Warning: spoilers ahead for Stranger Things 4.
Stranger Things 4 did not pull any punches when it came to devastating deaths – Eddie Munson, anyone? We’re still not over it. We’ll never be over it.
That said, one actor – not Joseph Quinn, who plays our lovable, shaggy-haired friend – is convinced that although his character seemingly died in the latest season of the Netflix show, we may just see more of him yet.
Matthew Modine, who plays the hateable-yet-commanding Papa, returned this season to help Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) regain her powers.
After many physical and emotional blows made as Papa and Eleven have what feels like a final showdown, she leaves him behind in the desert with multiple gunshot wounds. She tells him “goodbye” and heads off to Hawkins to save the world from Vecna.
But Modine doesn’t think things are that cut and dry. In an interview with Variety, he states he wouldn’t want his character to be dead, also questioning how Papa has got this far, and whether this may have helped him to survive.
“Three things are curious to me,” he said. “How did he survive the Demogorgon? How did he survive One?”
”And when Eleven tries to use her power against Dr Brenner after blowing three guards in the air, he unflinchingly thwarts her and says, ‘You didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you?’ She couldn’t get it to work on him. Is there something more to Brenner than meets the eye?”
Could Brenner be a supernatural villain next season? Who knows. When asked what he thinks his character could do to redeem himself in Stranger Things 5 (if he returned), Modine had some choice words to say.
“The horror of what Brenner did is accepting and understanding his culpability in the death of all those children because of what One did,” he said. “So if Eleven and Kali, or just Eleven, forgave him and sent him off, he would spend the remaining days of his life knowing he had been forgiven but having to accept responsibility for what he did.”
Above all, though, Modine just wants the chance to come back to Stranger Things. And who could blame him?
“I don’t want to believe it’s over,” he said. “Because I can’t wait to work with Millie [Bobby Brown] again.”