayer which gets louder and clearer throughout the seasons as a sign that Vecna has always been the overarching threat directing the Upside Down.
• Hero Killer: Being the one in control of the Upside Down Hive Mind, he's responsible for every major character death in the series, including Barb, Bob, Eddie, Billy, Max (temporarily) and Jason. Alexei is the only character who didn't die as a direct result of his influence, and even then, the circumstances of his death are indirectly related to the Upside-Down and the Russians' desire to manipulate it.
• Hidden Depths: He seems bitter when telling Eleven he didn't fit in with other kids, which implies that he did want to have friends once.
• Hive Mind: One is connected to all forms of life in the Upside Down either through tendrils or the Mind Flayer's particles. This turns out to be a weakness to him as he was puppeteering the Demogorgon in Russia which Hopper was fighting. Once Hopper chops its head off, Vecna experiences all the pain the Demogorgon would have felt if it had survived, leaving him wide open for a further assault from Nancy.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Downplayed. Teaching Eleven how to use her emotions to fuel her psychic powers for greater effect and control ultimately becomes his downfall, but he was actually winning initially in their duel because he was vastly more experienced in channeling sadness and rage into his powers than she was. It was only the faint memory of the brief moment of parental love Eleven experienced as a baby that gave her the strength to defeat him, a power that it's all but outright stated Henry cannot comprehend or defend himself against.
• Humanoid Abomination: Vecna is a tall being made of horrifically burnt flesh with alien-like vines that can move around and connect to the Upside Down's Hive Mind. That said, he's much more humanoid than the Demogorgons or the Mind Flayer, in spite of his horrific appearance and powers. It turns out there's a reason for that.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters:
  • His Start of Darkness began with his disdain for humanity's need to create order out of chaos rather than embracing it like he did. Not to mention that he himself is human, and he's one of the most evil creatures in the Upside Down. In fact, the Upside Down only because as monstrous, hostile and dangerous to humanity as it did because of him, as it's revealed that he shaped and controls the Mind Flayer as his avatar for his goals, giving him control over its original predatory inhabitants through their Hive Mind. Every action and death caused or related to the Upside Down stems from the fact that the first human to enter it was a total monster who had the ability to shape the realm in his own twisted image.
  • Vecna himself actually sees this as too much praise for humanity. He believes Dr Brenner was nothing more than a mediocre man who kept people like One and Eleven because he envied their power.
• Hypocrite:
  • He claims that his motivation is disgust at how humans have corrupted the natural order of the world. Yet when he gets to the Upside Down, he immediately sets about corrupting its natural order for his own ends, exactly like all the other humans he claims to be above.
  • His Start of Darkness was when he looked into his father's mind and saw that he accidentally killed a baby during World War II, which Henry took as a sign that Humans Are the Real Monsters. Henry then proceeded to murder his sister, who was still a child, before brutally slaughtering nine other children at Hawkins Lab years later, as well as murdering several children to power the Mind Flayer's construct.
• Iconic Sequel Character: He's one of, if not the most important and dangerous of the Upside Down inhabitants, and the Big Bad of the entire series, but his existence is not even mentioned in the first three seasons.
• I Fell for Hours: After being sent to the Upside Down by Eleven, Henry spends much of his time falling through the formless void the realm initially was, having his body horrifically scarred and burnt in the process. He does eventually land on the rocky, barren surface, which eventually results in him creating the Mind Flayer.
• I Have Many Names: Once Nancy relays Vecna's true identity to the other teens, they're briefly confused over which name they should be using from now on, even floating around the idea of calling him Henry-slash-Vecna-slash-One. Towards the end of Season 4, Mike refers to him simply as One, while El calls him Henry. In the run-up to the season, his character was officially named "Peter Ballard".
• In Name Only: Downplayed compared to the other Upside Down threats, as "Vecna" in the show is actually not that unlike "Vecna" from D&D, albeit the latter uses necromancy and spellcasting whereas the show's Vecna utilises Psychic Powers and weaponising the Upside Down's Bizarre Alien Biology. In both cases though, they're corpse-looking beings with powerful abilities who were previously defeated, but is now a looming threat. Adding to matters, they have a Red Right Hand and one blind eye, mirroring the Hand and Eye of Vecna (powerful items within D&D lore).
