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With two episodes of Stranger Things Season 4 still to come, we can’t go into too many spoilers with Matt and Ross Duffer about Volume 1, but one thing’s for sure: It’s been a “rough year for Max,” Matt says.
If you have yet to finish all seven episodes of Volume 1, we strongly advise that you stop reading immediately. There are major spoilers ahead.
For those who’ve faithfully watched all the very strange things unfold in Hawkins over the years, there have been a number of mysteries worth investigating since Will Byers’ (Noah Schnapp) disappearance in Season 1.
Steve Harrington (Joe Keery), Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer), Eddie Munson (Joe Quinn) and Robin Buckley (Maya Hawke) find the light in the darkness of the Upside Down.
What was the fate of Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine), the mastermind of Hawkins Lab and “papa” to Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), after he was attacked by the Demogorgon in the Season 1 finale? And what happened to all the other numbers besides Eleven and her “lost sister” Kali (aka Eight)?
Since the Duffer brothers have described Season 4 as the “beginning of the end,” this season was a ripe time to start tying up some of those lingering threads. But then again, it wouldn’t be Stranger Things without introducing some new ones as well...
For Tudum’s “Burning Questions,” Matt and Ross Duffer break down the glorious reveal of the true identity of Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), why breakout character Eddie Munson (Joe Quinn) was just what Season 4 needed and why Max (Sadie Sink) kept “Running Up That Hill” with Kate Bush.
Settle in, because the clock is ticking on these long-awaited answers.
Papa (Matthew Modine) and daughter (Millie Bobby Brown), together once again.
How long had you known that you wanted to bring Dr. Brenner back? Ross Duffer: We always knew we wanted to bring Brenner back. That’s why we didn’t show him dead at the end of Season 1, and we always knew that we needed to finish that relationship with him and Eleven. We needed them to talk to one another and for Eleven to deal with what had happened to her in the past. So we always knew we needed to do it, and, luckily, Matthew Modine is so incredible and he was kind enough to come back. He really wanted to get more into this character, too.
[In] Season 1, we’re hinting at Brenner, but we really get to know him a lot better this season, and that was something we were so excited about. Matthew and Millie are so close outside of the show, they’re really close to one another, and Matthew is so nice to her. They had so much fun working together and working on these scenes together. It really was a blast.
Matt Duffer: And they have some scenes together in the second two [in Volume 2] that are, I think, the best acting either of them have ever done. I was just —
Matt and Ross: Blown away.
Henry Creel, One and Vecna all being the same person is a massive twist. Was it always the plan to intertwine Henry Creel and Eleven’s backstory together with the Upside Down? Matt: Yeah, we had this 25-page mythology document that Netflix made us write all the way back in Season 1. Because we were like, “We know what’s going on in the Upside Down, more or less, but we want it to be unknowable. We want it to be mysterious.” But they were like, "Yeah, but can you write it down?” And so we wrote it all down.
We’ve been waiting to get into their backstory, in terms of, obviously, the mystery of what happened to the other numbers. Specifically One, right? And, it just took us a while to get around to telling that story. The most challenging thing was, “OK, we know that story completely informs what’s happening in the present, so it has a level of urgency to it, but you can’t reveal that right away.”
Ross: No.
Matt: “Or you can’t reveal why the past is urgent, because then you’re blowing the twist.” I’ve always said, “Stranger Things is not a twist show.” I’ve always pushed back whenever anyone’s kind of said, “Hey, we need a twist.” It’s like, “Can Mr. Clarke be working for the government?” I’m like, “No, he’s just a teacher.” You know what I mean?
But this was the first time where we were like, “OK, we want to try to pull off this twist. And how do we do that, but how do we make the past feel immediate and urgent?” That was the biggest challenge in the writers’ room. And I think by the time we wrote Episode 7, our writer, Kate Trefry, who’s a genius, goes, “I honestly didn’t think it was going to work.” I was like, “I can’t believe we got this to work.” It was scary, but thank God. It was a little bit of an accident with Eleven losing her powers and the idea of having to revisit her [past] to rewire her brain. So it ended up going, “OK, you’re going to be thinking she’s going through her past.” First of all, we’re going to learn the mystery of what happened to the other numbers, but she’s also doing it in order to regain her powers.
Ross: There’s an immediacy to it.
Matt: So you’re like, “OK, that’s why we’re here.” And then you realize, “Oh no, there’s another reason.” I don’t know, it was fun. From a writing and outlining standpoint, it was the hardest thing we’ve ever done with the writers.
Eddie Munson (Joe Quinn) taking a momentary breather at Skull Rock.
We have to talk about Joe Quinn as Eddie Munson. He has so much charisma and devours every single moment he’s on-screen. Why was he just what Season 4 needed? And why was Joe Quinn ideal to play him and disrupt the Steve [Joe Keery] and Dustin [Gaten Matarazzo] bromance? Ross: Well, we’re always very careful when we’re adding a new major character in the show, you know, going back to Season 2, when we added Max (Sadie Sink) and Billy (Dacre Montgomery), and then, of course, Season 3 with Robin (Maya Hawke). We’re very precious about adding people because we have such an amazing ensemble of actors already. So we only want to add someone if we feel like they’re necessary to tell the story that we’re telling. And in this case, something we really wanted to get into this year was the satanic panic. So that brought us back to the Paradise Lost documentary series with the [West] Memphis Three, and it brought us back to Damien Echols. We really wanted that character who’s a metalhead, he’s into Dungeons & Dragons, he’s ultimately a true nerd at heart. But from an outsider’s point of view, they may go, “This is someone that is scary.” So that’s really where the idea for Eddie came in.
