Last Minute Change in Stranger Things 4 That Saved The Duffers From Fan Riot
It turns out that a certain fan favorite character could have died in Stranger Things 4... but the Duffers decided not to go there yet.
Before Stranger Things season 4 premiered on Netflix, fans have spent months trying to guess who will die in the fourth chapter.
Many people feared for Max Mayfield's life, and turned out to be quite right. Even though Max is not exactly dead at the end of season 4, she looks like she's about to be. Vecna has plunged her into a coma, and even Eleven is not able to detect her with help of her psychic abilities.
Actress Sadie Sink, who portrays Max in Stranger Things, has revealed that her character was basically saved by the Duffer brothers last minute.
"I didn't know this until I read it in an interview, but I think Matt and Ross [Duffer] were planning to kill me off, like completely kill me off, and that was in the original plan for the season, but then they did change it. What I do know is that the Duffers are very smart, they're very calculated, and they'd only choose to kill a character off if it was good for the plot, or would come in handy later, and they'd only keep a character if it was going to serve the plot later as well," Sink shared when speaking on Variety Awards Circuit podcast.
Back at the time when the Stranger Things 4 trailer hinted that Max might be in grave danger, fans threatened to riot if she died in the finale. Now it's clear that the fifth and final season is going to revolve around Max and her friends trying to save her. However, since the upcoming season wraps the story up, it does not necessarily mean that the Hawkins gang will succeed in pulling Max out of Vecna's hands.
As Sink noted, Max's actual death "would have had a bigger impact for sure". The Duffers have never elaborated on why exactly they spared Sink's character, but the actress' remarks on the directors' "calculations" might as well hint that the Duffers have simply kept Max as another means of breaking fans' hearts in the final season.
The worst thing is that we will have to be running up that hill for well over a year, as Stranger Things 5 has not even started filming yet. However, the writing for the final season is ongoing, and we know that the first episode is titled The Crawl.
Just what could possibly go wrong...