• Insane Troll Logic: The original reason for his misanthropy is this. After finding out that his father accidentally killed a baby in World War II (and was racked with guilt for years afterwards), Henry jumps to the conclusion that humans are inherently evil and deserve to be wiped out. It's all but stated that this justification for his actions was little more than a paper-thin excuse for him to indulge in his sadism and psychotic traits with his abilities because he wanted to.
• It's Personal: By the final stretch of Season 4, Vecna has become a personal foe for just about every one of the main characters.
  • Eleven hates him for causing her unnecessary trauma and guilt ever since her childhood, and for trying to destroy everyone she holds dear. It's only fitting that with his mutual hatred of her that she's considered his Arch-Enemy.
  • Vecna becomes a horrific force in Eddie's life, due to his brutal of Chrissy and framing him for the murder, resulting in Eddie spending the rest of his life on the run from a group of jocks attempting to inflict Vigilante Justice to him. His death at the hands of the Demobats also makes Vecna a personal enemy of Dustin's, as Eddie was his best friend.
  • Max has a very deep resentfulness of Vecna, as he was responsible for Billy's death through the Mind Flayer, and for mentally (and eventually physically) trying to torture her to death by holding her guilt of his death over her. By extension, he earns Lucas's hatred for traumatizing and nearly killing the girl he loves, and indirectly causing a witch hunt that implicated his sister and closest friends.
  • Even Dr. Brenner, despite trying to rescue him out of guilt, holds him in contempt for manipulating Eleven and massacring his test subjects.
  • And everyone else hates Vecna for the deeds he committed through the Demogorgons and the Mind Flayer. For his part, his Motive Rant to Eleven makes it clear that he Hates Everyone Equally, and considers them all beneath him.
• I Want Them Alive!:
  • Downplayed, but it's hinted that despite holding him in utter contempt, as well as resenting him for attempting to control him and keeping him imprisoned and experimented on scene he was a child, Henry doesn't actually want Dr. Brenner dead. He had him unconscious and at his mercy during his rampage through the Hawkins lab, but instead merely killed the test subject in the room with him and spared Brenner himself. Brenner's perplexing survival from being attacked by the Demogorgon in a frenzy could be explained by Henry using the Hive Mind to direct the beast away from Brenner and after Eleven, and Vecna himself actually pauses when preparing to finish off Max when Eleven tells him that Brenner's dead, apparently genuinely displeased by the news. Rather than any care or such towards him however, it's hinted to be more so Henry could force Brenner to observe his life's work with controlling psychics come to naught as a means of taunting or 'punishing' him, akin to how Henry also spared his biological father figure, but left him tormented and trapped in an insane asylum.
  • Relatedly, he also has a similar focus on Eleven, due to their contrasting yet similar natures, as well as her being the person who 'freed' him from his restraints, firstly by removing his implant, secondly by trapping him in the Upside Down, which mutated him into his monstrous appearance. When he defeats her in a psychic duel inside Max's mindscape, he pointedly restrains her instead of killing her and softly tells her that wants to make sure she watches what he's about to do, both to Max, and then her friends in Hawkins, before he kills her, as punishment for her refusing his offer of We Could Rule Together, his tone filled with icy hatred.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Prior to transforming into Vecna, Henry Creel was a conventionally handsome young man. Being banished into a hellish dimension and getting several lightning bolts to the face along the journey is not good for one's complexion.
• Kinslaying Is a Special Kind of Evil: The murders Victor got in an asylum for? Those were his doing, killing Virginia due to calling Martin Brenner, and killing Alice just because. He would have killed Victor too, until his Power-Strain Blackout kicked in, and settled for framing his father for his crimes.
• Knight of Cerebus: The show was already grim before, but Chrissy's brutal murder at his hands during the season 4 premiere not only cements him as the most horrfying villain, but also marks the beginning of what is arguably the darkest entry of the story so far.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: He arrogantly believes that he can take on any possible foe, be it a regular human or a psychic like himself—and for the most part, he seems to be proven right. However, when Nancy, Steve, and Robin (three regular human adolescents with no supernatural powers or abilities) attack his physical body and beat him essentially to within an inch of his life, he doesn't hesitate to flee the scene in the interest of self-preservation.
