The third season of ‘Stranger Things’ isn’t due to drop until the summer, but the show’s cast and crew nonetheless have one eye firmly on the future. While the exact length of the show’s run (either four seasons or five) is still up in the air, co-creators Matt and Ross Duffer already have a narrative roadmap to the series’ eventual end, and they’ve shared it with at least one cast member.
That cast member is, perhaps unsurprisingly, David Harbour. Speaking with CNET, Harbour explained that he not only knows the Duffer Brothers’ planned arc for the series, but that it was something he discussed with them in the earliest days of the series. He was, naturally, mum on specifics, leaving it unclear how much detail he’s been given and how much may have changed during production of the first three seasons. Harbour left no room for doubt, however, that he knows exactly what’s in store for his character:
“I know somewhat a lot of Hopper’s place in that story because the more you can know about the end of your story, the more you can set up. I feel with acting you can sort of see a character make certain choices and you can feel what is behind it. As you see the end of the story, you’ll start to feel why certain characters behaved certain ways. I think that stuff’s really important, like knowing where your character’s going.”
“A lot of times you don’t get that in TV. But the great thing about this is that we knew what season one was, and we had ideas about if it extended – because we didn’t know we’d get picked up – but if it extended, what the end of the actual thing would be. Like ‘Star Wars’, ‘Empire Strikes Back’, and ‘Return of the Jedi’ have an arc to them. I think ‘Stranger Things’, be it season four or season five, has an arc to it that I understand.”
“I feel very proud of that because we’re not going to get lost in our story and leave those strands. We’re going to tie things up.”
While we’re hardly looking forward to the end of ‘Stranger Things’, it will undoubtedly be interesting to watch the show in its entirety and see how the choices made in the early days feed into and pay off at the end. Of course, it’s also hard not to take this talk of Hopper’s fate a bit ominously, given what we’ve learned about the Duffers’ original plans for the first season. Hopefully, Hopper will, in fact, be around for the show’s finale, whenever it finally comes!
While Netflix has yet to announce a premiere date for ‘Stranger Things 3’, the season is currently expected to debut in the summer of 2019. The new season will feature returning stars Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown, Joe Keery, Natalia Dyer, Priah Ferguson, and Charlie Heaton alongside newcomers Cary Elwes. Jake Busey, and Francesca Reale.
