A Conformity Gate deep dive - Vecna and Will's connection, how the Mind Flayer is more than we think....
When Vecna died, Will didn't feel a thing when he was spiked and got his head taken off. We can assume that after this Will’s connection was severed and thus his powers are gone. But what if a part of Vecna has transferred itself to Will without him knowing? Hear me out...
Vecna doesn't die immediately. In D&D, Vecna is an arch lich whose soul is linked to a phylactery and the only way to prevent him from coming back is by destroying it, which kills him permanently. His essence is sometimes attached to different objects such as his severed hand and eye or self restoring books like the Book of Vile Darkness or in a desolate plane that is virtually inaccessible to reach or find.
Liches are wizards who must undergo a specific arcane ritual in order to create the phylacteries that entrap their souls. They must consume a poison of transformation. The potion kills them, their soul transfers to the phylactery, and the individual rises as a lich. While the ritual is a one-time necessity, the phylactery needs occasional soul-feedings to continue to successfully maintain the lich’s body and soul. Liches are powerful, having access to 9th level spells like Power Word Kill and Imprisonment, the latter of which is required to trap a soul in its phylactery. The only way to potentially permanently kill a lich is through destruction of its phylactery.
Vecna may be dead but the people that worship him still endure.
Vecna has fashioned himself into a lesser deity of secrets, and his cult holds fast to the belief that secrets are coveted and to be kept from the world at large.
My theory is that The Mind Flayer secretly transferred Henry's consciousness into Will's mind before he died, turning his body into a vessel and a phylactery to keep him alive. Will can still tap into that dormant part of the hive mind and use his powers only when Vecna is in control. It is a symbiotic relationship so Vecna and Will need to rely on each other to keep each other alive. They share control of Will’s body.
Will was able to control Vecna like he was pulling at a puppet’s strings. Will siphoned his power from Vecna. Vecna is essentially siphoning power from Will's very life essence to keep him alive.
Will is able to hear Vecna's voice in his mind and talk with him. That broken boy that was once possessed by the mind flayer still inhabits Vecna's mind so slowly Will is able to help Henry gain a fraction of his humanity.
Vecna is slowly draining life from Will and causing internal damage to his body and organs. In order for Will to set free, an exorcism would need to be performed but detaching Vecna from Will's mind would cause it to dismantle Will completely and most likely kill him with Vecna.
We see shadowy particles leaving the throats of the kids when they get released from the spires, in the same manner as Will when he is freed from possession in the S2 finale. The physical body of the mind flayer may be dead but its shadow forms still remain. The particles make up a collective consciousness of mind flayers, an elder brain that uses the brains of the dead particles to maintain its power and intellect. It can communicate telepathically with any creature, guiding them by filling their minds with visions of world domination.
In Henry’s flashback when he first gets possessed by the mind flayer, the cloud of particles communicate with Henry by telling him to find it as we hear a cacophony of different voices speaking.
The Mind Flayer is the elder brain, it is made up of a collective consciousness of mind flayers that all share a body and communicate with humans on the mortal plain in order to find its vessels and control their minds. It can quickly cast spells at the same time as it uses its tendrils to attack.
The cloud pictured here resembles a large brain with tentacles, just like how the elder brain is depicted in D&D. A large brain with tentacles.
A cosmic deity. It stores minds inside of its collective consciousness and makes it a part of itself. Helping it gain knowledge of the outside world. As Dustin says, "it is a creature so ancient it doesn't know its own home" the mind flayer desires to learn more about the outside world and learn to control it, to understand it as a new home to conquer. It needs minds to harvest it and give it that knowledge and power over other lesser realms other than its own.
Many of its particles had been separated from it and required a proxy, vessel body in order to reach the physical world. The Mind Flayer appears in a spider-like form to Henry and Will. Its physical body in the abyss resembles an upside down spider. Vecna needed 12 kids to serve as 12 vessels for the mind flayer to become batteries that bring the physical form of the mind flayer to earth. It needed more vessels, more soldiers to harvest its collective consciousness rather than one singular brain and it needed them to awaken their powers to do that. Henry received his powers as a result of being exposed to the particles in the cave. Will when he gets possessed by the mind flayer.
Will was the first vessel. Vecna needed a physical connection to the real world, one that would allow the influence of the upside down to spread and consume all life. He needed someone to act as his spy. Someone that allows him to expand the realm onto the right side up. Vecna put the tendril down his throat so he could be an incubator and cough up slugs, allowing the hive mind to spread like a virus across Hawkins.