• Lack of Empathy: Interdimensional creature aside, when Eleven tries to reach to Vecna's human self by telling him how Brenner is dead and he doesn't need to do this, Vecna makes it clear he does and that he has always been this way, even before he became Vecna, which fits considering Henry's lack of understanding or care of humanity and seeing them as pathetic.
• Leaking Can of Evil: Both attempts to curb One have been failures.
  • Dr Brenner tried suppressing his powers with an implant, so One befriended Eleven and she relieved him of it.
  • Eleven used her powers to banish One to the Upside Down. By that point, his mental restraints had been removed so he was able to continue his killing spree even outside his native dimension.
• Light Is Not Good: Back when he was an orderly at the lab, One was a fair-looking young man with blonde hair, blue eyes and a white suit, who gives off a creepy vibe and slaughters people for next to no reason once his restraints were removed.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Especially if it's supernatural lightning. While trapped in the Upside Down, Henry is blasted with several bolts of the stuff to the point where his clothes have been destroyed and his skin is all deformed, which ultimately is where his transformation into Vecna begins.
• Logical Weakness: Vecna being at the center of a Hive Mind connecting the creatures of the Upside Down. While this means he can control or at least direct all of them, at the same time anyone who manages to hurt them also hurts Vecna, even if it is a faded echo of the pain. Conversely, hurting Vecna himself will ripple through other creatures. Managing to attack on both fronts at the same time will lead to a cycle of weakening all of them.
• Made of Iron:
  • Vecna manages to walk away from being hit with several molotovs and three shotgun blasts to the chest.
  • When Eleven banished him to the Upside Down, he tanked multiple lightning strikes and fell hundreds of feet for what appears to be a very long time.
• The Man in Front of the Man: Vecna appeared to be a servant of the Mind Flayer, but was actually the one who created the Mind Flayer as an extension of himself and by extension turned the Demogorgons into his own personal army. It's also apparent that he shaped the Upside Down itself, as its appearance when he was first cast into it is pretty different from how it looks "now". Quite appropriate, as Vecna is named after the Neutral Evil god of hidden knowledge and destructive secrets in Dungeons & Dragons.invoked
• Manipulative Bastard: One exploited Eleven's vulnerability and loneliness for his own ends by coming to her aid and showing kindness only to use her in his plan to murder everyone in the lab.
• Man on Fire: Nancy, Steve and Robin track down Vecna's physical body while he's in a trance and pelt him with molotov cocktails. When Vecna awakens and goes on the offensive, apparently ignoring the flames outright, Nancy keeps him at bay by shooting him repeatedly, but the fires do apparently distract him enough he cannot utilise his psychic abilities to kill them with a thought, despite his immense power otherwise.
• Meaningful Name: In multiple ways;
  • "Vecna" is just the name Dustin gave him due to being a "dark wizard", but also because Eddie had used Vecna as the Big Bad of their recent D&D campaign (much like how the Demogorgon had been named). However it's a surprisingly fitting name beyond that. Vecna, in D&D lore, was an evil lich, an undead spellcaster, who was previously a dark wizard that became the Neutral Evil god of hidden knowledge and destructive secrets, which is more or less exactly what this Vecna is. He's "undead" in the sense he was cast out of reality into the Upside Down when Eleven banished him, during which he was horribly scarred and became a corpse-looking being. Before this, he was another powerful psychic, like Eleven, which is certainly wizard-like. Liches are also almost by definition necromancers, one of the most commonly-attributed necromantic powers is to siphon the souls of those the necromancer has slain to increase their power, and One claims that each time he kills, he gets more powerful as he absorbs some of the essence of his victims.invoked
  • Additionally, much like the arch-lich that is his namesake, they both have odd left hands; the D&D character is missing his (which he usually replaces with a permanent Mage Hand spell), while this Vecna's left hand ends in long, razor-sharp talons that he uses to channel his killing power into his victims. This also comes into play in the finale as, due to his hive mind abilities, should other creatures like the Demogorgons take damage, he takes it in turn, weakening him and leaving him vulnerable.
