Eddie From Stranger Things 4 Looks So Different IRL
Fun fact: He played a Stark on Game of Thrones.
Stranger Things has always been a TV show that centers around the 1980s experience of being a nerd, specifically a 1980s-era Dungeons and Dragons-playing nerd. Although the series began with Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and Will as the game-playing foursome of kids, transitioning to high school means they had to broaden their game circle. In Season 4, that means introducing high school senior and Dungeon Master, Eddie Munson. And if the person playing Eddie in Stranger Things 4 looks familiar, it’s because actor Joseph Quinn has been in many TV series.
Warning: Spoilers for Stranger Things 4 follow. Bringing in a new Dungeon Master who lords it over young’uns Dustin, Mike, and Lucas is an instant shakeup to the group dynamic for two reasons. The first is because Lucas isn’t just in the nerd squad anymore. He also made the basketball team and had to divide his loyalties between two different high school cliques. The second is that, in the late 1980s, D&D culture had thoroughly overlapped with a second subset of high schoolers: metalheads.
Eddie is the quintessential metalhead DM, with MTV-inspired hair-band styling and a loud attitude to match. (He’s also failed to graduate twice so far, but that’s another story.) Unfortunately, when he accidentally witnessed the demise of Vecna’s first victim, he became the prime suspect and Public Enemy No. 1. Although the town’s “demon” hysteria might seem over the top, kids into D&D and heavy metal music were accused of very similar things in the 1980s, causing a media panic.
Although Eddie looks like he stepped out of an MTV video, the actor who plays him, Joseph Quinn, actually looks way different in real life.
Quinn’s most mainstream role in the U.S. was playing Koner, part of the Stark brigade, in Game of Thrones Season 7. But the British actor has also turned up in several BBC series. From Arthur Havisham in Dickensian to Enjolras in Les Misérables (in which he co-starred with Emily In Paris’ Lily Collins), PBS viewers know him well.
He’s also turned up on HBO outside of Game of Thrones, in Helen Mirren’s Catherine the Great as Tsarevich Pavel, and the mystery series Strike as Billy Knight. None of those roles have quite the mullet he’s rocking as Eddie, but considering all but Strike are period pieces, he’s quite used to sporting wigs that reflect the appropriately trendy hairstyle.
Hopefully, Eddie will survive to rock his mullet again in Season 5.
