From a shocking major character death, to extra-deadly demobats that would have killed
Steve, and a big change to the Mind Flayer reveal in the finale, there were some fascinating
moments and scenes cut from Stranger Things 4!
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, I'm Jan and in this video I'm revealing the deleted scenes
and alternate ending you never got to see in the fourth season of Stranger Things.
Spoilers ahead, of course, so take care.
In the Season 4 finale, everything goes horribly wrong when Vecna claims Max as his fourth
victim, opening the four gates to the Upside Down.
Although Max briefly died, Eleven managed to bring her back, though she was left in
a coma.
The Duffer Brothers have revealed, however, that in the season's original ending Max died
permanently, but they changed their minds about this as they "wanted to end [on] a little
more of a question mark".
Obviously, I'm glad Max survived her deadly encounter, and given how much Season 4 channels
The Empire Strikes Back, I think her comatose state is akin to Han Solo ending up frozen
in carbonite.
In other words, it's something she'll surely recover from in the fifth and final season.
The Upside Down's demobats introduced in Season 4 were fearsome predators and with their hive-mind
connection to Vecna, they could act as the villain's spies.
Fan favourite Eddie tragically died from his injuries after being attacked by the creatures,
but originally the flying monsters were going to be even more deadly.
According to Stranger Things concept artist Michael Maher Jr, the initially approved version
of the bats had "serrated tail tentacles that were […] meant to wrap and then cut flesh."
If the demobats we saw in the show had been equipped with this razor-sharp tail, it seems
like they could have easily killed Steve when one of them wrapped its tail around his neck
and began strangling him after he was taken into the Upside Down.
On top of that, another even more gruesome version of the demobat was considered "whose
head and body would split open horizontally."
I think this design would have felt a little similar to the demodogs and demogorgons whose
heads open up, although seeing the whole of the demobat's body open up would have been
pretty horrifying!
By the way, the original design for the demobats was based on the parasitic Mynock bats from
Star Wars which attack the Millennium Falcon in The Empire Strikes Back.
Fans have been heart-broken over the death of Eddie, but the season very nearly ended
with another big death as well as the Duffer Brothers have revealed that originally Dmitri,
aka Enzo, didn't make it out of the season alive.
The Russian prison guard became friends with Hopper when they were imprisoned together
after being given up by the treacherous Yuri.
Dmitri was crucial in changing Yuri's mind about sabotaging the helicopter, which in
turn ensured Hopper, Joyce and Murray could finally escape the Russian prison after they
destroyed the demodogs and Demogorgon.
Perhaps killing off a Russian good guy felt too similar to Alexei dying at the end of
Season 3, so the Duffers changed it.
After all, from what we saw in season 4, there wasn't any major narrative need to kill off
Dimitri, so the change feels like a sensible one.
It's also possible the Duffers still have a little something planned for a Russian storyline
in Season 5, so they kept him alive, given how he told Yuri that Russia could be under
threat from the Upside Down as well.
When asked on the Happy Sad Confused podcast whether Eddie was always destined to have
a single-season arc on the show, the Duffer Brothers explained that even if he had survived
his encounter with the Demobats, his character was still doomed and he would have wound up
in jail.
Because nobody in Hawkins would have accepted a "supernatural explanation" for what happened
to Chrissy, Fred and Patrick, and he was still being demonised at the end.
Sadly, the Duffers said Eddie's plan to finally graduate was never a realistic one, and he
was "hurtling towards doom" through all of Season 4.
An incredible piece of concept art which sadly didn't make it into the final cut was of this
moment when Eleven sends Henry through an inter-dimensional tear from the Rainbow Room.
The point-of-view here is from the Hellscape that One falls into and it's a beautiful shot
that would have been fantastic to see.
After One was thrown into the Hellscape, he arrived in a strange new world where he came
across a swarming mass of dark particles that were seemingly alive.
With his powers, he shaped these into the giant spider form we know as the Mind Flayer,
that he would go on to control and use to manipulate Will in Season 2.
However, Maher has explained that in early concepts of that scene, in order to create
the Mind Flayer, One actually had to extract the particles out of floating boulders.
By contrast, the final TV show reveals that the particles already existed as a separate
entity before Henry ever went into that dimension.
The Upside Down has probably been around for thousands of years.
Millions.
And that change might also imply that the particles in this dimension, as well as the
Demogorgon creatures which were already living there when Henry arrived, weren't malicious
until he came along and transformed them into a malevolent force for his own ends.
Concept artist Maher also revealed that the floating rocks in this dimension are "an asteroid
field" operating under "an altered state of gravity", and his initial idea was that "the
Mind Flayer particles were an anti-gravity element that would lift the boulders into
the air", making the rocks fall upwards.
This sounds like the particles that One discovers are a kind of fundamental force that governs
things in this other dimension.
Apparently, the idea was abandoned in the end as Maher says it "would have taken too
long to explain in the context of the story".
Also, the dimension's original look in this concept art was a lot darker, whereas it had
a yellowish-orange hue and lighting in the final version.
And Vecna's Mind Lair – where he torments Max and Eleven and stores the bodies of his
victims – originally had some strikingly different designs.
According to Maher, this one is "a large vortex where fragments of the house were dissolving
along with spires containing rotted victims.
Everything would be moving.
Slowly swirling in a circular motion."
And in this version of the villain's lair, Vecna dragged his victims across a blood-soaked
space towards a huge stone structure in the background.
Maher has said that this idea – and the look of the Mind Lair in general – is influenced
by the paintings of the dystopian surrealist Polish artist Beksiński.
And this similar shot of a vast landscape with Vecna dragging his victim to a towering
slab of rock on top of an enormous mound was inspired by the sci-fi psychological thriller
The Cell, which features scenes literally entering a killer's twisted mind and dreamscape.
In this other horrifying version, there's a slimy web of interconnected vines suspending
three of Vecna's victims over some kind of altar.
And it looks like he was dragging his fourth victim over to the spot.
There's a real spider's web feel about this design, which is fitting, of course, given
Henry's love of black widow spiders as a child.
And in these earlier versions, Max was suspended in the air via Vecna's vines, rather than
against a column as happened in the show.
This is more akin to how Vecna himself levitates via a web of vines whenever he's projecting
his consciousness outside his physical body.
By the way, Maher also revealed that the swirling haze in Vecna's lair is meant to reference
the storm in Billy's mind that Eleven saw when she reached into his memories in Season
3.
And an early concept of Vecna's attic had him lifted into the air by vines coming mostly
from the floor.
This later morphed into the final idea where he was suspended instead from the sides and
the ceiling, deliberately creating the effect of a spider's web and how a spider waits in
its web to trap its victims.
It's a very creepy moment when Fred has a hallucination of grieving mourners at a funeral
and a little girl points at him and her finger extends into a long, deformed claw similar
to one of Vecna's giant fingers.
But this original concept art suggests the moment could have been even more gruesome,
with tentacles also emerging from the girl's arm and across her hand, and blood streaming
from her eyes.
And, if you'd like to discover the super-creepy, horrifying designs for Vecna that we almost
got, including one where he had four legs and a mantis-like body, tap here to watch
that video, or there's a link in the video description.
So, Movie Lovers, what do you think about these original ideas for Season 4?
Let me know in the comments below.
If you liked this video, do leave a thumbs-up, I really appreciate it.
And you can tap left to discover every incredible easter egg you missed in the final part of
Season 4.
Thanks for enjoying Stranger Things with me and hope you have a marvellous movie-loving
week!
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!