Vecna Actor Shares His Thought on ‘Stranger Things’ Series Finale Plot Hole

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Be warned, the following contains spoilers for Stranger Things. Given the show’s science fiction elements and five seasons of unusual events, some inconsistencies are bound to happen. Even Jamie Campbell Bower, who plays Vecna, has acknowledged a perceived “plot hole” that viewers have pointed out. Season 4 revealed Vecna was originally Henry Creel, and the play Stranger Things: The First Shadow showed Henry went to high school with Joyce Byers and Jim Hopper. However, neither Joyce nor Hopper ever mentioned knowing him, which some fans see as a contradiction in the story.

During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the actor revealed he suggested Vecna say something to Joyce in the scene where she defeats him, considering their shared past.

I was trying to communicate the phrase ‘Please don’t.’ I’m not sure if anyone has seen ‘The First Shadow,’ the stage play based on ‘Stranger Things’ and Henry Creel’s story. In that play, Henry and Joyce meet.

Seeing her approach him, I suddenly felt a glimmer of hope – a sense that his better side might emerge, and that there was still a chance for him to change.

A ‘Stranger Things’ Plot Hole vs. Plot Contradiction

Some viewers might be surprised to learn that Stranger Things is a fictional story, not a documentary. This means the creators, the Duffer brothers, sometimes expect viewers to connect the dots themselves. While Jamie Campbell Bower, along with many fans, wondered why Henry’s backstory wasn’t fully explained in the final season, questioning this doesn’t necessarily create a plot error or break the show’s internal logic.

Bower cares deeply about this myth, but he acknowledges that adding these specific details to the show would have made the story too complex. He believes these details were likely developed during the 18-month gap between seasons four and five, even though viewers never saw them directly.

We carefully balanced how much to reveal about the play. We didn’t want to upset people who hadn’t seen it, as it could have been confusing if they started discussing plot points without that context. However, I suspect those conversations did happen anyway.

Bower shared how much collaboration was involved in the process, explaining that he even attempted to add a small conversation between Vecna and Joyce. While it didn’t quite work, he recalled trying different lines during post-production. “When we were rerecording dialogue for Season 5, I was trying to say ‘Please don’t!’ but it just didn’t feel right,” he said. “It didn’t quite land, but the feeling was there!”

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The creators of the show have responded to some fan theories about what happened after the final episode, but it’s still unclear if they’ll ever completely fill in the missing pieces of the story. We’ll just have to wait and see.

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2026-01-08 02:06