Stranger Things season 4 set pics hint at dark times ahead

The fourth season of Stranger Things is on its way to Netflix, hopefully sooner rather than later. The show ended the third season by killing off beloved character Sheriff Jim Hopper (David Harbour)…although it’s not following through. Netflix itself has been very upfront that Hopper will be back — somehow — in season 4. But that doesn’t mean that death can’t come for other characters, as some new set photos may hint.

Best vacate the premises now if you don’t want to risk exposure to potential SPOILERS.

Who dies in Stranger Things season 4?

Some new set photos posted by the Twitter account @StrangerNews11 show a few Stranger Things characters hanging out that most iconic of horror story locations: a graveyard. We won’t post the photos in the post lest Netflix’s lawyers are watching, you can check them out here.

It’s broad daylight and there’s a group of people gathered in a graveyard, suggesting that a funeral is happening. But whose? We can see cast members Natalia Dyer (Nancy Wheeler) and Charlie Heaton (Jonathan Byers) talking something over, so it’s not either of them. Might we be looking at the funeral for another character? Dear Joyce (Winona Ryder), perhaps? Might Steve (Joe Keery) buy the farm? They wouldn’t kill one of the kids, would they?

It’s also possible that this is just the funeral of some rando that Nancy and Jonathan are investigating like the junior detectives there are; the mortality rate in Hawkins, Indiana has gone way up since a portal to a dark demon dimension was opened back in the first season. Or it could be the funeral for Sheriff Hopper, whom the characters don’t yet know is (somehow) alive, or for Billy Hargrove (Dacre Montgomery), who died towards the end of season 3 and actually stayed dead.

We’ll have to wait a while to be sure. Stranger Things has never come out like clockwork, and the pandemic has slowed the newest season down even further. According to cast member Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler), we can “probably” expect the show to return in 2022.

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h/t Looper