Vecna required Will to build what he saw - hence why the tunnels exist. He needed his eyes into the Upside Down and give the mind flayer more of a chance to conquer and spread its influence across the physical world.
Vecna essentially wanted to recreate this process with the twelve kids. Attaching those tendrils down their throats allows them to be connected to the mind flayer, which makes them apart of the hive mind and gives them powers.
The way the mind flayer is one big cloud that has a collective consciousness of particles, acting as one mind, in the same way. It wants to conquer the human race and make all of these vessels a part of him, his collective mind. Therefore this serves as a metaphor for conformity as all of the particles within the elder brain are expected to act the same, just like the human vessels Vecna collects and possesses.
We are one
- Henry Creel
Vecna's plan was more than merging worlds together - it was about merging minds, merging consciousnesses to become part of one mind. Robbed of their agency and free will, using their powers to allow the UD to spread and bleed into our world.
The twelve kids were a part of this plan but so was Will. Vecna needs a vessel to take his place. He needed Will to awaken his powers for a reason.
He needed him as his spy again so they could merge together and their minds would become one. Will would slowly become Vecna. A human vessel to harvest his mind once he dies, a phylactery to keep him alive so he can continue to unknownly spread the mind flayer's influence across the planet.
The Upside Down may be gone and no gateway to the abyss can be opened but Henry using Will as his vessel allows him and the elder brain to remain connected to the real world.
The way the elder brain is the heart of the abyss, the exotic matter is the UD’s. Will was positioned at the heart of the exotic matter. The exotic matter is what keeps the wormhole together and stops it from collapsing. The exotic matter being shot at permanently messed with reality. In D&D, the elder brain casts spells and usually starts combat by producing a powerful mind blast. It uses many psionic attacks such as charm and domination abilities. It can cast spells as an extremely powerful sorcerer, making it an opponent to be feared.
A mind blast is a psionic attack used by the elder brain and the mind flayers to neutralize the cognitive abilities and psionic powers of other creatures. Mind flayers can use low energy versions of mind blasts to slowly erode the personalities of their victims in order to produce more docile thralls. A low power version of a mind blast could be applied to a victim over a period of 24 hours. The effect was the complete destruction of the victim's personality, leaving only a partially empty shell behind that could be easily trained into a perfectly docile thrall to serve the illithid colony's purpose. Once their minds were completely dissolved, the thralls became immune to the effects of the mind blast so, in case of a large-scale fight, the mind flayers did not need to worry about hitting their own troops.
What form of mind blast did we see in season 5? When Nancy shot at the exotic matter it emitted a large implosion of energy. It exploded and began to suck everything into the wormhole like a vacuum.
Nancy and Jonathan were directly infected and trapped inside the room with the exotic matter and submerged in the white goo. At the same time, Will takes control of Vecna's mind and Henry is able to fight back and take him prisoner.
He goes inside of his head to make him his spy again to find Max, he breaks down his mind and shows him visions of everyone he ever loves rejecting him. He essentially makes him feel ashamed of himself and that he never stood a chance. Just like a mind blast allows the mind flayer to make a docile thrall of its victims to serve their purpose, Vecna breaks down Will’s mind and personality in order to make him his spy again, making him feel like he is unloved. By breaking Will down and making him feel worthless, he prepares his vessel for the merge. So he can essentially merge their minds together.
The exotic matter is holding together the wormhole and the upside down in the same way the elder brain holds the entire abyss together. They are one in the same. A collective brain that has dominion over the upside down. When the exotic matter is destroyed, the elder brain/the mind flayer has no way of accessing the real world.
Will is at the heart of the exotic matter as positioned in the diagram. Will is the one who stabilizes the bridge. Nancy shot at the exotic matter like a bullet straight to the heart and this would cause the bridge to collapse. This is what got Will trapped in Vecna's mind but when El rescues him, the exotic matter begins to stabilize again, allowing Nancy and Jonathan to escape the melting room unscathed.
The destruction of the exotic matter would have not only destroyed the upside down and the wormhole completely but Will would end up dying.
If Vecna's plan was about merging the worlds together, then why did the physical form of the mind flayer not immediately leave the abyss and make its way to the right side up? Why no Demogorgons or demodogs in the abyss when we saw them there in Henry's flashbacks?
