The Upside Down is coming for you. To celebrate the highly anticipated return of Stranger Things, “Seven Stranger Days” takes you behind the scenes and inside the lives of your Hawkins favorites with insight from the cast, the crew and even the Duffer brothers. Check out our coverage to secure your spot in the Hellfire Club.
The very first time we see Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin) and Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo) in the first episode of Stranger Things, they’re gathered together playing Dungeons & Dragons. Throughout the show’s run, the fantasy role-playing game where players use dice and miniatures to explore and fight monsters became more than just a way for the friends to hang out — it helped them make sense of the terrifying supernatural events around them.
The kids are back at the gaming table in Season 4. Now they’re playing with Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn), who, as Dungeon Master and head of the high school’s D&D club, leads the players through the game. They’re also facing a terrible new foe they’re calling Vecna, a reference to an undead wizard and god of death who’s been a major villain in D&D for decades.
Ahead of the new season, Tudum talked with Stranger Things creators and executive producers Ross and Matt Duffer about how their love of D&D and other collaborative games shaped their characters, monsters and approach to storytelling.
How did you come up with the idea for your characters to contextualize the monsters they face through the lens of D&D creatures? Ross Duffer: What we really wanted to do with the kids in Season 1 is that, as they’re encountering these extraordinary circumstances and these supernatural events, we started to think about how we would react to that if we were kids. We would reference pop culture. What the kids in the show really love is Dungeons & Dragons. They know monsters from D&D, so they’re going to go, “Well, this reminds me of this from Dungeons & Dragons.” That became a shorthand for referring to these monsters or other supernatural events that are happening to them.
Matt Duffer: This is why the kids are better at handling this than the adults; they live in this fantasy world. We particularly wanted to use Dungeons & Dragons [since] it is so much more immersive than any other game because of the role-playing element. In a way, Stranger Things is like a massive D&D campaign, where the role-playing completely takes over their lives. It’s almost like they’re sucked into a D&D game.
Dustin and Lucas give Erica (Priah Ferguson) a D&D set at the end of Season 3. Why was it important to bring her into that group and spread the love of the game beyond the boys? Ross: One thing we liked about Erica was the banter between her and Dustin about whether she was a nerd or not. Dustin was correct: My Little Pony was her entryway into nerd culture. I imagine in the space in between these seasons, Erica was like, “Well, let me crack this book open and let me see what’s there,” and she [fell in] love with that world as well. We were really excited to show what Erica could do because she is very smart. We wanted to see her not only play D&D, but crush everyone at it, because of course Erica would crush everyone.
Stranger Things Season 4 introduces a new main character, Eddie Munson, the leader of Hawkins High School’s D&D group Hellfire Club. Where did the idea for Eddie come from? Matt: A friend who’s in the writer’s room with us was a metalhead in the ’80s, and he loved D&D. He was in a Dungeons & Dragons club. We thought that was really interesting. Typically, a character like that is portrayed more along the lines of how we would portray Billy [Dacre Montgomery]. They’re smoking, they pull out knives, they’re bullies, they’re bad guys. But no, they’re actually just geeks. They’re outsiders. Then Eddie looks at a character like Erica, a little girl in middle school, and can’t imagine her playing this fantasy game. Then she subverts that expectation. It’s that John Hughes The Breakfast Club thing where you have these characters who surprise the other ones. That was a lot of the idea behind both Eddie and Erica joining that game.
Eddie really captured the role of a Dungeon Master as an antagonist who ultimately wants his players to succeed. Did gaming teach you about how to create challenges that seem really intense and almost insurmountable until your characters pull them off? Ross: In some ways we and our writers are the Dungeon Masters of Stranger Things. We love all of our characters. In that game, Eddie’s throwing obstacles at these characters and he’s enjoying their reactions [of], “Oh, my God, I can’t believe this is happening. I’m so scared.” There’s just a joy in storytelling, and that’s what we really wanted to get across with that scene.
