These Are All the Monsters in Stranger Things

Warning! This list contains some spoilers for Stranger Things Season 3 and 4, in case if you haven't seen them yet. Be aware! Don't read further, unless you don't mind being spoiled.

• There are a lot of monsters in Stranger Things.
• The main one for Season 4 is Vecna.

Stranger Things is a lot of things. Above all, it's entertaining—but that entertainment comes from a number of different venues. It's funny—just about every character has a handful of laugh aloud moments in any given season. It's exciting—who can resist watching the next episode as soon as the previous one ends? There's so much going on, and the show picks the most exciting moments to leave us hanging on.

But possibly above all, Stranger Things is... well, it's pretty creepy—if not outright scary. What provides those thrills, of course, comes from the supernatural element of the show. In true Stephen King fashion (The Duffer Brothers are die-hard fans of the legendary author, and clearly paid homage to him in a number of ways), the show features a number of monsters who make life a living hell for our heroes. But what are these monsters? We break it all down below:

Vecna (Season 4)

The newest addition to the Upside Down is Vecna. Like previous Stranger Things villains, Vecna comes from Dungeons & Dragons, and in the game's lore is described as a once human turned undead wizard. He's a formidable foe with god-like reality-altering powers. He can control minds and even paralyze people. And after Season 4, we know his actual backstory too, not just the D&D lore.

In the television show, Vecna–before he was Vecna–was Henry, a young child who moved to Hawkins with his family, the Creels, in the '60s. He exhibited powers from a young age and generally terrorized his family, eventually killing them. Dr. Brenner found Henry and began working with him on his powers (he's the first child Dr. Brenner found, so he's tattooed with the number 1). When Dr. Brenner realized Henry was too powerful to contain, he injected him with a chip to neutralize his powers and keep him subdued.

In Volume 1, we discovered Eleven removed Henry's chip and Henry in turn...killed everyone in the lab except for Eleven and Dr. Brenner. Henry offers to take over the world with Eleven and Eleven, horrified, decides to kill Henry with her powers. Unfortunately, she accidentally sent him to the Upside Down and opened the first ever portal. So this entire time Henry's spent time gaining his powers and becoming Vecna, waiting for the chance to take over the world.

As of the Season 4 finale, the kids have yet to defeat Vecna, and we'll have to wait for Season 5 to see how Vecna's story ends.

The Mind Flayer/Shadow Monster (Season 3)

The main villain/monster for Stranger Things 3 is the Mind Flayer. Named after the Dungeons & Dragons monster, the Mind Flayer is a monster that possesses a host, and uses its body as a vessel to carry out its evil. Billy is the main vessel in this latest season, and the Mind Flayer, through him, possesses a number of people (most of whom are eventually turned into flesh goo), including Heather Holloway, his fellow lifeguard, Tom Holloway, Heather's father and the editor of The Hawkins Post, and Doris Driscoll, an old lady who tells Nancy about the infected Rats. Oh yeah, that's right—the Mind Flayer possesses and melts down a whole lot of rats.

By melting these possessed bodies down, the mind flayer merges them all into one, giant, six-legged monster that keeps gaining more and more mass with each body that's melted down. It's pretty creepy, and really gross.

The kids attack the monster with fireworks, but the monster is finally stopped when a number of factors happen: Billy defies the possession of the monster, distracting it from hurting the (now powerless) Eleven, and Joyce and Hopper close the gate to the Upside Down. Maybe for good this time, the Mind Flayer is dead.

Shadow Monster/Mind Flayer (Season 2)

We're first introduced to the Mind Flayer (originally referred to as the Shadow Monster) in Season 2, as the main antagonist/monster. Will Byers, who's just seemingly gotten past the events of the first season, keeps snapping between the real world and the Upside Down—and he sees a giant, spider-like monster, made entirely of smoke and shadows. Will is continually attacked, and eventually possessed by the monster.

The boys figure the monster out using the D+D lore (where it earns the 'Mind Flayer' moniker). As Will lets everyone know "he likes it cold," eventually they figure out that the way to defeat the Mind Flayer is with heat—Joyce and Jonathan blast a tied-up Will with heat lamps, and the Mind Flayer is forced out of Will's body. Eleven and Hopper go down by the gate to the Upside Down in Hawkins, and using Eleven's telekinetic powers, close the gate—for the time being—cutting the Mind Flayer off.

The Demogorgon

The Demogorgon was the original Stranger Things monster (and there were a few of them), and probably still the show's flagship monster. This is the monster that originally took and feasted on Barb (RIP), attacked Nancy through the tree gateway, and tormented both Will and Eleven. It's kind of like a demon that's face opens up and reveals a million, zillion teeth, accompanied by a screeching roar. It's creepy stuff!

At the tail end of Season one, one of these bad boys got totally roasted (literally) by Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve, when they fought it for a little while before defeating it by lighting it on fire. Eleven also defeated another one by blowing it to smithereens with her powers, blasting herself into the Upside Down in the process.

Just when we thought we were free of Demogorgons, though, we find out that assumption is a little bit too presumptuous. During the Season 3 finale's credits scene, we get a look at a far-away Russian prison, where the much-discussed "American" is being held. When that "American" is passed over for another prisoner, that prisoner is taken to a torture room, where, you guessed it, a Demogorgon awaits. Uh oh.

The Demodogs

When all seemed well at the end of Season 1, Will Byers was having dinner with Joyce and Jonathan, and excused himself briefly to the bathroom. Instead of, like, usual bathroom stuff, we saw Will flash back to the Upside Down, and then cough up a weird slug-like thing into the drain. Gross, and also foreshadowing of what to come.

By the early part of the next season, Dustin (a notable science nerd) finds a slightly-grown version of this same slug, and, thinking he's discovered a new species, takes it in and names it D'artagnan. 'D'art,' as they begin to call it for short, turns out to be a mini demo-gorgon, or a demo-dog, and thanks Dustin for his kindness by eating his family cat. (They're referred to as Demo-dogs because they walk around on all-fours, as opposed to the original Demogorgon walking upright)

The Demo-dogs cause all sorts of problems throughout the season, but Steve Harrington gets to have a real hero moment when he fights three of these bad boys with his spiked baseball bat, as Lucas, Dustin, and Max watch on.

Unfortunately, before their defeat, these creatures viciously maul Bob, the ever-so-sweet man who Joyce Byers was dating (and the manager of the local Radioshack). We will never forgive them for eating poor Bob.

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