Since its inception, Stranger Things has never been shy about acknowledging the influence that iconic horror novelist Stephen King has on the series, alongside Stephen Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment and the films of John Carpenter.

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But while the show has referenced specific works by King in the series from time to time, season 3’s primary villain Billy Hargrove is their most conspicuous homage to King’s work yet, and not just because actor Dacre Montgomery took inspiration from Jack Nicholson’s work in The Shining. The character of Billy shares a crazy number of similarities with a secondary villain in King’s doorstopper novel/ subsequent two-film adaptation It, Henry Bowers. Not only that, but the few significant places where the two character’s arcs differ are important in illustrating the different attitudes and atmospheres of Stranger Things and Stephen King's oeuvre.

Billy and Henry’s Similarities

There are similarities between Stranger Things’ Billy Hargrove, Dodge-charger-piloting bad boy bully/eventual alien host from Hawkins Indiana, and It’s Henry Bowers, standard eighties movie jerk/torturous sociopath and eventual puppet of Derry, Maine's resident killer clown Pennywise. Both characters are violent bullies, and in both cases, their most psychotic attacks are portrayed as more shocking to our main characters than the world around them. Billy’s brutal beatdown of Steve in season 2 leaves him bloodied and near-unconscious, but the show has already established in Stranger Things' divisive season 1 that this sort of rough-housing will only earn you a stern dressing down by Hawkins PD (as proven when Jonathan also beats the snot out of a then more-deserving Steve). Henry’s desire to carve his initials into the flesh of poor Ben, meanwhile, is portrayed as being just as horrific as that description implies, but townspeople by during the public ordeal and do nothing to intervene.

Both characters are also revealed to have abusive fathers whose violent intimidation explains (if not excuses) their outbursts. Billy’s adopted father and his birth father violently mistreat him despite his volatile temper, while Henry’s father belittles and beats him enough to earn himself a disturbing (if a little cathartic) death. Both characters target a ragtag group of misfit younger kids who are the heroes of the story (and both groups include a Finn Wolfhard character, although this may just be a coincidence of casting). Both characters are deeply un-PC villains, virulent racists even for their respective eras (Henry toward Mike, Billy toward Lucas), and unknowingly targeting LGBTQ+ victims. To be fair to Billy, Stranger Things has only touched on the idea that Will may not be straight in its series bible, whereas adult Richie is canonically gay in the It: Chapter 2 movie adaptation. Finally, both characters are eventually used as a puppet by a stronger, multi-dimensional monster who offers them strength and revenge on their perceived tormentors, only to instead manipulate them to their eventual death.

Where Their Stories Differ

So that’s a pretty clear and definite comparison, and anyone unfamiliar with the characters could be forgiven for assuming Billy is a carbon copy of Henry Bowers. But Stranger Things handles the character of Billy differently from It’s approach to Henry, and this change in approach is influenced by an important distinction between the sci-fi series and King’s novel. In It, the town of Derry is a locus of evil which dates back to the colonization of America, with Pennywise being an embodiment of the town’s generational racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and homophobia at different points of the narrative. Henry is tempted into cruelty and evil by Pennywise, but only after years of mistreatment by his father. However, the likes of Beverly, Eddie, and the bereaved Bill suffer significant childhood traumas and don’t side with Pennywise, and as such Henry is mostly punished for a moral failing to resist the allure of evil.

Related: The Original Script For IT Was Insane

In contrast, Billy is portrayed more empathetically, with the show drawing parallels between his possession by the Mind Flayer and Will’s earlier traumatic experience of the same. While Will’s father Lonnie is absent (for now) and his family isn't well-off, he has a group of devoted friends and a loving mother and brother. Billy, on the other hand, has no one and is alone not only when he’s initially attacked by the Mind Flayer but also throughout most of his screen time. Despite his tough attitude, he has few friends and his only love interest (pre-possession, at least) is Karen Wheeler, who backs out of their illicit rendezvous at the last second. In Stranger Things, the fact that no one was present to intervene before the Mind Flayer took control of Billy is shown to be a tragedy, whereas in It Henry’s journey from a teenage delinquent to a mind controlled serial killer is a dark joke that the audience is intended to delight in after how horribly he attacked the main characters.

This is where the two character’s deaths become important. In his dying moments, Billy is redeemed by a love for the Loser’s Club than a fully rounded or realized human being.

Why It Matters

Despite the obvious similarities between Billy and Henry, the way these two bullies are written means that the comparison isn’t immediately apparent. The villains should seem interchangeable, but the more empathetic approach taken by Stranger Things’ writing renders Billy a more believable monster where Henry is a more two-dimensional ghoul without much depth. For all of its gore and hard-edged horror moments, Stranger Things doesn’t share the often bleak tone of one of its primary inspirations, Stephen King. After all, the show also wears its Spielberg influence in its sleeve, as well as being inspired by the more light-hearted eighties horror-comedy stylings of  Joe Dante, Tom Holland, and Ghostbusters' Ivan Reitman. It’s this more warm-hearted style of storytelling which led the series to redeem the character of Billy where King’s text simply kills off Henry, resulting in a less brutal and more psychologically complex idea of villainhood, as opposed to the more didactic (and as a result less forgiving) eighties novel which helped inspire the series.

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