Since the finale of Stranger Things Season 3 back in 2019, one of the biggest concerns was the fate of fan-favourite character Jim Hopper who, for a moment, died before the show later revealed that he was captured by the Russians.
Jim Hopper actor David Harbour, while promoting Marvel’s Black Widow in an interview with Collider, teased Hopper’s journey moving forward while comparing his return to the rebirth of Gandalf the Grey in The Lord of the Rings.
“I can talk about Hopper. I guess I say this about a lot of seasons, but it’s my favorite season, in the sense that he’s at his purest, he’s at his most vulnerable, in a sense. He’s been, as we’ve seen, he’s in this Russian prison, so we get to reinvent him in a sense. 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. We get to explore a lot of threads in his life that have merely been hinted at that we get to see a lot more of. And there’s some real surprises that you know nothing about that will start to come out in this and play big as the series goes on.”
Harbour also discussed how the latest season of Stranger Things will compare to previous seasons with the actor teasing the importance of it taking place outside of Hawkins.
“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. 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.”
The latest additions to the season four cast include Robert Englund, who is best known for his role as the iconic horror villain Freddy Krueger, Tom Wlaschiha, Sherman Augustus, Mason Dye, Nikola Djuricko, Jamie Campbell Bower, Eduardo Franco, Joseph Quinn, Amybeth McNulty, Myles Truitt, Regina Ting Chen and Grace Van Dien.
Stranger Things stars Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers, David Harbour as Chief Jim Hopper, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven, Noah Schnapp as Will Byers, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, Sadie Sink as Max, Maya Hawke as Robin, Priah Ferguson as Erica Sinclair and Brett Gelman as Murray Bauman.