On Jim Hopper....
After reading a myriad of analyses and meta on Hopper’s character in S3 on Tumblr/Reddit/Twitter/everywhere, I've come to realize that my understanding of his character and his arc is very different than most interpretations I've seen. And it frustrates me because i think ultimately, the criticism of him is unfairly harsh and misses the point of his arc.
I will make a few bold assertions (bold=likely unpopular) and address them under the cut because the more I’ve thought about this the longer it got and I want to appropriately address each point.
Assertion 1: S1 Hopper is NOT the Hopper we want, in fact, this is regressive! Hopper and we should be glad he’s gone
Assertion 2: S1/S2 Hopper is inappropriately romanticized and it created unrealistic expectations for Hopper’s characterization in S3
Assertion 3: The circumstances in S3 are dramatically different than S1-S2 and drive the changes we see in Hopper’s characterization in S3
Assertion 4: Hopper and Joyce’s arguing in S3 was a symptom of a shift in their relationship dynamic, and not OOC
Assertion 5: Hopper's negative character traits were intentionally amplified in S3 as a juxtaposition for his redemption arc coming in S4
Assertion 1:
When we are introduced to Hopper in S1 he is a pill-popping womanizer. He is a jerk. In episode 1, he shows up to work hungover cracking "your mom" jokes and when Flo tells him that Joyce is worried about her missing kid he dismisses her and says "I’m gonna get on that." A frantic Joyce has to beg him to look for her son and during the conversation, he's throwing in interjections about screwing Chrissy as a teen in the back of his dad's Oldsmobile and somewhat snidely inquiring about whether Will is gay. Not a very nice dude.
It's not until later in the episode when we learn that he had a daughter who is now dead, and begin to suspect that perhaps there is more to him than the jerk-off cop from a small town. And then the first real introduction we get to Hopper, the real Hopper, is in 1x2 when an agitated Joyce asks him "wouldn't you know your own daughter's [breathing]?" He nearly caves then, caves under the weight of his grief, the pressure of dealing with a case of a missing kid, feeling empathy for what Joyce is going through. So what does he do? He retreats to his cruiser as soon as possible and pops a pill. Why? Because he cannot handle the grief and emotion. So he medicates it away.
For anyone who has ever been on Xanax (or see i.e. Benzos in general) they are typically prescribed to dull intense emotions, such as a anxiety attack. You can be in the middle of an anxiety attack (shaking, crying, unable to breathe), and a Xanax kicks in and it halts the entire thing. You feel nothing. When you're in pain, physical or emotional, it kills that pain almost instantly, too. And that’s what makes it so addictive. And it's not just pain that it kills, but pretty much all emotion with it.
Hopper in S1 is popping Benzos because he is at the lowest point in his life. He lost his daughter and his purpose in life. He is merely existing. He feels like a curse. Part of him even seems to feel responsible for Will's disappearance for no other reason than his own misery. Think about 1x1-1x7 Hopper for a second: can you remember a scene when he smiles? Laughs? Gets angry? Cries? Shows really any emotion at all? I've watched s1 multiple times and I don't remember one. He's so heavily medicated that he isn't feeling ANYTHING.
But then in 1x8, we finally get a glimpse of the real Hopper in glimpses of his backstory. A man laughing and playfully throwing around his daughter. We see a broken man crying in a hallway. We see a tender man reading to his daughter. This is the real Hopper who isn't just existing as Hopper is in S1, but living.
Hopper saving Will, this is the very beginning of his redemption. In that moment, he is able to bring Will back. Save him in a way he couldn't with his own daughter. That wall he’s built, quite artfully, is finally cracking.
So you see. S1 Hopper isn't what we want. S1 Hopper was in a deep dark cave. Sure, he was kind to Joyce. Helpful. He listened. He didn't lose his temper. But it's easy not to lose your temper when you're not feeling anything. It's easy to be calm and rational when you’re emotionally detached. But what kind of life is that?
