It sounds like Stranger Things is about to start filming again, and not a moment too soon. The kids are really getting into “How long have you been 17?” “A while” territory, and that bowl cut on Noah Schnapp looks goofier by the second. Millie Bobby Brown has previously expressed her desire to get the show on the road (and get the fuck out of Hawkins), and she’s not the only one.
According to David Harbour—the face and mustache behind beloved Chief of Police and Russia escapee Jim Hopper—the clock is ticking on the show’s final season, and not just the spooky one Max keeps seeing in season four. “I mean, we got to film that last season of Stranger Things, don’t we?” Harbour said when asked about his post-strike plans at a recent gala for Feeding America (via Variety). “I got to be down there, like, in a couple of days. We got to get going—we’re late.”
While it’s unclear whether or not scripts for the season are completely finished, the team has definitely been hard at work. Per a tease of the very first scene that they revealed on Twitter/X earlier this week, Hawkins’ final chapter will open with a child’s voice “singing a familiar song.” Will this sweet melody be 2022’s song of the summer, “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush? Or perhaps it will be Suzie singing “Never Ending Story” again? We’ll have to wait a while to find out.
Whenever the season does eventually wrap, Harbour hopes to take some key qualities of Hopper’s with him into whatever comes next. “Certainly his strength, his courage, his dedication. His powerful love for his family, and for right and wrong—his ideas of justice,” he shared.
Even without those lessons from Hopper, Harbour clearly has a keen eye towards combating unfair treatment in his own industry. “I think one of the beautiful things now is that we are taking care of people who are still training to become the stars of tomorrow—by giving them a living wage,” he said of advancements won in SAG-AFTRA’s tentative, strike-ending deal. “I think that’s fantastic.”
