Just what the good folks of Hawkins needed–a new kind of terror.
Stranger Things 4 will kick off on Netflix May 27 with Volume 1 (Volume 2 debuts July 1), and this much-anticipated season will spotlight a new “horrifying supernatural threat.” And that menace now has a name and face–Vecna.
The new baddie appeared briefly in the Season 4 trailer, but little else is know about him (it?) or his origins and powers. But at least one legacy cast member–David Harbour (Police Chief Jim Hopper)–feels this particular villain is just what the series needs.
In a recent interview with Variety, Harbour called the nightmarish Vecna a “psychological horror that I don’t think we’ve really seen. The Upside Down has been this Wild West show with creatures running around, but we’ve never seen something as calculatedly psychologically evil as this. He is a true big bad that we’ve needed in the series.”
The show’s creators–Matt and Ross Duffer–explained that Vecna was brought to life almost entirely with practical effects. Vecna, Ross said, is “90 percent practical. We wanted a presence on the set that our actors could react to. We wanted something there that we could actually film. I think that makes this villain scarier and more real and tangible.”
This is all part and parcel of the darker feel the Duffers want to bring to this fourth season of Stranger Things. “This year,” Ross said, “we’re leaning much harder into that horror movie territory that we love. It was fun to make that change.”
Stranger Things 4 picks up six months after the Battle of Starcourt, as the friends are separated for the first time. Meanwhile, this “new and horrifying supernatural threat” surfaces, presenting a “gruesome mystery” that–if solved–may finally end the horrors of the Upside Down, according to the synopsis.
Keep reading Horror News Network for the latest on Stranger Things 4 on Netflix.