Assertion 2:
In S2, Hopper is already different. In 2x1 our first introduction to Hopper is positioned similarly to S1. He pulls into the station in his police car. He's still grouchy, he's still joking around about dumb shit (dating Bob Derek) but we see a real smile from him. He goes with Joyce and Will to Will’s appointments at Hawkins Lab (we don't know how often but it's obviously frequent enough that Owens jokingly refers to Hopper as Will’s “Pop”). Hopper has a purpose again. To protect Will and Joyce, keep them safe. These are externalities. And as someone as riddled with trauma as Hopper is, externalities make it easier to function. Hyper-vigilance and overprotective/controlling behavior aren’t exactly admirable qualities, but they come in handy when the people close to you are threatened by inter-dimensional shadow monsters.
It’s at the end of 2x1 when we are introduced to the biggest change for Hopper: he has El. Someone to “feed, protect, teach.” And love. Turns out, love is a feeling. And with one feeling comes many feelings. She brought him out of that deep dark cave so now Hopper smiles. Laughs. Cries. Loses his temper. And with those feelings come all of his own insecurities, imperfections, fears. He confides in El at the end of the season about some of these fears: he believes himself to be a black hole. A black hole that took Sara. Almost took Will. And could take El too and he is terrified that will happen. He apologizes for some of his bad behavior. And we see El forgive him because she not only loves him, but recognizes that his anger and fear come from a different place than Brenner’s did. Hopper isn’t exhibiting controlling behavior to manipulate her. It’s because he loves her.
But here’s the thing. His apology and his and El’s recognition of his toxic behavior doesn’t make it okay, and it doesn’t magically make it disappear moving forward.
The 2 year gap between S2 and S3, I think, gave us a lot of time as a fandom to create the Hopper we wanted in our minds. A Hopper that moved past his trauma at the end of S2. A Hopper that didn’t lose his temper anymore because he apologized to El. A temper he can shut off now because the Gate is closed. A Hopper who would patiently wait around for years until Joyce was ready for him and had moved on from Bob. A Hopper who would be fine with sharing El with Mike because love conquers all. A Hopper viewed through rose-colored glasses.
But this isn’t realistic. Trauma can often be complex and in Hopper’s case, compartmentalized, making it easy to burst forth at any given moment and often inappropriately so. It can make you act badly, irrationally. It can be 2 steps forward and 3 steps back. And as an audience, I think a lot of us didn’t expect this to be a part of his storyline in S3. The expectation was that there would be continuous upward growth from his arc in S2 and when that didn’t happen, it was the subverted expectations that led to the disappointment in how his arc was handled in S3. But this disappointment doesn’t mean his arc didn’t make sense.
Assertion 3:
The Hopper we see at the end of S2 seems content. He has El. He has Joyce’s friendship. Things are at peace, the gate is closed. All is well. Or so we think. The Hopper we see at the beginning of S3 is miserable, lonely, sad, fat, and angry. It’s kind of jarring. But so are the circumstances at the beginning of S3. In S3, there is no longer an active threat. Everyone is starting to move on from the events of S1-S2. Joyce and El don’t need his protection anymore because there is no active threat. His hyper-vigilance leads him to almost shooting Betsy Payne’s dog, not shooting inter-dimensional demodogs. His overprotective/ controlling instincts are no longer useful they’re annoying, over the top, and just plain toxic.
In short, there are no longer externalities for Hopper to focus on, so all he has to focus on is himself. And he is not good at doing that, because that means focusing on his fears, insecurities, and imperfections. And the circumstances at the beginning of s3 give him plenty to personally angst about The two major ones:
1) El is growing up. This is normal, of course. Little girls become teenagers who become adults. But El isn’t a normal girl, and Hopper is not a normal Dad. El has superpowers, and she is not a kid anymore. She is a teenager with a boyfriend, she doesn’t need him the same way she used to, and Hopper cannot protect her the way he used to. Hopper lost his daughter when she was ~6 years old and he didn’t get to raise El for the first 12 years of her life. They’ve missed out on so much together.
