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“Justice for Barb!” That rallying cry launched after the death of Nancy Wheeler’s best friend Barb Holland midway through season 1. It also helped spur Stranger Things into the cultural sensation it is today. Since then, the series has had no problem killing off characters that connect with fans, including most recently Joseph Quinn’s metalhead Eddie Munson and Grace Van Dien’s Chrissy Cunningham.
As the series heads into its fifth and final season, fans already worry that favorites won’t make it to the closing credits. But in the minds of Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer, some of these stand-outs are already living on borrowed time. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, the Duffer Brothers even admitted that Sheriff Hopper and Steve Harrington were once each separately marked for death.
For his part, Steve almost shared Barb’s fate as a season 1 casualty. “That was close,” Matt said of Steve’s would-be fate, a statement that makes sense within the character’s storyline. He’s introduced in the show as a flake, a cool kid with great hair and who seems to only have a superficial interest in Nancy, especially in contrast to the earnest outsider Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton).
Yet, by the end of the season, Steve got a stay of absence and for one reason. “We just fell in love with Joe Keery,” explained Matt. “But had we not liked Joe Keery, Steve would’ve been gone.” Thus Keery endeared himself to the Duffers and audiences alike, shaking off his popular kid status and winning over fans when Steve started hanging out with Dustin and the other nerds in season 2. However, the Duffers cited another, even more integral character as a potential victim.
“Hopper at the end of season 3. I think death grazed him,” Matt revealed. “There was a version where he perished at the end of 3. It’s been a while since we had those discussions, but I feel like he came the closest to dying.”
It certainly seemed like the Duffers punched Hopper’s ticket at the end of season 3. By that point, the character portrayed by David Harbour had established something of an equilibrium with his adopted daughter Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), giving his story arc a natural end point. And given that run of episodes ended with him caught in an explosion in a secret Russian lab, it certainly seemed like the Duffers had finished him off.
Given all the misery that Hopper experiences as a captive in a Russian POW camp throughout the show’s fourth season, however, maybe it would have been better for him to have died in the explosion? It also wouldn’t have left him and Winona Ryder’s Joyce on a season-long boondoggle that year. But that’s the calculation the Duffers always face, weighing the surprise of a death with the loss of a beloved character.
Even though the Duffers often consider killing a main character, they always put story concerns first. “What often holds us back is you have to talk about the repercussions,” explained Matt. “This is a total hypothetical: You kill Mike. It just makes the show rather depressing and bleak, and it becomes entirely about that. Even these more supporting characters like Eddie [Joseph Quinn] or Bob [Sean Astin] or Barb [Shannon Purser], of course, have really long-lasting repercussions on our characters.”
While that might have been enough to keep Steve and Hopper alive for now, all bets are off with the story coming to end this holiday season. Will some favorites fall? Or will demand for justice keep them alive, even after the credits roll?
Stranger Things season five debuts Nov. 26, 2025, on Netflix.
The post Stranger Things Creators Reveal Which Fan Favorites Almost Got Killed Off Years Ago appeared first on Den of Geek.
