TV

David Harbour Reckons Your Theories About That Mind-Blowing ‘Stranger Things’ Ending Are Wrong

"I mean, we should always hold onto hope. We should never let go of hope — but Barb is really dead.”

by Joseph Earp  9 July 2019
Sheriff Hopper -- Stranger Things

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As you probably know, given that you and everyone else on the planet spent the weekend staring at a TV screen, binging the misadventures of bike-riding, superpowered teens, the third season of Stranger Things ends with tragedy.

Major spoilers for Stranger Things season three follow.

In the climactic battle of the third season, sherrif Jim Hopper (played by emerging style and sex icon David Harbour) does the whole ‘valiant sacrifice’ thing when trapped in a room with a bunch of evil Russians. In order to let his friends get away unharmed, Joyce (Winona Ryder) activates a generator that evaporates him and the Russkies.

No more Sheriff Hopper, then. Or at least, maybe no Sheriff Hopper. After all, during a mid-credits stinger set in the snowy Russian city of Kamchatka, a nefarious Russian feeds a prisoner to a furious Demogorgon while making an oblique reference to “an American.” Sure would make sense if Hopper got teleported into the middle of the Russian wilderness rather than exploded into goop, wouldn’t it?

Well, not according to Harbour. Although the internet has very good reason to think we’ve far from seen the back of the ole Sheriff, the actor who plays him reckons that’s the end of that.

“It seems pretty crazy,” Harbour says of the theory. “You know, that machine went off and blew up and Hopper seemed to be trapped there. He did glance around a little bit, but he seemed to be trapped and the machine exploded.

“I don’t know, I mean it seems strange. I don’t know how [he’s alive] though. I mean, we should always hold onto hope. We should never let go of hope — but Barb is really dead.”

Of course, this could always be the kind of misdirection that Hollywood stars and their agents specialise in (remember when were told that there was no way Christoph Waltz was playing Blofeld in Spectre, or that the rumour Benedict Cumberbath was set to play Khan in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek follow-up was a load of rubbish?)

So hey, who knows — we might be meeting Hopper again soon.