David Harbour sheds some light on that final Stranger Things scene

The third season of Stranger Things has a more mature feel to it than the first two seasons. We see the group of kids transition from Dungeons-and-Dragons-playing adolescents to teenagers with romance on the brain. Meanwhile, Nancy, Jonathan and Steve venture out into the working world, which isn’t all it’s cut out to be.

And then there was that devastating finale. Stranger Things had killed off characters before, but none so major as Jim Hopper, Hawkins’ chief of police and Eleven’s adoptive father. Hopper’s been a crucial part of the series since the start, and his death hit viewers pretty hard. There’s little in this world more heartbreaking than Eleven’s face when Joyce emerges from the Russian base beneath the Starcourt Mall alone.

The mid-credits scene, however, delivers some hope to Hopper fans. Essentially confirming that a fourth season is on its way, the scene transports viewers to a Soviet military facility where two guards are about to feed one of their prisoners to a Demogorgon. Before they retrieve the prisoner, they make sure to specify that they aren’t there for “the American” in the next cell over. And while it seems too good to be true, most fans believe that the American in question is, in fact, Hopper.

How Hopper could have survived the blast of energy that hit him when Joyce closed the gate to the Upside Down is its own mystery. Actor David Harbour shared his own theory about the character’s fate during a recent interview with /Film. “I think the tapestry of Hopper is so large and interesting, and I also think that Hopper has karmic debts to pay for how dead he’s been for a long time.”

"We have to decide who this man is…Is he a man of justice? Is he a father? Which one is he? And I think those two things are not always compatible. I don’t know that you can stand for values or stand for relationships at the same time. At some point, you’re going to have to choose. So I’m interested in that – in him as a human being, if he’s faced with that choice, what he would choose?"

Harbour is talking as though Hopper still has storylines in his future, which seems to confirm that he is indeed the American prisoner, although he doesn’t explain how the character will make a comeback.

The actor also expressed his hope that Hopper somehow survived during an Entertainment Weekly interview. ”I mean, we should always hold onto hope,” he said. “We should never let go of hope — but Barb is really dead.”

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And we live with Barb’s loss every day. Hopper, on the other hand, might make a comeback. Unfortunately, after so much time in a Russian prison — and possibly in the Upside Down as well — he might not be the same Hopper we know and love.

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h/t Gizmodo