Netflix's Stranger Things 4 teaser offers a major reveal to fans – Hawkins police chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour) is still alive. The 50 seconds of footage show a slow pan over a railroad track in Russia, where a number of men are imprisoned and working under the supervision of armed guards. One of them turns around at the end of the clip, and it is revealed to be Hopper – despite the fact that he was allegedly killed at the end of Stranger Things 3.
At the end of Stranger Things 3, Hopper and Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) destroy the machine the Russians have built to re-open the Upside Down. But Hopper gets caught in a fight with Grigori, and appears to be disintegrated (along with everything else in the room) when the shutdown occurs. Later, Joyce gives his adoptive daughter Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) a handwritten note from him, furthering the assumption that he died in the explosion. However, we never actually see his dead body, and a post-credits scene casts major suspicion on Hopper's death.
Right after the credits start to roll, the viewer is taken to a Russian facility in Kamchatka. The Stranger Things post-credits scene shows an officer dragging a prisoner out of a cell and into a cage, where he is attacked by a demogorgon. But before that, he skips over a different cell, under instructions from his supervisor. "Not the American," he says, before the doomed man is executed. This led to widespread speculation that the "American" is Hopper, and the chief is not actually dead.
The first Season 4 teaser confirms this theory several months before Stranger Things 4's expected release date, which will likely be in late 2020 if not 2021. The reveal was an unfortunately decision, however. Hopper being imprisoned in Russia is one of the biggest reveals in the show's history. Hopper is one of the Stranger Things' most beloved characters, and there was always going to be a huge reaction when it turned out he was still alive. When Jon Snow died at the end of Game of Thrones' fifth season, a similar wave of speculation soared through the internet that he may not actually be dead. That theory turned out to be correct, but it still was a shocker, despite rumors swirling for months that it would happen. Netflix could have had a similar reveal, and it would have still had plenty of shock value even if people saw the Stranger Things 4 plot twist coming.
But instead, Netflix tipped their hand in February. They pretended Hopper was dead for months, then decided to give it away in a teaser, wasting what could have been a riveting moment in Stranger Things 4's early moments. There's still plenty viewers don't know about Hopper: how he ended up at this facility, and what the Russians want with the demogorgon, Stranger Things' iconic monster. But it's still underwhelming to know the small-town Chief of Police is alive so far away from the release, when it could have had triple the impact in the middle of an actual episode.