The following contains minor spoilers for Stranger Things Season 4, Volume 2, now on Netflix.

Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 2 found the Hawkins crew confronting Vecna head-on, from his own Mind Lair or traveling from a Russian prison or through Max's mind. This season's villain brought new threats and a more human story to the dangers of the Upside Down. Under the prosthetics is Jamie Campbell Bower, who gave the Upside Down's latest threat his creepy physicality and lent his face to the deadly Henry/One. At a roundtable attended by CBR, Bower addressed the intricacies of bringing his villainous Vecna to life.

The character's physicality was a notable part of Bower's performance. When asked by Bloody Disgusting about his process for developing it, he responded that "the physicality was something that came quite early as I was prepping for Vecna. As far as I remember, we did a makeup test. We did the first cast for the suit sometime in the beginning of 2020. At that point, I saw some 3D renders that [moldmaker] Barry [Best] had gotten. I'd actually seen some as well before from Matt and Ross [Duffer], but at that point, it was all starting to click and come together."

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Stranger Things Jamie Campbell Bower Bloody

Bower described the first part of Vecna's extensive makeup and prosthetics processes that helped him build out the character. "So the first thing that Barry actually showed me," he explained, "was the animatronic hand and how that was going to move. So first of all, just the physicality of the movement itself was something, the practicality of that. Then came when it obviously wasn't on, I then had to sit there -- or I didn't have to, but I did. I sat there [and] looked at my hand and imagined my fingers coming out to here extending upwards. So I would just sit there, stare, and just kind of feel that space a little bit more."

"Then, of course," Bower continued, "obviously came the head. There's probably about that much more on top of my head [gestures to show about three inches] because it's quite thick -- maybe not that much, but a bit more. So there's a height difference as well. It was about kind of pushing the top of my skull up through the top of the prosthetic piece. The walk was something that I was always very interested in how I would hold myself, how I would just move my fingers as I was walking. So I spent a lot of time walking around downtown Los Angeles, literally walking around, very slowly moving my fingers. Stillness, as well -- a stillness to me was something that I found was very grounding. I always saw Vecna and Henry as this very grounded character. He's not wild, although there could be moments of him exploding. I was always like, 'No, no, he's very, very centered.' So it was just about making sure that I will place my feet in the right way, pushing the energy out of my own body through the prosthetic."

Part of the physicality was influenced by the very sets of Stranger Things. "The Mind Lair set was ginormous," Bower recalled. "That was literally a stage. Then we had all the green screen around... I saw that set, and I was like, 'I've got to keep pushing this out. I've got to keep going.' Then, of course, [I] also [had] the prosthetics on the face as well. So actually, it's about being grounded, understanding how my arms [are] going to move, how my head moves and then over-emphasizing in the face so that it comes through the prosthetic, which is not a natural thing. I would naturally try and be less rather than more. So yeah, it was a whole thing."

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CBR asked how Bower's process differed for getting into character as Henry or Vena or whether he treated them as one person. "So there was a process," Bower replied, "by which I looked at the journey for the character. I mean, I do and did call Vecna 'Vecna' or 'V Man,' and I do call Henry 'Henry.'" While Bower knows that "they are obviously all the same person," he describes how "young Henry, when we first meet him, he goes through this journey of isolation, of sort of just being removed from his own society, and feeling lost in a strange way, growing up in a world that he sees as full of lies, and [he's] misunderstood. I know a lot of people say that about the sort of big bad characters, but I really do believe that for him, he was very misunderstood."

"Then, obviously, he ends up in the care of Brenner," Bower continued, "whereby Brenner has to suppress this person because they're too powerful, and they're not listening to him, but which one of us here on this planet wants to be told all the time what to do how to behave? Nobody. Nobody wants that, particularly if you have a power. There's that resentment there is starting to build. It's building. It's building, building, [until] he then sees Eleven, who is obviously a part of him, but he sees her potential, above and beyond any of the other numbers. It's like, 'Well, you are like me, but at the same time, in a selfish way, I'm going to use you to get out of the situation that I'm in. I'm going to try and convince you that we can do this together because I do genuinely believe that we can.' All the time, that resentment's building."

