How Hopper survived the Stranger Things season 3 finale

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 4.

The first seven-episode volume of Stranger Things season 4 is chock full of information. We get answers to questions like: Is there any truth to Hawkins being cursed? What's going on with Eleven's powers (or lack thereof)? What is the deal with the new big bad? But before we get into all of that, the show gives us an answer to one crucial mystery: How the heck did Jim Hopper survive the season 3 finale?

The secret Russian lab in Starcourt Mall exploded that episode, and Hopper's body was nowhere to be found, leading everyone to believe he was obliterated. But no body also means there's no confirmation of death. Seven months after the finale, the Netflix show confirmed officially that not only was Hopper (David Harbour) alive, he was in the custody of the Russians and working at a camp in Kamchatka.

What happened in between? How did he survive? The answer isn't as dramatic as you might've thought.

No, Hopper wasn't blown into the Upside Down portal and trapped there, only to be fished out by the Russians. He also wasn't blown up and then surgically stitched back together by the Mother Land. The beginning of season 4's second episode reveals that he just fell down on a lower platform.

When Joyce (Winona Ryder) flipped the switch that caused the explosion, Hopper leapt off the platform to avoid being engulfed in flames. Instead of falling to his death, there was another platform underneath him. Simple. Perhaps too simple. Did nobody else realize there was another platform, or, like, look down? Anyway...

The fall knocked Hopper unconscious and by the time he climbed back up the ladder — yes, there was a ladder leading down to this lower platform. Someone should've looked! — Russian operatives were there to greet him.

At first, they tortured Hopper for information on why he was there and who his friends were, but he didn't give in. Realizing he had survived all their techniques, the Russians determine he's strong enough to help the Mother Land and ship him off to perform manual labor at Kamchatka.

"The man does not deserve the peace of death, so I have sent him to hell," one operative mutters.

"Especially coming out of season 3, I think we're going to see entirely different colors of Hopper," Harbour tells EW. "He's in a brutal environment. He's going through brutal external things and also brutal internal things. One of the greatest things about this show is the cinematography and the colors and things like that, and each quadrant of the show has a different color palette. So, Hopper is just in a very stark environment. It's a lot of white and this dark, dark blue. He's in Russia, he's being beat up by prison guards, he's isolated, he's alone, there's a monster in this prison. And also he has these secrets that have kept him from being the father, the man that he wants to be, and he needs to purge these secrets on the inside to move forward and be the warrior that can be necessary in this fight against the Upside Down."

Read our full recap of Stranger Things season 4.

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