How Stranger Things Stupidly Wasted Its Death Fakeout

When Stranger Things concluded its third season, the characters were in a pretty bad place.

The Byers family was moving away, and they were taking Eleven with them. Eleven had lost her powers, and fallen into depression. Joyce was devastated. All of this was because, in a fateful moment during the season's climax, Hawkins' Chief of Police Jim Hopper seemingly sacrificed himself to save everyone.

His death wasn't explicitly shown, but it was heavily implied, and everyone in the show believed him to be dead. Viewers thought that, if he was somehow alive, this would certainly be a huge, emotional reveal in the next season.

But now, by revealing it in the first piece of marketing for the season, Netflix has ruined any chance of this.

Now, it's worth mentioning that there was already reason to believe that Hopper was still alive. Of course, there's the common saying that unless you see a character die on screen, you can assume they'll come back in some way.

In addition to this, however, the post-credits scene of Stranger Things season 3 was set inside of a Russian gulag where they had imprisoned a demogorgon, and a guard at the prison mentioned an American prisoner. This sparked theories that, instead of dying in the chaos of the season's climax, Hopper was actually somehow transported to Russia.

Many people began to believe that Hopper was alive, but not everyone was convinced. The American could have been anyone, after all the series is set during the Cold War, when tensions between America and Russia were at an all time high. Is it that unbelievable that Russia could have imprisoned an American that wasn't Jim Hopper?

Another common theory about the identity of the American prisoner was that it could be Doctor Martin Brenner, the man who raised and created Eleven. Season 2 hinted that he could possibly still be alive, and it would have been interesting to see Eleven have to deal with her original father figure after losing her second father figure.

While most people already thought there was a decent chance that Hopper would come back, Netflix has robbed us of finding the truth out in a meaningful way.

It would have been deeply moving to learn that Hopper was still alive in the same scene that Eleven finds out. While the scene where they reunite will surely still be quite emotional, it's going to also feel somewhat empty. All of the scenes we will inevitably see of Eleven struggling emotionally without him won't mean as much when we, the audience, already know that Hopper is alive.

We'll know this struggle is temporary for her. Netflix didn't need to reveal Hopper's survival to promote the season, as it isn't like anybody was going to refuse to watch the season without him. One can only hope that the season still has many major reveals they will save for the actual show, if they felt that this was something worth showing early.