‘Stranger Things’ Creators Reveal They Almost Killed a Main Character in Season 1
Stranger Things fans are always thinking about who might die next. Every season of the show brings new theories and guesses about which characters could meet their end. With the fifth and final season coming up, that anxiety is even bigger.
The show’s creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, aren’t revealing who could be in danger this time. But they did share which main characters came closest to dying in earlier seasons.
“Hopper at the end of season 3. I think death grazed him,” Matt told Entertainment Weekly. “There was a version where he perished at the end of 3. It’s been a while since we had those discussions, but I feel like he came the closest to dying.”
Fans were shocked when Hopper seemed to die in the explosion at the Starcourt Mall in season 3.
But a teaser later showed he was alive, captured by Russian forces in a POW camp. Ross added, “It would’ve been very easy to kill him, but Hopper still had growing to do. We hadn’t finished his story. It’s important to us to be able to finish the stories we want to finish and not just be offing people for shock value.”
Matt also said that Steve Harrington, played by Joe Keery, almost died back in season 1. “That was close. We just fell in love with Joe Keery, but had we not liked Joe Keery, Steve would’ve been gone.”
He explained that the Duffers and the writers often talk about killing main characters, but they try to think about the consequences first. “What often holds us back is you have to talk about the repercussions. This is a total hypothetical: You kill Mike. It just makes the show rather depressing and bleak, and it becomes entirely about that.”
At long last… we can begin. The trailer for the epic final season of STRANGER THINGS is here pic.twitter.com/w4WuzuCqRs
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Even supporting characters like Eddie, Bob, or Barb are handled carefully because their deaths have lasting effects on the story. Matt said they are also careful about Billy Hargrove’s character. “We try to be careful, if there is a death, that it has real repercussions. So we just wanna be careful about when and how frequently we do it.”
Fans won’t have to wait long to see who makes it through. Stranger Things season 5 will drop the first four episodes on November 26. The next three episodes will come out on Christmas Day, and the series finale will be available in select theaters and on Netflix on New Year’s Eve.
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