Stranger Things fans think Eddie Munson is coming back as a vampire (yes, really)

The long-haired metalhead (played to perfection by newcomer Joe Quinn) has fans so heartbroken by his death that a new theory is circulating: could he return as a vampire?

We’d say “spoiler alert”, but you’d have to be living under a rock to not have heard by now how surprise fan-favorite of Stranger Things season 4, Eddie Munson, met a tragic and much-protested demise in the volume 2 finale. Though he had only been introduced a few episodes earlier, Eddie (as so many one-off Stranger Things characters seem to do) wormed his way into our hearts with his unapologetic love for heavy metal, stirring up trouble, and D&D – which is what made it all the more brutal to see him get his insides ripped out by a pack of rabid debates in the upside down.

Though his death on the show seems pretty conclusive, the outpouring of love for Eddie Munson (and the performance by Joe Quinn) have fans theorizing ways that he could return to the show – and believe it or not, one of the most likely theories out there is that Eddie might come back as a vampire.

Yes, you read that right: ‘vampire’. Granted, it may seem completely out of the left field for a human character to return to the series as a blood-sucking creature of the night, but this ‘Eddie’s coming back as a vampire’ theory – courtesy of Reddit, but that’s gained steam across the internet – has a surprising amount of support behind it, and the further we go down the rabbit hole, the more we begin to think that Eddie-mourners could be on to something.

Admittedly, it’s not quite as simple as Eddie coming back as a true ‘vampire’ (a-la Dracula) – the vampire is just the shorthand explanation for how Eddie’s return could mirror the story of a Dungeons and Dragons character: Kas the Bloody Handed. In Dungeons and Dragons lore, Kas is bitten and killed by bats (just like Eddie) but following his death, he’s reincarnated at the hands of Vecna, and serves as his right hand in exchange for the new life.

Though initially subjugated to Vecna’s will, Kas eventually finds the strength to turn against his villainous master, and wielding a weapon called the “sword of Kas”, is able to vanquish Vecna once and for all. While it may sound a little too good to be true, t’s not as if Stranger Things doesn’t have a long history of pulling narrative beats straight out of D&D stories – both the Demogorgon and Vecna himself are characters that originated in dungeons and dragons.

As for why fans feel that Kas’s storyline could go to Eddie specifically – a Reddit user gave a full-on song analysis for Eddie’s epic upside-down metal concert – “Master of Puppets” – and how the song’s lyrics reflect Eddie’s death and resurrection as a servant of Vecna. It’s also worth noting that Eddie sports a number of bat tattoos – the animal most commonly associated with Kas as a Vampire – as well as a hand holding a puppet’s strings.

Another Reddit user pointed out that it’s rather specific and somewhat out of character for the show to make it explicitly clear that the Dustin & Co. neglected to go back for Eddie’s body, and that his corpse was left in the upside down – a strangely specific detail that’s either intended a) to show how flaky of friends they are or b) that Eddie’s body is currently unaccounted for, and could absolutely have fallen into the clutches of the now even more powerful Vecna.

With season four ending on a dark note, Vecna seemingly more powerful than ever, and Eddie had met a horrifically gruesome end (like Chrissy before him), it shouldn’t come as a surprise that fans are latching on to any possible way such a beloved character could make a return. As far-flung as fan theories can be sometimes, Stranger Things has made it clear that there’s virtually no surprise or twist they’re not willing to explore – so while Eddie may seem dearly departed, for now, there’s no telling whether or not we could see a fang-sporting metalhead pop up next season.