David Harbour reveals Arnold Schwarzenegger Easter egg in ‘Stranger Things’ season four
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan the Barbarian has a connection to the fourth season of Stranger Things.
In the finale, titled ‘The Piggyback’, Jim Hopper (David Harbour) picks up and wields a sword against a demogorgon inside a Russian prison.
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Speaking to British GQ, actor David Harbour revealed the prop blade is the same one wielded by Schwarzenegger in the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian.
“I don’t know if you saw this, but that sword I pick up – it’s the actual prop sword they used in Conan the Barbarian,” Harbour said. “It’s the sword that Schwarzenegger swings in the movie.”
In the same episode, Hopper and Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) also share a kiss, which Harbour described as “a bit of fan service”.
“It’s always something that Winona and I have talked about – on set riffing about what their relationship was in high school, and y’know, who they are to each other,” Harbour said. “There was always a tension between should this be consummated, or should they just be friends? And I do think it’s a bit of fan service. I think there was a real appetite for mommy and daddy to get back together again. And then once we were on that train, it seemed like an inevitability.”
Stranger Things is set to conclude with the upcoming fifth season, although show creators The Duffer Brothers have discussed potential spin-offs.
Harbour recently suggested Euphoria actor Jacob Elordi could play a younger version of Hopper, if one of the spin-offs turned out to be a prequel.
Speaking about the actor, Harbour said: “He could pull off being as handsome as I was at 20.”
In a four-star review of season four, NME wrote: “While there are some gripes to be had with the penultimate season of the show, it still packs in all the terrifying thrills you’d expect, deftly blending horror and sci-fi to maximum effect while still allowing for some laughs among the bleakness. It’s a finely-tuned formula that’s given us yet another sublime season.”