Warning: This story contains spoilers from Stranger Things Season 4, Volume 1.

Robert Englund is the stuff of nightmares — literally. As Freddy Krueger, he darkened the dreams of the teenagers of the Nightmare on Elm Street series and everyone else watching at home. But outside Freddy’s dreamland, Englund, who joins Stranger Things Season 4 as the imprisoned Victor Creel, is far more likely to get emotional about a group of fictional high schoolers than terrorize them. In fact, one Stranger Things moment has the actor all choked up: the memorable shot of the Hawkins kids riding bicycles in our reality, as their older teen mentors race to save the day on those same bicycles in the Upside Down. 

Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

New Line Cinema/Everett Collection

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“They were saved by bikes, and there was something so sweet and wonderful and innocent [about that]... It really touched me,” Englund tells Tudum over the phone. “Because a lot of what’s happening in Stranger Things in these last [few] seasons, just like in A Nightmare on Elm Street, is about the loss of innocence.” 

Few people have lost their innocence quite like Englund’s character, Victor. As viewers learn over Stranger Things Season 4, Victor served as a soldier in World War II and accidentally bombed the wrong home, killing the family inside, including an infant. Then, 14 years of guilt later, supernatural horrors began manifesting in his home, culminating in the gruesome murder of his family. Victor assumes a demon committed the unspeakable crime and mutilates himself in an effort to join the late Creels. But as fans who finished Volume 1 now know, the perpetrator was actually Victor’s own son, Henry (Raphael Luce as a boy, Jamie Campbell Bower as an adult). Whether you call him Henry, One or Vecna, Victor’s son is the biggest bad in Hawkins. 

“I don’t know if Victor knows his son is the evil — if his son had that in him, that his son is responsible. I don’t know if he’s in denial and that’s what’s making him a little crazy,” Englund says. But he still has some Stranger Things theories, along with a few ideas about where Victor’s story could go in Volume 2 (premiering July 1) and beyond. 

Viewers only spend one scene with Victor, but it’s so impactful. How did you infuse so much emotion and personality into such a short amount of time?  The character is set up in Season 4 from the get-go. They’re talking about Victor Creel right away. I played characters like that onstage before, where they talk about you for a while and then you enter. There’s a certain expectation. So you have to be there right off the blocks with your character.

Victor does become this looming figure very quickly this season.  And he’s that character that explains a lot of backstory. So that’s a responsibility. In my particular case, I’d already seen the makeup. I’d had a makeup test in London with the wonderful Barrie Gower and Duncan Jarman, who did Game of Thrones.

Tina Rowden/Netflix

How did the makeup help you get into character?  I had lived with it for a while, while I was waiting to start shooting because of COVID [production pauses]. So when I was preparing my dialogue, I knew what I was going to look like, and that’s a big help. I didn’t have to act blind because I couldn’t see much with that makeup. I didn’t have to devote energy to that. 

And I knew the characters I was acting with. I knew Maya Hawke’s Robin. I had watched Stranger Things Season 3 twice. I had fallen in love with the scene with [her] and Joe Keery in the bathroom at the mall where Robin gently comes out to him.

It’s a lovely scene.  It’s just an amazing, wonderfully acted, sweet, sweet scene. So I was looking forward to working with Maya. I had just seen her in The Good Lord Bird with her father [Ethan Hawke]. And I’m a big fan of Natalia Dyer’s anyway. 

Vecna terrorizes Natalia Dyer’s character, Nancy, in the Volume 1 finale. Do you think Victor has any idea that his son committed the Creel murders or that he’s an interdimensional villain?  I don’t know. I asked this question of the Duffer brothers and of Shawn. I’m not sure if... he was in denial or if he suspected his son. It’s hinted that the mother did [have suspicions about Henry]. If the mother did, the father was probably made aware of it. I think Victor loved his son. I think maybe he loved his son more than the daughter, as fathers sometimes do. Fathers want boys. They want to see themselves reflected in their offspring. So he might have been more forgiving of Henry.

Victor’s also been in jail. He’s only experienced the death of his family. He hasn’t experienced any of the trauma that Hawkins has experienced.

Do you think that Victor’s story is finished? He could do with some peace of mind after years of grief. Or at least to know the truth of what happened that terrible night — including the fact that his son is technically still alive.  Well, I don’t know if Victor deserves a happy ending because of what happened in World War II… That may be his burden and his sin, even though it was an accident. They have so many loose ends to tie up. We have to see the story of Vecna resolved, and we have to get David Harbour and Winona Ryder out of Russia. 

But Vecna has a line of dialogue about his father and says something like, “Oh, poor old Victor. I’ve left him there. I’ve been very, very busy. Maybe I should visit him someday.” So I don’t know whether Vecna would want to kill Victor or confront his father or just torment him more because Vecna is so obsessed with the hypocrisy of that generation. 

As Jamie Campbell Bower, who plays Vecna, told Tudum, he wants to tear down the institutions that hurt him, which were built by the previous generation.  When [adult] Henry is talking about how sour the world is to Eleven, and he’s telling her his worldview and his philosophy, it’s so dark. It’s almost anarchistic. It’s almost like he wants to destroy the whole world because he just sees hypocrisy everywhere. He’s just that demented.

Well, just in case Vecna comes for you, what song would save you, as Robert, from his curse?  Oh, gosh, I don’t know. Maybe that Talking Heads song “Naive Melody.” I played that at my wedding. It’s just a great song. Either that or “Waiting in Vain” by Bob Marley.