The Stranger Things series finale brought the wild story of the Upside Down to a close, and it looked to give every character one last unforgettable moment. Whether that was Dustin honoring Eddie on the graduation stage or Steve, Nancy, Jonathan, and Robin’s reunion on the rooftop, there were a bevy of powerful final moments for the show’s cast. One of those moments actually featured a different final line, and now that we know what the scrapped line was and why it didn’t make the cut, it’s actually pretty devastating.
The first half of the series finale features the final showdown with Vecna, and those who have seen the finale know that it ends with Joyce Byers mauling an impaled Vecna with an ax until she decapitates him. In an interview with The Tonight Show, Vecna actor Jamie Campbell Bower reveals the final words of Vecna were going to be “please don’t”, but it ultimately didn’t work and was scrapped from the Final Cut.
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Stranger Things’ Scrapped Vecna Line Held a Key Connection to The First Shadow
During the interview, Bower revealed that there was actually a changed line for Vecna in season 4, and season 5 almost had a changed line as well, and it would have been another key connection to the stage play Stranger Things: The First Shadow.
“I wanted to try and convey the words ‘please don’t’. I don’t know if anybody here has seen The First Shadow, which is the play they’ve done of Stranger Things and the sort of Henry Creel backstory, and obviously Henry and Joyce, within that, have met each other. So when she kind of walks up to him, I felt like in that moment, that the humanity could come through a little bit more, and that we could just reintroduce that level of sort of potential maybe he could be saved at that point,” Bower said.
“And when we were doing season four, there’s a bit where Eleven turns Vecna around, it’s when we’re in the snowball, and she says ‘hi’, and just before that I sort of growl,” Bower said. “And we were in ADR and I was like, ‘It looks like I’m saying the word you, can I add that in ADR, and they were like, ‘yeah, yeah sure, let’s try it.’ I don’t want to step on her line and make her line not cool, but let’s try it.”
“So we tried it, and it worked, and it was great. Anyway, we get to ADR for season five. I’m like gurgling, and I’m like I remember all I wanted to say was ‘please don’t’, and we try it, and it just didn’t work. It didn’t land, but the emotion is there,” Bower said. “I tried it, yeah, it wasn’t good.”
Stranger Things season 5 is now streaming on Netflix.
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