Victor Creel

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Victor Creel
Biographical information
Status	Alive
Born	1919 (approximately)
Age	40 (1959) 67 (1986)
Aliases	Old, Dumb, Blind Victor (by Henry)
Residence	Rachel, Nevada (19??-19??) South Bend, Indiana (19??-19??) Creel House, Hawkins, Indiana (1959) Pennhurst Mental Hospital, Kerley County, Indiana (1959-)
Relationship status	Widowed
Family	Virginia Creel † (wife) Alice Creel † (daughter) Henry Creel (son) Unnamed † (great-uncle-in-law)
Affiliation	Pennhurst Mental Hospital
Occupation	Soldier (formerly) Psychiatric patient at Pennhurst Mental Hospital (current)
Physical information
Height	5’10” (177cm)
Eye color	Blue
Hair color	Gray
Portrayal
Main actor	Robert Englund Kevin L. Johnson (young)
Other actors	Michael Jibson (The First Shadow)
Appears in	29, 32 (flashback)

Victor Creel, portrayed by Robert Englund in 1986 and by Kevin L. Johnson in 1959, is a recurring character in the fourth season of Stranger Things. In 1959, Victor was imprisoned at Pennhurst Mental Hospital, where he would spend the following three decades after taking a plea deal for the gruesome murders of his family, which he did not commit; he maintained his innocence and insisted a demon was responsible for their deaths.

Quick Answers

Who portrays the character Victor Creel in Stranger Things?

The character Victor Creel in Stranger Things is portrayed by two actors. Robert Englund plays the role of Victor Creel in 1986, while Kevin L. Johnson portrays a younger Victor Creel in 1959. Robert Englund is famously known for playing Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

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What is the backstory of Victor Creel in Stranger Things?

Victor Creel, a character in Stranger Things, is portrayed by Robert Englund in 1986 and by Kevin L. Johnson in 1959. Born around 1919, Victor was a soldier before becoming a psychiatric patient at Pennhurst Mental Hospital. His story takes a dark turn in 1959 when he was imprisoned at the hospital after taking a plea deal for the gruesome murders of his family, which he did not commit. Victor maintained his innocence, insisting a demon was responsible for their deaths. He was a resident of Hawkins, Indiana, and his family included his wife Virginia Creel, daughter Alice Creel, and son Henry Creel.

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Why was Victor Creel imprisoned in Pennhurst Mental Hospital in Stranger Things?

Victor Creel, a character from Stranger Things, was imprisoned in Pennhurst Mental Hospital following a tragic incident. He was accused of the gruesome murders of his wife and daughter in 1959. However, these crimes were actually committed by his son, Henry. Despite Victor's insistence that a demonic entity was responsible for the deaths, he was declared legally insane and incarcerated at Pennhurst Mental Hospital, where he would spend the next three decades.

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What's Victor Creel's link to his family's murders in Stranger Things?

Victor Creel, a character from Stranger Things, was a resident of Hawkins who was institutionalized after being accused of murdering his family in 1959. However, Victor maintained his innocence, insisting that a demon was responsible for their deaths. Despite his pleas, he was imprisoned at Pennhurst Mental Hospital, where he spent the following three decades. The Creel family had experienced strange and supernatural occurrences in their home before the tragic incident, adding a layer of mystery to the story.

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How does Victor Creel's character contribute to the plot of Stranger Things season 4?

Victor Creel plays a significant role in the fourth season of Stranger Things. He is a resident of Hawkins who was institutionalized in 1959 after being accused of murdering his family, an event that he insists was the work of a demon. This mysterious and tragic backstory adds a layer of intrigue and suspense to the plot. Victor's character, portrayed by Robert Englund, also known as the Freddy Krueger actor, is a recurring character in the season, and his experiences with the supernatural become a key element in the unfolding storyline.

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History

Victor Creel was born around 1919, and served as a soldier in the Second World War. While serving in France, Victor erroneously ordered the shelling of an innocent household, and was haunted by guilt ever since.

Victor and his family in front of their new house

After the war, Victor married a woman named Virginia and started a family with her. They had a daughter called Alice, and later, a son called Henry. Though Alice was an ordinary and straightforward child, Henry was much more troubled, and struggled to relate to others.

At some point in March of 1959, Victor and his family moved into a house in Hawkins, Indiana after his wife's great uncle had died, leaving them a "small fortune." After only one month of peace, they began to notice various animals (rabbits, squirrels, chickens, dogs) murdered and mutilated in their yard and around their neighborhood, but their deaths were labelled as the attacks of a wildcat. Dubious about this explanation and paranoid for the safety of his family, Victor believed the attacks were the doings of a "spawn of Satan. A demon." Meanwhile, Virginia and Alice began to experience disturbing "encounters," which he later described as "waking, living nightmares." Victor himself soon began having these "encounters" as well, namely hallucinations of his dark past in France.

