Stranger Things 4 is “the scariest and the darkest, easily”
By Daniel Roman
What happens in Hawkins, stays in Hawkins
That leaves our Hawkins crew, which is split into a few groups. Steve (Joe Kerry) and Robin (Maya Hawke) are working at a video story. Max is grieving the death of her older brother Billy, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) has found newfound popularity as a member of the high school basketball team, and Mike and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) have joined a school Dungeons & Dragons group called the Hellfire Club, which is run by metalhead Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn).
“Hellfire Club is kind of a dark D&D club of just all the outcasts and rejects,” Wolfhard explained. “It’s good because [Mike’s] found his little calling at school. He has something, finally. I think there’s also an implied darkness to it that makes him feel pretty cool.”
The D&D group will play a bigger role this time around. In the ’80s and ’90s, America went through the “Satanic Panic,” where people got paranoid about stuff like heavy metal and Dungeons & Dragons being linked to occult practices. Think about how back in the day some people were concerned that Harry Potter was teaching kids witchcraft; these sorts of moral panics tend to pop up every once in a while.
But I digress; the point is that, in season 4, the show will use D&D for more than just inspiration for monster names. “To some people in Hawkins, they don’t think that it’s an innocent game that they’re playing, but that there is something more sinister beneath the surface,” Ross Duffer said.
The Creel House
Of course, we all know that D&D is not to blame for everything that goes wrong in Hawkins! But what is? Over the course of the show, various creatures have emerged from the Upside Down to wreak havoc on the small town, but we’ve never quite understood what the Upside Down is.
Season 4 will finally start to paint the bigger picture. There will be a story revolving around a creepy old mansion called the Creel House. Sometime in the 1950s, Victor Creel (played by Freddy Kreuger actor Robert Englund) and his family moved into the house, which ended up leading to tragedy. After a brutal murder, Creel was committed to a psychiatric hospital where he still resides. The season’s big bad, Vecna, resides in an Upside Down version of the Creel House attic, so you know this place is going to play a major role. “What occurs in [Creel House] is pivotal to understanding what has been happening in Hawkins all of these years,” Ross Duffer teased.
If all of this sounds pretty spooky, it’s supposed to. “I would definitely say [season] 4 is the scariest and the darkest, easily,” Wolfhard said. “[The show] is just constantly breathing and changing, like it’s its own monster.”
Part one of Stranger Things season 4 hits Netflix on May 27, with part two following it up on July 1.
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