The beginning of the end is near, as Netflix is set to release the first four episodes of Stranger Things Season 5 in a matter of days. A lot has happened since those grainy credits and synthy score played for the first time in 2016, with viewers bearing witness to one of the most compelling coming-of-age stories on modern television. Even though the large majority of the characters are way more interesting today because of well-developed arcs, star David Harbour, famous for playing Hopper, says he actually prefers the way his character was back in Season 1. The reason? He prefers the creative “freedom” of making the show when it wasn’t as popular as it is now.
Talking to Variety while promoting the fifth and final season of Stranger Things, Harbour reflected on the early seasons, and how the popularity of the show has affected part of its narrative direction. The actor used Season 1 as a reference, focusing on the pressure of making characters friendlier in nature:
“You gain something and you lose something. You know, Hopper doesn’t smoke in the show anymore. That is a direct result of popularity. Because your audience does get so large, you are trying to continue to appeal to the largeness of that audience, and large audiences require soft edges. Which is an interesting conundrum that you deal with in pop music and pop culture and all sorts of popular entertainment.
“So, for me, the freedoms of that first season, when we were just carving it out and no one expected anything, as opposed to the pressures that we were under on the fifth season, you know, I would prefer the freedoms of that first season. And yet, I love the attention, and I love capturing the widest audience possible, and I love moving the most people with what you’re doing.”
Comparing ‘Stranger Things’ to ‘Indiana Jones,’ ‘Star Wars,’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’
There’s no question that Stranger Things is one of Netflix’s flagship shows, standing beside Bridgerton, Squid Game, and Wednesday. The MCU star also addressed the show’s appeal and how it’s exponentially grown since its release in 2016. When Variety asked if the show is popular simply because it depicts compelling outsiders fighting against villains, Harbour said:
“The outsiders fighting back has shifted over the years. I did find that as seasons go on, it’s more interested in empathy. Vecna has become very important, like the monster himself is becoming more human, and we’re supposed to understand and have feelings for the monster. Whereas in Season 1, it was really scrappy outsiders who were taking down a corporation, right? It has been an interesting transition in terms of what they’re focused on, how you elaborate that story.”
Harbour also compared the series and its legacy to major film franchises like Star Wars. Sure, Stranger Things has got a long way to go until it reaches the popularity of these powerhouses. But he made a great point when he said that instead of rebooting the tropes that made franchises so popular, the show has created something new within those archetypes. He even compared his character to the iconic heroes played by Harrison Ford:
“I think, at its best, it really hits all the beats of character and story moving forward at the same pace, which is a difficult thing for a script to do. Usually, scripts focus on character, or they focus on plot. Stranger Things will do both of them simultaneously in a very sophisticated way. The other thing is, we love Star Wars, right? We love Lord of the Rings. I think what Stranger Things is trying to do is, instead of rebooting Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, they’re taking the archetypes or the tropes — or the words and the letters, let’s say, and creating new sentences out of them. Hopper is Han Solo, is Indiana Jones, is Gandalf the Gray. There are these archetype tropes that just live in our subconscious cinematic lexicon, and we love them. Stranger Things just reinvents them with Eleven, Hopper, Max. It’s not afraid to play those really strong power chords.”
- Release Date
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2016 – 2025-00-00
- Network
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Netflix
- Writers
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Kate Trefry, Jessie Nickson-Lopez, Jessica Mecklenburg, Alison Tatlock