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Warning: This story contains spoilers from Stranger Things Season 4, Volume 1.
When viewers meet Eddie Munson in the Stranger Things Season 4 premiere, he has one topic on his mind: graduation. “I’m gonna look Principal Higgins dead in the eye,” the high school super senior and Hellfire Club leader says, a visible hop entering his step. “I’m gonna flip him the bird, I’m gonna snatch that diploma and I’m gonna run like hell outta here.” It is immediately impossible not to love Eddie. And, apparently, the man who plays Eddie — British actor Joe Quinn — shares his character’s sentiment.
“High school is just such a terrible period in all our lives, isn't it?,” Quinn tells Tudum on the set of his Stranger Things cover story shoot with co-stars Joe Keery and Gaten Matarazzo.
For the denizens of Hawkins, young adulthood is a particularly “terrible” era, since they constantly have to deal with bloodthirsty interdimensional monsters. But there’s also the simple, relatable horror of growing up. That, at least, Quinn is familiar with.
“Stuff starts dropping and hair starts growing. You’re a bag of hormones, and you're trapped in a classroom with each other. It’s horrific,” the Dickensian alum says. “I’m very glad that’s over. Aren’t you?”
Eddie couldn’t have said it better. Yet Quinn cautions fans away from thinking he and his rocker alter ego are one in the same. “Was I the Eddie at school? No, I don’t think so,” he laughs. “I think I was probably quite mouthy at school. I don’t know if I was as stylish.” It’s difficult to be as fashionable as the guy who can pull off a denim vest, a flowing mullet and ripped jeans, all while jumping into a rip in the fabric of reality, as Eddie does in Volume 1 episode “The Dive.”
While Quinn recognizes that Eddie, Dustin Henderson (Matarazzo) and Steve Harrington (Keery) have some memorable moments in Volume 1, he promises we haven’t seen the best of “this magic bromance” just yet. “I think the payoff is later on in the series for our characters,” he teases. Like Vecna, we’ll be watching.
Stranger Things Season 4, Volume 2 premieres July 1.
