Matt and Ross Duffer, the creators of Stranger Things, shot down a “terrible” plot idea that David Harbour and Winona Ryder once pitched for their characters. Originally premiering on Netflix in 2016, Harbour and Ryder lead a talented ensemble cast as the small-town police chief Jim Hopper and struggling single mother Joyce Byers. When Joyce’s youngest son suddenly goes missing, and a mysterious young girl escapes from a nearby laboratory, the township of Hawkins quickly finds itself at the epicenter of a series of increasingly strange and unsettling events.
As anticipation for Stranger Things season 5, Harbour recently appeared at Canada’s Calgary Expo convention (via ComicBook.com), where he recounted a scandalous theory about Hopper and Joyce’s backstory that he had worked out with Ryder. Working out a timeline that suggested Joyce’s eldest son Jonathan (played by Charlie Heaton) could have been Hopper’s illegitimate lovechild, the actor revealed that he approached the Duffer brothers with the idea, only to be shot down in no uncertain terms. Check out his comments below:
I love this theory, Wynona and I both love this theory. It’s something about how Hopper went to Vietnam, and we figured out a timeline where Lonnie couldn’t have been Jonathan’s father. They broke up, Lonnie was in the picture for a while, and I guess they dropped out in-between one of Hopper’s tours in Vietnam. He came back and just brought a pie to Joyce’s house one day, and they conceived Jonathan, then she got back together with Lonnie and never told him. And so the secret is that Jonathan is Hopper’s kid, and that’s why in the first season, there’s a lot of male bonding stuff between me and Jonathan.
We had developed this whole thing about [Joyce and Hopper] that I really liked. I brought it up to the Duffers, and I was like, ‘Maybe we should put this in the show.’ And they said, ‘No, that’s terrible.’
Will Stranger Things Season 5 Give Hopper and Joyce A Happy Ending?
Over the past four seasons, the blossoming romance between Hopper and Joyce has encountered its fair share of setbacks. Just when things finally seemed set to change for the pair, their future together was hampered by Hopper’s supposed death in season 3 and subsequent incarceration in a Soviet prison. While the Stranger Things season 4 finale finally saw the two characters reunited and back on American soil, their joy was quickly set aside as the Upside Down began breaking through into the township of Hawkins.
After years of placing increasingly difficult hurdles in front of the two characters, many of the show’s avid viewers are keen to see whether Hopper and Joyce may finally get their chance to become a happy couple. While the pair’s emotion-filled reunion in season 4 paid off their long-running, will-they-won’t-they chemistry, it is unlikely that the Duffer brothers intend to make things easy for the two. With the stakes moving into season 5 higher than ever before, there will likely be little time for Hopper and Joyce to explore their relationship in a more traditional sense.
Though Harbour and Ryder ultimately failed to convince the show’s creators to include their own ideas in the show, Hopper and Joyce’s relationship has always been one plagued by the complexities of their respective pasts. Moreover, the pair also tend to argue more often than not and any attempt at a long-lasting relationship will require some significant compromise on both their parts. Whether Stranger Things season 5 will finally give them a chance to overcome these issues remains to be seen, but it is likely their quest for happiness will still have many more hurdles to face.
Source: Calgary Expo (via ComicBook.com)
