The heart-pounding four-hour conclusion to Stranger Things Season 4 hit Netflix on July 1, and with it came many revelations, triumphant victories, and devastating losses. From Eddie Munson’s (Joseph Quinn) heroic sacrifice to Max Mayfield’s (Sadie Sink) heart-breaking fate, the heroes of Hawkins are reeling from the latest round of damage dealt out from the Upside Down. While these two defeats weigh heavily on the Party, and on the audience, there’s another fan favorite who was initially in the narrative crosshairs at the beginning of this season.
Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer recently sat down with Collider’s Editor-in-Chief Steve Weintraub to discuss the work that went into Season 4, what’s to come in Season 5, and everything in between. As you may know, not everything on the page always makes it to the screen, and any creative project goes through multiple drafts before the final product makes it to the audience. Weintraub made sure to ask the Duffer Brothers if there were any significant changes from the first draft to what we saw in Volumes 1 and 2 when they arrived on Netflix. “Did you originally have any different ending for this season? I’m curious if anything really big changed in this one?”
Matt Duffer was quick to reveal that initially there was one more death planned for the season’s second volume. “In terms of who makes it, who lives or dies. I think there was a version where Dimitri, AKA Enzo, didn’t make it.” Enzo/Dimitri (Tom Wlaschiha) is the guard that Hopper (David Harbour) befriended while imprisoned in Russia. Initially a tentative ally, and an essential pawn in getting Hopper’s message to Joyce (Winona Ryder), Dimitri quickly became a fan favorite over the course of Volume 1 as his friendship with Hopper grew after Yuri (Nikola Djuricko) betrayed them both. Thankfully, Dimitri made it and helped Joyce and Hopper successfully make it out from behind the iron curtain. “Then he ended up making it. But that’s [the most] radical of a departure from the original idea versus what we ended up with.”
For the Duffer Brothers, “sticking the landing” is always the goal when they set out to write a new season of Stranger Things. “For Matt and I, it’s such an important part,” Ross Duffer explains. He continues, elaborating on how they work very carefully to set these big plot points in place from the start. The Duffers outline where they want the story to end and then work towards that goal, Ross Duffer describes their process, saying:
In that vein, the Duffer Brothers also revealed that they already know where the entire series will end. Writing for the fifth and final season of Stranger Things is set to begin in August, and you can watch Seasons 1-4 in their entirety on Netflix right now.