  • His true relationship with the Mind Flayer as its master is also evidenced by the monikers the party gave to them; Mind Flayers, while powerful psionic monsters with frightening intelligence, are an entire species of creatures that are killable by a determined adventurer. Vecna, on the other hand, is an arch-lich with reality-bending magical abilities and Functional Immortality due to his undead nature that often serves as the Final Boss of many D&D campaigns (as he was at the start of the season). Thus, the show's Vecna being the Greater-Scope Villain behind the actions of every monster and nightmare that came from the Upside Down becomes much more understandable.
  • Both the D&D and Stranger Things Vecnas suffered fatal defeats at the hands of one they had trusted. As Lampshaded by the Hellfire Club, Vecna was slain by his lieutenant Kas, which Foreshadows The Reveal of One's defeat at the hands of Eleven, who he had allied with.
• The Mentor: Taught Eleven how to unlock the true extent of her abilities by channeling her emotions.
• Mercy Kill: Perversely, this is how he frames all his murders (though his victims would certainly beg to differ). After days of mental torment, Vecna brutally murders his victims to "end their suffering," even mock-comforting them at many times. He hates humanity so much that he seems to think he's doing his victims a favour by removing them from the board. As Vecna is a metaphorical personification of suicidal depression, this quality of his might reflect the temptation and "peace" of death, the rationalization that there's no other choice but release.
  "Don't cry, Chrissy. It's time for your suffering to end..."
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: The awakening of Henry's telepathic powers led him to discover terrible things about his parents, such as the fact that his father had accidentally killed a baby while fighting in World War II. While he preyed on the darkest secrets of his peers, he convinced himself that Humans Are the Real Monsters and they deserved to be punished in his own special way.
• Mind Rape: His MO. He attacks people with taunting visions, often forcing them to re-experience traumas in order to torture them before he kills them. As he used to Mind Flayer to possess Will and force him to incubate and release demodogs, he can also be considered a literal rapist by proxy.
• Mirror Character: To Kali / Eight. Both of them were formerly institutionalized at Hawkins Laboratory under Dr. Brenner's care and resented the experiments done on them, to the point where they instigated their own escape from the lab. They also both are ruthless leaders of their own gangs who hate having to conform to the standards and laws set by humanity, use their Master of Illusion abilities to torment those in their way and attempt to use Eleven in their path for vengeance against people who they believe deserve it. With that said, Kali's resentment and fear of humanity is utterly dwarfed by Vecna's Misanthrope Supreme and Omnicidal Maniac qualities.
• Misanthrope Supreme: Henry started his career of evil because he saw humans as inherently evil, therefore he sees no problem in killing them. The only human he ever showed any kind of empathy towards is Eleven and even then he was willing to kill her for showing defiance. Ironically, his misanthropy started when he himself was still a human.
• Moral Myopia: One considers society to be a counterproductive construct that upsets the natural order. He himself has used the Mind Flayer to turn humans and Demogorgons into his puppets, suppressing their own nature solely for his ambitions. By the end of the season, he's successfully unleashed the Upside Down into Hawkins, which not only endangers plenty of locals but causes something akin to a nuclear winter that kills off a field of wildflowers, showing that his master plan is no better.
• Motive Rant: He delivers one:
  "You see, humans… are a unique type of pest; multiplying and poisoning our world, all while enforcing a structure of their own. A deeply unnatural structure. Where others saw order, I saw a straitjacket. A cruel, oppressive world dictated by made-up rules. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades! Each life a faded, lesser copy of the one before! WAKE UP, EAT, WORK, SLEEP, REPRODUCE, AND DIE! Everyone… is just waiting… waiting… for it all to be over, all while performing in a silly, terrible play, day after day. I could not do that. I could not close off my mind and join in the madness; I could not… pretend. And then I realized… I didn’t have to."
• Never Found the Body: Despite having his underlings slain and losing power, and subsequently taking multiple molotov cocktails and shotgun blasts before falling out of an attic, Vecna manages to muster the strength to run off and hide. Will outright confirms that he's still alive.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Him teaching Eleven to use her emotions to channel her powers backfires on him in his two defeats by her hands.
