Stranger Things Star Explains Vecna’s Latest Alternate Identity

This article contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 5.

Who is the big bad of Stranger Things? The answer most would give is “Vecna,” but who is Vecna? Sure, he’s the ruler of the Upside Down who kidnapped Will Byers way back in season 1 and who ends 5’s first volume of episodes with an attack on Hawkins. But over the preceding seasons, and the stage play Stranger Things: The First Shadow, we’ve learned that Vecna was at one time misunderstood teen Henry Creel, who became the first test subject in the program that led to Eleven.

Season 5 introduces yet another identity for Vecna, the seemingly kind Mr. Whatsit. Viewers may think that Mr. Whatsit’s a complete divergence from the skeletal monster we know, but they’re all the same to actor Jamie Campbell Bower. “They’re all varying entities of himself,” Bower explained to The Hollywood Reporter. “Mister Whatsit, I’d say, is obviously a presentation of who he considers, and wishes, himself to be. But it’s a memory for him more than an actual human being. It’s a performance; an amalgamation of all the things he’s known and of what he thinks would make people safe.”

The name Mr. Whatsit helps reinforce this self-assessment. He’s given the name by Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher), one of many children who Whatsit visits throughout the first four episodes of Stranger Things‘s fifth season. The name comes from Holly’s favorite book A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, which features the kindly witch Mrs. Whatsit. In the same way that Mrs. Whatsit brings a group of outsider children on a cross-dimensional trip, the Mr. Whatsit of Stranger Things appears to be gathering kids in Hawkins to protect them.

The first four episodes of season 5 end before we get any answers about the full relationship between Vecna and Mr. Whatsit, but for his part, Bower’s just happy to have the opportunity to do such varied acting.

“I felt like I’d bitten off a large amount of something when I was asked if I could join the show for season 4” Bower admitted. “I spent so much time considering [Creel] as a child and considering his childhood, his environment and his upbringing when he was more human.” Thanks to that approach, Bower could find something human inside of even the monstrous Vecna, whom he describes as “pure resentment. No sooner did Bower become comfortable with his take on Vecna than the Mr. Whatsit persona is added, offering yet another challenge.

“That was quite a meaty bite to have because as an actor,” Bower said of this other identity. “There are so many times where what you want to be doing is playing the truth, and the truth in this scenario is clearly that Holly Wheeler is being used in some way, and he’s not telling her. And that is a terrifying thing to sit opposite a child and have to lie; that means it’s really, really scary.”

We’ve already seen bits of that scariness even in Mr. Whatsit, particularly when he takes Holly to the childhood home of his memories. But if Bower is being honest, we’ve only begun to see what Creel and his identities can do, which means we’re in for even scarier stories to come.

Stranger Things season 5 episodes 1–4 are now streaming on Netflix.