How Long Has Vecna Been In The Upside Down?

Warning: SPOILERS for Stranger Things season 4.

How long has Vecna been in the Upside Down and how have those years affected him, turning him into the monster viewers see in Creel family in 1959 and resurfaced once again in 1986. But how accurate was he?

Crucially, Dustin tells Steve that they don't know how long the Upside Down has existed, because, for all they know, Eleven didn't create the Upside Down when she opened the first gate back in 1983, though that's technically a possibility. It's an alternate dimension stuck on the day that the gate opened and Will Byers disappeared, but there are a number of potential reasons for the Upside Down's timeline. After all, Eleven opened a portal to the world before that didn't set off this chain of events.

Overall, Vecna has been in the Upside Down for seven years. In September 1979, Eleven freed Henry Creel/Number One from his metaphorical shackles and inadvertently allowed him to massacre everyone at Hawkins Lab, including all of Dr. Brenner's test subjects. But when she discovered what he had done, she banished him to the Upside Down, creating a temporary portal to send him there, which closed immediately afterward (this was similar to the portal she created when she defeated the Demogorgon at the end of season 1). Therefore, Henry Creel/Vecna has been in the Upside Down for seven years due to season 4 picking up in spring 1986 (so more like 6.5 years).

Eleven Fighting One in Stranger Things Season 4

Vecna wasn't in the Upside Down when the Creel family was killed, as the group had believed, because it was Henry Creel who killed his sister and mother, and attempted to kill his father. It wasn't until 1979 that he finally entered the alternate dimension and was brutally scarred and deformed as a result of being hit by multiple lightning strikes. Even beyond that, surviving in the Upside Down couldn't have been easy. Being there for one week severely affected Will Byers when he got trapped, so spending seven years there after being struck by lightning turned him into the monster that he is now.

What's interesting is that Vecna now has some control of the hive mind in the Upside Down. Whether he obtained that because the Mind Flayer allowed him to (if Dustin is correct in that Vecna is the Mind Flayer's five-star general), or because the Mind Flayer is truly gone and all that's left is Vecna, remains to be seen, but hopefully that should be answered in some fashion when Stranger Things season 4 returns for volume 2.

Next: What The Grandfather Clock Means In Stranger Things Season 4

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