After his latest batch of young captives are freed, Vecna begins to awaken, which compels Joyce to approach the monster, ax in hand. Joyce drives the blade into the enemy, striking until he’s finally beheaded.
By itself, there’s nothing upsetting or even unusual about a final standoff between the big bad and the heroes. Stranger Things is fundamentally a fantasy show, so even if we’re largely opposed to violence in the real world, we understand that a series like Stranger Things interprets conflicts between good and evil only through spectacular fights. The problem is the way the Duffers choose to depict Joyce killing Vecna.
Before each blow Joyce strikes, the Duffers cut to a close-up on one of the main cast members, accompanied by a flashback that shows how Vecna harmed them. So when the camera pushes in on Dustin, we see Eddie Munson getting killed. A push in on Holly is matched with a flashback to a demogorgon attacking Karen Wheeler. After each flashback, the camera cuts to a close-up of the ax landing on Vecna’s neck.
One gets the sense that the Duffers intend the moment to be cathartic, to remind us that so many people have suffered at Vecna’s hand and now that suffering can come to an end. But instead, the combination of a wrong done followed by a blow of the axe makes the scene feel like a celebration of retributive violence. Each member of the community is bound not by how they suffered, not by the way they support one another, but rather by the fact that they inflict violence on Vecna. Moreover, the editing of the scene suggests that the slow killing of Vecna achieves some sort of balance through the violent act.
That presentation undercuts the cathartic feeling that the Duffers want to achieve with the scene and the long denouement that follows. Across the last 45 minutes of the finale, we see how the main characters have found some sort of peace and even prosperity after the events of the show. No, they don’t want to forget what Vecna did to them or all that they lost—that’s the main point of Dustin’s valedictorian speech. But they do want to move on, no longer living in the fear and suffering they experienced while Vecna was free.
By building Vecna’s death scene around the rhythm of remembering grievances and Joyce’s ax strikes, the climax emphasizes retributive violence. It suggests that healing doesn’t come just from the diverse group of weirdos who make up the show’s heroes coming together, or even from overcoming Vecna and the Mind Flayer. Instead, the scene emphasizes the dismembering, suggesting that healing comes only through retribution through blood. It’s not enough to stop and defeat Vecna. He must be methodically punished, ritualistically dismembered.
