Stranger Things 4 Star Reveals Behind-the-Scenes Look at SPOILER’s Return

Many of the main characters of Stranger Things made the return for the acclaimed show’s fourth season, including David Harbour’s Hopper, who could have easily been written off with the Season 2 cliffhanger. One popular character, however, did die in a previous season, and their death took place on-screen, so there was no question about their ultimate fate. Surprisingly, the character in question did end up making a brief appearance in Season 4, in a very unexpected fashion. WARNING: Spoilers for Stranger Things 4 ahead!

Billy, played by Dacre Montgomery, died at the end of Stranger Things 3, standing up to the monsters of the Upside Down to save Max and the others after acting as the Mind Flayer’s puppet all season. In Season 4, Max blames herself for not saving Billy. When Max’s mind is invaded by Vecna, she sees a vision of Billy, still bloody from his death, blaming her for what she didn’t do. On Monday, Montgomery took to Instagram to share a behind-the-scenes photo of his return.

“Feeling extremely fortunate to have been able to shoot these scenes during the pandemic in my hometown, Perth (in Australia),” Montgomery wrote. “What an absolute blessing to work with such an incredible local crew and [Shawn Levy] directing on Zoom!”

Billy appears in Season 4 as a part of the storyline surrounding Vecna, the show’s terrifying new villain. Series producer and director Shawn Levy opened up to IGN about the creature known as Vecna.

“Season 4 required a villain unlike any before,” Levy said. “And it needed to be more than a creature, more than an evil cloud of particulate. It needed to be a humanoid villain with more depth, more dimension, and far more evil. That’s what Vecna is.”

At the Stranger Things 4 premiere, series star David Harbour offered some thoughts on what Vecna brings to the table in this new season. Like Levy, Harbour confirmed that the villain is much different than anything we’ve seen so far.

“Vecna is a psychological horror that I don’t think we’ve really seen,” Harbour told Variety. “The Upside Down has been this wild west world where there are creatures running around, there’s violence, but we’ve never seen something as calculatedly psychologically evil as this. That’s exciting because he is a true big bad that we’ve needed in the series.”

What did you think of Billy’s return in Stranger Things 4? Let us know in the comments!