I'm going to die someday.
But not today.
You better not die.
We just got you back.
But should we have?
There's no denying fan favorite character Jim Hopper, played
by the charismatic David Harbor, is one of the living,
breathing hearts of Stranger Things.
But after apparently dying in a moving and heroic
self-sacrifice at the end of season three,
Hopper's storyline in season four
never really seemed to justify the decision
to keep the character living and breathing.
And before we start theorizing about this mystery,
why not take a moment to subscribe
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Stranger Things debuted on Netflix in 2016.
It was a massive hit, and Chief Jim Hopper
was one of its breakout characters.
He was the pragmatic, levelheaded, and amusingly
laid back police chief of Hawkins, Indiana.
Hey, hey, hey?
What I just say?
One at a damn time.
A working class everyman with a troubled past and a drinking
problem, evocative of any number of fictional '80s law
enforcement officers.
Over the next two seasons, Hopper
became a surrogate father to mysterious runaway Eleven.
As a dad, he turned out to be a bit more
of an overprotective jerk, but his heart was mostly
always in the right place.
There's nothing wrong with Nana.
What?
But there's something very wrong with this thing
between you and El.
Their relationship taught him to feel again,
making him capable of doing things like fall in love
with Joyce and form nascent bonds with Will,
and reluctantly, Mike.
So when their lives and everyone else's were at stake
and he could only save them by sacrificing himself,
it wasn't even a choice.
For fans of the show, Hopper's death
at the end of season three delivered
the same kind of emotional gut punch
Star Wars fans got when Ben Kenobi raised his lightsaber
and allowed himself to be struck down by Vader so the Millennium
Falcon could escape.
But Hopper's letter to El confronts that hurt head on.
It talks about the pain that comes along with change
and how it's really a good thing.
We felt the loss the same way El did.
But then during the credits, two guards in a Russian prison
make a reference to an unseen American
that they have in one of their cells.
Fans immediately began to speculate Hopper had survived,
and while David Harbour's appearance in the season four
trailer could have been part of a flashback,
it certainly didn't do anything to diminish those theories.
But it turns out after his apparent sacrifice,
Hopper was zapped over to Russia where
he was interrogated, tortured, and eventually
sent off to perform hard labor in Kamchatka Prison.
The facility is explicitly compared to hell,
and he's told anyone who tries to escape dies.
Run, you die.
You hear, American?
Hopper initiates an escape plan anyway.
He takes a lot of punishment pulling it off
and eventually hits an emotional low point.
The plan doesn't exactly work out.
But Joyce, who managed to make it into the prison
as the culmination of the season consuming
storyline she shares with Murray, still frees him.
In the end, they make it back to Hawkins,
and Hopper is reunited with El and the rest of the gang
just before all hell breaks loose in anticipation
for season five.
Hopper and Joyce do get to help out in the final battle
by killing some demogorgons that were conveniently
located in the prison, but it feels more
like a flimsy attempt to connect the events in Russia
to the main plot than a genuinely important part
of the story.
And as far as the overall structure of the season goes,
Hopper's thread mainly just functions
to keep him and Joyce out of the central plot
so the younger characters feel a little more on their own
in their various adventures.
Also worth noting is that Hopper's presence in Hawkins
would have made the main storyline of season four, which
required the police to suspect Eddie of killing Chrissy,
impossible.
Hopper's relationship with the kids in the Hellfire Club
and his experiences over the previous seasons
would predispose him to believe every word Eddie said,
so he had to be kept out of town and out of communication
long enough for the entire season to unfold.
And that's what happened.
Hopper spends most of season four concerned with his escape.
The storyline is a slow burn, and it doesn't even
really take advantage of all of the impossibility it
creates around the prison.
As far as prison break stories go,
his plan turns out to be pretty straightforward.
He bribes another prisoner into sledgehammering his leg cuffs
so it can be removed, wins a fight with some guards,
and steals a snowmobile to make a break for it.
It takes most of the season, and it all feels pretty toothless.
The show's general unwillingness to kill its main characters,
along with the specific improbability
they would kill Hopper so soon after resurrecting him,
made it hard to believe he was ever in any real jeopardy.
Even he didn't seem nervous.
It was impressive.
You didn't even seem nervous, American.
I'm impressed.
All the physical trauma he would have experienced
from the cold and the torture and the beatings is also
just kind of shrugged off.
This Hopper is seemingly impervious to the consequences
of injuries.
Even the damage he incurs to his ankle
while it's being sledgehammered never
really slows him down all that much.
That's because far from being a nuanced take
on an '80s everyman cop that we met in season one,
or even the quippy Irwin Fletcher style investigator
of season three, this Hopper is a fully formed '80s action
hero--
a mash up of influences like MacReady
from The Thing and Braddock from the Missing in Action movies.
And through the vast majority of the season,
he is as steely as any of those characters.
That choice by the creators left actor David Harbour with little
to play with in the fact of Hopper's emotional life.
And as a result, much of the story feels a little flat.
A few scenes do go there.
There are moments where he ruminates on his experiences
in Vietnam, talks about the death of his daughter,
and he explains how it all led to his problems
with drugs and alcohol.
And they're not bad.
But your mileage may vary on how revelatory they actually feel.
And just to be clear, none of this is on David Harbour.
The actor absolutely gives it his all
and even lost 30 pounds so he would
look the part of a guy who's been in a Russian prison
for eight months.
You look--
Not fat.
His performance throughout season four
is absolutely one of the best things Hopper's storylines has
going for them.
But there's an argument to be made that the show should
have let Hopper stay dead.
Stranger Things' reluctance to kill main characters
has not exactly escaped the notice of fans or cast
members, a topic we cover in our other video about Stranger
Things.
Check it out.
Link in the description.
Hopper's death didn't do much to change that.
But Hopper also wasn't just another character
who survived a situation he shouldn't have.
He had sacrificed himself, and allowing him to survive
stripped that defining character decision
of a lot of its dramatic weight.
The show tries to make up for it by repeatedly brutalizing him
both mentally and physically, but it's not
the same-- which isn't to say we want to see him suffer.
We want to see him become a better man.
The journey to a sacrifice was a beautiful example of that arc.
It felt complete.
And well it's certainly the creators' prerogative
to keep one of their characters alive,
it also feels like they struggled to find something
to do with him in season four.
Hopper spends pretty much all of nine episodes in a narrative
cul-de-sac.
The storyline isn't totally without memorable or effective
moments, but at the same time, he barely
gets to interact with any of the other main characters
and has no role in the central plot of the season
until late in the final episode.
And even there, his participation
feels a little tacked on.
But while Hopper was out of the loop,
everyone, especially Eleven, showed real growth.
They all started learning how to get on
in the world without their guardian police chief
watching over them.
It was the kind of growth you'd hope
to see at the end of season three--
the kind of change Hopper hoped would happen and talked about
in the letter he wrote to Eleven.
And it was sometimes painful, sad, surprising, and happy,
just like he knew it would be.
Ultimately, watching the Duffer Brothers restore Hopper
to the Stranger Things universe, while undeniably
a joyful development for a lot of fans,
made it impossible not to think about that letter.
He explained that he knew Eleven was growing and changing,
and that scared him.
He wanted to stop the change and make things go back
to how they were.
But he had learned something-- something his creators
may have forgotten.
That's not how life works.
Even though it hurts, you have to embrace change,
learn from it, and grow.
So what do you think?
Do you like what Stranger Things did with Hopper in season four?
And if not, how would you have fixed it?
Let us down in the comments below.
And if you enjoyed this video, you'll
definitely find others you'll like if you check out
the rest of the channel.
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