In a new interview with one of the crew members of the hit Netflix series Stranger Things, it was revealed that this season’s principle villain, Vecna, was directly inspired by the most ominous villain we’ve seen on TV in years, The Night King from HBO’s Game of Thrones.
Per an account by the show’s makeup designer, BAFTA-winning Barrie Gower in Digital Spy, the show’s creators Matt and Ross Duffer used the nefarious character from the hit HBO series for inspiration when developing the idea of Vecna.
“Their brief, really – they were fans of our work from Game Of Thrones, and the character we did, the Night King. And they were also fans of recent work we’d done for Chernobyl for HBO as well, with all the radiation-burn victims,” Gower revealed.
He explained: “For season four they were after an iconic villain, and I think they almost wanted a mix of those two approaches. I think they were basically after their own Night King for Stranger Things.”
Gower then discussed the differences between the two iconic miscreants, explaining that it was dialogue that allowed the brothers to create a character that stayed within the Stranger Things universe whilst doing something slightly different than what had come before. “I think they were after a menacing character, and somebody who had a similar presence to the Night King. Obviously Vecna has a lot of dialogue, which the Night King doesn’t,” he said.
Since season four of the show debuted late last month, with it setting Netflix’s record for hours watched in the first 28 days, Vecna quickly established himself as one of modern TV’s greatest villains. One would even argue that he surpasses The Night King in terms of just how wicked he is.
