The Stranger Things creators appear to have accidentally revealed the fate of Jim Hopper beyond season three.
Showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer may have let slip that Hopper (David Harbour)—who seemed to have died in the Starcourt Mall explosion at the end of the third series—hadn’t actually perished.
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The Duffer brothers made the hint while discussing their show in a podcast interview with Entertainment Weekly. In it, they spoke of their frequent use of ’80s film references in the hit Netflix sci-fi series and addressed the fact that Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) gets a nod in the latest season.
“We always talk about Empire Strikes Back – we always wanted to give him a darker ending, we always wanted to give him a Han Solo sacrifice moment,” Matt said in reference to Hopper.
Of course, Star Wars viewers will remember that Han Solo didn’t in fact die in The Empire Strikes Back, making a welcome reappearance in Return of the Jedi (1983).
Additionally, a fan theory highlighted by The Independent points to the idea that “the American” spoken about by the enemy Russians in the second season’s mid-credits sequence could well be Hopper.
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Politico’s Bill Kuchman has drawn parallels between Hopper and Solo, such as the pair’s separate “see you in hell” lines before seemingly dying, and likens the two characters’ respective captors (Jabba the Hutt who feeds his prisoners into the Sarlacc Pit in Return of the Jedi; Russians who feed prisoners to the Demogorgon in the mid-scene credits of Stranger Things 3).
In other news, Stranger Things star Mille Bobby Brown has revealed that a scene in season three of the show made her “vomit.”
Brown, who plays Eleven, shared a behind-the-scenes picture from the episode ‘E Pluribus Unum’. After trying to get inside Billy’s mind using her superpowers in the episode, Eleven is sent spinning after she falls through a void.
Quoting Dead or Alive’s ‘You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)’, Brown said: “u spin me right round baby right round ahhhh.”
She added: “Threw up after this.”