• The Noseless: Lost it at some point in the Upside Down.
• Not So Invincible After All: Throughout season 4 he's depicted as a terrifying and unstoppable force that his victims can only submit towards without any way to meaningfully avert their fate, and Dr. Brenner outright says to Eleven that she's not ready to face him in a psychic duel despite her strength and having recovered her powers, which he proved handily when she faces him anyway. However, Vecna's abilities are rooted in and fueled by the negative emotions of rage and sadness, and thus he is powerless against actions fueled by positive emotions. Max is able to physically attack him when her restraints weaken as she embraces the positive emotions brought about by her favorite song and realising the Party want her to live, ripping out one of Vecna's neck-vines to distract him enough to escape, and Eleven overpowers him twice when she's reminded of the love she has with those who care for her. When Nancy, Steve and Robin face Vecna's physical body in the Upside Down and set him ablaze whilst he's distracted and open, he attempts to shrug off the flames and pull and Unflinching Walk straight at them, only to stagger when their follow-up molotov and shotgun blasts further weaken him, with his inability to use his psychic abilities implying that he simply wasn't used to being hurt at all, and unable to comprehend it.
• Not Quite Dead: Eleven thought she'd destroyed One in their first confrontation and given he was shown disintegrating into a bright light it seemed like she had, but it turns out he was just banished to another dimension. And then not only does One turn out to be Vecna, [[spoiler:and the intelligence behind the Mind Flayer, but he manages to survive the latest battle and bring about Armageddon. Will tells Mike that he can sense Vecna's still out there, due to having once been possessed by Vecna's weapon, the Mind Flayer.
• Older Than They Look: Henry in 1979 looked much younger than a 32-year-old man would have looked in that decade.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Vecna plans to destroy Hawkins by merging his world with theirs, and wants to kill off all of humanity, viewing them as unworthy of life.
• Only Friend: Henry was the only one in the lab who treated Eleven with anything even remotely resembling kindness and respect, and never bullied or experimented on her. Then Eleven discovered the kind of monster he was.
• Orderlies are Creeps: Henry Creel was forced to be the Orderly of Hawkins Laboratory, where he essentially is forced to take care of the children (Eleven in particular) while being kept under Brenner's watchful eye. While he seems like a pretty friendly guy to Eleven at first, he immediately turns murderous and visionary the second his chip is removed by her, resulting in Eleven banishing him to the Upside Down.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • Among his victims is Two, a test subject who was nothing short of an arrogant, mean-spirited bully towards Eleven.
  • Killed Tom, Bruce and Billy, all who were horrible people, although Billy redeemed himself and sacrificed himself to save Eleven.
  • By getting a new gate to the Upside Down open, he indirectly kills Jason, a violent Jerk Jock who swore revenge upon the innocent Eddie, whom Jason wrongly held responsible for Chrissy's death. Although slightly downplayed, as Vecna directly contributed to Jason's Sanity Slippage leading to his above-mentioned crimes.
  • Was on the receiving end from Dr. Brenner in an earlier episode, who electrocuted him for stepping out of line.
• Pitiful Worms:
  • Refers to humanity as a "pest".
  • He also views Dr. Brenner as a "mediocre man" who collects and manipulates psychic children so he can feel powerful. He's not wrong.
• Power Echoes: He has a subtle vibrato to his deep, stentorian voice whenever he speaks, and is powerful enough that he can track people, psychologically torment them, and then turn them into an eyeless, twisted mass of limbs and meat from the Upside Down.
• Powers Do the Fighting: He relies mostly on his telekinesis to ensnare his victims. When one of them escapes, he doesn't even bother engaging in a pursuit, instead dropping rocks from the sky.
• Power Floats: Inverted. He makes his victims levitate before killing them.
• Power Parasite:
  • According to Dr. Brenner, Henry doesn't just kill a person, but absorbs their essence into himself, thus growing increasingly powerful with each murder he commits.
  • Vecna reveals this was the purpose of the Mind Flayer's construct biting Eleven at the end of Season 3: to steal a portion of her power to open portals between Earth and the Upside Down.