It's because he needed Will, he needed the children, so he could break them body and mind and make them vessels for the mind flayer to harvest on and give it strength. So they could become one collective being, just like the elder brain being made up of particles of the mind flayer. Vecna and the Mind Flayer share a symbiotic relationship because they are part of one collective brain where one is in control of another and draws its power directly from Vecna.
It is stated in season 4 that when Vecna kills, he consumes everything that his victims are and traps them in his mind. Henry tells Eleven that all of the lab children he killed are in his mind and he points to his head. He stores dead minds within his head in a similar manner to the elder brain storing dead particles within its own collective consciousness. Max ends up being trapped in his mind and that is how she finds Holly who is trapped in a figment of the Creel house. All of the children are placed in this fake reality while their physical bodies are attached to spires. We literally see Vecna attached to the physical beating heart of the mind flayer! Vecna's mindscape is essentially one collective brain and he needs to find the perfect vessels to make an elder brain of his own. Taking and killing souls and making them a part of his mind. In a way Vecna's plan was foreshadowed in season 4 as well when Robin said to Steve that they should combine into one being. This is what Vecna is doing with Will and all of the children he has taken. He plans to merge their minds together as a part of his own, in the way he kills his victims and stores his mind within his own head. It is a merger of minds not worlds.
Vecna tells Will that the minds of the kids can easily be reshaped and broken, just like what he did to him to make them the perfect vessels. Vecna says to Will that some minds don't belong in this world but his. When we head Will retell what Vecna said to him to the group, the scene takes an ominous turn and there is a quick demeanor change in Will. There is more to Vecna's plan than what the characters actually believe and he is committing it in plain sight. Slowly Will begins to doubt that his powers aren't even his and that he is not a sorcerer and he is purely just siphoning and stealing his powers from Vecna. He believes he never stood a chance. This is intentional. The Mind Flayer made Will think like this the way it made Henry lose hope in humanity and that allowed it to break him down into the perfect vessel just as Vecna is doing with his twelve kids.
Henry could have learned to control the mind flayer and choose to resist it but instead allowed himself to believe the ideas it had put in his head. To believe that humanity is broken and that he is unloved, the same practice he did on Will. The same practice Brenner had conducted on him to bring the mind flayer out by making him think that Patty never loved him. The Mind Flayer is essentially breaking down the minds of its vessels to make them feel like they aren't good enough, aren't loved, which makes them more vulnerable to its control. That is how they become part of its collective brain.
All of the kids were connected to the rib cage of the mind flayer by tendrils in their throats. This attaches them directly to the elder brain and connects them to the hive mind which vice versa gives them their unawakened powers. This is how the elder brain finds and harvests its vessels. Will was the first and it showed them what was possible, how easy it was for children like him to break, so they needed to carry out this same practice.
It is an ancient cosmic entity and it is using Henry to achieve the same thing it did. The elder brain had called out to Henry when it first possessed him and he is taking orders from it. The particles that were put inside Holly, Derek and the kids may be out of their systems but those remnants are now part of the elder brain, so they now have possession of their memories and their thoughts.
The video game Baldur's Gate III, which the Duffer Brothers were big fans of and took inspiration from for season 5, and is based on D&D explores a similar concept with the mind flayers. At the start of the game, the protagonist wakes up inside a giant dimension crossing ship controlled by illithids (mind flayers). They are infected with a parasitic tadpole that enthralls and transforms people into illithids. The mind flayer infected these kids with these ‘tadpoles’ with the tendrils to take control of their minds and turn them into his twelve vessels. Mind flayers.
It is just like the Black Thing in a Wrinkle in Time, the book that Holly's class reads, the one Henry draws inspiration from to get the kids to trust him. The black thing is a massive shadowy and intangible cosmic force that envelopes planets such as Camazotz with evil and darkness and causes oppression, suffering and the erasure of free will. It takes the form of a dark cloud just like the mind flayer when it first reaches out to Henry and it takes away free will of the people it controls just like the mind flayer when it infects minds to possess them.
Vecna needed the 12 kids to break a hole into the world in order for the merge to begin. To allow the abyss to be close to the real world and for the mind flayer's physical form to come alive as it needed those vessels to power it. To make them a part of its collective consciousness.
This allowed the mind flayer to get closer to Will so it can merge Vecna and Will's minds together without him knowing, thus completing the merge and allowing the two beings to become one. To stop either of them dying when the exotic matter is destroyed because Vecna’s mind will be transferred inside of Will's to slumber there until it is the right time for it to take control.
