There is little doubt that Eddie Munson has captured the hearts of Stranger Things fans despite his brief yet important role in Season 4 Volume 2. People have even gone as far as to start a petition begging the Duffer brothers to resurrect the character in the final season. However, it looks like the showrunners had different plans for Eddie and yet the alternate fate wasn't very promising.
In Stranger Things Season 4, Eddie Munson witnessed the death of Chrissy Cunningham and ended up being the suspect in her murder. However, he teamed up with Dustin and his friends in an effort to stop the real killer and ultimately got killed by Demobats in the Upside Down.
It's a terrible fate considering that viewers were rooting for Eddie to be cleared of the murder charges and finally graduate. Unfortunately, Matt and Ross Duffer have revealed that, although Eddie was originally set for a different fate, it wasn't much better than his untimely death.
"In a way, we saw Eddie as a bit of a doomed character,” Matt said during the Happy Sad Confused podcast. "Even imagining the flip side of that where he does survive the battle is not a great life awaiting Eddie back in the right side up either. He was always really designed from the get-go as a doomed character."
Ross added that Eddie was always "a tragic character" and that "There was never any other arc for him and there was no 'how do you survive this?'," explaining that the residents of Hawkins would never forgive him for what happened to Chrissy.
"At the very end, you see people still drawing devil horns on his head – no one in Hawkins is going to accept a supernatural explanation for this. He would have wound up in jail and this fantasy that he would have been able to walk and graduate sadly was not ever a realistic outcome for him," Ross said.
Although we're not happy with this idea, the Duffers do have a point there and it would be impossible for Eddie to get a happy ending beyond the events in Stranger Things Season 4. Still, we're glad he managed to make a difference and save his friends in the end.
All nine episodes of Stranger Things Season 4 are now streaming on Netflix.
Related: Metallica Pays Tribute to Eddie Munson in Epic Master of Puppets TikTok Duet
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