Henry Creel / Vecna

Introduced in fragments and flashback, Henry Creel is a boy who moved to Hawkins in the 1950s with a gift he can't control and a family that fears him. As the show peels back its own history, he emerges as the origin point behind the show's monsters — quiet, watchful, and desperate to be understood by someone, anyone.

Jamie Campbell Bower plays him as wounded before he's monstrous, all soft-spoken need and flinching vulnerability, which makes the character's pull toward darkness feel tragic rather than cartoonish. The writing wisely lets his loneliness explain him without excusing him, and Bower's stillness — that unblinking, hungry patience — turns every scene he's in faintly unbearable to watch, in the best way.