Bower explained how that resentment boils over when Eleven "comes in at the end of [Episode] 7 and finds him doing what he's doing to Two and what he's done to all the other numbers because, again, they represent real nastiness, I think. I really believe they do represent real nastiness. He gives her his truth -- this box is unlocked. Grief and experience just bubbles up to the surface, and he presents the truth, the truest version of himself because, well, I mean, she's seeing what he's up to. So then, with Vecna, that resentment has built up to that point, and then she sends him to his demise at the end of 7. At that point, he's left alone again to stew in this fury. That's all that's there. Everything that he believes now has been compounded." Bower added that "any hope, any dream that he had, has died. She is his target. She's his target now. So yeah, I do see them as one person, but one person who goes on a journey because, as we all do in life, we pick up experience, and that affects us."

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Stranger Things Henry Eleven

When asked by Coming Soon about Vecna's mindset going into Season 5, Bower described that "he's pissed. If you thought he wasn't pissed before, he's pissed now. The vengeance... If it were me on a personal level, if I'm talking about if somebody did that to me, I'm coming to you."

The origins of Vecna's evil can be seen in Henry's isolated childhood. When asked by Looper what he knew about this backstory going into filming and how it impacted his performance, Bower responded that "I was a fan of the show beforehand. For me, it was a very interesting and natural process. As I was preparing for the job and for the role, I actually put a picture -- and this is before I was given all of the scripts, so this is how weird this job is -- I put a picture of Will and the Upside Down and the Mind Flayer in the middle of this mood board, and then worked my way out."

Without necessarily knowing the relationship between Vecna and Will, Bower had tapped into something critical for the overarching story of Stranger Things. "So whatever is out there," Bower explained, "whatever Matt and Ross were putting out into the universe, I was picking up on. I was like, 'Okay, I think I understand what this person is and who this person is. Getting more of the information, again, for me solidified what I thought I already knew. It was this aha moment. I was like, 'Aha, I'm not mad!. I am right.'"

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"There were certain questions that I did have for Matt and Ross," Bower continued, "just in terms of Maxine. I wanted to know more about why Max and her family moved in the first place, why they came to Hawkins. So we had a conversation about that. Sometimes I went too far, you know. I've mentioned this before in an interview, but I think I remember discovering that the numbers one and 11 in Greek are alpha and omega, which is obviously good and bad, almost yin and yang. I was like, 'Did you do this on purpose?' I won't tell you their answer. I knew as much as any of us knew, going into it, in preparation for it, and I was discovering more about it as I was getting more information."

Despite Vecna's elaborate backstory and the Duffer Brothers' extensive mythology for Stranger Things, there are still parts of Henry's journey into this villain that haven't yet been established. When asked by Bloody Disgusting if he had the opportunity to fill in those blanks, Bower described that "it was about building on that feeling of being isolated and sitting in that hatred. Obviously, we see what he does with the Mind Flayer and how that all works. [laughs] I sort of saw it as another opportunity for him, in the same way that when he was a child, being sat there with his spiders on his own. He sat there in a different location, on his own, feeling the same way -- dying to get out, dying to win, dying to be heard."

"It was funny," Bower continued, "that the thought process that I would often write down, or that I would say to myself over and over again, is you took everything from me, now I'm going to take everything from you. That is very much like to the sensitivity that I felt like he was carrying through that period of time. In terms of did he have a sit down every now and again [and have] a good cry, [laughs] I never really went there, as it were. It was more the emotional side of being isolated."

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Stranger Things Henry Eleven Blindfold

Bower also described how he drew on his own experiences to flesh out that emotional side of Vecna. "I don't know if that comes from personal experience, actually," he reflected, "of being isolated, of feeling isolated. Time can be a very interesting thing, I think, when you're in those places. Particularly for me, not you, but for me, time can pass quite quickly. Days and nights don't seem to mean anything. They just become a bit of a blur. So I think maybe I was drawing on my own personal experience from that. Maybe that's why it ended up being the way that it was for me."

CBR asked whether tapping into this personal experience and filling in Henry's journey of isolation and the cruelty of Brenner allowed Bower to find any part of Vecna sympathetic, even after the harm he's caused. "All of it," Bower replied. "I find all of him to be. I mean, in terms of like, do I find him to be sympathetic? Not particularly, but do I sympathize with him? 100%. I mean, I have to as an artist and as an actor playing the role. I have to love the person that I'm playing and justify. Again, I did see him as this sort of righteous justice in this very cruel, oppressive world, to quote the script. So I do. I could relate, had to relate, but can relate."

Catch Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 2, streaming now on Netflix.