A full year has passed since Stranger Things initially revealed the title of the Season 4 premiere, and a long wait may still be ahead before fans get any new episodes. The good news is that a new image has released in connection to Season 4, and it sheds light on what the premiere will likely deliver. Fans should prepare for some "Hellfire" in a way that they may not have expected.
As revealed on Stranger Things Day 2019, the title of the Season 4 premiere is "Chapter One: The Hellfire Club" and was penned by the Duffer Brothers. No more than the title and writers were revealed, and not even all of the Season 4 scripts had been completed at that point, so fans could only speculate. Is it a reference to the club of the same name from X-Men comics? Or is it a reference to the real-life clubs from the 18th century? Or something else entirely?
A new image released just in time for Stranger Things Day 2020 sheds some light, and I'm leaning toward "something else entirely." Take a look:
Well, for the sake of all the heroes of Stranger Things, I hope a new monster doesn't debut in the Season 4 premiere that looks like the demon in the Hellfire Club emblem! Despite how eye-catching the satanic-looking head is, I'm actually more interested in what surrounds the head: a pair of dice, a flaming sword, and a morning star. Is "The Party" upgrading their name to "The Hellfire Club," at least for Dungeons & Dragons purposes?
The dice alone point toward D&D, and flaming swords and morning stars can be wielded in D&D. The guys had moved away from their epic campaigns by the time they hit the summer of 1985 in Season 3, but they could get back into the game for Season 4. There is the complication that the Byers family (now including Eleven) moved away from Hawkins, so the former D&D party would presumably be made up of Mike, Dustin, and Lucas, with maybe Erica and Steve for good measure.
If only Zoom was an option back in the '80s so Will could easily participate from afar! The group could have easily gotten the name from the pages of X-Men comics without the club having anything to actually do with X-Men. Further supporting my suspicion that the Season 4 premiere will reveal the boys got back into D&D under the "Hellfire Club" name is another post from Stranger Things on Instagram. Take a look:
It may not be the Demogorgon on that D&D board, but I wouldn't count a Demogorgon out of Season 4 after how Season 3 ended! As of the end of the third season, there was at least one living Demogorgon on the wrong side of the Upside Down, in a Soviet facility. For the sake of Hawkins, I hope it stays on another continent, but Hopper may be a little too close to the creature for comfort.
Unfortunately, we might not find out any time too soon. Like many other shows this year, Stranger Things had to shut down production due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and production seemingly only restarted in late September/early October. The break did allow the Stranger Things team to finish writing all of the Season 4 scripts, and producer Shawn Levy shared some ways that the break actually improved Season 4.
You can find the three seasons of Stranger Things so far streaming on Netflix now. For some more viewing options now and in the coming weeks, you can check out our 2020 fall TV premiere schedule.
