While a large swathe of the internet is deliberating whether it wants to smash or pass Stranger Things evil entity Vecna I found myself wondering where the fuck I had seen a certain charcter’s face before. Oh and before we go any further, this story absolutely has major spoilers for Stranger Things season four and the identity of the main antagonist, Vecna. If you haven’t watched it yet, scroll down at your own risk. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
As I was powering through season four of the wonderfully spooky Netflix hit I couldn’t help but think that I had seen one actor before in something else. Jamie Campbell Bower — who plays the lab assistant that befriends and helps Eleven unleash her powers and later becomes Vecna — was ringing a tiny bell in the back of my head.
YOU. WHERE HAVE I SEEN YOU BEFORE?
His slightly-menacing-yet-strangely-alluring face haunted me and my sheer stubbornness to look him up on IMDb had me stuck. I knew that I knew him from something before Stranger Things, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
That was until I saw a triple-feature of the last three Twilight films at the cinema on Sunday night.
@nikki.spice 7 hours and 0 dull moments 🐺 #twilight #twilightsaga #edwardcullen #bellaswan
When we returned to the cinema after powering through Eclipse and breaking for a dinner intermission we launched into parts one and two of Breaking Dawn. That was when it hit me: THIS was where I’d seen Vecna before.
The Volturi are back after learning about the possibility of an immortal child. Flanking Michael Sheen‘s manic portrayal of Aro is the man I’ve been thinking about: Jamie with white-blonde hair and blood-red eyes in the role of Caius.
vecna and caius being the same person makes no sense to me pic.twitter.com/89GSo4cssK
— roofus (@wheresroofus) May 31, 2022
Of course this is where I’ve seen him before.
I feel like there are a lot of parallels between his portrayal of Caius in Twilight and his Stranger Things role as the kinda-weird orderly at Hawkins Laboratory that turns out to be 001 of the experiment. They’re both a bit erratic and vengeful. They also both have this demonic demeanour behind their porcelain complexions. And they both give me the ick like nothing else.
I’ve since found out that Bower also plays a young Gellert Grindelwald in the Harry Potter universe and Anthony in Sweeney Todd. But it’s the Caius connection that has spun me out the most.
So there you have it — Twilight is where you’ve seen that God damned face before.
Now I can sleep easy at night knowing that loop has been closed in my stubborn brain. Stranger Things and Twilight. What an incredible CV.
