Stranger Things co-showrunner Ross Duffer explained the real-world inspiration behind the show's antagonist, Vecna.
"We've wanted for a very long time to make a villain that was much more psychological in the way that they attacked our heroes," Duffer told The Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview. He then cited Hellraiser, Nightmare on Elm Street villain Freddy Krueger, and Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King's It as characters they looked to for inspiration. "'Why did that work so well? Why did that scare me when I was growing up?' At a certain point, the villain just became Vecna," he said.
Duffer, who co-created Stranger Things with brother Matt Duffer, broke down how they phased their references into creating a brand-new villain of their own. "You try to analyze it, but at a certain point, we stopped talking so much about [the references] to try to tell the story because I don't think you can just do a collage of references. It's never going to work," Ross Duffer explained. "He became part of this world, and we had to figure out how to tell his story properly."
Vecna's origins were explored in Season 4, Episode 7 "Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab." In the same interview, Duffer revealed that when writing the show, the creators had to ask Netflix for an additional episode to explore the character properly. "We realized we needed a lot of time to do that properly, and it required its own episode," he explained. "I don't think we said, 'It’ll be movie length,' but that's what it ended up being."
The episodes of Season 4 were significantly longer than in previous seasons. While they were satisfied with the final length of Season 4, Duffer also mentioned there was a "longer version of this season," and that he still missed certain storylines that ended up on the cutting room floor. The Duffer Brothers have previously defended the length of Episode 7 in particular, saying that, if they had cut it down by even 15 minutes, "it wouldn't feel like a satisfying episode." Duffer said, "So, at a certain point we just said, 'Well, it's just a mega episode.' If someone wants to pause it, they can!'"
Vecna, played by Jamie Campbell Bower, is a new villain introduced to Stranger Things Season 4. In a previous interview, Bower explained that reference work on Hellraiser and the film's star Doug Bradley helped him develop the voice for Vecna. "I went home and worked on it and did a bunch of reference work," Bower explained. "This deep, booming voice kind of comes out of the darkness...I loved it. It was amazing."
Stranger Things Seasons 1-4 are currently streaming on Netflix.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter