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This post contains spoilers for the finale to Stranger Things.
Over the course of five seasons of Stranger Things, we saw how Vecna destroyed the lives of the people of Hawkins, Indiana. With his spindly, vine-covered body and his skull-like face, Vecna was the embodiment of evil, willing to use children as tools to bring the hellish Abyss to Earth. But those who saw the play Stranger Things: The First Shadow know that before Vecna was Vecna, he was Henry Creel, a little boy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
If Vecna actor Jamie Campbell Bower had his way, Henry’s humanity would have shown through in the character’s final moments. Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Bower revealed that he had wanted to add an extra line to Vecna’s final scene, right before Joyce Byers hacks him apart with an axe. “I wanted to try and convey the words ‘please don’t’,” said Bower of shooting the scene. “I’m like gurgling, and I’m like I remember all I wanted to say was ‘please don’t’, and we try it, and it just didn’t work.”
Vecna’s last scene has been a bit controversial, as reflected by our dueling takes here at Den of Geek. Yet, there’s no question that letting Creel beg for his life would have added some complexity to the character, making him more than an ultimate evil that needed to die.
And as Bower pointed out, the line would have called back to The First Shadow by acknowledging the connection between Creel and Joyce. Although the stage play focuses on the life of young Henry Creel, it also lets us spend time with several Hawkins adults back when they were teens, including Hopper, Bob Newby, and, of course, the future Joyce Byers. Joyce was among the teens who showed kindness to the troubled Henry, at least before he was corrupted by exposure to the Mind Flayer and endless tests at the hands of government scientists, led by Dr. Martin Brenner.
To its credit, season five of the Netflix hit did include several glimpses into the life of young Henry. Max and Holly see his high school life while going through his memories and when Will calls up the fateful moment when the boy Henry met a government scientist. However, by the time of the finale, the show had no interest in humanizing Vecna. Vecna rejects Will’s attempts to blame the Mind Flayer by insisting that he did everything willingly. The series wanted Vecna to be a monster, nothing more.
And that might be why the addition of “please don’t,” in Bower’s words, “didn’t work.” Bower reminded The Tonight Show audience of Creel and Joyce’s connection in The First Shadow, and said that, “when she kind of walks up to him, I felt like in that moment, that the humanity could come through a little bit more, and that we could just reintroduce that level of sort of potential maybe he could be saved at that point.”
While that would have made the character’s final scene more complex, that’s not what Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers had in mind. For better or worse, Vecna was a monster who needed to die.
All of Stranger Things is now streaming on Netflix.
The post Stranger Things: A Cut Line Would Have Added Needed Depth to the Finale appeared first on Den of Geek.
