Think Hopper Should Have Died in ‘Stranger Things’? So Does David Harbour

The most relied upon ways to spice up a show are to give someone a baby or kill someone off. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes, such events can feel forced and unnecessary. A character could be killed, but no one cares enough about them (or they care too much). A baby can be born only to be cast aside because the writers realized they didn’t want to write about people taking care of a baby. You could go the It’s Always Sunny route, having a season involve the birth of a baby only to give that baby to its rightful parents, but not everybody has the juice to pull that off.

I’d argue that putting a baby in a show is much harder than killing someone off — now you have an infant to deal with. Kill someone off, and there are fewer characters to write. Then, you can deal with the grief the other characters feel, even though that aspect can get a bit trope-heavy, especially regarding female characters getting killed just to motivate men. My point is that either of these changes requires careful consideration, so if the Duffer Brothers didn’t kill off Hopper in the first season of Stranger Things, they hopefully had a good reason.

I’m not just talking about the third season. The finale of that season featured Hopper getting blown into oblivion by some dimension-ripping hydro collider (or something). He stared right into the camera, and boom, there he went. Then, in Season 4, he made his big Gandalf return via a Russian prison. Many people thought that Hopper should have stayed dead (not me, but I get it). If it were up to David Harbour, who plays the character, Hopper wouldn’t have made it out of season one or season three.

That much is stated in a recent interview with GQ. “As for Stranger Things, saying goodbye to Hopper this late in the story is something Harbour initially didn’t think should have happened,” writer Hayley Campbell notes in the piece. “Before it became a phenomenon for Netflix, and there was a high chance it would run for only one season like any other show, Harbour read the scripts and was convinced the first season should have ended with Hopper dying by suicide. To him, it was the only way Hopper could apologize to his daughter.” That’s messed up! It makes sense from a character standpoint, but it is likely darker than the show wanted to go.

If you have David Harbour, you keep David Harbour. But the man himself doesn’t seem to think so, as he also addressed his season four fate. “I think they were just committed to the beauty of that moment of his death,” Harbour explained. “It was so moving that I think they almost didn’t want him to be alive.” Damn, dude! Maybe Harbour will get his wish, and his character won’t make it out of the final season. Or, maybe, he’ll live happily ever after with Winona Ryder’s Joyce Byers. Would that be so bad, David?!

On a personal note, please enjoy the header, which has David Harbour looking fly as hell throwing out the first pitch for my beloved Texas Rangers. I squealed when it came up as a choice.