We’re in the endgame now, Stranger Things fans. Season four may not have aired yet, but David Harbour, who plays Sheriff Hopper on the popular retro supernatural series, has already started talking about the end. In an interview with Collider, when asked about moving the action out of Hawkins, Harbour said the season four would see the series start to move towards a “definitive ending”.
“I mean, it’s bigger, that’s the first thing. In scope, in scale, even in the idea that we’re not in Hawkins anymore. We, locale-wise, we’re bigger,” Harbour explained. “We’re introducing new stuff, but we’re also tightening and wrapping up in a certain direction to make it have a clear, clean specific, and definite ending at some point, which I can’t really talk about.”
Harbour went on to say that Stranger Things season four is his “favourite season”. Adding that he can’t wait for fans to see this “extraordinary” season and what happens to his character Hopper, who he says is at his “purest” and “most vulnerable” in season four.
The last time we saw Hopper, he was trapped somehow in a Russian prison camp, which Harbour says has allowed the writers to “reinvent” the character. “He gets to have a rebirth from what he had become, and we’d always sort of planned this almost resurrection of you have Gandalf dies, Gandalf the Grey re-emerge, and I’m really interested in this resurgence of him,” Harbour explained.
He finished by saying that season four would explore parts of Hopper’s life that have only been hinted at so far and promised that there would be “big” surprises along the way. Hopper isn’t the only resident of Hawkin’s whose past the show is going to explore. One of the Netflix trailers teased the return of Hawkins lab and the re-introduction to Dr Brenner, known to viewers as Eleven’s ‘Papa’.
Fans have taken this as confirmation we’ll finally learn how Eleven got her telekinetic superpowers and maybe even reintroduce her “siblings”, a concept the show touched on in season two but hasn’t addressed since.
If you want to know more about the secrets of Hawkins and the upcoming season, then check out our Stranger Things season four guide, where we break down everything we know. Or why not take a look at our list of the best science fiction movies.
Stranger Things seasons one through three are streaming on Netflix now.