The Byers left Hawkins, Indiana behind after three seasons of Stranger Things, but will the family be back in season 4 and why did they go? Beginning back in 2016, the Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things has grown from a cult hit to a major pop culture phenomenon. Beginning as a relatively grounded small-town mystery that followed a sheriff searching for a lost child, while the kid’s friends come across a mysterious girl with psychic powers; oh, and there was a monster and an alternate dimension too.
Stranger Things was a fusion of sci-fi tropes, horror elements, and 80s coming-of-age nostalgia unlike anything else on TV at that time. The series became a massive success for streaming service Netflix thanks to its impressive cast, intriguing overarching mystery, and chilling villains. All good things must come to an end, and while the season 3 finale of Stranger Things wasn’t as much of a closing chapter as it seemed, the episode did see major players the Byers family and Eleven uproot and leave the small-town setting of the show.
Hopper may not actually be dead, but Joyce, Jonathan, Will, and his adopted daughter Eleven are very much out of Hawkins, leaving behind a crestfallen Mike - and presumably a pretty upset Dustin, Lucas, and Max, too. It was a sad sight to see the Byers leave Hawkins behind at the end of Stranger Things season 3, but it’s also the only decision that makes sense in practical, character, and story terms. Whether or not the family end up coming back in the course of season 4’s action is another question.
While leaving Hawkins may have been the right call for the Byers clan, there’s a reasonable case to be made against the decision that Winona Ryder’s Joyce made for her family. After all, the choice to leave Hawkins indirectly broke up Eleven and Mike in addition to Jonathan and Nancy by proxy, a difficult decision the younger Byers should have had a say in. Both Eleven and Jonathan have lived through a lot of trauma and these early relationships were sources of stability in their chaotic lives, so severing those ties wasn’t something to be decided lightly.
Meanwhile, for Will Byers, while Hawkins is home to many, many traumas for himself and his family, it’s also home to all of his friends too. It also had a familiar school he was just getting reintegrated into after not one, but two long absences due to extra-dimensional shenanigans. With that in mind, it’s fair to suggest uprooting Jonathan, Will, and Eleven could cause even more difficulty for the kids who have already been through plenty in their young lives.
That said, traumatic memories aren’t the only thing leading the Byers clan to flee Hawkins. In practical terms, the town is still home to Hawkins lab, the villainous facility that experimented on El and Will and caused most of their traumatic memories in the first place. While the Starcourt Mall may be gone - along with its secret Soviet base and Billy’s Mind Flaying monster form - Hawkins Lab is operational to some extent and still able to track down Joyce, Will, and Eleven with ease if they choose to remain close by.
All this is without even mentioning the Gate contained in Hawkins, an eldritch location between dimensions that (so far as Joyce knows, at least) led directly to Hopper and Bob Newry’s deaths. Joyce’s survival instinct is more than justified in booking it out of Hawkins ASAP, something her kids may struggle to accept but which is easy to understand. Jonathan and Eleven can’t have their respective teen romances from beyond the grave, after all. And on the subject of Stranger Things romances, it’s worth remembering that outside of safety, Joyce may also want to leave behind the site of her last two love interests’ (apparent) gruesome deaths for the sake of her own emotional stability.
With the entire staff of the local newspaper reduced to part of Billy’s blob monster, Jonathan no longer has any income, and a small American town in the middle of the 1980s isn’t a location brimming with high-income opportunities for a high school graduate. Meanwhile, working-class single mother Joyce can’t hope to support her offspring - especially with a new mouth to feed in the form of El - particularly when the General Store employing her is now shuttered. It was impractical and possibly even impossible for the Byers to afford life in Hawkins, giving them a concrete reason to get out of dodge even without any of the Stephen King-inspired monsters of Stranger Things being taken into account.
With such good reason behind their departure, it is admittedly tough to tell whether Hawkins will be home to the Byers family for much of Stranger Things season 4’s action. On the one hand, Stranger Things has always focused on the town and the show’s small-town mystery atmosphere is a significant part of its enduring appeal, as proven by the mixed reaction to Eleven’s season 2 Chicago excursion. That said, Hopper is already in Siberia, so it is clear that season 4’s settings won’t be as limited as earlier installments. If the show wants to do justice to the character, it will be more than one or two episodes before he is back home and reunited with Joyce, Eleven, and co.
In addition to this shifting scope, it’s hard to guess how sprawling the settings of Stranger Things season 4 will end up being. Only time will tell whether the Byers will need to return to set the plot in motion. However, the cast’s impressive chemistry is a huge part of Stranger Things’ enduring appeal with viewers. As such, the odds are good that to keep this alive via more than phone calls between characters, the central family will return to their hometown in short order come the events of season 4.
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