“Stranger Things” proved to be an appealing coming-of-age tale for contemporary audiences despite its devotion to the aesthetics of the decadent era of the 1980s.
Spoilers alert: while the show did not shy away from exploring typical story tropes like hunting monsters, love triangles, or combating a one-dimensional evil, the writers also gave a nod to the modern-day dramatization of villains based on the show’s direction in season four.
As Netflix drops the final trailer for season five, the fans anticipate how Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown’s character) and the Hellfire Club will confront the endgame of last season’s biggest revelation: Vecna, also known as One.
One, Vecna & Henry Creel
For the first three seasons, the Mind Flayer was deemed to be the show’s overarching antagonist, while the Americans and Russians were relegated to peripheral threats who were merely competing over a force they did not understand.
The Duffer Brothers turned the story upside down in season four by introducing the character of Vecna.
The eldritch horror, which was thought to be orchestrating the defeat of humanity, was actually just a pawn of an insane individual with psionic powers – hellbent on revenge.
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Black widow connection
According to Henry Creel, who eventually became One/Vecna, found kinship with black widows, a solitary yet dangerous arachnid.
By observing black widows, he formed his twisted interpretation of natural order, which he insists is the only way for salvation: the strong are bound to eat the weak.
Creel seems to believe that social darwinism is a way forward to reinstating order in a chaotic world with him at its helm.
It did not help when Creel himself felt alienated by his family. In his mind, his family’s attempt to embrace normalcy by migrating to Hawkins is a facade he is obligated to break.
By terrorizing his family, Creel said he was “holding a mirror” in front of them, showing them the horror they were too cowardly to confront.
A misunderstood villain
A social outcast turning into a sadistic villain is not new in pop culture.
The closest example is The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy.
During the interrogation scene in “The Dark Knight” (2008), The Joker taunted Batman by claiming that he was “ahead of the curve”, meaning he simply sees through the masked hypocrisy that the general public opts to wear.
For The Joker, laws and justice are illusory guardrails that keep humanity from its true nature: selfish, violent, and destructive.
As soon as these guardrails are removed, humanity will cannibalize itself, just as it did long before he and Batman appeared.
Like Creel, The Joker’s vision is an anarchic world, one that has no rules, only freedom.
If you step back further in time for an edgier example – “Fight Club” (1999) offers some semblance of idealism to Creel’s world-conquering ambitions.
Brad Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden, makes this grand claim that the world has spun out of control, with men slowly losing their social identity and evolutionary purpose due to consumer capitalism.
Confronted by this dilemma, Durden’s solution is to destroy the oppressive society and create a new one where individuals can freely pursue self-gratification without tiptoeing around the whims of others.
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A pointless cycle
While it would be easy to dismiss Creel’s soliloquy as the ramblings of a madman, keep in mind that “Stranger Things” is set in a timeline marked by global militarism and sociopolitical upheaval.
As cultural revolutions and consumerism took over American streets, the rest of the world was holding its breath as the Cold War raged on between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The emergence of the internet and the expansion of free-market economics also paved the way for individualism to take root in American society.
Creel expanded his cynical take on social order by pointing out the cyclical nature of human life: eat, work, sleep, and reproduce.
For Creel, humanity’s tendency to repeat the same destructive patterns despite the inevitability of death reveals a pest-like nature that the world would be better off without.
Moreover, Dr. Martin Brenner intended Creel and Eleven to serve as America’s greatest weapons after its nuclear arsenal, adding another thematic layer about how far the pursuit of scientific knowledge can go, even at the cost of human lives.
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Geoffrey H. Latayan 
Vivien Bernardino