Will didn't feel any pain because he had already found acceptance within himself. He showed Vecna that he wasn't afraid anymore and this is what allowed him to take off his right arm and pin him to the spike. This new strength Will had gained was what the mind flayer needed so it needed Vecna's mind to become one with Will, so he still has a physical connection to the real world even when the wormhole is destroyed.
There are no Demogorgons or demodogs in the abyss because the elder brain is a collective mind. It already has its soldiers. Its own mind flayers, its twelve vessels. The Demogorgons hunted down and brought the kids to him, therefore their purpose had been served to Vecna and the mind flayer and they were cut off. The demodogs went after Max, the demobats were the guards of Vecna's lair when he occupied the creel house. That same purpose had been served. The hive mind becomes non-existent as a result. The Mind Flayer doesn't need it anymore when it has its own army made up of children, the weak and feasible minds it needs to draw its power from. Henry is his pawn and he needs to merge with Will as one mind, one collective in order to still remain connected to the real world. To give the elder brain a door and eyes into the real world even after the wormhole to the abyss has been destroyed.The abyss is closed off. By secretly implanting the last remnant of Henry's mind into Will's, he can use his vessel to open another gate to the abyss. Therefore this whole thing will repeat itself again. There is no demos because Vecna wanted them to find his home turf so he could get closer to possessing Will's mind.
Vecna stays dormant, unawakened inside Will’s mind until the time is right and when he wakes up, Vecna and Will can share a collective body. Harvesting both of their consciousnesses into one mind in order to keep both of them alive. One can't live without the other. They become one brain, thus creating another elder brain in the mortal plain. A phylactery. One the mind flayer can pull the strings off and gain more access into the real world from the abyss.
The Elder Brain forces consciousnesses to become part of the same, to act the same and become vessels. When all people begin to act the same, it becomes the perfect analogy to conformity and how it shapes and destroys minds. This is what a collective brain is about, taking away the free will of others and making them part of the same minds, expected to act the same. This is what Vecna is doing with Will and the twelve vessels and this is a spell that he could still continue to enact even death.
We know Mr Whatsit had all of the kids around a table performing a kind of seance in order to awaken their powers and cause the worlds to emerge. To get closer to the perfect vessel.
Remember this quote from season 4 episode 1 -
“The hooded cultists chant. Hail Lord Vecna…”
The twelve kids represent The Cult of Vecna. A fanatical organization dedicated to worshipping Vecna and operate in hidden cells to amass dark secrets and magical power, aiming to advance Vecna's dominion over the multiverse. They often use necromancy, assassination and theft to achieve these goals. They believe knowledge is power and hoard it for themselves. They destroy books and memorize them instead so that knowledge dies with them.
Henry has all of the children gathered around in a circle, performing a ritual in order to awaken their dormant powers. Casting a spell.
The cult of Vecna teaches that Vecna was cursed by gods who were jealous of his power. […] Vecna confronted his own death and imprisoned it in a castle on the gray sands of an alien world, where it wails in eternal torment.
Vecna and his followers like to manipulate secrets. They can alter and weaponise information and stories in order to rewrite reality in Vecna's favour. Vecna is the god of secrets and he focuses on controlling the truth to gain power.
In Die, Vecna, Die! , an advanced D&D module, Vecna attempts to rearrange all of existence to his whims, which causes in-universe changes to happen between D&D editions.
When Die, Vecna, Die! was released, Vecna was vaguely responsible for the D&D multiverse no longer sharing the same cosmological structure. It wasn’t spelled out exactly that way, but it was mentioned that all of those differences between how AD&D 2e presents the universe and how D&D 3e presents the universe can be traced to Vecna damaging the multiverse when he entered Sigil. Vecna was able to rewrite reality. The spellweavers were able to remember a time where all planes were unified through one single reality. The Spellweavers ultimate goal is to collapse all of the multiverse back into a single reality, which makes them especially cross with Vecna, who managed to split reality into ever more iterations. Like most things related to Vecna, this is less a definitive bit of lore than it is a tantalizing piece of potential energy. It ties together concepts like the multiverse originally being less fractured, as well as cosmic knowledge being used to condense and rewrite the rules of the multiverse to remake it.
