Netflix's Stranger Things season 3 aired earlier on July 4, 2019. All the episodes are surprising but not as shocking as the last episode which features a major death.
In Stranger Things season 3 episode 8 title "Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt," we see how David Harbour's Jim Hopper and Winona Ryder's Joyce Byers are in the mall where the Russians are trying their best to open a portal to the Upside Down and use its elevated energy for destructive purposes. Our protagonists are trying to destroy the machine and stop the Russians from opening the portal. By doing that, they also had to make sure that the beast stays inside.
In the final scene, we see how Hopper is fighting a Russian, while Dustin is asking everyone to close the portal as soon as they can. It is Joyce who looks at Hopper and understands what he wants — to turn off the key and close the portal. Upon doing that, the huge machine explodes and just like the very first episode, we see a number of Russians getting vaporised in the said explosion.
In the end, we see how Eleven, Mike, Dustin, Steve, and others saved the day just like the previous two seasons but in the epilogue of the show, we see a picture of Chief Police Office, Jim Hopper, in the local newspaper. The headline reads as "Hero Dies in Fire." Well, it sure looks like that Hopper died but the post-credit scene takes us to Russia where two Russian guards bring a prisoner to a cage that already has a Demogorgon from season two.
Even David Harbour recently talked about the post-credit scene of Stranger Things season 3. During his conversion with ET Online, he considered the idea of having a post-credit scene "really cool."
"Season three has a mastery to it that I think is so beautiful because of that freedom, so I was like, they clearly won't lock themselves into anything and then they did put a post-credits scene in where they were like, 'We're going to commit because we're interested in this,' and that's interesting," he added.
From the very beginning of Stranger Things, fans had a very soft spot for Jim Hopper. The character's arch got a beautiful touch in season 3 and only future seasons will reveal whether he survived the final battle or not.
