Stranger Things: What Vecna Looks Like In Real Life
While earlier seasons of "Stranger Things" never really lacked frightful and dangerous villains, the production team really outdid themselves in Season 4. From the very first episode of the season, Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) was a force to be reckoned with as he began his reign of terror in Hawkins, one body at a time.
Clearly at least partially inspired by Freddy Krueger of the "A Nightmare on Elm Street" franchise, Vecna haunts troubled young teens through vivid hallucinations and terrifying visions before bending them to his will and finally murdering them in a brutal fashion. However, at the end of the day, Vecna isn't real, so fans might be wondering what the actor behind the creature looks like on a normal day.
Well, as fans may have surmised, the actor who plays Vecna is the same performer behind the role of 001/Henry Creel in "Stranger Things." As Season 4, Episode 7 ("The Massacre at Hawkins Lab") shows, the reason why the character's appearance changed so dramatically was that Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) opened up a gate to The Upside Down and sent the villain hurtling through to the mirror dimension.
Jamie Campbell Bower is borderline unrecognizable as Vecna
As Henry/001 was hurled through the skies of The Upside Down, he was struck by bolts of red lightning from an alternate reality. This caused him to develop the burn scars that cover his body, while his time in The Upside Down seems to show him evolving to have tentacles and long, sharp claws as well.
Though many "Stranger Things" fans will only be aware of Jamie Campbell Bower through his work on the hit Netflix series, the actor has actually been active since 2007. The performer had early roles in movies like Tim Burton's macabre musical, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" and Guy Ritchie's crime movie, "RocknRolla."
He went on to take the recurring role of Caius in three of the "Twilight" movies and played a young Grindelwald in both the "Harry Potter" and "Fantastic Beasts" franchises. Bower also appeared in "The Mortal Instruments" and an unaired "Game of Thrones" prequel pilot from 2019, showing that he was a franchise actor long before Season 4 of "Stranger Things."
As for what the fiendish Vecna looks like now, after being shot and burned by Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Steve (Joe Keery), and Robin (Maya Hawke), fans will have to wait for the return of the show's big bad when "Stranger Things" comes back for its fifth and final season, likely in 2025 or 2026.