David Harbour knows you’ve been shipping his “Stranger Things” character, Jim Hopper, and Winona Ryder’s Joyce Byers since the show debuted in 2016. And now that Season 3 of the Duffer Brothers-created Netflix sci-fi series is about to launch next week, the actor promises TheWrap that “Jopper” fans will get what they’ve been writing fan fiction about for years.
“I know, it’s really sweet. Actually, it’s one of the things I so love is that ‘ship-of-Jopper’ thing,” Harbour told TheWrap in the above interview. “There’s all these fans that are like 12 and 13 and they’re very interested in a middle-aged couple getting together. [It’s] confusing to me, but also really sweet and beautiful.”
“There will be a lot of content for you this season,” he said. “Your thirst will be quenched, as the kids say.”
But Harbour warned us that even though you’ll see something brew between Jopper on “Stranger Things 3,” it might not be what you imagined in the end.
“There’s so much there this season and we really get to see them interact in a way that we haven’t,” he said. “There have been like scattered scenes of them and now we really get to go in. And I will say you get a lot of fun stuff and also you get some really unexpected stuff. And it’s not gonna be the way you think in your head but it’s beautiful and I think it’s profound what they have and it’s really a fun season to watch for them.”
You know who it might not be so fun for? Hopper and Eleven a.k.a. Jane Hopper (Millie Bobby Brown), who are struggling to deal with what it means for her to be a teenage girl.
“We start off the season where it’s, like, the monster — the gates [to the Upside Down] have been closed and so [Eleven and Hopper are] sort of living a pedestrian life,” he said. “Jane Hopper has been officially adopted, she’s a resident of Hawkins, Indiana. And so it’s a different type of fathering. He’s not so much hiding her, protecting her, [it’s] more like it’s his actual daughter. And that almost is more stressful for him because he doesn’t have like a clear purpose.”
“And he can’t pop pills or drink as much, so he’s eating a lot of chips and salsa, sitting on the couch watching television, and listening to her and Mike (played by Finn Wolfhard) kiss and it’s just driving him bonkers,” Harbour continued. “So I think, in a way, he starts off this season crazier than ever and more stressed out than ever. And that leads him to this relationship with Joyce where he’s looking for advice, he’s looking for another single parent.”
Harbour says “as he seeks counsel from her, these feelings unlock.”
“Things start to bubble in him, in both of them, I think, and it sets us off on a certain journey that’s very fun,” he said.
Watch the full interview above.
“Stranger Things 3” drops July 4 on Netflix.