Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Stranger Things Season 4, Episodes 1-7.In the new season of Stranger Things, just about everything expands. There are more characters, more locations, and more of a willingness to dip into horror. It all serves the show well enough, making this fourth season the best since its debut. Yes, I am well aware that isn’t necessarily saying a whole lot following uneven prior seasons. Yes, what has been released thus far in this penultimate season is essentially seven feature-length movies that can often feel bloated. However, most of the central story works and the character dynamics of these scrappy kids grow, much like their hair, in some interesting ways. Unfortunately, there is still something that has remained the show’s biggest hindrance. It has only gotten worse through the seasons, proving to be its greatest narrative weakness.
I am talking about the journey of David Harbour’s flawed yet fascinating Jim Hopper. He has had a rough go of it, often becoming boxed in by tropes and trite developments. He ended the last season by making a sacrifice that left all those around him believing that he had perished. By the time we get to this season, we’ll almost wish that he had. Still, I’m getting ahead of myself. Prior to his near-death experience, his storyline felt increasingly regressive as he embodied a one-note portrayal of a controlling father figure that flew in the face of the growth we had seen in the second season. Mercifully, we seemed like we were coming to some sort of tentative resolution to that incredibly played-out storyline. What we couldn’t have known is that this most recent season would literally leave him out in the cold.
For almost the entirety of his story this season, Hopper is trapped in Russia where he was teleported. While there, he is either being tortured for information, made to work at a hellish labor camp, or trying to survive in a bizarre gladiatorial-esque arena. He is reduced to being a vessel for pain as Stranger Things spins its wheels about what to do with him. The decision was clearly made to keep him alive as opposed to killing him for some purpose, though it is hard to see there being much of any vision for his storyline. Attempts at escape are usually always foiled, bringing him back to square one and leaving him with nowhere to go.
Despite all the actor's best efforts, Hopper has been reduced to being a part of what feels like not just an entirely different show but a much more uncertain one. While the character was often uncertain himself, the writing of the first season felt like anything but. He was a complex character, trying to recover from the past loss of his daughter and keep up appearances that he was okay. He used his charisma as protection, ensuring the glimpses we got of the man underneath through the cracks in his armor are mesmerizing for how rare they were. He was a multifaceted character whose layers were gradually pulled back.
That nuance has all but vanished here as Hopper is mostly in survival mode, getting only brief moments to actually express any emotion. Some of this is the show’s rather blunt way of showing he has given up on life, though it ends up making his character feel lifeless by extension and lessens the impact of him being broken down. It just drops him into the darkness with no sense of development, leaving both actor and character there to wither into nothingness until it needs him to make a sudden rebound. There are moments of excitement and spectacle, though it all feels hollow when so disconnected from everything that is going on. Even when there is a rescue attempt that is making its way toward him, it plays out with painfully slow pacing that renders it narratively inert and without any momentum.
The rest of the season at least feels like characters are going somewhere, making what is happening to Hopper into a sideshow to the larger story. He is reduced to being a blank slate, save for when he gives an occasional monologue to halfheartedly remind us that he is actually the character we once knew. Absent that, his entire storyline just feels like a distraction with no direction to where it is going. The aforementioned gladiator arena ends up being home to a climactic fight, something that should pack a whole lot of tension if it weren’t so devoid of stakes. It sees a group of prisoners square off against a Demogorgon, a gruesome and terrifying sequence that is undercut by the fact that we know Stranger Things can write its way out of having Hopper die. When there is no gravity or stakes to what happens, it all becomes empty.
Early on in this season, Hopper is described as being “stuck” and this unintentionally ends up being the aptest description of what his role has been reduced to. He can’t ever seem to get himself unstuck, leaving us wondering why he was even brought back in the first place. There still remains a future for Hopper, both narratively and thematically, as the show has shown it can dig itself out of some pretty substantial holes. It hasn’t always done so with the most tact or grace, though anything would be better than Hopper’s storyline in this season. It just will require a massive recalibration and refocusing moving forward into its final one. While whatever happens in Season 4’s final two episodes are set in stone, one can only hope it brings Hopper back into the fold and actually gives him something to do beyond being sullen. As it stands now, Stranger Things is squandering a solid actor and wasting the potential of what could be a strong character. He was one of the most compelling parts of the first season, something that feels so long ago as he has become buried under a mountain of drivel.