It sounds like a new kind of automobile, but it’s the new monster for the forthcoming STRANGER THINGS season four! In keeping with the tradition of the kids naming the monsters in the show after creatures appearing in DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS—the Demogorgon, the Mind-Flayer—the new beast is called the Vecna. In the world of D&D, a Vecna (aka the “Whispered One”, aka the “Undying King”) is a zombified sorcerer, an evil human magician who went all undead. (If that sounds a lot like a Ringwraith that’s no coincidence, as about 90% of D&D’s content was lifted straight from Tolkien, given a chopshop redesign and a new name to avoid lawsuits. But hey, Tolkien got 90% of his creations from Teutonic mythology, so we can’t give D&D too much grief over it.)
In the world of STRANGER THINGS, the Vecna was also once a human being, but he’s mutated. Said Barrie Gower, production designer for the show: “What’s happened is he’s [the Vecna] been subjected to all the environments and all the surroundings of the Upside Down basically for 20 odd years…So, the look for Vecna is, he’s humanoid but we are basically integrating lots of shapes and textures and form from the Upside Down. There’s a lot of roots and vines and very organic shapes and fibrous muscle tissue and what have you…It’s still very much a human beneath it, and we still have panels of flesh which are very pale, almost anemic looking…the idea really is that the exposed flesh that is pale is human skin that hasn’t seen sunlight for the last 20 years.”
There will also be demo-bats in the show! “We always like to introduce a new demo-creature, as you will, and so we were excited about introducing demo-bats…one of them alone is not very dangerous, but when there’s hundreds and hundreds of them coming to you at the same time, they’re very, very deadly, and they also have the ability to act as spies, so you may not even see one in the tree, and it spies you, and then suddenly because everything is a hive mind in the Upside Down, every monster in there knows that you’re there.”
I’m vurry exited to see these new beasties when STRANGER THINGS returns! (All you lucky people who live in civilization will get to see it first on May 27th!)
Watch the trailer here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQEondeGvKo
