Why ‘Stranger Things’ Would Have Been So Much Better Without Vecna

Unsurprisingly, I received a bit of pushback to my recent post about the main culprit behind the decline of Stranger Things. I argued at the time that while there were many problems with both Season 4 and especially Season 5, many of these can be traced back to Vecna and how the addition of a fantasy Big Bad fundamentally altered the series for the worse.

One counter-argument I’ve heard from fans is that it actually makes perfect sense to introduce a Dark Lord figure in Stranger Things, since this is a show based on Dungeons & Dragons and that game pretty heavily influenced by The Lord of the Rings. In fantasy, of course, a Dark Lord is pretty common, whether that’s Sauron or Voldemort or The Dark One from The Wheel Of Time. Dark Lords are everywhere in fantasy.

The television version of Game Of Thrones introduced its own Dark Lord in the ominous Night King, which is a pretty significant departure from the books by George R.R. Martin. Naturally, the Night King ended up being a rather lackluster Big Bad in the end.

That’s one trouble with Dark Lord archetypes. They’re built up to be these impossibly deadly and evil and cunning foes, and then our much less impressive heroes manage to take them down through grit and determination or just dumb luck.

Sauron was bested by some filthy Hobbitses and their pal, Gollum. Voldemort would have gotten away with conquering Middle-earth if it weren’t for those meddling kids. (The Vecna/Voldemort similarities are actually pretty hilarious). The Night King was built up over seven seasons, with the nightmarish Long Night perpetually on the horizon and an army of the living dead poised to roll across Westeros . . . and then Arya Stark just stabbed him to death out of the blue. I guess “Stick ‘em with the pointy end” was Chekhov’s Gun, after all.

The same problem arises in Hawkins, Indiana. The Dark Lord, Vecna, has been set up as this super powerful, evil otherworldly necromancer about to literally destroy the world, and we get one of the most lackluster boss fights ever, despite Vecna and the Mind Flayer teaming up. Many people shrug this sort of thing off, saying that it’s really hard to wrap up a five-season arc, that final seasons are often disappointing. I have no doubt of the challenge, but it’s our job as critics of media to take things apart and figure out why they’re not working. Could this series have driven more confidently across the finish line had it abandoned Vecna altogether? Perhaps.

While Stranger Things certainly was influenced heavily by Dungeons & Dragons, there has never been a great deal of Lord of the Rings DNA in the show. It’s always hewed more toward 80s’ era coming-of-age and horror, from Back to the Future to Ghostbusters to E.T. and so forth. Sticking to this type of story for all five seasons would have almost certainly resulted in a better conclusion.

The Mind Flayer, a creature of the Upside Down with no human emotion or motivations, is a much more interesting, Lovecraftian monster than Vecna ever was. Stranger Things should have either kept the Mind Flayer as the chief antagonist or revealed some even greater, more monstrous power behind it and the other eldritch horrors of the Upside Down. So much of Season 4 and 5 were spent building up Vecna, only to have it all flame out in the end.

Season 4 without Vecna could have revolved around some similar events, with the Mind Flayer targeting individuals like Max. The Upside Down itself could have begun seeping into the real world in unsettling ways. A quest to go into the Upside Down to save Max and kill the Mind Flayer once and for all would have been an exciting storyline. Better yet, it wouldn’t require retconning earlier story beats. The show could have gone other directions as well. Time travel is risky, but with the Upside Down frozen in time, you can see how it might work.

Regardless, choosing cosmic and psychological horror over mythic fantasy would have been a smart direction for Stranger Things, and would have been more thematically consistent with the first three seasons. Even the Season 5 Mind Flayer felt more akin to a dragon or fantasy monster than the shadowy terror we were first introduced to in Season 2.

Other changes I would make along with Vecna’s removal from the storyline:

• A slimmed down cast. Sorry, Hopper, you should have died at the end of Season 3, and probably a few other characters along with you. At least one or two of the older teens, like the lovable Steve, could have also been killed. Side-characters like Murray should have been written out before becoming caricatures. Adults in general should have had less presence in the show. The genre is not about adults. It’s about kids. Imagine The Goonies with a half dozen adults tramping through the caves. Imagine that movie with the same size cast as Stranger Things.
• Much less focus on teen romance among the core group. There was enough romance written into the Steve / Jonathan / Nancy subplot. We didn’t need Mike and Eleven to be anything more than friends. I do think that Lucas and Max ending up as a couple in the end, after he helps save her from the Upside Down / Mind Flayer, could have worked. But far too much time was spent on young teen romance and none of it improved the show.
• No more de-powering Eleven. Eleven should have been at the forefront of Season 5 rather than sidelined by characters like Holly, though the problem was less about Holly and more about the bloated cast in general. Eleven was de-powered in Season 4 and pushed to the side in Season 5. When Will finally gets powers, he’s almost instantly de-powered as well. This kills momentum. Players of D&D will know that once you gain new powers, the last thing you want is to lose them.
• Cut the entire military subplot. Once the Hawkins Lab people were out of the picture, I’d narrow the focus down to the main characters and their quest to somehow close off the Upside Down and/or kill the Mind Flayer (and the Mind Flayer could have been just one of many, or subservient to an even greater cosmic horror). The show could still include a government subplot, maybe some shadowy investigators poking their noses around, but as it was written, the military was just unforgivably lame.
• Have Will come out in Season 4 rather than waiting until the end of Season 5 and, if the show insists on giving all the other kids romantic interests, give him one as well (though ideally we should have just avoided all the romance stuff in the younger group, and put an end to the love triangle in the older group much sooner). But if we must include romances for our main characters, put the “Byler” stuff to rest by giving Will a boyfriend or at least a crush.
• Remove the ambiguity from the ending. Rather than killing off Eleven or leaving her fate a mystery, give her the happy ending she deserves. Neither of the current outcomes are satisfying in the least, though her sacrifice and death was a bold narrative choice until they nerfed it with ambiguity. In the end, Eleven should have been at the D&D table with her friends, the Upside Down closed, her powers gone for good, and a normal life ahead of her filled with love and pain and struggle and joy. I think a lot of people will disagree with me about a lot of other things in this post, but maybe we can all agree on this.

I should note, before we leave, that none of this is a critique of Jamie Campbell Bower, who played Henry / 001 / Vecna with enormous skill and talent. Even if Vecna was cut, in a perfect world Bower would have gotten some other great role in the show. Maybe a character with powers who was also investigating the Upside Down, but with nefarious motives. A secondary antagonist of some kind. Just not the Big Bad fantasy Dark Lord.

Ultimately, removing Vecna from the story wouldn’t fix all its problems, but without him, Stranger Things would have felt more like, well, Stranger Things. What do you think?

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