David Harbour Is Ready To Leave ‘Stranger Things’ Behind After 10 Years of Playing Hopper

The final season of Stranger Things is coming to Netflix later this year, and one of the show’s biggest stars is looking back on his time working on the series. While the kids of Stranger Things run the show and will undoubtedly be remembered as the highlight of the series, adults like David Harbour and Winona Ryder have also helped give the show its identity. Harbour has been acting since the early 2000s, but his role as Hopper in Stranger Things has helped advance his popularity and make him one of the biggest stars in the world. During a recent interview with Interview Magazine in which Harbour caught up with his MCU co-star Scarlett Johansson, he reflected on Stranger Things coming to an end, which he isn’t necessarily sad about:

“When I started I loved it so much. Buddies of mine who’d done TV shows for many years said, ‘By Season three or four you’ll be running.’ And I was like, ‘Never! I love all these guys so much.’ And then you get to a certain point where you’re like, ‘How much more story is there?‘ You’re having to play a lot of the same beat, and there’s a feeling where you’re like, ‘I want to take a risk. I want to do something that people haven’t seen me do before.’ So yeah, after 10 years, it’s like, ‘Okay.’ “

After doing something for so long, letting go has to be somewhat cathartic. Harbour also isn’t the first person to work on a specific project for years that he’s looking forward to leaving behind. People like Tony Gilroy and Diego Luna, who began working on the Star Wars franchise on Rogue One and then kept that up with both seasons of Andor in the last few years. For creatives and stars like this, who are likely to receive offers for all kinds of projects, it’s likely quite liberating to leave that chapter behind and be able to focus on something new. The future of Stranger Things is unclear right now as fans remain curious about potential spin-offs, but it sounds like David Harbour won’t be part of anything related to Netflix’s sci-fi universe going forward.​​​​​​​