Maya Hawke (Robin) thinks Stranger Things has too many characters

Season 4 of Stranger Things was a huge hit on Netflix. It was also one of the most ambitious shows the streamer ever produced, with episodes averaging well over an hour (or two), budgets of $30 million per episode, and a sprawling cast of characters spread all over the map. Things had come a long way from the first season, where things were tightly focused on just a few players all exploring the same mystery. In season 4, the kids from Hawkins, Indiana grew up, and Stranger Things grew up with them.

That said, Stranger Things is no Game of Thrones. Although it’s gotten more mature, it seems reluctant to kill off any of its main characters despite constantly putting them in life-threatening situations. Even Millie Bobbie Brown, who plays Eleven, commented on it last year when she joked to The Wrap that a “massacre” was going to be needed in season 5 to deal with the massive cast. “The Duffer Brothers are sensitive sallys who don’t want to kill anybody off,” she said. “We need to have the mindset of Game of Thrones. Kill me off! They tried killing David [Harbour] off and they brought him back!”

Maya Hawke thinks Stranger Things has too many characters

Now, Maya Hawke (Robin) is weighing in too. She hasn’t quite gone as far as Brown did in suggesting that heads should roll, but did admit that the cast has gotten so large as to be almost unmanageable. While taking a polygraph test for Vanity Fair, Hawke was asked if she thought fan-favorite character Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) should have died in season 4. “I don’t think he should’ve died, but I do think the show has too many characters,” Hawke responded.

Earlier this month, Hawke told Rolling Stone about her own hopes that her character would die in the upcoming fifth and final season of the show. “I would love to die and get my hero’s moment. I’d love to die with honor, as any actor would. But I love the way that [showrunners] the Duffer Brothers love their actors. The reason that they write so beautifully for me and for everyone else is because they fall in love with their actors and their characters, and they don’t want to kill them. I think that’s a beautiful quality that they have, and I wouldn’t wish it away.”

As for Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer, they responded to Millie Bobbie Brown’s comments back when season 4 was airing. “Believe us, we’ve explored all options in the writing room,” Matt Duffer said. “Just as a complete hypothetical, if you kill Mike, that’s depressing. We aren’t Game of Thrones. This is Hawkins, it’s not Westeros. The show becomes not Stranger Things anymore because you do have to treat it realistically, right?”

Paul Reiser (Dr. Owens) doesn’t know if he’ll return for season 5

Despite all this talk about Stranger Things being reticent to kill characters, we did see a couple of deaths during season 4. One of those was Dr. Brenner (Matthe Modine), Eleven’s “papa” who pathologically abused her in order to unlock her powers. Brenner was gunned down as Eleven escaped the Nina Project…although granted, this was after he was seemingly killed in season 1 only to be brought back.

In the process, Dr. Owens, played by Aliens star Paul Reiser, was left behind in the secret bunker in the Nevada desert after being locked up by Brenner when he tried to help Eleven leave. Owens was last seen being taken into custody by the U.S. military. We can assume he’s still alive, but it’s impossible to know for certain. Apparently, even Reiser himself has no idea whether his character will return for Stranger Things season 5.

“The Stranger Things writers’ room tweeted out, ‘Hey, everybody, send us your thoughts for next season. What would you like to see?’,” Reiser told to E! News. “And I wrote in, ‘Can Dr. Owens live? Would that be possible?'”

Owens’ has always been a somewhat ambiguous character on Stranger Things, so perhaps it’s fitting that his fate is up in the air. He was first introduced during the show’s second season, where he tried to help Will Byers and set up Jim Hopper’s adoption of Eleven. All that said, he does still work at Hawkins Lab. In season 4, he tricked Eleven into going to Dr. Brenner’s lab in Nevada before eventually proving that he was still in her corner.

According to Reiser, this ambiguity was intentional. “When I first met [the Duffer Brothers] four years ago, I said, ‘Am I a good guy or a bad guy?’ They go, ‘We don’t know.’ And I went, ‘You don’t know or you just don’t want to tell me?’ They go, ‘No, we don’t know.’ And so they don’t tell me.”

Whether we’ll see Reiser again in Stranger Things season 5, only time will tell. But I’d say it’s a safe bet. After all, I hear this show doesn’t like to kill off characters.

The first four season of Stranger Things are streaming now on Netflix.

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h/t People