Stranger Things 5 Volume 1 has come at last, retracing the very moment when the series first cast its mystery in 2016, how it happened that Will Byers was the first one to be taken by the forces of the Upside Down. The new season goes back to the point of Will’s first mental possession and gives the audience a glimpse of Vecna’s grabbing Will and the connection with the Mind Flayer. The show is still ambiguous but fan theories have been trying to unravel the plot over which is the reason why Will is the main character to get singled out.
Reddit Fan Theories On Why Vecna Chose Will Byers
Will has always been the emotional core of the link between Hawkins and the Upside Down. Without a trace of Will in Season 1, it was the first contact with Eleven that got the door flung open for the government to come and contain the breach and Duffer brothers revealed the Demogorgon and the Mind Flayer. By returning to the same event from a different perspective, the first episode of Stranger Things 5 basically confirms that Vecna was controlling Will’s mind.
The first one of these is that Will was simply unlucky. The argument states that of all the people around, he was the one who happened to be at the crossing point of the Demogorgon and Hawkins at the time when the monster came out of the portal and that Vecna, after the event had taken place, just followed the easiest path, which was Will. He in this theory is portrayed as the first usable host, the vehicle for possession when the Mind Flayer chosen to expand its influence in Season 2.
Another one proposes that Vecna first wanted to find Eleven, not Will, basing this on the fact that they were close that night when Will disappeared. They believe the reason that Will is the one taken is that he looked like Eleven or that he met the demogorgons on the way that were looking for her after she had left the lab.
An alternative theory suggests that Will was chosen due to his fragility. His experiences with school abuses, the pressure from the teachers, the problems at home, and the emotional side of him as a sensitive child are pointed out by the fans to be the root of his vulnerability. There is a group that thinks in this way-vecna sensed this fear and loneliness especially since these are the characteristics she has been exploiting throughout the series for characters like Max and Chrissy.
Noah Schnapp announced that his Stranger Things 5 scenes will give us a real physical confrontation between Will and Vecna rather than just impressions. Talking to Netflix’s Tudum, he said the experience of shooting with Jamie Campbell Bower, who was in full makeup, was “terrifying” but it was necessary to grasp how closely Will and Vecna are related.
Netflix’s Stranger Things season 5 volume 1 was released on November 26, 2025