If Storify were still a thing(?) Iād Storify ERWās entire feed from the last week or so. (Also note the dude who thinks that using a double negative is as bad as coercive control/emotional abuse, because of course he does.)
Anyway, Hopper is one of the antagonists of ST3 and he acts against his own interests, Joyceās interests, Hawkinsā interests, and ESPECIALLY Elās interests. The Duffersā choice to make ST3 a definitively horror show, instead of mixing up genres and making it fantasy/intrigue/coming-of-age/scifi/horror-lite but just STRAIGHT UP HORROR, recasts the tropes and roles of its characters, and they have to deal with that. One of the fundamental truths of the horror genre is that horror is a teenage girl. The monster is female sexuality. The monster is your daughter growing up and leaving you. The monster is sex.
Itās no coincidence that the season Stranger Things became straight-up horror is also the season that Hopper lost his mind about Eleven dating -- and that he died to close the gate (that, okay, is a giant glowing vagina) forever. And when he did, Eleven lost her powers and has to move away from her boyfriend. And none of this is even going to get INTO how Hopper treated Joyce all season, which was horrific and painful to watch. This is specifically about Hopper and Eleven from a specifically technical-writing horror genre perspective... thing
Mike, since season one, has promised El that she isnāt the monster. And she wasnāt: in season one, it was Nancyās sexuality that birthed the monster -- Nancy having sex that killed her best friend, in the parlance of horror. In ST2 Nancy drunkenly tells Steve that they killed Barb, and she is wrong inside the universe of the show -- the demogorgon did, ofc, not them -- but outside of the world of the show, in the meta world of the showās existence, sheās right. If Nancy and Steve were not having sex, Barb would be alive, because in horror, women having sex that isnāt rape is like a monster homing-beacon.
In season two, it was Joyceās sexuality that brought the monster back to her home, invited the monster to meet her children and drive them to school (and that is why Bob always had to die). Joyce CANāT ever just be happy in Stranger Things, because if she were, if she got to be happily in love and having a healthy relationship, the story would have to punish her, otherwise Stranger Things would have no story to tell. That is the conceit that horror demands, and for all that ST likes to pretend like it subverts all these ā80s tropes and stuff, it doesnāt, really. It blends them well, but the basic premise conceits are there, especially when it comes to women and girls. (Look at Max: last season, Max was the Final Girl, beating her monster with a bat when it came to Billy; this season, for some fucking reason, she gives a shit whether he lives or dies?? Come on.)
But this season was over the top. Hopper let himself die to āsave the worldā aka āclose his daughterās giant glowing vagina on the wall and end her powers, to keep her a child, to seal her off from the world of women.ā And so the last scenes we get of Eleven this season are in her fatherās voice, holding a teddy bear, being driven away from the boy who told her she wasnāt a monster.
Within the scope of How Horror Works, this IS protecting El, because to paraphrase Boy Meets World, the way to survive a horror story is to be the virgin, because virgins never die. But in the meta of looking at ST3 and its characters as mirrors, as though they are people and not objects/tropes/archetypes/vessels, itās horrifying. The amount of coercive control that Hopper feels entitled to over not just Eleven and Joyce and Mike but the whole TOWN (āIām the chief of police, I can do whatever I want,ā slurs the violent drunk angry white man with a machine gun, HORRIFYING) is... so villainous and scary and gross.
Like, obviously Billy was The Villain of S3, and thatās obvious, and jesus FUCKING christ I hope no one is excusing anything he did because goddammit karen it DOES NOT MATTER IF A WHITE BOY WAS A LITTLE BIT SAD, HE KILLED PEOPLE. But Hopper was A villain in ST3, too, and either it was intentional -- or the Duffers are not good at writing horror. And since they, like, seem to be good at writing horror, weāve gotta assume that itās intentional that Hopper, like every other adult man who has ever been in Elevenās life, has become a monster because he sees her as one.
As of where the plot stands, if he returns in ST4, itāll be as the Big Bad. And thatās as it should be, because he... is.
anyway, tl;dr, ERW is right, Hopper is abusive and scary in ST3