Imagine a world where Jim Hopper never made it past Stranger Things season 1. For David Harbour, not only did he think Hopper would die, but he expected it to happen.
In a new interview with British GQ, Hopper spoke about Stranger Things’ upcoming fifth and final season. Hopper is one of the most popular characters on the show. Yet when the show first introduces the Hawkins Police Chief, Hopper is still grieving the death of his daughter, which emotionally takes him to dark places. Harbour told GQ that he saw his character arc coming to a tragic end after one season.
“Harbour read the scripts and was convinced the first season should have ended with Hopper dying by suicide,” the profile reads. “To him, it was the only way Hopper could apologize to his daughter.” Hopper survived season 1 and became a pseudo father to Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown).
In season 3, Harbour confronted the death of his character for the second time, except this time, Hopper appeared to die after sacrificing himself to close the gate to the Upside Down. As fans eventually found out in a teaser, Hopper survived the explosion, but Russian soldiers captured him and shipped him to a prison camp in Kamchatka.
“I think they were just committed to the beauty of that moment of his death,” Harbour says about Hopper surviving the explosion. “It was so moving that I think they almost didn’t want him to be alive.”
No one, not Harbour or even Netflix, could have predicted the overwhelming success of Stranger Things. The show has become a global phenomenon, transforming Harbour and his cast members into household names. Seasons 3 and 4 are two of Netflix’s 10 most popular English-language TV shows.
Season 5 is the show’s final season and will stream later this year on Netflix.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.