We’ve been gifted with a few sneak peeks at Stranger Things season 4 by this point, but apart from the major revelation that Hopper is indeed still alive, we’re still yet to get any real sense of where the story will go next. The most recent trailer debuted in early May, taking the form of a flashback to Eleven’s childhood locked in Hawkins National Lab. The heroine herself didn’t feature, but we did receive a glimpse at the other kids that the evil Dr. Brenner experimented on.
This trailer appeared to be a vision that Eleven was receiving, going by the final shot featuring Millie Bobby Brown’s eyes bolting open. This further teased that Brenner will be back in season 4, somehow resurrected after being eaten by a Demogorgon in the first run. It’s possible that this promo had another purpose, though, with a new fan theory pitching that the other children could also prove key to season 4’s storyline.
The theory relies on a separate promo for evidence. At the same time as the aforementioned teaser, a different one debuted. This was more of an atmospheric, eerie piece, featuring a never-changing shot of the HNL Control Room, depicting some CCTV TV screens. For the duration of the two-minute trailer, the screens mostly just show static, but occasionally a flash of what look to be one of the children’s rooms, smeared with blood and abandoned, appears.
When you put these two promos together, they seem to tease that the next run will finally reveal what happened to the other kids who Brenner experimented on. Season 2 introduced Kali AKA Eight, but due to the negative reception she faced, the show dropped this plot thread in the third outing. They can’t leave this corner of the mythos unturned, though, so it’s encouraging and intriguing that we might catch up with the other kids next time.
But, going by the evidence, it looks like they’ll be nowhere near as well adjusted as Eleven and Kali and may even pose a serious threat to our heroes and the people of Hawkins. Will both they and Brenner be the big bads of season 4? That’d certainly be an interesting twist, and we’ll find out for sure when Stranger Things eventually returns to Netflix. Probably in 2022.
