Copyright Screen Rant
Warning: Spoilers ahead for Stranger Things Stranger Things creators The Duffer Brothers have revealed their plans to kill a couple of fan favorite characters in the earlier seasons. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Matt and Ross Duffer spoke about the final season of Stranger Things beginning at the end of November, as well as their past storylines, which ended up getting canceled. Matt spoke of the initial plan to kill a major character and stated: "Hopper at the end of season 3. I think death grazed him. 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." At the end of season 3, Jim Hopper (played by David Harbour) appears to have been killed in a huge explosion in Starcourt Mall in a hidden Russian lab. However, fans were shocked to see Hopper alive at the beginning of season 4 and kept as a prisoner in a Russian camp. Ross commented on the decision to keep Hopper alive and stated that it "would've been very easy to kill him," Ross comments, "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." Another main character the Duffer Brothers considered killing off was fan-favorite Steve "The Hair" Harrington (played by Joe Keery), and said it was "close" for the character as he was nearly killed in season 1. Keery was responsible for securing his character's place for future seasons as the Duffer Brothers "just fell in love with Joe Keery, but had we not liked Joe Keery, Steve would've been gone." Matt and Ross stated that they "always talk about" killing main characters with the writers. But have stated: "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. Even these more supporting characters like Eddie [Joseph Quinn] or Bob [Sean Astin] or Barb [Shannon Purser], of course, have really long-lasting repercussions on our characters."
