WARNING: The following contains FULL SPOILERS for Stranger Things Season 4, Part 2, now streaming on Netflix. For spoiler-free coverage of Stranger Things, check out our review of Part 2.
When Stranger Things Season 4, Part 1 debuted, Jamie Campbell Bower—the actor behind Vecna/Henry/One— sat down with IGN and revealed that Eleven actress Millie Bobby Brown broke down in tears when she saw him in full Vecna gear.
Still, he should have been coy about it at the time, since in the show Eleven and Vecna hadn’t faced off against each other yet. Now that Part 2 is out, Bower spoke with IGN again and revealed that right before Vecna and Eleven’s big showdown in the Mind Lair, Brown cried about the chilling suit — and production decided to go for it.
“This is the day I’m talking about,” he says. “And her reaction, what you see on camera, is pretty much what was done on the day.”
“She saw me, burst into tears and then [cinematographer Caleb Heymann] turned to everyone and said, “Now we have to shoot Mills.” And everyone was like, “absolutely.” Just set it up, let’s go,” he continues. “And I gave her space, I gave her distance, because when a reaction like that happens, it’s so important to keep it. And so I put her at a distance and let her know it was me when we went on, and I think that made her a lot more comfortable… And bless her, she absolutely brought it.”
This scene is one of the few big ones for Eternal in the season finale, which also sees him finally confronting Eleven earlier in the episode and later being lampooned by Nancy, Steve, and Robin while he’s distracted in Mental Lair.
And since so much for Vecna is the practical effects—he previously told IGN that it takes seven and a half hours to get into full suit and prosthetics—we thought we should ask him if he actually burns while Vecna burns. He wasn’t, of course, but pretty much everything else in that scene where Eternal is shot and thrown out the window was mostly real.
“The fire itself is digital, but from the point of view of Nance giving Vekna the old shotgun in the face, [actress] Natalia [Dyer] was there with the gun and I was reacting to her blasts and then I kind of just figure out the moves to try to get to her and then I got shot out the window. So most if not all of what you see is physically there, but the fire isn’t. The fire element is the one thing that we couldn’t do, just because really, I would imagine given the nature of the prosthetic itself, that thing just it would go up in flames. It would just melt on the skin. Not funny. It’s not even worth it.”
Vecna’s fiery defeat (or so it seems) was not his only brush with the elements. A flashback in the finale shows Henry upside down after his first fight with Eleven – not quite Vecna yet, but still damaged by Eleven’s powers and the lighting that hit him on his way down. This is another elaborate makeover for Bower, showing Henry before he’s fully in Vecna mode, but still definitely damaged. Fortunately, he reckons this look only took four or five hours to pull off – relatively easy compared to Vecna’s outfit.
“When Eleven blows up Henry in the Upside Down, there’s this kind of electric shock, this burning, melting of the skin,” he says. “A lot of the wounds you’ll see in this mode are based on the idea of melting electricity and fire itself, actually… But I really enjoyed this day in particular because what I can do in this scene is more from great. “
“When Eleven blows up Henry in the Upside Down, there’s this kind of electric shock, this burning, melting of the skin that happens.
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Picking up where we left off Vecna, he physically disappears after being shot through the window by Nancy. However, the show makes it pretty clear that we haven’t seen the last of it; at the very end, Will tells Mike that he still feels him alive, suffering.
Unsurprisingly, Bauer has been tight-lipped about whether he’ll be back for Season 5. But he’s been keeping an eye on the social media conversation surrounding his character, and yes, he’s even seen some of the memes — including one that was born from Netflix timeout who has him in the Vecna suit casually drinking iced coffee that has taken over the internet and running.
“I’ve seen it,” he laughs. “It’s funny, you know – it was towards the end of filming and obviously we were in such a flow, and Vanity Fair there is a video from earlier in the process [where] we were all kind of sitting in silence reading a book. So, you know, it makes me laugh. People say it humanizes me in an interesting way, and I’ll take that. If it humanizes me then it’s absolutely fine, I don’t like it.”
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