Stranger Things' Joseph Quinn Reveals How Knowing Eddie's Fate Impacted His Performance
This article contains spoilers for "Stranger Things" Season 4, Episode 9.
It's hard to believe we only met Joseph Quinn's Eddie Munson a mere nine episodes ago at the beginning of "Stranger Things" Season 4. Eddie is initially introduced as the eccentric leader of the Hellfire Club, the Dungeons & Dragons group that newly minted Hawkins High freshmen Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) are part of. But Eddie turns out to be much more than that. After popular cheerleader Chrissy (Grace Van Dien) dies in his trailer, Eddie goes on the run and soon finds himself swept up in the latest battle against the Upside Down, whether he likes it or not.
Yet while Eddie professes that he's "no hero," the perpetual high school senior ultimately rises to the occasion when it matters most, single-handedly taking on a swarm of Demobats and sacrificing himself in an effort to ensure that the Upside Down's version of the Creel house, where Steve (Joe Keery), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), and Robin (Maya Hawke) are fighting Vecna, remains free of the creatures. Even as he's dying, Eddie maintains his good humor and generous spirit, making his end even more bittersweet.
In an interview with Looper and other outlets, Quinn explained how knowing Eddie's arc — from anti-establishment Dungeon Master to wrongly accused fugitive to selfless hero — impacted how he played the character.
Knowing Eddie's fate helped Quinn 'dig the knife in'
Joseph Quinn noted that being aware of Eddie's fate in "Stranger Things" Season 4 influenced his performance, observing, "It's very helpful to know everything. You want to know everything so you can bend it in certain ways and get payoffs at different moments."
Quinn said this was particularly true in the scenes that preceded Eddie's death, where he and Gaten Matarazzo worked to make Eddie and Dustin's relationship especially endearing. "Gaten and I were talking about the scenes that lead up to his demise," Quinn shared. "We really wanted to explore this fraternal kind of love between them — how physically they could get excited about stuff and how youthful they could feel in order to really dig the knife in."
Interestingly, while Eddie's death scene in "Stranger Things" packs an emotional wallop, Quinn revealed that filming it was actually a rather strange experience.
"Logistically, it was quite a weird scene to film. We shot it at the end of a very grueling night shoot where we started at [around] 6:00 p.m. ... then finished at 6:00 [a.m.]. It was a proper nocturnal night shoot," Quinn remembered. "We'd done all of the bat fight stuff. Then, I was in prosthetic makeup ... being worked on by four or five brilliant makeup artists and then wheeled out and chucked on the floor, and then we managed to get my coverage before the sun came up. Then literally months later, we shot Gaten's coverage. So it was quite weird knowing that that scene wasn't quite done, but we were both very relieved to get that monkey off our back, really. It was such a delight doing that with him because he's so great."
Every episode of "Stranger Things" Season 4 is now available on Netflix.