Vecna star Jamie Campbell Bower thinks his Stranger Things season 5 fate is "the ending the show deserves"

Vecna star Jamie Campbell Bower has accepted his character's fate in the Stranger Things season 5 finale, and thinks it's the only way the long-running Netflix show could have ended.

"It's the ending the show deserves," Bower said during an appearance on The Tonight Show. "I've been a fan of the show since the start, so even just joining the show was a huge achievement, and I felt very honored and blessed to be a part of it. Even as the actor who plays Vecna, it feels right. This show is so much about friendship and love and hope and joy and of course the person who is not that has to go. All he really needs is a hug, though."

Of course, Vecna bit the dust in episode 8 – the series finale – at the hands (and ax) of Winona Ryder's Joyce Byers, but Bower said he didn't find out that he was going to die until the table read for that episode. The actor said it was a "really strange experience, because I got COVID for that table read and so everyone's in the studio in Atlanta and I'm stuck behind a computer screen in my little apartment in Atlanta. Isolated, alone, lonely… like Vecna," he joked.

It only took Ryder two takes to deliver the blow that finished Vecna off once and for all. "You can't rehearse a scene like that. You just have to sort of save it for the take. I think I only did it twice," she revealed.

All episodes of Stranger Things season 5 are now streaming on Netflix. For more on the show's finale, check out our Stranger Things season 5 finale review, or our spoiler-filled Stranger Things season 5 finale ending explained.