Hopper (David Harbour) and Joyce (Winona Ryder) have had a thing through four seasons of Stranger Things, but one thing the dating-back-to-high-school, but-not-dating friends didn’t have: a love child together. At Canada’s Calgary Expo convention, Harbour revealed — and immediately debunked — the “crazy” theory that won’t prove true in the upcoming fifth and final season of the Netflix series. As told by Harbour, the two actors once suspected that the hinted-at history between the old friends wasn’t just a will-they-or-won’t-they romance, but that Hopper fathered Joyce’s oldest son, Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton), instead of her absent and alcoholic ex-husband Lonnie (Ross Partridge).
“I love that relationship. I remember early on, in the script, Wynona and I were always very fascinated from the first season … we were just digging into the story and we were just figuring it out,” Harbour said. “Joyce and Hopper, in the beginning, are hinted at having some kind of past relationship, but it’s never expressed. It was something in high school that happened, but that’s why they’re so mad at each other. But, you know, throughout the years, we thought we’d get into it in season 2, and then they introduced [Sean Astin’s Bob]. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s going to be a problem.’”
Videos by ComicBook.com
Harbour clarified that the “crazy, fun, weird backstory” he developed with Ryder “isn’t a spoiler for the show because [series creators the Duffer brothers] have assured me that it isn’t true.” According to the theory, a Joyce-Hopper hookup happened when he returned home from his military service in Vietnam.
“I love this theory, Wynona and I both love this theory. It’s something about how Hopper went to Vietnam, and we figured out a timeline where Lonnie couldn’t have been Jonathan’s father. They broke up, Lonnie was in the picture for a while, and I guess they dropped out in-between one of Hopper’s tours in Vietnam,” Harbour explained. “He came back and just brought a pie to Joyce’s house one day, and they conceived Jonathan, then she got back together with Lonnie and never told him. And so the secret is that Jonathan is Hopper’s kid, and that’s why in the first season, there’s a lot of male bonding stuff between me and Jonathan.”
He continued: “We had developed this whole thing about [Joyce and Hopper] that I really liked. I brought it up to the Duffers, and I was like, ‘Maybe we should put this in the show.’ And they said, ‘No, that’s terrible.’”
Harbour previously revealed Stranger Things 5 begins filming in June.
Related Posts
-
Henry Creel appears in Stranger Things: The First Shadow.