When you were coming up with your versions of the monsters that become known as the Demogorgon, the Mind Flayer and Vecna, did you go to D&D first, or did you say, “This is my idea for a monster. What would be the best D&D analogue for it?” Matt: We come up with a monster that we want in whatever season we’re doing, and then we flip through the D&D Monster Manuals looking for, “What would [the kids] be referencing here?” In this case, it was Vecna, who really wasn’t a character until the ’90s. We cheated a little bit, but we thought Eddie is so advanced — and the idea of Vecna did exist [in the lore] — that he could have brought Vecna back to life. But that’s why you have the kids react in the way they do, like, “You can’t do that. He doesn’t exist. He’s dead.” And Eddie’s like, “No, he’s alive. He’s very much alive.”
Ross: It’s essentially like if Eddie wrote “Vecna Lives!” a bit earlier than it was actually written. Hopefully, the D&D lovers out there don’t hate us for doing a little bit of a cheat there. But it really felt like it had to be Vecna. If the kids were going to talk about this new monster, that was the closest [fit]. So, that was our way of making it work within the context of it not yet being 1990. It was too good to pass up. Vecna just feels so ominous and scary. We wanted it to be just like the Demogorgon is. We wanted it to be a monster that is infamous in the D&D world. We didn’t want it to be some smaller monster that not many people were familiar with. We wanted it to have that weight to it. It needed abilities that lined up in some way with our monster and it needed a cool name.
Matt: Vecna is a great name.
Ross: We thought the same thing with Demogorgon, [though] it was obviously a little harder for some people to say. I’ve heard people mispronounce it a lot. But it felt like a cool name, and it felt ominous and scary.
Dungeons & Dragons is more popular than ever, and it’s won more mainstream acceptance. How do you feel about that change in perception, and how do you think Stranger Things contributed to removing some of the stigma around the game? Ross: If Stranger Things helped D&D [gain] popularity, that’s amazing. I think certainly there were people that weren’t aware of it, saw it [on the show] and became interested. I think that’s really exciting. But I think it’s more than that. I really think that, in this day and age where everything is digital, there’s just less human interaction. I think that people still need that and they still crave it and something like Dungeons & Dragons is a reason to get together with your friends and to actually see them face to face to overcome this challenge. Even though it’s make-believe, I do think it brings people closer. I think there’s something refreshing about just being in a physical space with people and doing something.
Matt: It’s just different than when we were growing up. Geek culture is just more mainstream now. When I was growing up, reading Lord of the Rings, that was pretty dorky. Now they’re billion-dollar movies. Now there’s a Magic: The Gathering [series] that [Netflix] is working on. Ross and my first movie in fourth grade, was [about] Magic: The Gathering. That’s all I wanted in the world was a Magic: The Gathering movie. That was 25 years ago, and nobody was interested in doing it.
What was the plot of your Magic movie? Ross: It’s been a little while since I’ve seen it, but I remember I was a dwarf because I had on a cotton beard. Ross was a knight, our friend Tristan was a paladin, and we were essentially making a journey through the woods. I don’t remember who the villain was, it was one of us with a skull mask on.
Matt: I don’t think there was much plot in there. It was mostly us whacking each other with swords with Danny Elfman music playing in the background. But, somehow, it took us all summer to craft this thing. We were very proud of it, and I would say we were ahead of the curve because now Hollywood is finally catching up. They should have listened to us way back when.
What were you trying to convey about each kid in Stranger Things, based on their roles in the game? Matt: When we cast the actors, we started to figure out more who these characters were. It was fun to figure out what D&D character they were going to pick. Mike very much is the leader. He’s the heart of the group. [The players] each serve a different purpose within the group of D&D, in that they’re a party. The party does not work if you’re missing one element from that party. They each have very distinct and different roles. We wanted to make sure, when we were deciding what characters they would be, that they would fit the roles they’re playing in the real world as well.
Will gives up his D&D books because he says he couldn’t imagine being with another Dungeon Master, but then the rest of the kids do find another Dungeon Master. Do you think Will made a mistake? Matt: That really is Will’s journey this season — dealing with the emotions that come with being separated from his friends, and part of their identity is this game. That was the case when we were growing up. We would get together to play a game or make a movie. When you’re separated from that, it’s like you’ve lost a limb.
Ross: I don’t think Will is done with D&D. I think it’s too much of who he is. You saw in Season 3 how much he loves it, and how frustrated he was that his other friends were moving away from it briefly. But I think, at the end of the day, it’s such a core part of this group of characters that they could never fully give it up.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
