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Warning: This article contains spoilers from Stranger Things Season 4, Volume 2.

We’ve waited. We’ve speculated. And we now know the song that Eddie Munson (Joe Quinn) absolutely shreds on his guitar in the Stranger Things Season 4, Volume 2 finale is Metallica’s “Master of Puppets.” Eddie’s big metal moment is a turning point for the president of the Hellfire Club, as he finally takes his life into his own hands after his world has been turned upside down all season. And also...

“It’s just fucking badass, isn’t it?” Quinn tells Tudum.

Badass and deliberately so. The Duffer brothers only ever had one song in mind when cooking up Eddie’s star-making moment. It was “Master of Puppets” or nothing, and it was written directly into the script. “They knew what they wanted,” says Quinn.

Stranger Things music supervisor Nora Felder says that, like Max’s (Sadie Sink) theme this season (“Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush), the Metallica song was another one of those “it has to be this song!” moments. “Just as ‘Running Up that Hill’ holds a truth that speaks to the core of Max’s being, ‘Master of Puppets’ also speaks directly to Eddie’s core,” says Felder. “I really don’t think it could have been any other song!”

Dungeons & Dragons paladins in mossy armor, Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo) and Eddie Munson (Joe Quinn).

A guitarist in real life, Quinn ran out and bought a new guitar as soon as he received the script for Episode 9, in which he and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) team up to lure the Demobats away from Vecna’s (Jamie Campbell Bower) hideaway by rocking out on the roof of the Munson trailer. “I manically started practicing,” says Quinn. The Duffers didn’t actually know that Quinn could play when he signed on for the show, it was just a lucky coincidence. They only found out after emailing him during the pandemic, asking Quinn, “By the way, can you play guitar?” Quinn remembers telling them, ‘I can play guitar. Like, I’m no virtuoso, but I’ll be able to get away with looking like I play guitar.’ I hope,” he says. “They said, ‘OK, good to know.’ ” By the time it came to shooting that scene, Quinn had mastered the guitar riff and was actually playing along to a guide track. “Everyone thought he did a great job!” says Felder. 

Eddie Munson (Joe Quinn) roaring the rock gods to life to selflessly save the world.

Before Volume 2 dropped on Netflix, Quinn hadn’t watched the extended scene in its entirety — just bits he’d seen in post-production. But in his mind, “Master of Puppets” is sonically a “smack in the face” and “the perfect crescendo for the madness that is that sequence.”

Felder also thinks the “high-octane, driving sonic elements” accent Eddie’s character evolution well, as the song “aligns with Eddie’s seemingly arrogant and edgy, in-your-face public persona.” Leading up to the scene, “the townspeople have misunderstood Eddie as a sort of satanic demon — which is the farthest from the truth,” says Felder. “Against this backdrop, the Talisman-like qualities of Eddie’s guitar and punk/metal music help him reconnect to his closely guarded traits of love, care and courage.”

Quinn admires Eddie’s “bravery in confronting one’s own vulnerability.”

The music supervisor continues: “This enables him to fend off his personal inner demons in order to help fight the all-powerful demon, Vecna. When Eddie cries out, ‘Chrissy, this is for you,’ we begin to realize Eddie has taken back his power to selflessly risk it all for others, memorializing Chrissy in the process.”

Felder points out that the drugs referenced in “Master of Puppets” share similarities with Vecna, as they each have the potential to rob people of their autonomy. Lyrics like “twisting your mind and smashing your dreams” could almost have been written for the show. “The aggressive, up-tempo metal sound of ‘Puppets’ belies its cautionary psychological and socially conscious lyrics, which are rooted in a sensitive concern for others,” says Felder. “The sensitive side that we’ve seen in Eddie, which is clearly evident in the scene when he meets up with Chrissy, is similarly masked and concealed by Eddie’s abrasive public image.”

Turns out Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) has been pulling the strings for much longer than we thought.

Steve Dietl/Netflix

Quinn notes that, to him, the lyrics amplify “Vecna being the ‘Master of Puppets,’ and us trying to confront that,” as Eddie also pulls on his own guitar strings, forcing the bats to obey him — their new, albeit temporary, master.

Eddie playing the bat puppet master might not have lasted long, but it was foreshadowed. If you clocked Eddie’s tattoos this season, you may have noticed a few Easter eggs. Namely, bats and a puppet inked on his arm. 

Head makeup artist Amy L. Forsythe tells Tudum that she and Jeremy Sutton, the series’ tattoo designer, designed Eddie’s tattoos together. “I wanted his tattoos to have thin, fallen out line work to look like he gets them done in the trailer park by a ‘kitchen scratcher,’ ” she says.

(Left) Eddie’s tattoo of a puppet; (right) Eddie’s tattoo of bats.

Forsythe opted to give Eddie bat tattoos because they’re “pretty heavy metal,” and she had already read the episode where Steve (Joe Keery) gets attacked. “The Puppet Master tattoo was my nod at the control Vecna has over his victims,” she says, but admits she had no idea that she had so many foreshadowing tattoos on Eddie or that they’d line up so well with the song’s title. “Pretty rad that it lined up that way, though,” she says.  

Adds Quinn, “I think [the puppet tattoo] was on there before those [final] scripts came out. That might have just been a coincidence, really.”

“For us, it was like watching the greatest song at a rock concert, and we each had front row seats!” music supervisor Nora Felder says of seeing the full scene for the first time.

With Eddie’s body art lining up perfectly with the song’s title, it would’ve been a major bummer if Metallica — whose song “The Four Horsemen” was featured in Season 2 — hadn’t approved its usage. Felder wanted to be “respectful in making sure that Metallica fully understood what context the song was being used in, plus how integral it was to the scene and for this exciting new character, Eddie Munson, who no one had met yet in previous seasons,” she says. “When we heard the band signed off, we were elated.”

As were Metallica. They tell Tudum they were “beyond psyched” for “Master of Puppets” to be featured in the show. “The way the Duffer brothers have incorporated music into Stranger Things has always been next level,” says the band. “But to have such a pivotal scene built around it… we were all stoked to see the final result. And when we did, we were totally blown away.”

The band calls Quinn’s climactic scene “extremely well done,” noting their amazement that some fans were able to guess the song just by seeing a few seconds of Quinn’s hands in the trailer. “How crazy cool is that?”

They view being such a big part of Eddie’s journey “an incredible honor” and are delighted to “once again be keeping company with all of the other amazing artists featured in the show.”

The band’s blessing, Quinn’s dedication to his craft and some nifty details from the makeup department all culminate in what Felder calls “clearly the episode’s most epic scene.” In that moment, we see the fire finally back in Eddie’s eyes after a season spent running scared. It’s the image of a man coming back to himself for a higher calling. Or as Felder puts it, “It’s as if Dustin and the audience are rooting for Eddie in his courageous attempt to reclaim his own power and fend off Vecna’s evil fleet to save his friends and the world.”

Most. Metal. Concert. Ever.