The following is going to touch on spoilers for Stranger Things, so please stop reading now if you haven’t watched the episodes in Part One.
Without actually stating it, season 4 of Netflix’s Stranger Things has been borrowing inspiration from the classic horror franchise A Nightmare on Elm Street. The main villain, Vecna, “hypnotizes” his victims and makes them feel as if they are trapped in a nightmare before finally mauling them, physically, in sequences that traumatize with disturbing audio effects. And while the Stranger Things team admits that Vecna’s appearance was influenced by a vintage Game of Thrones character, they also very much tipped their hand at the Nightmare on Elm Street love when they cast Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund, for a crucial role… and he thinks there’s a good chance that he will be back once part two of season 4 arrives.
Robert Englund appeared in one episode of Stranger Things season 4 so far, playing Victor Creel in a set up that was also a blatant homage to Anthony Hopkins’ imprisonment in The Silence of the Lambs. But by the end of the first part of this season, when we learned that Vecna is really Victor’s troubled son Henry Creel, we assumed that Victor could return. So when Englund stopped by CinemaBlend’s official ReelBlend podcast, we asked him if he planned to return to Stranger Things, and he told us:
I don't know. You know what I realized is, because I just finished watching the whole entire season 4. And I obviously, without giving out a lot of spoiler alerts, I see where they’re going. And we see what's manifesting itself with Henry, my son. We've learned the truth of that. But there's a moment when Nancy is in the sort of red upside down – underworld, Salvador Dali floating things, and stalactites and stalagmites and bits and pieces of Hawkins, and the roots growing everywhere. And there's a voiceover there, and (Vecna) talks about me. ‘Old Victor. Oh, I haven't seen old Victor in a while.’ … He says, ‘Well, maybe… I've been so, so busy. But maybe I should revisit him or something.’ So, I don't know what that means. I don't know if that's just the writing reaffirming to the audience the relationship between the two, you know? Henry, Victor, Victor, Vecta. Or if it means that he's got to come back and kill me, you know? Or he wants to relish my death because as a father, I let him down. That I had been responsible and I'm a hypocrite, like he says to 11. I'm a hypocrite, and I was responsible for a baby's death during World War II and all of that.
Just speculating here, but Robert Englund appears correct when he says that Vecna has unfinished business with his father, Victor, and the return of Englund for a few more scenes makes sense, narratively. Also, why cast a horror legend like Robert Englund if you don’t plan to use him for more than one scene inside of a prison cell? Yes, the prosthetics team has praised Englund’s contributions to the season. But Englund thinks there’s even a literary reason why Victor needs to resurface… giving us real hope. As he tells ReelBlend:
But you know, Victor. What's Victor? What is the name Victor? What is the dropdown basic horror collective consciousness of the name? Victor Frankenstein. And who is Victor Frankenstein? What did he do? He gave birth to a monster. Because Frankenstein is the scientist, not the monster. And I'm Victor Creel, and I gave birth to a monster. So what does that say about my evil seed? It's good writing. There's a whole lot of stuff going on.
We won’t have to wait very long to find out, as part two of Stranger Things season 4 lands on Netflix on July 1. We singled out a number of things that we want to see in the season’s conclusion, and even laid out the questions we still had after part one played out. Some of them had to do with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), and the “war” that is coming between Vecna and the Hawkins kids. Let’s hope Victor gets his day in the sun.
