Stranger Things nearly saw Vecna switch sides until the Duffer Brothers changed their minds

Jamie Campbell Bower as Vecna in Stranger Things season 5 — (Image credit: Netflix)

If you got the feeling in the Stranger Things finale that Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) was going to have a final heroic hurrah during his final talk with Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), then don’t be alarmed. The Duffer Brothers had recently admitted to playing with the idea until realizing that, in the end, he'd passed the point of no return and had to get the chop.

While the Duffer Brothers had revealed that they’d taken a lot of inspiration from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in terms of wrapping things up, they came close to pulling from Return of the Jedi, as well. In an interview with Netflix Tudum, Ross Duffer broke down why there was no going back for Henry Creel.

"We did discuss with the writers’ room if he could have a Billy [Dacre Montgomery] moment where he turns against the Mind Flayer [in a] Darth Vader-type situation,” the co-creator confessed. “But the more we talked about it with the writers and with Jamie, he’s gone so far at this point to get here, he has to justify everything he’s done. And the only way to justify that is to go, ‘I chose this, and I believe in this still.’”

You can undoubtedly feel fragments of what could’ve been a Creel-face turn in the aforementioned scene, which lingers long enough for us actually to believe it might happen. Like a lot of plot threads in the show’s final chapter, though (whether we like it or not), the Duffers are happy to leave things up for interpretation on just whether Henry really was considering a different path.

“Even though he is shaken by seeing this memory, he’s too far gone at this point to turn against the Mind Flayer. But we wanted to leave it up to the audience whether young Henry chose this or whether the Mind Flayer controlled him from beginning to end,” Ross Duffer explains. “But ultimately, in terms of where Henry goes, it doesn’t matter because he chooses the side of the Mind Flayer at the end of the day.”

Ultimately, no matter how things panned out and where you might stand on some other creative choices in the finale, killing off Henry was the right thing to do. Also, if he hadn't died, well, Joyce (Winona Ryder) would’ve brought that ax for nothing.