Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Andrew Sanford | News | October 31, 2025
One of the many things I loved about the fourth season of Stranger Things was its ability to start tying things together. They weaved the show’s main antagonist, Vecna, into the previous seasons of the show fairly effortlessly. A villain we thought had just been introduced had a past with Eleven, and all the kids of Hawkins, for that matter, and we had already seen him in different forms.
The way they pulled it off almost felt like a magic trick. To be fair, some of it could be seen as simply retconning a few aspects of the show. That big monster? He was just a projection of the smaller monster. Those demagorgons? Mindless servants of his evil. Will Byers’ abduction? That was committed by Vecna, not the demagorgon that menaced the town in season one. Wait, what?!
That last bit has yet to be confirmed by anyone involved in the show, but it’s taken many fans’ imaginations by storm. There’s some fairly convincing evidence for it, too! Fans have gone back to the first episode and put together a few pieces that may not have seemed apparent at first watch. But, is it all careful planning, or some more late-stage corrections?
Will Byers’ disappearance is the most important story of season one. He’s abducted by a shadowy figure and taken to the Upside Down. At the time, we could have assumed it was the season’s frightful demagorgon. However, it behaves much differently than we see them do in later seasons. It’s sneaking around and intentional. The creature follows Will home, and the door unlocks with telepathy, something demagorgons don’t have, but Vecna does.
Vecna could have possibly controlled that door from the Upside Down, but was he already in Hawkins instead? Later on, when Will falls off his bike, you can hear a clock chime. We would come to learn that such a noise signals the coming of Vecna. That said, that’s the one part of the theory I don’t buy as being pre-planned. I could be wrong, but it would be pretty easy to go back in and add a light sound to a show that’s always streaming. Part of me wants to go back and find a DVD of season one, a rare feat for a Netflix show. But I’m tired.
The most convincing bit of evidence supporting the idea that the Duffer Brothers pre-planned all of this is Will saying that he kept singing Should I Stay or Should I Go, one of his favorite songs, and he remained safe until rescued. We will later learn that someone’s favorite song can keep them safe from Vecna, as Max shows in season four with one of the show’s greatest moments.
The Duffer Brothers could have easily gone back, looked at the season, and said, “What if we use music? What if Will was kept safe because he was singing?” That isn’t as fun as them having a master plan that’s paying off, but I honestly would still give them credit for it. Tying things together can make shows like this infinitely more satisfying. Even if I’m not convinced it was all pre-planned, it’s still rad as hell.
It’s more likely that Vecna orchestrated Will’s disappearance. The new trailer for the final season shows that Vecna has some specific plans for the young boy/man in his mid-20s. He’s been using him for the whole show, albeit through different forms and forces. Now, we should learn what his grand plan really was, but whether or not that was the plan all along for the Duffer Brothers will remain up for debate.
