By Owen Quinn author Photos copyright Netflix.
In the series finale of Stranger Things, it was the final battle with the evil Vecna. He had killed, tortured, scared and manipulated everyone from day one. He sent demogorgons and demodogs after innocent people leaving many dead in their wake. Although he wasn’t revealed until season four, we soon found out that Vecna had no conscience. He saw children as weak minded vessels to do with as he wished. The one thing he never counted on was kidnapping the son of one Joyce Byers, a wallflower that quickly became a tigeress.
Fan theory says that Vecna, aka Henry Keel, chose Will Byers as his first victim because at school, Joyce gave a young Henry Keel a part in a play where no-one else liked him. Whether this played a part in Vecna’s reasoning is uncertain. But the opening scene of season five, we see Will captured and Vecna tell him “At long last, they can begin. You and I are going to do such beautiful things together, William. Such beautiful things.” Jump to the climax of the fifth season mid-season finale, The Sorcerer, Vecna levitates Will off the ground and brings him face to face with him. Joyce and Mike are there too amid the carnage of the military base as Vecna takes Will. Joyce has jumped up to defend her son but has been swiped aside by Vecan, again, maybe because of the play. Now Joyce has seen the face of the monster that took her son and put them all through hell.
Vecna taunts Will that he chose the children because they are weak in body and mind, easily reshaped and easily controlled and he was the first and that he broke so easily. It was Will that showed him what he could achieve by taking kids as vessels. But as we know, Will unleashes the power of the hive mind, kills the demogorgons and gives them a way into Vecna’s head.
Now, when Will first vanished, Joyce became Hopper’s worst nightmare. She fought every step of the way to convince the Sheriff Jim Hopper something was seriously wrong and to make more effort into finding her son. At times, she appeared mentally unstable and irrational because only she knew that Will was still alive somewhere and talking to her through the lights. She put every friendship and relationship on the line to fight for her son and bring him home. Not even Hopper believed her, seeing her as a crank, a hysterical mother. But Joyce was relentless and never gave up hope. When the world was against her, she kept fighting for Will, intent on bringing him home. Even when Will’s body is found, she refises to accept it. She turns on her ex-husband, Will’s father, and even Jonathan doubts her. But when Hopper finds his home has been bugged, he finally starts to listen to Joyce. Will’s corpse is a fake and they are captured when trying to break into Hawkin’s Lab. Dr Brenner sends them into the Upside Down where she finds Will and brings hin home.
Did you know that Joyce was fashioned after Bill Neary, Richard Dretyfuss’ character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?
Joyce may be a small lady but she’s a rottweiller where the people she loves are concerned. As we saw in season four when she and Murray headed to Russia to find the supposedly dead Hopper. So after all of this, Max, Max’s brother, Barb Holland, steaking the kids, nearly killing Mr and Mrs Wheeler and all the others Vecna has been hurting, Joyce can take no more. She is the one that is the motherly character in the show even giving Derek the name of Delightful Derek rather than Dipshit Derek. Vecna has hurt her child, used the fact he is gay against him and kept her away from Hopper for over a year so when they finally have him defeated, Joyce intends to make sure that his pathetic gurgling will be his last breaths. Vecna is a helpless being now and you’d expect Joyce’s mothering instincts to kick in but memories of how Will was after his rescue are too painful. There is a moment where he is reaching out to Joyce because of her act of kindness. Or maybe because she is the mother of them all? Joyce has had a fury build inside her for these last few years and it needs unleashed.
“You fucked with the wrong family!”
When Joyce snarls this, you know Vecna is screwed. His mewling turns to a deep growl of fury as Joyce lashes out.
She lashes out, chopping and chopping at his neck to kill him. Against her fury, we get flashbacks to Will being hurt, his post traumatic stress, Eddie’s death, Mrs Wheeler’s being attacked by the demogorgon from episode two, Max’s trauma and lying to Elle that she was responsible for creating Vecna. Joyce chops and chops until Vecna’s head falls to the floor., She is venting for all of them because she knows what Will’s friends means to him and he to them. They are all family and Vecna will never again hurt them.
The audience are fully with her as the flashbacks remind us just how much they have lost. It reminds us of their pain and terror and never giving up hope. When Joyce was the only one in the world to believe her son was alive, it was all because of Vecna. It is only just that Joyce is the one to deliver the killing blow. It is her job to protect the kids, not the other way round, so thematically only she or Hopper could take this final step. To have one of the kids do it would reduce them to Vecna’s level in the world’s eyes. And Joyce refuses to let that happen.
This is a powerfully emotional scene as any good parent would do the same. Vecna thrives on primal fear such as the loss of a child and cares nothing about the parents. In his last moments, Vecan died seeing the true power in the world; the raw power of just how far a mother will go for her child. There is not a force more powerful than this in the world. If only Vecna had taken Will’s offer to come back to the good side.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 