David Harbour still can’t believe his Stranger Things character has made it to the fifth and final season.
During a recent interview for British GQ, the actor who plays Jim Hopper on the hit Netflix show said that after reading the scripts for season one (which aired in 2016), he was convinced his character would die by suicide at the end of the first installment — as a way for Hopper to apologize to his daughter who died.
However, that didn’t happen and Hopper had much more to give in the following seasons as Stranger Things became a global phenomenon. Although there was a moment when fans thought Hopper did die, at the end of season three when Joyce (Winona Ryder) closed the gate to the Upside Down, leading them to believe his character made the ultimate self-sacrifice. So Harbour understands if Stranger Things fans were a bit doubtful when Hopper returned in season four, alive and imprisoned in Russia.
“I think they were just committed to the beauty of that moment of his death,” Harbour said. “It was so moving that I think they almost didn’t want him to be alive.”
Now, as the Duffer brothers-created show prepares to release its fifth and final season later this year, Harbour teased that his character didn’t get any breaks when it came to brutal physicality in the last installment.
“We shot a lot of nights, and there is a lot of action, and we’re fighting evil in a very direct way,” the Thunderbolts star said. “Hopper is a man of action — there’s a lot of running around.”
Stranger Things follows a group of friends in 1980s Hawkins, Indiana, who uncover a mystery involving secret experiments, terrifying supernatural forces and one strange little girl after a young boy disappears. The series also stars Millie Bobby Brown, Noah Schnapp, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton and Joe Keery.
Earlier this week at the opening of Stranger Things: The First Shadow on Broadway, Schnapp also teased to The Hollywood Reporter that “people are going to be truly devastated” when it comes to watching the last season unfold.
