Stranger Things 4‘s official trailer just dropped today and it gave us plenty of information about the upcoming season. We got to see some of the old favorites among the Stranger Things cast, including some new characters. One character, in particular, is fascinating from a horror fan’s perspective and a storyline one. Throughout the trailer, it’s teased what the big bad for the season is going to look like, but we also get a look at Victor Creel. Robert Englund, of A Nightmare On Elm Street and plenty of other horror classics, is playing Creel. The official Netflix description from the casting goes like this:
Robert Englund aka Victor Creel is a disturbed and intimidating man who is imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital for a gruesome murder in the 1950s.
The Evidence From The Trailers For Stranger Things 4
As seen in the “Creel House” teaser for the fourth season, this is the same house that Victor Creel lived in as a kid. In the last shot of the new trailer, a new, most terrifying, monster, with tentacles and a brooding voice, is shown. Notice the background, which looks exactly like the Creel House. While we don’t know for sure that Victor Creel is this monster, it would make sense.
From all the promotional material and casting of an actor of Robert Englund’s horror background, it would only make sense that Creel and this monster are one and the same. However, what got him to this point, and what gets him to the upside-down, is unknown.
It looks like The Duffer Brothers and the series are leaning more into the horror elements that are in place throughout with some of the teenage and adult storylines, but that had escaped the kid’s stories. Now, the kids are grown up, so those Goonies/ET vibes are out the window, replaced by 80s tropes and visuals from horror films of the time. Time will tell if Victor Creel is a smokescreen to whatever monster this is. Or it could be some form of Papa (Matthew Modine) from the upside-down.
Either way, we’ll have to figure out when Stranger Things 4 releases on Netflix on May 27th, with Volume 2 hitting the service on July 1st, 2022.
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