is eddie really dead?
The season four finale of "Stranger Things" is a seriously emotional ride, with some deaths both big and small rocking our cast of characters' lives. One of the most devastating, by far, is the loss of Eddie Munson, who in the course of one season went from being a total newbie to a beloved fan favorite. Eddie went out heroically, buying his friends time to carry out their plan against Vecna. But did Eddie really die, or is there hope for him to return somehow?
According to a theory shared on Reddit, the Dungeons & Dragons game universe could hold the key to Eddie's survival. Reddit user Fearless_Start7574 posted someone else's Facebook theory that draws on D&D lore to suggest how Eddie might have survived. The idea is that Eddie could not have died from the bites of demo-bats alone, so, instead, he is transformed into another creature based on D&D characters.
According to this theory, Eddie will be turned into Kas, a vampire creature who wields a spiky shield, similar to Eddie's spike-covered trash-can lid. In D&D, Kas eventually betrays Vecna and works to defeat him. The parallel, according to this theory, would be that Eddie would initially be turned into a villain against his old friends, but would eventually turn back to the side of good and help them defeat Vecna once and for all.
It's an intriguing theory, and one that plays well with the heavily D&D-themed mythology of the Upside Down, as well as the fact that Eddie's body was most likely left behind in the alternate dimension.
There's just one problem with this theory: the show's creators insist Eddie is well and truly dead.
"Yes," series cocreator Matt Duffer said when asked by podcaster Josh Horowitz if Eddie is "officially dead." Matt's twin brother and cocreator, Ross Duffer, added, "Sadly, yeah."
The theory hinges largely on the idea that a demo-bat bite isn't fatal in the way that a real bat bite would lead to a potentially fatal rabies infection. In an interview with Variety, the Duffers half-jokingly assured fans that no, demo-bat rabies isn't actually a thing, mostly in the context of how worried viewers should be about Steve's fate during his stint in the Upside Down. "I wouldn't worry about the bat thing," Matt Duffer said. "That's more my thing, I have this thing, I'm worried about bats. So anyway, that was just me fixating on bats the moment I wrote that. . . . If [Steve]'s going to die, it's not going to be from the bat bite."
If Eddie had succumbed just to bites from the demo-creatures, it would be a different story. Unfortunately, from the looks of things in his final scene, Eddie wouldn't have died from the bat bites, but rather from bleeding out due to full-fledged stab wounds.
13 July 2022, 15:07 | Updated: 14 July 2022, 13:27
Eddie was never going to survive season 4, but if he did... he still would have been doomed.
Wondering what would have happened to Eddie Munson in Stranger Things 5 if he had survived? Well, we finally have an answer – and it's not great. It's not great at all.
If you've watched season 4, you'll know that our beloved Hellfire King Eddie was brutally killed in the final episode after being bitten to death by Demobats. Fans were absolutely devastated by his death, and have been desperately calling for him to somehow return in season 5. But it now appears that a future for Eddie beyond season 4 was never on the cards...
Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the Duffer brothers dived into Eddie's death a little deeper, explaining that "it was not designed for shock value." In fact, they actually "saw Eddie as a bit of a doomed character" from the moment they created him.
READ MORE: Stranger Things 5 theory suggests how Eddie could return as Kas and kill Vecna
Speaking to host Josh Horowitz, the Duffers shared what would have happened to Eddie had he survived the Upside Down and the events of season 4: "Even imagining the flipside of that, where he does survive that final battle, there’s not a great life awaiting Eddie back in the right side up either, so he was really designed from the get-go as a doomed character."
"In this case, Eddie was sort of hurtling towards his doom the whole season," they added. "In our mind, the minute we came up with this character, he was always going to be a tragic character. There was never any other arc for him."
Ross Duffer continued: "How do you survive this? You see at the very end, they're still drawing devil horns on his head. No one in Hawkins is gonna accept some of supernatural explanation for any of this."
"He would have wound up in jail – and this fantasy that he would have able to walk and graduate, sadly was not ever a realistic outcome for him."
Are you devastated? Because I'm devastated.
Based on that bombshell, it seems like fans hopes that Eddie might somehow return in season 5 have been officially dashed. He's dead. He's gone. It's over. Not even Joseph Quinn and Joe Keery's genius idea, or the eerily perfect theory about him being resurrected by Vecna, are gonna save him.
Justice for Eddie!
If Eddie had succumbed just to bites from the demo-creatures, it would be a different story. Unfortunately, from the looks of things in his final scene, Eddie wouldn't have died from the bat bites, but rather from bleeding out due to full-fledged stab wounds.
