‘Star Wars’ was the great inspiration for the end of ‘Stranger Things 4’

Spoilers for season 4 of ‘Stranger Things’

Particles from the Upside Down World are still raining down on Hawkins, after they premiered on Netflix on July 1 the last two episodes from ‘Stranger Things 4’.

With an open ending that leaves the cards on the table for the fifth and final season of the series, the lengthy chapter 9 (over two and a half hours) left us with more questions than answers, and a tragic ending for two of the show’s most beloved characters: Eddie died in a heroic way after giving us “the most metal concert in history” of Stranger Things playing ‘Master of Puppets’, and Max ended up being dead for a few anguished minutes until Eleven mediated to bring her back (although she is still very wounded and in a coma).

According to the creators of the series, brothers Matt and Ross Dufferthe main inspiration of ‘Stranger Things’ when dealing with the conclusion (or, in some cases, the “non” conclusion) of certain themes was ‘Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back‘.

The midpoint of the first released trilogy of ‘Star Wars’ (take a look at the order of the ‘Star Wars’ movies to find out everything) has always been pointed out as an example of a darker sequel, which serves to advancing the story masterfully while paving the way for a future conclusion. Y the Duffers were clear: “We’ve always wanted to do ‘The Empire Strikes Back’.”

The brothers highlight the sense of loss that both works share. In the fourth season of one of Netflix’s best series, we lose recurring characters like Doctors Owens (Paul Reiser) and Brenner (Matthew Modine), as well as new fan favorite Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn), and there is a clear parallel between the state of deep coma of Max (Sadie Sink) and the end of Han Solo (Harrison Ford) in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ frozen in carbonite.

Hawkins’ fate also seems to reflect the shattered state of the Rebel Alliance at the end of ‘Star Wars V’. With the spores raining down on Hawkins in the final moments of episode 9, the stakes are higher than ever and failure is closer than ever. “We knew we wanted to end the spore drop in HawkinsMatt says.

He continues: “Like I said, we were very inspired by ‘The Empire Strikes Back,’ that ending where they look out the window. We knew we wanted to end on the backs of our characters as they look out into this darkness. We wanted to convey the notion of war, a supernatural war that hangs over Hawkins“.

Of course, all of this impending doom is meant to anticipate the final closure in season 5, just as ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ set us up for ‘Return of the Jedi’. Matt continues:

“We’ve established the stakes, and the feeling that we wanted to try and have is that ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ feel of, ‘OMG I’m so excited to see what happens next‘. Or ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’, as they head towards Mordor. That is the dream, that is the hope. That’s the feeling you want. Which we just haven’t been able to do before, because we usually end stories and then say, oh, but there’s some horror lurking below the surface that the audience sees that our characters don’t necessarily see. ANDn this case, our characters actually see the horror. It’s like, what are they going to do? How are they going to deal with this? How will your trip be? Those were the two movies we were referring to when we were working on the last take.”