Warning: Contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 4, vol 1.
The villains of Stranger Things season 4 are believable, scary, and clearly defined, unlike season 3’s messy mish-mash of Soviets, supernatural monsters, and vaguely defined government conspiracies. After a long wait, Stranger Things season 4 brings back some of the show’s existing villains while also introducing a slew of new antagonists, some of them paranormal monsters, and some of them very much human. However, whether they are returning characters or well-established foes, the villains of Stranger Things season 4 are far more well-rounded than the universally cartoony monsters of season 3.
One of the biggest problems in Stranger Things season 3 was endless villains producing endless subplots which, in turn, resulted in the show’s narrative drive stalling as there were too many character combinations to keep up with and too many strands to maintain tension effectively. While a Soviet assassin hunted Hopper and Joyce, a body-snatching monster consumed the denizens of Hawkins (while also simultaneously possessing local bad boy Billy). As if this weren’t enough, there were also Soviet scientists beneath the Starcourt Mall who took Robin and Steve hostage, as well as a largely-forgotten corrupt mayor and the original villains of Stranger Things, the almost-irrelevant Hawkins Lab.
With so many interconnected and overlapping storylines, it was tough for any lone villain to make much of an impact in season 3. One of the biggest mistakes in Stranger Things season 3 was wasting Billy, a potentially interesting villain, by only giving the character a sympathetic backstory seconds before he was killed off. However, against the odds, Stranger Things season 4 has completely reversed this trend, providing scary, well-rounded new villains, fleshing out some familiar faces, and leaving the show’s growing stable of antagonists without an obvious weak link while also making its new villains more understandable (although no less monstrous) in the process.
Stranger Things 4 Fixes The Russians
In Stranger Things season 3, the Russians under the Starcourt Mall were sneering, universally monstrous villains with no individual characteristics beyond being the season's bad guys. This made it easier for viewers to laugh when Hopper mowed them down with machine-gun fire but left the finale of season 3 feeling more like an 80s action pastiche than the mature, grounded mystery that Stranger Things season 1 was. In Stranger Things season 4, however, the Russians running the prison camp where Hopper is held hostage clearly see themselves as the morally upright heroes of their own story, with two of them risking death to avoid dooming their colleagues. They are still villains, but the army are humanized and more believable in season 4. As a result, it is easier to care about Hopper’s fate since his captors don’t act like one-dimensional cartoon characters (unlike the sadistic Russians who captured Robin and Steve), which also makes their choice to not simply kill him and Enzo after their first escape attempt more believable.
Stranger Things 4 Fixed The Hawkins Lab Story
Before Stranger Things villain, just a more well-rounded one.
Stranger Things 4 Turned The Tables On Brenner
Despite clarifying that Brenner is still a villain, Stranger Things season 4 also made the character (one of the only ones to survive a Demogorgon attack) a lot less invincible. Sending powerful government factions to hunt down and attempt to kill Brenner, Owens, and Eleven also allowed Stranger Things season 4 to humanize Papa despite his crimes. While the show’s original villain is still a creep, Brenner is disempowered enough to be more human than he was in season 1. This, along with the fact that it was his decisions that created Vecna in the first place, allows Brenner to function as both a major villain and a tragic figure, something that the shakier and less focused Stranger Things season 3 couldn’t pull off with troubled bully Billy, despite Dacre Montgomery’s superb performance.
Vecna Is The Best Stranger Things Villain So Far
Vecna may not get a proper introduction until the end of Stranger Things season 4 part 1, but the character remains comfortably the most memorable villain in the series so far. His motives, from feeling outcast to being abused by Hawkins Lab, are believable and sympathetic. His modus operandi of possessing victims, flooding them with their worst memories, and ripping them apart from the inside out, is memorably gruesome. Most importantly of all, his power is appropriately limited, allowing Stranger Things 4 to create a villain who is smaller than the Mind Flayer but more personal and resonant as a result. Stranger Things season 4 needed to be smaller than season 3, which opened up a lot of plot holes with its multi-story monster that no one in Hawkins noticed during its rampage.
Vecna Makes Stranger Things Villains Feel Real
Vecna, with his ability to enter the minds of his victims and terrifying hallucinations, was the most mean-spirited of the show’s monsters so far. However, a combination of a superiority complex and his brutal mistreatment by Hawkins Lab and Dr. Brenner made his evil believable rather than far-fetched and grounded his misdeeds in a personality, rather than vague and amorphous nature. Where the Mind Flayer is evil simply because it is evil, in an almost Lovecraftian logic knot, Vecna’s evil is rooted in tangible, tragic trauma that makes the character feel human. Ironically (given how outlandish his Freddy Krueger/Pennywise-style supernatural powers are), Vecna’s outlandish abilities haven’t stopped him from making the stakes of Stranger Things season 4 feel more grounded than ever before. Thanks to Vecna’s powers relying on emotional manipulation, the bond between the characters has never been more important than it is in Stranger Things season 4, something that never felt true in the busier, goofier season 3. By putting life-or-death stakes on the friendship between the show’s characters, Vecna proved that Stranger Things season 4 could offer a truly inventive, genuinely scary villain for the series.