One night, Victor noticed the radio experiencing interference while the family was eating dinner at the table. As he watched, the lights began to flicker, and Virginia was suddenly pulled from her chair by an invisible force and lifted violently into the air. Suspended above the table, her bones snapped and grossly contorted, before her eyes burst and she fell to the table, dead.

Horrified by what he had witnessed, Victor tried to take his children and leave the house, but he found the front door locked. He attempted to open the door with brute force, but when it opened, it "opened" into a hallucination of his darkest memory. The memory was of his time in the war, when he entered the remains of a building and discovered a burning cot with a baby screaming inside. During the hallucination, he heard music from the radio in the real world. He later explained to Robin and Nancy that he had wrongly thought German soldiers were inside the building and had ordered its shelling, and that the music was the "voice of an angel".

When he snapped out of this hallucination, Victor found Alice has suffered the same fate as her mother and was dead on the hallway floor. The only other person left alive was his son, Henry, who had fallen into a coma. Police eventually arrived and found the disturbing crime scene. As he was falsely believed to have been responsible for the deaths of his family, Victor was arrested and charged with their murders. He took an insanity plea deal, and ended up in Pennhurst Asylum, locked in the highest security section alongside the most dangerous patients. As for the fate of his son, Victor was falsely led to believe that Henry had died one week later, after falling into a coma.

At some point during his incarceration, Victor tried to commit suicide to "join his family" by stabbing himself in the eyes with razor blades, only for it to fail and leave him permanently blind.

Unfortunately, Victor was never aware that his son, Henry, was responsible for what had happened to the animals, Virginia, Alice, and himself. He believed that his son was just a sensitive child.

Victor became an infamous and feared figure in the history of Hawkins for his presumed killings of his family: he became a "boogeyman" that Wayne Munson and the other townsfolk of his generation were all too aware of.

In 1986, Hawkins residents Nancy Wheeler and Robin Buckley paid Victor a visit at the asylum because similar murders had been committed in Hawkins. Nancy and Robin sought information on the 1959 murders in order to understand the 1986 murders and the nature of the killer. Victor told them his story until Warden Hatch and guards arrived to apprehend Nancy and Robin for gaining access to Creel under false pretenses. Nancy and Robin used what Victor had told them about the music he had heard in order to help save Max Mayfield from Vecna's curse. After she was saved, Max continued to listen to her favorite song as a way to keep Vecna out of her head.

Later, while Nancy's mind was momentarily hijacked by Vecna, Vecna told her inside his mindscape he’d consider giving "dumb blind old Victor" a visit; as Nancy later learned, Vecna was in fact a much older, transformed version of Henry Creel.

Personality

When he moved to Hawkins with his family in 1959, he had seemed happy and peaceful, although he had a dark event in his past which occurred while serving as a soldier in World War 2. After a month of peace in Hawkins, things changed for Victor. After various animals were found mutilated in his yard, he grew paranoid and fearful for his family. His fears mounted as he, his wife, and daughter experienced terrifying hallucinations. Creel believed a demon was causing these events, and never understood that his young son Henry was behind these terrifying visions. After being arrested for a crime he didn't commit, he took an insanity plea. At some point during his incarceration, he attempted to commit suicide by gouging his own eyes out in an attempt to join his family in death, but failed to kill himself. Over time, Victor refused to talk to reporters about what had happened to him, knowing now they'll find him insane or that his traumatic past was too painful to talk about. However, he did agree to share his story with Nancy and Robin when they admitted they believed his story and that his family's murderer had returned.

Appearances

Season Four appearances
The Hellfire Club	Vecna's Curse	The Monster and the Superhero
Dear Billy	The Nina Project	The Dive
The Massacre at Hawkins Lab*	Papa	The Piggyback

^{*Appears in the present and in flashbacks in "Dear Billy". Appears only in flashbacks in "Papa".}

Family tree

note: family trees are only visible on desktop.

Victor Creel

Virginia Creel †

Henry Creel

Alice Creel †

Behind the scenes

• His character was officially revealed on November 20, 2020, via the show's official social media accounts, along with several other new characters. Victor was originally described as "a disturbed and intimidating man who is imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital for a gruesome murder in the 1950s."
• Victor Creel is portrayed by Robert Englund, best known for playing the terrifying Freddy Krueger in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, one of the inspirations behind Stranger Things. Much like Vecna, Freddy Krueger was capable of making his victims hallucinate, and would attack them within their own mind, with damage being inflicted upon their real body at the same time.
  • Amusingly, a cutout of Freddie Krueger is visible inside Family Video, hinting at Robert Englund's presence later in the season.
• Due to his experience playing Freddy Krueger, Robert Englund was well acquainted with the heavy makeup process required to turn him into Victor Creel. Barrie Gower and his team were impressed with his knowledge of the kinds of material used to create his prosthetic make-up.