SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses plot developments in Season 5, Volume 1 of “Stranger Things,” currently streaming on Netflix.
Vecna is back in “Stranger Things 5” and he looks scarier than ever.
In Season 4 of the Netflix series, Jamie Campbell Bower was introduced as the sinister arch-villain in the Duffer Brothers’ Netflix series. While Bower is easy on the eyes as Vecna’s human incarnate, Henry Creel, Vecna in full form is a gruesome monster with vascular gray flesh, a decrepit face and piercing eyes — a fitting prince of the Upside Down.
Due to Vecna’s temporary defeat at the end of Season 4 — after Nancy, Robin and Steve shot up his body and set it on fire — he returns in Season 5 looking even more grisly. When he makes his full body debut in the season’s fourth episode, he appears larger, with a more skeletal frame composed of veins, bones, muscles and ligaments tangled together in a ghastly visual.
Naturally, Vecna’s new look required a new level of special effects, both digital and practical. “This season was definitely more of a blend between practical and CG,” Bower tells Variety. “On a practicality level, the face is all prosthetics, the shoulders are prosthetics, the hands are prosthetics, but everything else is a morph suit.”
Turning Bower into the monster was a collaborative process between the actor and the make-up, special effects, costume and concept art teams. Bower credits prosthetic makeup department head Barrie Gower, costume designer Amy Parris and concept artist Michael Maher for their ingenuity in bringing Vecna to life.
Bower recalls talking with Gower to ensure that, while he would no longer be in full costume during shooting, “Vecna still has the presence that he had when I first stepped onto set — I want to make sure that I’m still large.” Gower added shoulder pads into the costume as well as “two large blocks in the side of the suit,” he added, so that Bower’s arms “just naturally sat that little bit further away from the body,” ensuring that Vecna retained an organically menacing gate. Meanwhile, Parris made sure that Bower had three inch rises in his shoes, so that Vecna towered over the rest of the characters.
It was a different experience playing Vecna this time around, as the new prosthetics and technology required for a smaller layer of latex covering the actor. Bower recalls that in Season 4, he had “an inch and a half of foam latex to get through” whereas Season 5 only called for “a millimeter.” This allowed for more fluidity and a smaller membrane for his performance to translate through.
Still, a couple features remained the same, notably Vecna’s sinister voice, which Bower also provides. Bower developed the voice in Season 4 based off of Doug Bradley’s performance as Pinhead in the “Hellraiser” movies. “Doug is amazing as Pinhead and those first three [‘Hellraiser’] films are incredible,” he said. “I would often send the Duffers the gif of ‘Hellraiser III,’ where he says, ‘I am the way’ before the windows blow. That was often on the end of an email.”
Bower also strived to maintain his relationship with his costars, especially since he shared scenes with so many young actors playing Vecna’s terrified victims. “You absolutely don’t want them to be afraid all the time,” says Bower, “but of course, there are times where it’s necessary for the scene as well.”
He credits the copious scenes he shared with Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven in Season 4 for allowing him to refine this balance. “Millie is wildly receptive and that’s what makes her an incredible actor,” he says, “It’s like what she’s experiencing is real all the time, so within that, there were definitely moments where we were working and she was in full terror, which, of course, is something that you need and want for the scenes. It’s important, but also, as her friend and somebody who loves her, I don’t want her to feel like that and there were certain moments where we were doing that and she went, ‘Oh, no, I know it’s you now. I feel safe because I can smell your cigarettes.’”
Those check-ins were paramount to keep filming a positive experience, and even though Vecna is the series’ antagonist, Bower still feels a kinship with his costars and the “Stranger Things” crew. “We all are such a family, you know. It’s one of the most amazing things I think I’ve worked on,” he reflects. “Because Matt and Ross are both intellectually incredibly intelligent and emotionally incredibly intelligent as well as incredibly passionate, hardworking people, it makes all of us just go, ‘Yes, let’s do this together. We’re in this. Let’s bring our A-game.’ And within that, we just become this incredible team and, like I said, a family.”
• The Duffer Brothers Answer Volume 1 Burning Questions
• Noah Schnapp on Will’s Game-Changing Discovery
• Nell Fisher on Playing Holly Wheeler and Working With Sadie Sink
• Cara Buono on Karen Finally Joining the Action
• Sadie Sink on the Max and Venca Plot in Season 5
• Natalia Dyer on Nancy’s ‘Failure’ in the Season Premiere