• Power-Upgrading Deformation: The horrific mutations inflicted by his banishment to the Upside Down and subsequent formation of his bond with the Mind Flayer seems to have greatly augmented Henry's Psychic Powers. He can conjure extremely lifelike illusions (while 008 only appeared able to add to an already existing environment) and project his telekinesis hundreds of miles away.
• Prophet Eyes: His eyes completely cloud over when he possesses a victim.
• Psychological Horror: Tortures his victims by confronting them with their worst fears or traumatic experiences before killing them.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Inflicts this onto the heroes. While he is defeated, he’s still able to accomplish his goal of opening the last gate in Hawkins, leading to the erosion of the barriers between Hawkins and the Upside Down and beginning to transform the former into the latter.
• The Quiet One: As a child, he was this, not really interacting with his family. Foreshadowing his nature as The Sociopath.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: When Henry massacres the other experiments his eyes are left bloodshot, which contrasts strongly against his pale skin and blue eyes. It proves to be an effective foreshadowing of his eventual fate.
• Red Right Hand: Or Massive Left Hand with claws, used for his kills, bigger than their faces.
• Remember the New Guy?: He was a very important person in Eleven's past, but he was never in Eleven's flashbacks until Dr. Brenner forced her to remember him. Justified, as it's heavily implied that she repressed those memories, and Matt Duffer implies here that the coma she fell into after sending him to the Upside Down messed with her ability to remember.
• Restraining Bolt: Dr. Brenner put a chip in his neck to keep him under control. It turns out to be the only thing stopping him from slaughtering nearly everyone in Hawkins Lab...which he does after he manipulates Eleven into destroying the said chip.
• Revenge Before Reason: Throughout Season 4, Vecna pursues Max as one of his potential victims pretty persistently. It's implied that he aimed to target her from the get-go, due to her connection to both Billy and The Party. However, when she manages to escape his curse the first time around, Vecna is pissed. He seems to intentionally avoid claiming a different fourth victim for almost half the season, opting instead to wait for Max to become vulnerable to him again. He's so determined to get her that he deliberately walks into a trap set by Max and The Party to kill him in order to get the job done. While he does succeed in killing Max (at least temporarily) and accomplish most of his goals in the season finale, he does so at great damage to his physical health and strength, when Steve, Nancy and Robin get the drop on him and nearly manage to kill him in his lair.
• Sadist: Vecna seems to literally feed off the fear and suffering of his victims.
• Satanic Archetype: Let's see... Henry Creel, a man known by multiple aliases, was a conventionally-attractive, intelligent fellow dressed in white with supernatural gifts who showed opposition against authority and staging a rebellion that left many dead before being cast out into an infernal dimension. As a child, Henry tormented his family, eventually culminating in him gruesomely murdering his own mother and sister and sending his father to A Fate Worse Than Death, which his father blamed on the Devil. As an adult, he manipulated Eleven with fake niceties and temptations. Afterward, Henry becomes Vecna, a hideously scarred monstrosity representing pure evil, and spent years using his underlings to bring harm to the people of Hawkins and plotting to make a return to his home world to create a Hell on Earth that he wants to rule over. When Jason sees Patrick die by Vecna's hands, he, and eventually Hawkins, becomes convinced the Devil was responsible. When he succeeds, the ground splits open as eldritch fire bursts out, with the Upside Down causing the landscape around Hawkins to die and killing over 20 people. After the earthquake, people are shown attending church in mass to find some form of relief. Yeah. Definitely Satan.
• Scars Are Forever: Vecna's whole body was deformed and mutated upon his arrival into the Upside Down. The only part of him that wasn't changed was a patch of skin on his wrist that bears that tattoo 001.
• Sealed Evil in Another World: After Eleven banished him to the Upside Down, he wasted no time in twisting it into his own image, his big end-goal being that he wants to escape into Hawkins and start his campaign of destruction on humanity.
• Self-Made Orphan: He killed his mother and as good as killed his father by framing him for the murder.
• Serial Killer: Described as a serial killer by Robin and fits the profile: Stalking, a specific type of victim (those with deep, repressed trauma), and the same style of murder each time.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • The massacre at the start of the season that everyone assumed was Eleven's doing? Turns out he did it with his own telekinetic powers.
