What You Missed In Stranger Things Season 3 Ending
Stranger Things Season 3 dropped and everyone is going crazy over it. All we have is questions! However, many fans are not noticing some key things in the show that changes everything for the future of Stranger Things franchise. Want to know what key things you missed in the season? Keep reading!
Hopper’s Still Alive
If you’ve been keeping up with Strangers Things like most of the world then you’ll know that it’s continued its long-standing tradition of killing loveable characters. Alexi was shot in the stomach right after joining with the good guys, and Billy was repeatedly impaled… right after joining up with the good guys. Tragic.
And even if you don’t think Billy redeemed himself by the end, Hopper was one character you can’t argue offered up a lot of charm in his rough way. Sorry, we slipped with the use of the past tense there. We meant to say is one character. Near the end, this seasoned gave a strong impression that it would be Hopper’s last, but then the directors pulled a good 'ol fashioned Hollywood trick: they didn’t show the body. You don’t even have to be looking closely to see it. The scene that’s supposed to detail Hopper’s death does so without actually showing up Hopper’s corpse.
The difference between Alexis and Billy’s death compared to Hopper’s supposed death is that we saw both bodies of Alexi and Billy. We didn’t see anything happen to Hopper. On top of that, there’s a certain song that plays during Hopper’s supposed death scene, one that we’ve all heard played once before when another character’s body was supposedly found. Back in season one, when Will’s “body” was found, the song heroes by David Bowie was playing. This same song plays when El reads Hopper’s letter to her at the end of the season. Obviously, Will isn’t dead, and obviously, the Duffer brothers know they used the Heroes song when they were pretending that he was. If they decided to choose the same song for Hopper’s little farewell, there’s a good chance it was because they wanted to achieve the same vibe and foreshadow that Hopper is, in fact, still alive.
We think this might be one of the reasons El lost her powers in this season. Think about it. Since season 2 El’s was using her abilities constantly to look in on what other individuals were doing. She especially abused it this season. We think that was a bit of foreshadowing. Now that she doesn’t have her powers and Hopper’s suddenly gone, El can’t be tempted to use them to find him. She has to wait and see what unfolds along with the rest of us.
So since it’s looking like Hopper’s still among the land of the living, a few new questions come to mind: where is he, and what’s the plan for him moving on into the next season? We think we might have a few ideas.
Hopper’s "the American"
At the end of season 3, we get a glimpse of what the Russians are up to in their homeland. As they’re debating which prisoner to feed to their captive Demodogs, the Russian soldier in charge says “not the American.” They have an American prisoner. If Hopper isn’t dead but also hasn’t returned to Eleven, then he’s somewhere he can’t travel back from, right? We think a Russian prison cell meets this criterion pretty well. Even if by some miracle Hopper managed to get out of his cell, he would have to avoid Russian guards and Demodogs, and then figure out how to navigate the freezing cold of Russia to get back to America. Hopper’s tough, but we place the odds against him in that scenario.
In this case, though, we don’t really know what the Russians would want with Hopper. It doesn’t seem like he can really offer them anything they want. Maybe they think his experience with the gate will help them open it?
Hopper’s in the Upside Down
Speaking of the gate, Hopper may just be in the Upside Down. This is another area that meets the criteria of being pretty hard to travel back from. If we think about it, it also makes a bit more sense for Hopper to be here rather than in the Russian prison. For starters, the Russians would have had no way (that we know of) to snatch up Hopper and escape from the US military, all while the gate-opening device was malfunctioning. It would be nonsensical for them to even make the attempt really. Their goal at that time would be preserving their forces and living to fight another day. What’s one dead American prisoner to that?
Getting into the Upside Down at that time would be much easier than getting kidnapped by the Russians, too. The gate was closing, not yet closed. Remember the Mind Flayer’s promise to El? It told her that it would kill her, all of her friends, and her family. It was about to succeed, too until Billy intervened, and Joyce and Hopper started closing the gate. That should have pissed it off. This would be the second time it was going to have the gate closed on its face. But then look -- there’s Hopper, El’s dad, standing right there on the catwalk in front of the gate, all alone, just asking to be snatched up and dragged into the Upside Down against his will. The Mind Flayer wants out, but El keeps finding ways to thwart it. But with Hopper in its possession, the Mind Flayer has the perfect leverage against El. If it wants, it can use Hopper to eventually force El to open the gate herself -- an ironic and clever twist. It just has to wait for El’s powers to come back. Then when she opens it, it can just kill Hopper anyway because why not?
