{"id":226897,"date":"2026-01-04T13:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T13:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/226897\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T13:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T13:09:08","slug":"stranger-things-nearly-saw-vecna-switch-sides-until-the-duffer-brothers-changed-their-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/226897\/","title":{"rendered":"Stranger Things nearly saw Vecna switch sides until the Duffer Brothers changed their minds"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you got the feeling in the Stranger Things finale<\/a> that Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) was going to have a final heroic hurrah during his final talk with Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), then don\u2019t be alarmed. The Duffer Brothers had recently admitted to playing with the idea until realizing that, in the end, he’d passed the point of no return and had to get the chop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the Duffer Brothers had revealed that they\u2019d taken a lot of inspiration from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King<\/a> in terms of wrapping things up, they came close to pulling from Return of the Jedi, as well. In an interview with Netflix Tudum<\/a>, Ross Duffer broke down why there was no going back for Henry Creel.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“We did discuss with the writers\u2019 room if he could have a Billy [Dacre Montgomery] moment where he turns against the Mind Flayer [in a] Darth Vader-type situation,\u201d the co-creator confessed. \u201cBut the more we talked about it with the writers and with Jamie, he\u2019s gone so far at this point to get here, he has to justify everything he\u2019s done. And the only way to justify that is to go, \u2018I chose this, and I believe in this still.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

You can undoubtedly feel fragments of what could\u2019ve been a Creel-face turn in the aforementioned scene, which lingers long enough for us actually to believe it might happen. Like a lot of plot threads in the show\u2019s final chapter, though (whether we like it or not), the Duffers are happy to leave things up for interpretation on just whether Henry really was considering a different path.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though he is shaken by seeing this memory, he\u2019s too far gone at this point to turn against the Mind Flayer. But we wanted to leave it up to the audience whether young Henry chose this or whether the Mind Flayer controlled him from beginning to end,\u201d Ross Duffer explains. \u201cBut ultimately, in terms of where Henry goes, it doesn\u2019t matter because he chooses the side of the Mind Flayer at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, no matter how things panned out and where you might stand on some other creative choices in the finale, killing off Henry was the right thing to do. Also, if he hadn’t died, well, Joyce (Winona Ryder) would\u2019ve brought that ax for nothing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For all our coverage on the final season of Stranger Things (and boy, has there been a lot), head here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Bringing all the latest movie news, features, and reviews to your inbox<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you got the feeling in the Stranger Things finale that Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) was going to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-226897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}