Duffer brothers confirm they planned to kill this member of the gang in Stranger Things 4

*Spoilers follow* The latest season of Stranger Things has definitely been the most dramatic yet. But now the show’s creators, the Duffer Brothers, have confirmed the original plan for Stranger Things 4 was to kill off one on the gang – our very own Max.

Yep, really. Max went through hell in this season. It looked like she might have been killed by Vecna in volume one, and then in volume two she was in a coma after having her bones broken and being blinded by Vecna. She technically died for one minute before Eleven revived her, but the original plan was to have her die permanently.

“It was discussed as a possibility,” Ross Duffer said. “For a while that is what was going to happen. But we ended up in this… we wanted to end it with a little more of a question at the end of the season. It’s still really dark and if Max is going to be okay, we just don’t really know. We wanted to leave it up in the air moving forward into season five.”

via Netflix

Matt Duffer added that, with the original plan being to kill Max, they had wanted the main characters to feel a sense of loss in Stranger Things 4. “We wanted them to actually lose,” he said. “We wanted our characters to experience what that felt like. That was the big idea coming into season four, that they were going to lose. We were going to introduce Vecna and they were going to lose to him. That sets our characters up for what will be the ultimate final confrontation with Vecna and with the Upside Down in season five.”

They definitely do feel a sense a loss, with Max in a coma having been consumed by Vecna and now having her mind left as an empty void. But it could have been so much different!

Sadie Sink, who plays Max, had previously shared with EW she doesn’t know what fate is in store for her character. “It’s definitely all up in the air right now,” she said. “I’m just as excited as everyone else to find out where Max is and how she’s doing.”

Stranger Things 4 is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook. 

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