The victim of bullying and social exclusion, Eleven of Stranger Things finds a friend in Peter Ballard. But in her world, little is truly quite what it appears to be at first glance.
CAUTION: The following discussion may reveal plot details from Stranger Things Season 4, Volume 1, which can now be seen online on Netflix.
So, who is Peter Ballard? Peter Ballard is Vecna’s human form, also identified as One or Henry Creel at the Hawkins Lab, as revealed in season 4, episode 7. In 1959, while Henry was still a little child, his family relocated to Hawkins, where he soon learned that he had psychokinetic powers.
After Peter Ballard was first featured in the fourth season of Stranger Things, he played the simple role of Eleven’s lone friend at Hawkins Laboratory.
Because he worked as an orderly, he was able to get close to the kids and see how Eleven’s siblings treated her. This provided him a front-row seat to flashes of Eleven’s fragility and isolation.
However, Ballard, who is represented by Jamie Campbell Bower, noticed Eleven’s potential and offered his assistance in assisting her using it to her advantage. Eleven was distinct from her siblings in that she was quieter and timider in her skills.
Eleven put his suggestion to trial and obtained mind-blowing outcomes, just to afterward see Papa being punished because of what he’d achieved.
When he informed her that pulling on the feelings of terrible flashbacks would strengthen her, Eleven put his advice to the test.
Her envious relatives grew more malevolent and vicious, isolating her in the Rainbow Room as a kind of punishment for embarrassing Two and driving her to the edge of a precipice from which there would be no turning back.
How Was Eleven Used by Peter Ballard?
In the Hawkins Laboratory, it was difficult for Eleven to avoid experiencing feelings of isolation. Although her father said that her mother had passed away while she was being born, she retained the recollections of her mother’s trip to the laboratory.
She felt insecure about her relatives since they were typically capable of achieving and expressing their talents in a manner that earned praise from their father.
This caused her to feel inadequate. When Ballard first started observing her, he quickly saw that she was holding back a great deal of strength, and he proceeded to approach her.
When they started talking about One, Ballard acknowledged that One wasn’t a living legend yet rather a person who was too strong for Papa to control.
This revelation came when the two were discussing One. He drew his strength from experiences that kept him miserable and brought him excruciating agony, which incited her to do the same action to herself.
Ballard brought to her attention the lie that her mother and father had told her, which she subsequently used while she was practicing with her relatives to overcome Two.
While she was taking the opportunity of her additional time in the Rainbow Room, Papa saw a rise in her strength and properly punished Ballard. She watched as he punished Ballard as she was in the Rainbow Room.
Following this, Ballard started to hatch a plan with Eleven for the two of them to flee together. He told Eleven that Papa would not come to her assistance if her siblings assaulted her once again.
He said that Papa was in fact encouraging them to kill her, and he wanted to assist her in evading capture so that she might be safe.
It did not take long for Ballard’s real intentions to become clear when he gave her his identification card and persuaded her to replace the chip that was limiting his ability.
Eleven approached Ballard about lying to her after he had utilized his ability to kill practically every person in the laboratory, which include the other children.
This occurred after Ballard had previously lied to her. He admitted to her that he despised mankind and that he intended to wipe out every last trace of it, and he asked Eleven to combine her might with his in order to accomplish this goal.
Eleven had no intention of becoming a destroyer, so she politely declined his offer.
Who Exactly Is This Peter Ballard, Anyway?
As Nancy struggles to escape Upside Down, she finds herself traveling through Vecna’s memories and learning a horrible secret about the man’s identity.
In the meantime, Eleven is retrieving memories that she had previously suppressed about what had place with Peter Ballard at Hawkins Laboratory on that particular day.
A disturbed young man called Henry Creel, who is the son of a sentenced murderer named Victor Creel is the subject of a narrative that Vecna relates.
Henry battled psychologically with the repetitive time’s nature and the propensity of humans to just go through the motions of life without much thought.
After seeing a nest of black widow spiders in the new house that his family had moved into, he got fascinated with the predatory nature of the spiders and wished he could be like them.
Henry came to the realization that he has telekinetic abilities and immediately started conducting tests on the critters that lived in the family’s backyard while also causing strange happenings within the house.
He suddenly had the realization that he might apply his abilities to delve into other people’s memories and then utilize those memories to both torments and control his targets.
Victor believed that these events were caused by a demon, but Henry’s mother, Virginia, suspected that her son had something to do with them and wanted to send him away to seek assistance.
Henry, aware that he needed to put an end to her ranting, waited until his father was preoccupied at dinner before killing his mother and then his younger sister, Alice.
Henry had wounded himself by overusing his gift, and as Victor came from the moment with him, Henry was unconscious.
Victor was subsequently informed that Henry had passed away.
Because of the accusations that Victor was responsible for the murder of his wife and daughter, he was sent to jail, and Henry was placed under the care of Dr. Martin Brenner.
Brenner intended to analyze Henry’s strength in the hopes of one-day exercising command over it.
He was the very first person to participate in Brenner’s project and was given the 001 tattoo as well as a gadget named Soteria that was implanted into his neck to control the power he had.
What Led to Peter Ballard’s Transformation into Vecna?
When Ballard first approached Eleven with the idea of their working together, he made the point that they were identical. They could eliminate all of mankind and transform the earth into a paradise if they worked together.
After Eleven rejected his overture to join him, he leveraged his strength against her. Eleven’s whole life seemed to be playing out in front of her eyes as he scooped her up and proceeded to twist her body and shatter her bones as she was being thrown about the room by him.
Eleven fought back, repairing her own bones and amassing enough strength to toss Ballard through the monitoring screen throughout the room.
She was empowered by her own grief and wrath, which gave her the ability to do so.
Following that, she reduced Ballard to ash, therefore destroying him. Eventually, he was sucked into the vortex of Upside Down, and it started to change him in a cruel manner.
This was very similar to the way he had previously used his ability to punish and reshape other people.
The terrifying last view of Vecna showed the tattoo of the number 001 on his wrist.
This was a deliberate manipulation of his individual body and memory, similar to what he had done to others when he was younger.
It is a wonder how he was able to grow and recover the strength to continue carrying out his goal to destroy mankind from the Upside Down. Perhaps this will be explained in Season 4, Volume 2, which premieres on Netflix on July 1.
Conclusion
Peter Ballard is one of the most intriguing characters in the Stranger Things series, and this article will show you him in his true form.
