Stranger Things Star Casts Doubt on Appearing in Final Season

The first season of Stranger Things saw Winona Ryder’s Joyce and David Harbour’s Hopper have chemistry with one another, yet it wasn’t an obvious love connection, while Season 2 introduced Joyce’s love interest Bob, as played by Sean Astin, who sacrificed himself to save her and her family. While Bob is definitively dead, Astin doubts that he would appear in the final season of the series even in the form of a flashback, as Joyce’s relationship with Hopper has changed in the wake of Bob’s death to be a fan-favorite romantic connection. The final season of Stranger Things isn’t expected to premiere until 2025.

“[Fans would] say, ‘Are you gonna be in Stranger Things?’ and I would say, ‘No, I’m dead,’” Astin recently shared during an appearance at LA Comic-Con, per The Direct. “But why couldn’t they do a flashback [for Season 5]… to a happier time with…? I know why they won’t. Because it’s going to be Hopper and Joyce, and they’re not going to want to flashback to a time when she was actually happy.”

Given the chemistry between Ryder and Harbour, fans were largely surprised to see Astin debut in Season 2 as Joyce’s love interest, but the charm he brought to the role made it all the more devastating to see him killed off in the series, even if it was in a heroic fashion. In fact, even the creators of the series the Duffer brothers had intended Bob to die much earlier in the season, but Astin was so delightful of a performer, he got to stick around a while longer.

“Bob was always intended to die, but we fell in love with Sean and what he was doing with this character,” Ross Duffer shared with Entertainment Weekly back in 2017 about Bob’s death. “He was supposed to die in like Episode 4 and we just kept keeping him alive because he was so great and what he added to the show. Once we got to 8, we were like, we either got to do this or not do this. But I think it was important in terms of the stakes of the show. This is not a kids show and there are consequences and people do die. But we are sad to lose him because he really just blew us away.”  

At the time, Duffer even teased, “I have some Bob ideas but I don’t know what to do with him … I will say I would love to revisit the character of Bob in some way but I don’t know how to even do that.”

With how much has changed since Season 2, a flashback seems unlikely, but with the Stranger Things franchise expanding in a variety of ways, we can’t rule out seeing Bob again.

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