Stranger Things' Joseph Quinn Has A Plan In Mind For Eddie's Possible Season 5 Return

This post contains spoilers for "Stranger Things" season 4.

"Stranger Things" fans know the drill by now. Whenever a quirky newcomer ingratiates them among the show's main group of characters, odds are it's only a matter of time before they're snuffed out in heartbreaking fashion. Bob Newby (Sean Astin)? The adorkable RadioShack man gets mauled to death by Demodogs while helping his girlfriend Joyce (Winona Ryder) rescue her son Will (Noah Schnapp). Dr. Alexei (Alec Utgoff)? We'd only just met the wide-eyed Cherry Slurpee-sipping Russian scientist when he was assassinated by his own people for helping the show's heroes.

As such, when season 4 ended with newbie Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) getting slaughtered by a pack of Demobats while simultaneously shredding Metallica's "Master of Puppets," well, it was sad for sure but far from a surprise. The offbeat, guitar-strumming, Dungeons & Dragons-playing high schooler spent most of the season on the run after being wrongly blamed by the people of Hawkins for the murders perpetrated by the monstrous Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). For Eddie, a proper outsider who abhorred the idea of social conformity, to turn around and sacrifice his life to save the very people who always despised him anyway was about as noble an ending as anyone could ask for.

Quinn, it appears, agrees. "I think there's a great beginning, there's a great middle, and a great end for the character," he told RadioTimes in 2022. "And as an actor, you want characters with those kinds of arcs. So whilst it would have been great to come back for another season and get together with all those lovely people again, I think it was a brilliantly realized ending for a brilliantly written character."

That being said, Quinn has some thoughts on how to (figuratively) resurrect Eddie for season 5.

One imagines Eddie's "metal" death is exactly the way the character himself would've preferred to go out. It appears his final guitar solo was an equally moving moment for Quinn, who filmed it after production on season 4 resumed in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns. "For the whole crew, it felt like the first time that people had been in a live music kind of situation since the pandemic, so it was a joyous celebration on the day," he said. "It's a fantastic conclusion to the character, and yeah, I feel very, very lucky."

Continuing, Quinn said he and Joe Keery (Steve Harrington) have discussed the idea of Eddie popping up in season 5 as a "figment" of his buddy Dustin's (Gaten Matarazzo) imagination. Would that undermine the character's sacrifice? Not necessarily. "Stranger Things" previously did something similar with Bob in season 3 when Joyce remembers happily watching "Cheers" at home with him one evening, only to snap back and find herself alone in the present. It's a real stab-you-in-the-heart moment that reminds you of the emotional hole Bob left in Joyce's life. Dustin imagining Eddie could easily have the same impact if handled correctly.

If not that, then Quinn would like to see Eddie's name cleared among the citizens of Hawkins."[...] He made the ultimate sacrifice for a town that thought he was a monster, which is a level of heroism that's kind of hard to comprehend," the actor noted. If this were the real world, the truth about Eddie would probably never come to light ... and even if it did, many people in Hawkins would probably dismiss it as "fake news," anyway. But in the world of "Stranger Things"? That kind of feel-good ending wouldn't be out of place.