  • When he targets Max, he assumes the form of Billy and plays up his worst traits. As he's Eleven's "brother", the similarities were clearly foreshadowing.
• Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: He loves shapeshifting into his victim's deceased loved ones to torment them, appearing as Chrissy's mother, Fred's father, and Max's stepbrother Billy as well as Lucas.
• A Sinister Clue: His monstrous talon is his left hand; his right one is relatively normal.
• Smug Super: He considers humans to be basically vermin, including his own family. The only person he treats with respect is Eleven, because she is the only psychic powerful enough to compare to him.
• The Social Darwinist: Invisions himself as a "predator" culling the weak. He in fact reveres spiders, which to him embody the concept of the strong purging the inferior.
• The Sociopath: One checks all the boxes. He has absolutely zero empathy for anyone, is extremely manipulative to the point of being able to feign emotions, and is dangerously violent and sadistic. He seemingly has a fondness for Eleven, but that doesn't stop him from trying to kill her when she defies him. The First Shadow reveals it was the Mind Flayer's manipulation and possession that turned Henry into one.
  • It's worth noting that when he first discovered his powers, he started out by torturing small animals to death before moving onto his family. Killing animals is an early warning sign for psychopathy in children.
• Squishy Wizard: A powerful psychic with the ability to manipulate others via the mind, but in the flesh he's just as vulnerable as anyone. It's why his lair is guarded by Demobats constantly, and once Nancy's team breaches it, he goes down with simple molotov cocktail and a good ol' fashioned shotgun. While the injuries do cause him to retreat, they don't kill him, and they definitely would have been fatal to an ordinary human.
• Straw Nihilist: Henry says that he is "freeing" his victims by killing them. His Motive Rant towards Eleven before being cast into the Upside Down reveals that he believes the society humanity has created makes life utterly pointless, so in his twisted mind, he is "freeing" everyone he kills from their meaningless existence. Vecna does however, 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.
• Strong and Skilled: Henry and Eleven are easily the two most powerful psychics in the series, with Henry easily massacring the other psychics at Hawkins Lab and absorbing their potential. However, while it's implied that Eleven has greater power and potential, Henry is a self-taught prodigy with far more experience and finesse than Eleven.
• Super Supremacist: One assumes that he has the right to control the world simply because he's more powerful than anyone else. He also expressed care for Eleven for this reason, believing she would readily join his goals due to having immense psychic potential, and is enraged when she rejects his offer.
• Take Over the World: He wants to create a world that abides by his own rules, instead of humanity's.
• Tentacle Rope: He ties Max to a pillar with his tentacles while she's mentally trapped in his realm. He also does this particular move to Nancy (twice), Steve, Robin and Eleven.
• Thin Chin of Sin: Henry has had a sharp jawline ever since he was a child.
• Traitor Shot: When Eleven removes the chip from his neck. The ominous line he delivers marks his transition from the Friendly Orderly to One.
  One: Who knew something so small could cause so much trouble.
• Two Aliases, One Character: Three—or even four, if you include the name "Peter Ballard" that was only used in promotional material. In-universe, he began as Henry Creel, the kid supposedly murdered by his father Victor. Later, he was a nameless (to Eleven at any rate) orderly at Hawkins National Laboratory who occasionally gave Eleven pointers on how to hone her powers. He later revealed himself as 001, Eleven's older "sibling" in the lab, with extensive powers of his own. And finally, he is Vecna, the villain haunting Hawkins in the present day. The teens lampshade the fact that Vecna has three names, and can't decide on what to call him now.
  Robin: We were wrong about Vecna... Henry... One. Sorry, what are we calling him now?
  Dustin: One.
  Erica: Vecna.
  Lucas: One!
  Nancy: Henry.
  Robin: Right. We've learned something new about Henry/Vecna/One.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Played with, in that his goal was most certainly to instigate doom, but making Eleven mad and scared enough to cast him into the Upside Down creates the first portal there. This certainly wasn't part of his plans, but it allowed other evil creatures to make their way into the human world and wreak havoc.