But again, it was such a long search to find Joe Quinn. And honestly, we didn’t fully know who Eddie was 100% until we saw Joe’s audition tape. Then we went, “OK, wait a minute. I think this can work,” because ultimately that character doesn’t work if it’s cast incorrectly. [If it’s cast incorrectly,] I think the season falls flat.
Matt: Well, I think we had the cafeteria scene written.
Ross: That’s right.
Matt: It definitely got better. Once we cast Joe, it improved, but the rough outline of that cafeteria scene, where he’s standing up on the table and he’s calling everyone out [in Episode 1] — just nobody could do it. None of the actors could do it, like, do it in a way where you like this guy, where you didn’t want to just punch him. Right? And Joe, I don’t know how he did it. He was the only one. There was literally no other option. Joe just pulled it off.
Originally, we were talking about, “What was [Quentin] Tarantino like in high school?” Because he’s got that sort of charisma, the magnetism, the hyper energy. Like, Tarantino could easily be annoying maybe, but he’s coming from such a passionate place that you can’t help but kind of love the guy. That’s the kind of energy we were looking for, but so specific. Then Joe brought his own thing to it. He’s the kind of guy whose every take is different — he was finding it as we went. I’m so happy that people are responding so well to Eddie because we and all the other actors on set fell in love with Joe.
You can see why Dustin loves both of them. Ross: Exactly.
Matt: Exactly. Yeah. There was going to be more of a Steve-Eddie rivalry. We just didn’t have time.
Ross: Also, we’re just like, “He’s so charismatic that it’s like, how can you not like Eddie?”
Steve and Eddie’s bonding scene in the woods of the Upside Down [in Episode 7] was very sweet. Matt: Yeah.
Ross: They’re not quite on the same page. [Steve] doesn’t know who Ozzy Osbourne is, but there’s still this mutual respect, which I like about that scene.
Matt: I always liked that. It’s the John Hughes thing of you put [together] two characters who shouldn’t get along, who have judged each other because of the way they look or what they’re into and have misjudged one another. You know what I mean? And then when they actually get to know each other and they go through these experiences together, they realize they have more in common than they thought. There was a lot of that going on with Eddie. What’s sad about his narrative is that the people who get to know him love him, and the people who don’t have judged him horribly. Just because of the way he dresses and just because of his interests. But anyway, yes, that scene with him and Steve is really sweet.
Max (Sadie Sink) kept “running up that hill” to snap out of Vecna’s trance.
Max’s arc of loss, grief and numbness is incredibly moving this season. “Running Up That Hill” was such a symbolic theme song for her. Why did you pick that song? And why did you want music to be what saves people from Vecna’s trance? Ross: Music wasn’t in the initial season outline, but we knew Max was going to get cursed, and we knew we needed some way for her to defeat this curse. We were looking, just medically, into people that have comas and all of this stuff, and I think that’s honestly what led to the music. Music has a power to reach people, even when they’re in these catatonic states. But then we’re like, “Well, whatever the song is, it’s got to be perfect.” And by perfect, I mean, it needed to be cinematic in a way, in the music of it, because we knew that scene where she’s running through what we call the mind lair [at the end of Episode 4], we knew it needed to have a cinematic scope and build to it. But at the same time, it needed to be emotional, and Kate Bush’s lyrics are just so emotional.
Matt: And haunting. [“Running Up That Hill”] felt like the tone of the season. We locked in on it. It’s weird, Ross and I were looking on Spotify, we had our music supervisor, Nora [Felder], looking — she doesn’t really have to; she knows all these songs. And I’ll never forget, she sent an email that was like, “I think it’s ‘Running Up That Hill,’ Kate Bush.” And that was our [mine and Ross’] top choice, completely separately. Then we started to freak out a little bit because we’re like...
Ross: “What if it doesn’t work?”
Matt: “It has to be Kate Bush. What if Kate Bush doesn’t want it?” Because it wasn’t just licensing it, getting it to play once. It was like, “No, we need it a lot.” But she’s been awesome, and we’re sending her the scenes so she’s able to see how the music is used in the show. We keep going back because we keep wanting to put more Kate Bush in there. There’s an epic Kate Bush moment in the finale [Episode 9] that we weren’t expecting, that we kind of discovered as we were editing.
Ross: We’re like, “What if we tried a little Kate Bush here?”
Matt: The sequence was really cool and we were happy with it, but it was missing a little something. And I was like, “Well, let’s try Kate. Because when has Kate let us down?” And it just took it to this new height. Then we had to go back to Kate Bush and just... [demonstrates praying] We sent her the scene and she was gracious enough to let us use her song one more time. She’s been amazing. It’s arguably the most epic Kate Bush moment. It comes back in a major way.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
