Enzo From Stranger Things 4 Is A *Very* Familiar Face For GOT Fans
A man plays many characters.
Stranger Things 4 kicks off in three different directions in the premiere. In Hawkins, the murder of a cheerleader sets off a witch hunt, while in California, the arrival of Mike Wheeler reveals just how bad life is for Eleven in her new high school. But for Joyce, the adventure begins when she receives a package from “Enzo” from the USSR. But Enzo, aka Dmitri, turns out to be very different than what she imagined in Stranger Things 4.
Warning: Spoilers for Stranger Things 4, Vol. 1 follow. First, Enzo isn’t the name of the person who sent the package. It’s a code for Joyce to recognize — Enzo was the restaurant name where she and Hopper spent their last meal together at the end of Stranger Things 3. The person who sent the package is Dmitri Antonov, one of Hopper’s prison guards. He’s not really trying to help Hopper escape; he barely cares about the guy other than his American status. Believing that all Americans are wealthy beyond measure, Dmitri plans to bribe Hopper’s family to free him, lining his pockets and those of his middleman, Yuri.
Whether this storyline (or Joyce and Murray’s decision to run away to Alaska to meet Yuri without alerting the American authorities) works for you depends on how much of a “Jopper” shipper you are. But for Game of Thrones fans, it’s worth tuning in to the actual prison scenes, since Antonov is played by GOT fan-favorite Tom Wlaschiha.
The German-born Wlaschiha has been a professional actor since the mid-1990s. His first significant English language role was in 2008’s remake of Brideshead Revisited, in which he starred alongside Ben Whishaw and Matthew Goode. He also appeared in the Doctor Who spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures, the ITV’s long-running Poirot, and Borgia before finally becoming a household face as the Faceless Man, Jaqen H’ghar, in Game of Thrones. Wlaschiha’s time morphing out of various small-time characters as part of his Jaqen H’ghar assassin guise makes him the perfect actor for a character like Dmitri, who undergoes a complete transformation from bad guy to Hopper’s BFF over the season.
Since Game of Thrones, Wlaschiha has gone on to appear in Prime Video’s Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and the remake of Das Boot. His next project will be the Peacock thriller Last Light, an adaptation of Alex Scarrow’s bestselling apocalyptic novel.
Stranger Things 1 through 3 and Stranger Things 4, Vol. 1 are streaming on Netflix. Vol. 2 arrives on July 1, 2022.
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