Can anyone survive this? That is a question not many know the answer to. David Harbour was one of the lucky people to know the end of the show, Stranger Things.
“I think it varies from person to person, from character to character, and I’m such a harassment specialist that I think I’ve gotten it out of them. It’s been back and forth about like, ‘What happens to Hopper? Is he a character that’s able to survive Hawkins or does he die?’” Harbour said. “I know what happens and it’s quite moving and quite beautiful.”
The first half of Season 4 will be released on May 27, 2022. On July 1, 2022, there will be two more episodes. There will be a fifth and final season of the show.
Harbour has known how the show ends for a long time.
“I think that I needed to know as we were shooting early on because I needed to know where he ends up and for what reason he ends up there. I think there is going to be somewhat of a morality — or at least responsible storytelling — to what the Duffers are doing,” he explains.
“There’s a reason in Season 2 why Bob dies. He’s too innocent. You can’t go up to that monster and say, like, ‘Get away from me, get away!’ You just can’t be that person in this world. That person dies. So I think there’s a responsibility in terms of how Hopper ends up that I’m eager for people to see, and I had to know that going in so I knew where to arc it.”
Harbour notes that he has been very good at keeping quiet and has yet to reveal any information about the show. “I will hold this one to my grave, I promise,” he laughs. “This is a big one.”
The fourth season follows the cast as they are separated from one another. The Byers family and Eleven have moved to California, but the rest of the gang has not. Harbour was filming a good chunk of the season in Lithuania because Hopper was being kept prisoner in Russia.
“It was different and as a result of different, kind of great,” he says, “I don’t want it to get back to the fellow cast members that I liked not working with them, but I’ve gotta say it was refreshing!”
He said that Hopper has spent a lot of time at the centre of the film and that he was excited to do something a bit different.
“To have him be so far away with a bunch of Lithuanians who didn’t speak English was kind of fun! It was like doing a big old prison escape movie on my own,” he mentioned.
“I like mixing it up. There was a whole physical transformation that happens and a mental one. He’s a totally different guy. He really is stripped bare and to the core of who he is. I really like that. Playing the same note over and over again is really hard. The Duffers were really responsive to the fact that we wanted to do other things. We had talked as we were shooting Season 3, I was like, ‘We’ve got fat dad Hopper pretty much in the can. We may as well try something new!’”