Hopper’s a Potential Villain for The Next Season
Regardless of where Hopper is, Russian prison, or Upside Down, he has a very strong chance of becoming an enemy in Stranger Things 4. If Hopper’s in a Russian prison and they can’t torture any real information out of him they always have another option available. They can subject Hopper to some heavy-duty brainwashing so that he can help them other ways. Who doesn’t have use for a good sleeper agent? Hopper can sabotage the very group of people that keep finding ways to foil the Russians. He’s a living, breathing goldmine in that regard at least if he doesn’t turn out to be any good for information.
On the Upside Down-side of things, the Mind Flayer has a history of possessing people and using them to do its bidding. It’s its favorite thing really. If we remember correctly, It’s done it in every season of the show far. To be able to do it to Hopper -- there’s almost no way it would pass up that kind of opportunity. It would just be one of the many ways it could torture El. It threatens Hopper to get her to open the gate and then gives him back to her possessed. It’s a win-win. And if El doesn’t agree to open the gate, then the Mind Flayer just waits for the Russians to inevitably do it again. Then it sends Hopper, possessed, of course, back to El to make her life a living hell. It just can’t lose now with him in its possession.
Other Possibilities For “The American”
If Hopper is in the Upside Down -- which seems like the likely scenario -- then that still leaves the mystery of the American prisoner in Russia. If it’s not Hopper we think there’s a possibility that it could be two other people.
The first is Dr. Brenner -- you remember him from season 1? His fate was left up in the air a bit in that season, but the seventh episode of Stranger Things 2 hinted that he could most certainly still be alive. Considering his knowledge of El powers, and the fact that he was the first person in America to open the gate to the Upside Down, he would be a very valuable prisoner to the Russians. He could give them all kinds of information that they don’t already have. On top of that, Matthew Modine, the actor who plays Dr. Brenner, was at the Stranger Things 3 premiere. That seems like a good enough reason to think he could be coming back.
The second person is, crazy enough, Alexi. Yes, we know we’re talking about seeing Alexi’s body earlier, but hear us out. Alexi was shot in the stomach. Dying from a single bullet wound in the stomach takes a good deal of time. It’s possible that Joyce and Bald Eagle only gave Alexi a brief look over and missed his pulse. It’s not like they weren’t under a lot of stress or anything.
When Hopper escaped from the Russians they could have doubled back and picked Alexi up. Sure, he was a traitor, but he was a smart traitor. His being a traitor, actually works in this theory. The Russians consider him an American now, so when the Russian commander said “not the American,” he could have been using nationality ironically. Alexi was valuable and, unlike Hopper, the Russians actually had time to pick him up. If Alexi could build them one gate-opening device, why not have him build another -- just as a Russian prisoner this time (not that he basically wasn’t one before).
Wrap Up
There’s too much evidence toward Hopper being alive. If they wanted him dead there’s no reason they couldn’t have just killed him on camera. The Duffers visually killed two other lesser characters without issue, so why not do the same for Hopper? The events that take place during and after his death help support this a bit.
There’s an American in a Russian prison. Why have the Russian guards say this in English if the American they were talking about wasn’t someone we the audience already knew?
We have three choices between Hopper, Dr. Brenner, and Alexi. While Hopper feels like a good possibility for this, it seems more likely that he’s somewhere a little bit more sinister. Alexi could be the prisoner, but if the Russians wanted to use him to build another gate-opener, why would they keep him prisoner in a cell and debating whether or not to kill him instead of just forcing him to work on the new device immediately? That leaves Doctor Brenner.
It’s around that time for the good Doctor to make a reappearance anyway. Eleven’s lost her powers, and he’s the one who trained her to have them in the first place. He’s the perfect person to help restore them to her. And now is the perfect opportunity to bring this character back. Dr. Brenner considers himself to be Eleven’s creator, but Eleven just lost the person that she considers to be her father. To have Dr. Brenner -- her tormentor -- come back into her life now, and for her to need him, would be an interesting dilemma to see Eleven in. He would constantly remind her of the father she lost, and she would have to put up with it in order to get her abilities back and have a chance at protecting the loved ones she still has. The dynamic would be such a good one to toss into Season 4 because it seems like the next logical step.
Meanwhile, Hopper would be lost in the Upside Down -- the subject and plaything of the Mind Flayer. This also puts Eleven in a difficult situation. The Mind Flayer can use Hopper to try and get her to reopen the gate, or once the gate is reopened, can use Hopper as a way to make Eleven back off. It has all of the cards. If Eleven does get her abilities back, then the Mind Flayer can even force her and Hopper to face off against one another. If Eleven kills Hopper to survive, then it’s a victory for the Mind Flayer. If Eleven allows Hopper to kill her, then, again, it’s a victory for the Mind Flayer and an even better one at that. Aren’t these theories just so cheery?
Whatever happens it’s looking like Stranger Things 4 is shaping up to an interesting followup season.
