Netflix officially announced that Stranger Things is getting a fourth season this week, causing fans to rejoice after the recent smash-hit season 3. The shock ending of the finale left viewers aghast that we might be losing one of the show’s most popular characters – David Harbour’s Sheriff Jim Hopper – but this being a series which has tricked us into thinking characters are dead before, many are theorizing that he escaped his fate.
In fact, We Got This Covered is hearing from our sources – the same ones who told us season 4 will be the last run of the show, which seems like it’s all but confirmed now – that the theorists are right and Hopper will return in Stranger Things‘ next batch of episodes. The last time we saw him he was apparently vaporized by the Russians’ machine that opened a wormhole to the Upside Down. According to our sources, though, as many have suspected, Eleven’s adoptive dad was sent into the dark dimension in the blast. However, the Russians have other ways of accessing the Upside Down and will retrieve him in season 4.
Our intel doesn’t specify that Hop’s the mysterious “American” imprisoned by the Russians in the post-credits scene of the season 3 finale, but it doesn’t sound out of the question if the Soviets are the ones to rescue him from the Upside Down. Likewise, the presence of a Demogorgon in the Russian facility confirmed that they’ve reopened the door to the other realm and brought some specimens back with them.
In fact, Harbour has been dropping a lot of cryptic clues that he’ll be back in the next run on his Instagram account, plus comments from Millie Bobby Brown have suggested that Hop’s alive, too. It also only makes sense to get him back for season 4, considering that this looks likely to be the final run of the blockbuster show. After all, you couldn’t end it without having the whole Hawkins gang involved.
In any case, we’ll hopefully get some answers soon, as Stranger Things 4 may start shooting as early as this month, which means it could land on Netflix at some point in 2020.