Stranger Things Star Confirms Return for Season 5 (Even Though They Died)

Stranger Things Season 5 will be the Final Season of the show, which means all bets are off when it comes to characters living or dying. But how about dead characters living again? That certainly seems to be the implication from one of the biggest stars of Stranger Things – one we didn’t think we’d be seeing in the Final Season of the show, because last we saw, they were dead!

WARNING: STRANGER THINGS SEASON 5 SPOILER FOLLOWS!

In a new Vulture interview with the not-so-subtle title of “Matthew Modine Doesn’t Thing His Stranger Things Time Is Up”, Stranger Things star Matthew Modine floats the idea that his character of “Papa” (aka Hawkins Lab head Dr. Martin Brenner) isn’t as dead as he looked in the penultimate episode of Stranger Things Season 4 – Part 2:

“I wouldn’t want him to be dead,” Modine said, before dropping some big “questions” for fans to consider: “Three things are curious to me: How did he [Brenner] 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?”

Will Stranger Things Season 5 Reveal Martin Brenner’s Secret Powers?

There’s been a long-running fan theory that one of Stranger Things‘ biggest secrets is that Dr. Martin Brenner isn’t just the president of his little clinic of psychics – he’s also a client. That is to say: some fans didn’t buy that Henry Creel/One was the only secret-psychic hiding in the Hawkins Lab: they believe that Martin Brenner is and always has been one of the original psychically-endowed operatives working for the government.

It would make a whole lot of sense to have Brenner turn out to be more than a administrator exploiting children for their psychic gifts; his connection to Henry Creel and Eleven would also resonate on a much deeper level, if they were both echoes of his own experiences in the kind of programs that preceded MKUltra. Given how compartmentalized Brenner is, it would also make sense that he would never reveal the extent of his own psychic abilities – even while pushing children beyond their boundaries to unlock and/or master their psychic might.

Having Brenner survive, and reveal that he has powers would also open a new door of possibility for how the Hawkins Gang can finally defeat Vecna and seal the breach between our world the Upside Down. If Brenner has powers, those power could arguably include clairvoyant insight into the dark realm and Vecna, as well as the kind of telekinetic abilities that could help defeat the demonic hordes, and close the portal between dimensions.

At the very least, it will be fun to see Matthew Modine back for the final chapters of Stranger Things – especially if Eleven and “Papa” get an epic shared-psychic action moment together.

Stranger Things Season 5 will premiere on Netflix sometime in 2025.