The days leading up to the Season 4 Volume 2 finale of Stranger Things had fans of the show lighting candles in honor of their faves, sending up prayers and casting a protective veil around them knowing the Duffer Brothers were about to wreck their worlds. Somewhere in the back of fans' minds, they knew that the lovable Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) wouldn't be making it to the endgame, and when his hero arc came to its weepy conclusion they refused to relent to the Writers That Be. Now, the masses are campaigning to pull an Eleven and Max-Mayfield Eddie into Stranger Things Season 5 by starting a petition in the hopes of reaching the show's writers, and at this time they have over 30 thousand names calling for his resurrection. Roll for initiative!
Only a day after the fourth season's finale, a heartbroken fan took to Change.org to begin the campaign for Eddie Munson's life. With a smarmy still of the character flashing the bird, they wrote a caption pleading for back-up, beseeching fans of Quinn's to come together and share the word. Within days of the petition going live thousands of fans lent their support, leaving comments like "Eddie deserves to graduate," and calling the writers of the show "heathens." The campaign received regular updates with new photos to appeal to the emotions, and tips to spread Eddie Munson awareness. There's even a Facebook page that went up in honor of what the fans deem an "unfair" death.
Quinn spoke with Collider in an interview, saying:
"I don't know how they'd do it, but yeah, I'd love to come back. It feels like his fate might be pretty... it speaks for itself, I think. But if there was a world in which I could kind of be a fly on the wall or something, I don't know. My suspicion is that they've got enough characters to grapple with at the moment, so I think they might have got what they needed out of Eddie, but it was a pleasure to be here, even if it was only for one season."
In Stranger Things Season 4 the show introduced a brand-new character to the three-season established storyline named Eddie Munson. Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) did an excellent job building the suspense for this mysterious and foreboding new character's wrath if Lucas wasn't able to make it to their Dungeons & Dragons campaign the night of his big basketball game. When Eddie finally was introduced he was an erratic metalhead, and King of the Outcasts, who had extended his senior hand out to these three gawky freshmen, proclaiming that 1986 would be his year. Throughout the show's fourth season fans watched Eddie defy social stereotypes, all while the people of Hawkins were grinding him into the social pariah stereotype for being different, a "freak."
Multiple times Eddie was vocal that he wasn't the hero of any story, that he believed he was a coward, even as he bore witness to mind-bending atrocities one after another, from the death of the head cheerleader, Chrissy, to the knowledge that there's an Upside Down universe with an evil Mindflayer bent on destroying the world. It was in the face of this evil that Eddie met his untimely end, after a wicked Metallica solo, sacrificing himself to the Demobats for his new friends, and for a town that made him the monster. With thousands of people across the globe weeping, Eddie Munson beamed up at Dustin, asking, "I didn't run away this time, right?" and finally, "I think it's my year, Henderson."
Though the campaign explicitly states they want Eddie back, and "not just as a flashback," Quinn himself said he'd be thrilled to come back as a figment of Dustin's imagination or "like his conscience or something." In the end it was the charm and true kindness that Eddie possessed under his rough exterior — and an epic redemption arc given to a character who was never truly a coward to begin with — that upset fans so deeply. Many believe his death was unwarranted, that it was unnecessary to the plot, but if anything the petition proves what an excellent character Eddie was and how poignantly Quinn portrayed him.
Stranger Things is streaming all four seasons on Netflix and you can join the petition to revive Eddie here.