Dr. Martin Brenner may rear his white-haired head within the Stranger Things world once again. Following his apparent death at the hands of the Demogorgon in Season 1, Matthew Modine’s Dr. Brenner would make flashback appearances in both Stranger Things 2 and Stranger Things 4, before being revealed as still alive in the present timeline. Throughout his time in Season 4, Brenner reestablished himself as the head honcho of the Hawkins Lab, now rebranded as the NINA Project in a New Mexican desert. Brenner would resume his experiments on Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven before the laboratory is raided by Sherman Augustus’s Lt. Colonel Jack Sullivan and his forces. While Brenner makes it out of the underground base on his feet, he is made quick work of by a helicopter sniper.
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Despite Brenner’s body now resembling Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Modine does not believe fans have seen the last of the infamous experimenter.
“No, I wouldn’t [say he’s dead] because I wouldn’t want him to be dead,” Modine told Vulture. “Three things are curious to me: How did he survive the Demogorgon? How did he survive One? And when Eleven tries to use her power against Dr. Brenner after blowing three guards in the air, he unflinchingly thwarts her and says, ‘You didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you?’ She couldn’t get it to work on him. Is there something more to Brenner than meets the eye?”
While the supernatural implications of his character are intriguing, Modine noted he most wants another Stranger Things run because of the cast.
“I don’t want to believe it’s over, because I love the Duffers. I don’t want to believe it’s over, because I can’t wait to work with Millie again,” Modine said. “I say Millie, because I don’t really have anything to do with the other cast members — except for Paul Reiser.”
In his final moments of Season 4, Brenner showed signs of a turn to the light side as he unlocked Eleven’s shock collar. While this one action was far from a complete turn to the light side, Modine sees it as a potential launching off spot for a complete redemption arc.
“The horror of what Brenner did is accepting and understanding his culpability in the death of all those children because of what One did. So if Eleven and Kali, or just Eleven, forgave him and sent him off, he would spend the remaining days of his life knowing he had been forgiven but having to accept responsibility for what he did,” Modine said. “I think Dr. Brenner is a more moral person than that, and he’d have to spend his final days acknowledging and accepting responsibility for the pain he caused. That’s the real nightmare — not being able to escape your thoughts and the things you’ve seen or done.”
Modine can be seen in Stranger Things 4, now streaming in full on Netflix.