The closing paragraph of the dungeons and dragons 2nd and 3rd reads about Vecna’s multiversal shattering plan as follows:
"Even with Vecna's removal, his time in the crux effected change in superspace. Though the Lady of Pain attempts to heal the damage, the turmoil spawned by Vecna's time in Sigil cannot be entirely erased. Some Outer Planes drift off and are forever lost, others collide and merge, while at least one Inner Plane runs "aground" on a distant world of the Prime. Moreover, the very nature of the Prime Material Plane itself is altered. Half-worlds like those attached to Tovag Baragu multiply a millionfold, taking on parallel realism in what was before a unified Prime Material Plane. The concept of alternate dimensions rears its metaphorical head, but doesn't yet solidify, and perhaps it never will. New realms, both near and far, are revealed and realms never previously imagined make themselves known. Entities long thought lost emerge once more, while other creatures, both great and small, are inexplicably eradicated. Some common spells begin to work differently. The changes do not occur immediately, but instead are revealed during the subsequent months. However, one thing remains clear: Nothing will ever be the same again.”
Vecna is rewriting reality and the timeline of the show. Everyone is under his curse and is trapped in a fake reality, controlled by one collective brain. All trapped within the same brain, without free will and acting the same. The elder brain and the mind flayer possessing humans to become part of its collective brain to share his nihilistic worldview aligns perfectly with the messaging around conformity.
Reality is being rewritten by Vecna and the characters are trapped in it.
Mike is the storyteller, he gives each of the party a comfortable ending. A fake reality. He is actively influencing the narrative unintentionally and rewriting reality itself.
Comfort and happiness can you be more trite?
And the storyteller? What about him?
Out of everyone in the entire party, Will is the one to ask Mike what his happy ending looks like when no one else does rather than give himself his own ending.
Will knows this reality is fake and in a way is trying to influence Mike's own.
What is noticeable is that Will is the last party member to get his ending and is the last one to leave and put his book down before Mike.
When they are playing D&D, Will is bathed in the light while the rest of the party is in the dark. Henry told the children that light is what expels the darkness. Will is the only one who has the influence and power to free Mike and possibly break free from Vecna's influence.
In the end credits, Will is dubbed as an illusionist rather than a sorcerer. This is pretty telling because in d&d lore, illusionists cast spells based on their distinctive character which can create figments and phantasms to deceive and trick their foes. Illusionists can recognize when a spell has been cast by an illusionist, even if it is the same spell that a cleric or magic-user could cast. Will recognizes that they are all trapped in a fake reality, hence why Will is the first to ask Mike about his ending. Unlike the rest of the party, Will is wearing a necklace in this scene. We don't see him wear a necklace in the bar in the ending Mike envisions for him. But who else we know wore a necklace? Holly did and it allowed her to be brave. Will wearing this necklace not only makes him stand out from the rest but shows that he is the only one who knows they are trapped in a fake reality.
Mike says Will goes to the city of Vallaki where he finds acceptance - a city where humans that had been experimented by mind flayers had escaped and migrated to, possessing psionic gifts. In the bar Will goes and meets the epilogue boyfriend, you can see there is an exit scene at the top of the bar, hinting that this is a fake reality and that Will has a door he can escape through.
Another form of proof that could be used to show that this is Vecna's fake reality is when Dustin talks to the jocks about Prismatic Spray which causes blindness. It is an evocation spell that can infect multiple targets with a cone of multicolored rays emanating from a caster's hand. One of the colours that deals damage is violet which casts a ray which strikes a creature with blindness and subsequently banishes it into another plain. Violet is the color purple. Purple was Eleven's favorite colour. Purple Palm Tree Delight! Purple Rain by Prince plays when Mike says goodbye to Eleven for one last time and she sacrifices herself. The parade of purple is a festivity that is celebrated in Vallaki where the townspeople are forced to maintain happiness despite living under oppressive and tyrannical rule.
Everyone has been hit by prismatic spray and is trapped in this fake reality, forced to be happy, forced to comply with the elder brain's ideals of conformity. They want to make everyone the same.
So in conclusion, the only way Will can break Vecna's influence over him and the mind flayer's spell over the town is by casting a wisdom saving throw. If it is successful, it will end the blindness while if it fails, they are transported to another plane. In BG3, the elder brain can be defeated by exploiting its weak strength and dexterity saving throws since those are the brain's lowest stats and using the netherstones to control the elder brain and destroy it. By freeing the town of Hawkins from the elder brain's control, they can regain their sentience and destroy it, thus allowing Vecna's soul to be freed from Will's body and destroying the mind flayer once and for all.