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The Unfortunate Problem With Stranger Things' Jim Hopper
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Jun 26, 2025
Hawkins Police Chief Jim Hopper, portrayed by David Harbour, is without a doubt one of the fan favorite characters on Stranger Things. So much so, that Stranger Things creators, The Duffer Brothers, decided to bring the Jim Hopper back in Season 4, even after his on screen death in Season 3. With this one decision, Stranger Things revealed a major flaw with it's handling of fan favorite characters.
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I'm gonna die someday, but not today
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You better not die, we just got you back. But should we have
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There's no denying fan-favorite character Jim Hopper, played by the charismatic David Harbour
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is one of the living, breathing hearts of Stranger Things. But after apparently dying in a moving and heroic self-sacrifice
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at the end of Season 3, Hopper's storyline in Season 4 never really seemed to justify the decision
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to keep the character living and breathing. Stranger Things debuted on Netflix in 2016
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It was a massive hit and Chief Jim Hopper was one of its breakout characters. He was the pragmatic, level-headed, and amusingly laid-back police chief of Hawkins, Indiana
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Hey, hey, hey, what'd I just say? One at a damn time
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A working-class everyman with a troubled past and a drinking problem, evocative of any number of fictional 80s law enforcement officers
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Over the next two seasons, Hopper became a surrogate father to mysterious runaway Eleven
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As a dad, he turned out to be a bit more of an overprotective jerk, but his heart was mostly always in the right place
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There's nothing wrong with Nana! What? But there's something very wrong with this thing between you and Elle
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Their relationship taught him to feel again, making him capable of doing things like fall in love with Joyce and form nascent bonds with Will
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and, reluctantly, Mike. So when their lives and everyone else's were at stake
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and he could only save them by sacrificing himself, it wasn't even a choice
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For fans of the show, Hopper's death at the end of season 3 delivered the same kind of emotional gut punch Star Wars fans got
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when Ben Kenobi raised his lightsaber and allowed himself to be struck down by Vader
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so the Millennium Falcon could escape. But Hopper's letter to L confronts that hurt head-on
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It talks about the pain that comes along with change and how it's really a good thing
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We felt the loss the same way El did. But then, during the credits, two guards in a Russian prison make a reference to an unseen American that they have in one of their cells Fans immediately began to speculate Hopper had survived
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And while David Harbour's appearance in the season 4 trailer could have been part of a
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flashback, it certainly didn't do anything to diminish those theories. But it turns out after his apparent sacrifice, Hopper was zapped over to Russia where he
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was interrogated, tortured, and eventually sent off to perform hard labor in Kamchatka
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prison. The facility is explicitly compared to hell, and he's told anyone who tries to escape
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dies. Hopper initiates an escape plan anyway. He takes a lot of punishment pulling it off and
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eventually hits an emotional low point. The plan doesn't exactly work out, but Joyce, who managed
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to make it into the prison as the culmination of the season-consuming storyline she shares with
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Murray still frees him. In the end, they make it back to Hawkins and Hopper is reunited with L
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and the rest of the gang just before all hell breaks loose in anticipation for Season 5
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Hopper and Joyce do get to help out in the final battle by killing some Demogorgons that were
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conveniently located in the prison, but it feels more like a flimsy attempt to connect the events
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in Russia to the main plot than a genuinely important part of the story. And as far as the
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overall structure of the season goes, Hopper's thread mainly just functions to keep him and Joyce
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out of the central plot, so the younger characters feel a little more on their own in their various
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adventures. Also worth noting is that Hopper's presence in Hawkins would have made the main
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storyline of season four, which required the police to suspect Eddie of killing Chrissy
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impossible. Hopper's relationship with the kids in the Hellfire Club and his experiences
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over the previous seasons would predispose him to believe every word Eddie said, so
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he had to be kept out of town and out of communication long enough for the entire season to unfold
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And that's what happened. Hopper spends most of season four concerned with his escape. The storyline
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is a slow burn and it doesn even really take advantage of all of the impossibility it creates around the prison As far as Prison Break stories go his plan turns out to be pretty straightforward He bribes another prisoner into sledgehammering his leg cuffs so it can be removed
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wins a fight with some guards, and steals a snowmobile to make a break for it
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It takes most of the season, and it all feels pretty toothless. The show's general unwillingness to kill its main characters
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along with the specific improbability they would kill Hopper so soon after resurrecting him
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made it hard to believe he was ever in any real jeopardy. Even he didn't seem nervous. It was impressive
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You don't even seem nervous, America, nonetheless. All the physical trauma he would have experienced from the cold and the torture and the beatings
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is also just kind of shrugged off. This hopper is seemingly impervious to the consequences of injuries
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Even the damage he incurs to his ankle while it's being sledgehammered never really slows him down all that much
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That's because far from being a nuanced take on an 80s everyman cop that we met in season 1
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or even the quippy Irwin Fletcher-style investigator of season 3, this Hopper is a fully formed 80s action hero
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A mashup of influences like MacReady from The Thing and Braddock from the Missing in Action movies
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And through the vast majority of the season, he is as steely as any of those characters
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That choice by the creators left actor David Harbour with little to play with in the fact of Hopper's emotional life
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and as a result, much of the story feels a little flat
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A few scenes do go there. There are moments where he ruminates on his experiences in Vietnam
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talks about the death of his daughter, and he explains how it all led to his problems with drugs and alcohol
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And they're not bad, but your mileage may vary on how revelatory they actually feel
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And just to be clear, none of this is on David Harbour. The actor absolutely gives it his all
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and even lost 30 pounds so he would look the part of a guy who's been in a Russian prison for eight months
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You look... Not fat. His performance throughout season four is absolutely one of the best things Hopper storylines has going for him But there an argument to be made that the show should have let Hopper stay dead Stranger Things reluctance to kill main characters has not exactly escaped the notice of fans or cast members A topic we cover in our other video
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about Stranger Things, check it out, link in the description. Hopper's death didn't do much to
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change that, but Hopper also wasn't just another character who survived a situation he shouldn't
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half. He had sacrificed himself, and allowing him to survive stripped that defining character
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decision of a lot of its dramatic weight. The show tries to make up for it by repeatedly
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brutalizing him, both mentally and physically, but it's not the same. Which isn't to say we want to
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see him suffer, we want to see him become a better man. The journey to his sacrifice was a beautiful
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example of that arc. It felt complete. And while it's certainly the creator's prerogative to keep
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one of their characters alive, it also feels like they struggled to find something to do with him
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in season four. Hopper spends pretty much all of nine episodes in a narrative cul-de-sac. His
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storyline isn't totally without memorable or effective moments, but at the same time
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he barely gets to interact with any of the other main characters and has no role in the central
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plot of the season until late in the final episode. And even there, his participation feels
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a little tacked on. But while Hopper was out of the loop, everyone, especially Eleven
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showed real growth. They all started learning how to get on in the world without their guardian
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police chief watching over them. It was the kind of growth you'd hope to see at the end of season
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three, the kind of change Hopper hoped would happen and talked about in the letter he wrote
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to Eleven. And it was sometimes painful, sad, surprising, and happy, just like he knew it would
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be. Ultimately, watching the Duffer brothers restore Hopper to the Stranger Things universe
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while undeniably a joyful development for a lot of fans, made it impossible not to think about that letter
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He explained that he knew Eleven was growing and changing, and that scared him
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He wanted to stop the change and make things go back to how they were. But he had learned something
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Something his creators may have forgotten. That's not how life works. Even though it hurts, you have to embrace change
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learn from it, and grow