When we first land in Hawkins, Mike, Will, Lucas, and Dustin are in the throes of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in Mike’s basement. The board game/amateur theater hybrid was created by Gary Gygaz and Dave Arneson, and allowed a game leader (known as a Dungeon Master) to bring to life fantastical adventures with friends. Games, known as campaigns, can pretty much last as long as you want them to, be it hours, days, weeks, or even months!
Much like we saw in Stranger Things Season 4, Part 1, the game did have a bad rep and sparked fear around occultism and satanism in the 1970s and mid-’80s, due to the dark subject matter and creatures in the game. There were lots of people who would have joined Jason Carver’s witch hunt for Eddie!
The game is a thread throughout the whole series so far, but it’s more than just the characters who get immersed in its extensive lore. Matt and Ross Duffer said that when they come up with a monster, they immediately flip through D&D Monster Manuals looking for what the kids would likely reference when describing the monster.
In the case of Season 4’s villain, the Duffers said they actually cheated a little bit, with Matt telling Netflix: “(Vecna wasn’t) really wasn’t a character until the ’90s. We cheated a little bit, but we thought Eddie is so advanced — and the idea of Vecna did exist [in the lore] — that he could have brought Vecna back to life. But that’s why you have the kids react in the way they do, like, “You can’t do that. He doesn’t exist. He’s dead.” And Eddie’s like, “No, he’s alive. He’s very much alive.”
Ross follows up, saying: “It’s essentially like if Eddie wrote (the book) “Vecna Lives!” a bit earlier than it was actually written. Hopefully, the D&D lovers out there don’t hate us for doing a little bit of a cheat there. But it really felt like it had to be Vecna. If the kids were going to talk about this new monster, that was the closest [fit].
So, that was our way of making it work within the context of it not yet being 1990. It was too good to pass up. Vecna just feels so ominous and scary. We wanted it to be just like the Demogorgon is. We wanted it to be a monster that is infamous in the D&D world.”