• The Usurper: Possibly. When Henry arrived in the Upside Down, it was a formless, chaotic Eldritch Location ruled by a shadowy Hive Mind. Henry then used his powers to hijack the shadow and morphed it into the Mind Flayer, taking over the rest of the Upside Down in the process and turning it into a twisted version of Hawkins. However, it's still unclear if Henry is fully in control or if the Mind Flayer still has agency of its own. The First Shadow reveals it's the latter and the Mind Flayer manipulated him.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • He is correct that his father did something that deserved punishment, and the first visions could be explained as Karma Houdini Warranty. The rest, however, is pure Disproportionate Retribution, and despite his excuses it's clear he did it all out of sadism more than anything.
  • His assessment of Brenner as a "mediocre man" who collects psychic children to feel special likely isn't far off.
• Villain No Longer Idle: After the Mind Flayer fails to carry out his will in the first three seasons, Vecna finally makes his debut in Season 4 to carry out his Evil Plan himself.
• Villainous Cheekbones: His human appearance before being cast to the Upside Down has notably high cheekbones. Being deformed upon his banishment made them extra prominent.
• Villainous Rescue: He inadvertently saves Eddie's butt by murdering one of the basketball players, Patrick, just as they're about to catch him.
• Vocal Evolution: Henry's time spent in the Upside Down causes him to lose his creepy, but nonetheless regular nasally voice in favor of a deeper, more monstrous one.
• Walking Spoiler: One's mere existence and identity spoils the entire mystery behind Vecna (and the show itself). In fact, when new characters were revealed for the season, the orderly that befriends Eleven is called "Peter Ballard", a name never once spoken (or written) in the actual show.
• Was Once a Man: His true identity is the son of Victor Creel, later known as One. His time spent in the Upside Down gradually transformed him into a burnt, writhing mass of flesh and tentacles with a very humanlike shape.
• We Can Rule Together: One gives this pitch to Eleven after he massacres the other test subjects. Needless to say, she rejects his offer, leading to his current status. Years later, he muses over the fact that he once considered allowing Eleven a place at his side, but instead decides that she should watch him destroy everything she's grown to care about.
• White Shirt of Death: His white orderly uniform gets splattered with blood after he massacres the children.
• Would Hurt a Child: He ruthlessly murdered all of Brenner's child subjects, as well as killing his own sister during his Bloodbath Villain Origin. Due to being Mind Flayer's will, he is also behind the Mind Flayer killing children in Season 3.
• You Are What You Hate: One wishes to exterminate humanity for imposing a flawed order upon the world. He himself is a human that tried to manipulate Eleven into being his pawn. And then he nearly destroys Hawkins along with its encompassing environment, not to say about hijacking the mostly-benign Upside Down when he arrived in 1979, transforming it into the hellish landscape and the inhabitants into berserkers attacking any human they can lay their hands on, thus corrupting its own natural order for selfish purposes.
• Younger Than He Looks: His undead, skeletal visage creates the impression that he's an ageless, ancient evil much like the Evil Sorcerer he's named for. In fact, he's barely 40; his original human form also had very delicate, boyish features.
• Zerg Rush: He is capable of doing this by controlling the Mind Flayer, which in turn allows him to order the Demogorgons, Demodogs and Demobats to kill anyone just with sheer numbers. Bob and Eddie are killed this way.

Demobats

Flying, vaguely batlike monsters that appear to be psychically linked to Vecna and serve as his eyes and ears.

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• Airborne Mook: They are flying creatures from the Upside Down who are linked to Vecna's hive-mind.
• Bat Out of Hell: Bats are the closest animal they resemble and they inhabit an Eldritch Location.
• Hero Killer: They fatally wound Eddie.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Up close, they appear to be a combination of bats and spiders. Their wings aren't typical bat wings, but eight spiky legs connected by webbing, which they also use to crawl.
• Nested Mouths: Demobats have extra rows of teeth, which makes it appear like they've got one mouth inside the other.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: While they are one of the smaller residents of the Upside Down, they are absolutely lethal creatures who are stronger than they look.
• Zerg Rush: Demobats are almost never alone. They attack in numbers to overwhelm their victims. Eddie experiences this the hard way.

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