And here’s the tragic thing: eventually, she will become an adult, and she will no longer need him at all, theoretically. Hopper isn’t her biological father. So what ties El to him, other than her need for him to protect her? In his mind, nothing. In his mind, her growing up means turning 18 and leaving him. Permanently. He can’t lose another daughter. That would break him. So what does he do? “Try to stop the change. Turn back the clock. Make things go back to the way things were.” When she was his little girl he was not in danger of losing her. And because he has trauma, because he is unable to handle his emotions, he takes it out on Mike and Mike/El’s relationship. He takes it out on their closeness. This symbol of her becoming an adult.
2) Joyce is moving away. Understandable, of course. Her youngest son was snatched by the Demogorgon and she had to venture into another dimension to bring him back from near death, he was possessed in S2, and her boyfriend was brutally murdered in front of her. I would want out of there, too. But doing so means leaving Hopper behind. Joyce, the one other constant in his life, who he can talk to about anything, who he relies on for parenting advice for El, who he can trust completely, who is always there for him, who he loves (who perhaps he’s always loved). And she’s leaving him behind.
So he thinks maybe, maybe, if he make her feel safe, if he gives her a reason to stay (him)...that she will. But she stands him up and she doesn’t just stand him up, it turns out it’s because the threat was back and he not only didn’t realize it but wasn’t able to keep them all safe from it, despite that being his sole driving force. He had one job. And he failed.
So, you see, Hopper’s character arc in S3 is about him, and not the externalities in S1-S2. He cannot hide behind the danger anymore. He can’t hide behind “feeding, protecting, teaching.” His flaws and imperfections are on full display and it’s more difficult for us, and Hopper, to sweep them under the rug. They’re amplified by the circumstances and his arc.
Assertion 4:
This is sort of an aside? But something I still wanted to address because I see it come up a lot. Namely, that Hopper and Joyce’s dynamic in S3 didn’t make sense, was out of character, and/or that Hopper’s behavior was abusive. I think that this particular point is important to review not only for Hopper but for Joyce as well, who is integral to Hopper’s character arc, and who I think the fandom often handles with kid gloves. Full disclosure, I AM a Jopper shipper, and have been since 1x1. That being said, I was not bothered by their dynamic in S3 because I think it was an important bridge in the structure of the show as as well as their relationship.
We still at this point in time don’t know what Jopper’s backstory is, although I suspect we are going to finally get that in S4 based on some of the spoilers/casting calls we’ve gotten over the course of the last few months. What we do know is at the beginning of S1 there is a familiarity between them (she calls him Hop), there are rumors around town that they fucked, and they seem to trust each other on a level that is not shared with other adult characters.
I hear a lot of people say S2 was “peak Jopper.” Their relationship is pretty stable. They are friends, he goes with her to Hawkins Lab, she relies on him for safety and protection, they are gentle with each other. It’s nice. But it’s also not very personal. Joyce is with Bob. Hopper doesn’t tell Joyce that he’s been hiding El. They obviously care about each other (and it seems like Hopper has some feelings there) but they hold each other at arm’s length.
This isn’t the case anymore in S3. In S3, there is no more arm’s length. They’re co-parenting. He shows up at Melvald’s at the beginning of 3x1 (reminiscent of Bob appearing at the beginning of 2x1) for advice, which it appears he’s been doing for months. They really have no one else but each other to confide in, which they clearly do a lot. There are feelings there now on both sides (I don’t subscribe to the theory that Joyce doesn’t reciprocate his feelings, but that is a discussion for another thread.)
These new (old?) feelings interrupted the S2 relationship dynamic. They’re not just comfortable friends anymore reminiscing about high school. Hopper wants to be close to her, but doesn’t quite know how and blunders through attempt after attempt and the more she rejects him the more upset he gets and the worse he handles it. Joyce is still struggling to move on from Bob and (imo) is confused about her feelings for Hopper because he is a little bit like Bob, a little bit like Lonnie (and yet nothing like either of them at the same time) and I don’t think she quite knows what to do with that except to fight her feelings and hold Hopper at arm’s length. The end result is bickering and Hopper losing his temper, because neither of them are able to really discuss their feelings for various reasons.
