In the Season 4 finale of Stranger Things, Sadie Sink’s Max faced some serious injuries at the hands of Vecna, though the final scenes of the episode confirmed she would survive through these wounds, much to the surprise of viewers. Creators of the series Matt and Ross Duffer previously explained that one of the ideas they considered was having Max perish, with Sink herself recently weighing in on that outcome for her character, expressing that she didn’t know until after the season had completed that her character nearly died and that she was happy she will return for Season 5.
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“I didn’t know this until I read it in an interview, but I think Matt and Ross were planning to kill me off, like completely kill me off, and that was in the original plan for the season, but then they did change it,” Sink recalled during a conversation for Variety. “What I do know is that the Duffers are very smart, they’re very calculated, and they’d only choose to kill a character off if it was good for the plot, or would come in handy later, and they’d only keep a character if it was going to serve the plot later as well. So everything is very calculated, they know what they’re doing, but I understand, I think, if Max did completely die, then it would’ve had a bigger impact for sure, but I’m personally happy she’s still around.”
Given that the Season 4 finale featured the death of Eddie Munson, having to say goodbye to both characters likely would have been a devastating blow for audiences. With the last time we saw Max being her in the hospital and seemingly comatose, it’s unclear what sort of permanent injuries she’ll be coping with in the series going forward, but with the new season expected to have a time jump, it’s possible she will have largely recuperated from such setbacks.
While the Duffers previously teased a more grim fate for Max, they confirmed that they wouldn’t have explicitly depicted her death, more that they wouldn’t have clarified that she had survived the conflict with Vecna.
“[Max’s death] was discussed as a possibility. For a while that is what was gonna happen,” Ross shared with Netflix Geeked over the summer. “We wanted to end it in a little bit more of a question mark at the end of the season where it’s still really dark and we don’t know if Max is going to be OK… We don’t really know. We wanted to leave it up in the air moving forward into Season 5.”
Stranger Things Season 4 is expected to head into production in 2023 with a possible 2024 release date.
Are you glad Max survived the season finale? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!
