We still don’t know when “Stranger Things” Season 4 is coming out, but thanks to a trailer that dropped Thursday, we do know that the new season will delve more into Eleven’s past.
What does the new ‘Stranger Things’ trailer mean?
On Thursday, “Stranger Things” dropped a trailer for Season 4 — the first teaser since the February 2020 clip that revealed Hawkins’ chief of police, Jim Hopper, to be alive and working in a Russian prison camp, the Deseret News reported.
In what appears to be a flashback, the new “Stranger Things” trailer returns to Hawkins Lab, where Eleven and other children were raised as test subjects by Dr. Martin Brenner, who they call “papa.”
Several children in hospital gowns — resembling Eleven’s initial appearance on the show — are grimly playing with toys and games as Dr. Brenner enters the room and tells them, “Today, I have something very special planned for you.”
The clip then moves down the hall to Room 11, where Millie Bobbie Brown’s character is shown for a brief second before the scene ends.
The scene is likely a flashback that sets up the possibility of including other children like Eleven in the “Stranger Things” storyline — something the show explored for one episode in Season 2. It also allows for Matthew Modine’s Dr. Brenner — who was presumably killed by a demogorgon at the end of Season 1 — to revive his character should the season explore more of Eleven’s past.
What else do we know about ‘Stranger Things’ Season 4?
“Stranger Things” stars Finn Wolfhard and Gaten Matarazzo have confirmed that the fourth season of “Stranger Things” is the scariest one to date.
- “I think they want their show to mature with their kids,” Matarazzo has said of the “Stranger Things” creators’ approach. “As we are growing older as people, we have to grow older as characters. They’re confronted by this issue, but they embrace it, and they use it to their advantage. And they don’t freak out when we get taller or when our voices drop or anything like that. They use it and they use it as ammunition for their writing. It’s incredible what they can do. Working with them, it’s just exceptional. Always has been.”
The new season will also likely explore beyond Hawkins, as the end of Season 3 showed the Byers family and Eleven — who at least temporarily has lost her telekinetic powers — moving away after Hopper’s presumed death, the Deseret News reported.
But Hopper does appear to still be alive, and actor David Harbour has said Season 4 will dive more into the character.
- “He’s a man of justice (and) he now has become a prisoner,” Harbour has said. “He’s trapped and he’s isolated. And we get to see an entirely other color of him that has been hinted at. ... This season is my favorite because he really is going to show you some new colors and what he’s really made up of
- “You really do get to see a lot of his backstory of who he was as a warrior in a sense and sort of the mistakes he made in the past come back to visit him,” he continued. “And he just sort of unfolds.”
The new season will also introduce several new characters — including “A Nightmare on Elm Street” star Robert Englund and “Game of Thrones” star Tom Wlaschiha, the Deseret News reported.