eddie munson was completely plot irrelevant and somehow that makes it so much worse.
remove eddie munson from stranger things 4. go ahead. do it. what changes?
i'll wait.
NOTHING. absolutely nothing. the upside down is still there. vecna still does his little villain monologue. max still almost dies. eleven still saves the day. hawkins still falls apart. THE PLOT DOES NOT MOVE DIFFERENTLY.
eddie munson existed to be hot and play guitar and die in the most dramatic way possible and the AUDACITY of that working so well on all of us
joseph quinn carried that character on his back through sheer charisma and face genetics alone. the writers handed him narrative decoration and he turned it into a whole ass moment. the metallica scene? ICONIC. for what? for vibes. purely for vibes.
and the death?? the death was so pointless it looped back around to being insulting. he died in the upside down fighting demobats while the actual plot was happening somewhere else. he died buying time for a plan that would have worked anyway. he died and hawkins didn't even know he's innocent.
the only person whose story actually changed because of eddie munson was dustin. DUSTIN. one character. that's the entire narrative footprint of this man.
and yet here we all are. still not over it. because the vibes were IMMACULATE and he came and served facecard and left like wind and took a piece of us with him
the duffer brothers really said here's a man with zero plot utility and the most compelling presence in the room. good luck grieving.
i'm totally normal about this...mostly
I also love how the duffers didn't even really flesh out the character and let Joe do that himself, and he created somebody so relatable, endearing, and real, that he instantly captured our hearts. Doesn't hurt that he's a legit snack too.