Most significantly, when they’re bickering and when Hopper loses his temper, Joyce is not afraid of Hopper. She is never afraid of him. She holds her own, she argues back, she stands her ground. When he refuses to believe her about the magnets, she steamrolls him into following her to the Lab. When he shouts at her, she shouts back. When he digs at her, she digs back. The problem with characterizing Hopper’s behavior in S3 as abusive is it fails to grasp the intent behind the bickering. They’re attempting to find a new normal, a new relationship dynamic. The way people refer to them throughout the season is heavily coded in language that describes a “team” a “couple.” Because despite the bickering they do respect each other and care about each other and in 3x8 they start to come to that realization together.
(My other issue with calling Hopper abusive is that it makes Joyce a victim. And Joyce isn’t a victim. She’s own her independent entity with needs and wants and desires. After 2 seasons of being “mom,” shoving her into another archetype reliant on another male character’s actions sorta sucks, doesn’t it? I really do not think this what the Duffers were going for here.)
Assertion 5:
Finally, I wanted to touch on the 3 biggest Hopper blunders in S3:
1) Constantly losing his temper. I italicized this further up because I wanted to emphasize the fact that this was not something new in S3. It’s always been there. In S1 the benzo’s were masking it. In S2, he was screaming at a 12 year old girl about how she cannot do anything right. It’s unacceptable behavior. It got worse in S3 because it is also a symptom of a hurting man who is losing control of everything around him. In S1-S2 attempting to control everything worked, in S3 it didn’t work anymore.
2) Breaking up Mike and El. After nearly a year of it just being El and Hopper, he has to share her with Mike. Combine this with El growing up and Mike and El’s co-dependent behavior, it’s a recipe for disaster. He tries and fails at a heart to heart and starts shouting and carrying on instead. Slipping into cop mode is easier than Dad mode. It was also the wrong way to handle it.
3) Trying to push Joyce into a date before she was ready. I already touched a bit on this above in #3, but his eagerness to make her stay leads him to try to push her into something she is not ready for. The end result is more misery for him when she fails to show up, and him being a jerk about it for the duration of the season (”You know he reminds me a little bit of a Russian Scott Clarke.”)
Here’s the thing though, he makes these blunders because he’s flawed. He’s always been flawed. And the combination of his prior trauma, the circumstances leading up to S3, the shift in relationship dynamics between him and Joyce, and the shift of the narrative from externalities to hhis internalities, make S3 very different than S1-S2. And it showed us that Hopper really is more of an anti-hero than a “good guy” and has been this entire time.
And if you wanted him to be the good guy because he had soft moments in S1-S2, S3 was just a set-up for a let-down because Hopper isn’t the good guy. He’s a jerk. And jerks don’t get the girl. Jerks don’t get happy endings. Jerks die. Unless they survive, and get a chance at redemption.
Being trapped in a frozen Russian gulag can kill you, or it can make you stronger. It can make you re-evaluate what you took for granted, how you handled situations, how you interact with those you love, what really matters. And for someone like Hopper, who loves deeply despite his issues, this is the opportunity to turn all of that around and truly start over. And if you are the Duffer brothers, you want to ying and yang that shit so the yang is that much more noticeable and emotional when it happens. This whole journey for Hopper is just as important as the outcome and as someone who loves his character, I want to be with him for that entire journey, not just the “good” parts.
So I guess, in sum, Hopper is a flawed jerk who loves El and Joyce. Who makes mistakes, but usually has good intentions. Who had a lot of bad shit happen to him. Who made a lot of missteps and mistakes, particularly in S3, but deserves empathy and a chance at redemption. Who should come back a changed man and get the girl and the happy ending. And I think S3 needs to be viewed through this vacuum in order to fully appreciate his character and the arc.
And if you read all the way through this, God Bless you.
