Stranger Things Season 4 has been a long time coming and while the pandemic did delay production on the fourth season of the Netflix hit, some teases about what's in store have been dropping. Even though there isn’t much known about Season 4, star David Harbour shared hints and a surprising comparison to The Lord of the Rings.
The end of the third season of Stranger Things brought some major heartbreak, as David Harbour’s Hopper sacrificed himself and ultimately died... or so it seemed until a post-credits sequence and subsequent Season 4 preview proved he survived somehow. Now, the Black Widow star has compared the upcoming season to Lord of the Rings in an interview with Collider, saying:
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 reemerge, 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.
David Harbour bringing up Gandalf and talking about Hopper’s "rebirth" gives fans some clue about what's happening now that he is coming back but also makes you wonder just how he’ll come back and in what condition. And it's not the only movie connection he's made, as last summer, he compared Season 4 to Indiana Jones! Last year, Harbour hinted at what fans can expect from Hopper, noting his isolation, and that this season is his favorite because Hopper really “is going to show you some new colors and what he’s really made up of.”
There has been plenty of speculation as to what could happen in Season 4 of Stranger Things, from the return of a former character to an even scarier season. As if the series wasn't scary enough in the first three seasons, to the point of the Byers family (plus Eleven) leaving the town of Hawkins behind. Whatever happens, one thing that’s for sure is that Hopper is definitely returning. Though how he’s going to be when we finally go back to Hawkins is still up in the air. It will be interesting to see how that Lord of the Rings comparison comes into play.
While the wait for the fourth season of Stranger Things to arrive on the streamer after the Season 3 finale all the way back in July 2019, you can relive the first three seasons of Stranger Things on Netflix!
