#they did eddie munson dirty

[iworkforthescoops]

ST4 Vol2 SPOILERS

Listen, I LOVE Steve (he IS my favourite ST character after all), but honestly I’d rather they had killed Steve this season, because the way Eddie died? FUCK THAT.

This just shows that the whole purpose of Eddie‘s character was to be a filler death because the Duffer brothers are unwilling to kill one of their main characters. We saw it happen with Bob and Alexei and now with Eddie and we’ll see it again when in season 5 they’re going to introduce a loveable new character whose sole purpose is to be there as a cheap cop-out death, because god forbid that one of the main characters actually dies.

And the way that apparently Dustin and Eddie‘s uncle are the only ones who’re actually mourning him? They way that they just left Eddie‘s body in the upside down? The way Eddie died to protect a whole town that was out to kill him? Fuck that.

And this is just one of my many issues with volume 2 (looking at the whole mess that was Will‘s feelings for Mike being used to further the Mileven relationship).

God, I’m bitter. I need a fix-it fic. Or possibly a whole lot of them.

[that-lame-ghoul9000]

Eddie would have passed out had he seen this. He'd be on the ground

And I'd be giving him mouth to mouth to revive him.

[itookthetardis2liveaid]

Eddie Munson would have loved The Princess Bride.

But this is the thing that bugs me: Eddie died in 1986. And what year did The Princess Bride come out? 1987. The year after.

RIP Eddie, you would have loved The Princess Bride.

[ah-jiing]

I love this man yanno?

[autistic-stedebonnet]

thinking about elementary school teacher steve and his rockstar husband eddie who shows up to the school dressed like he’s on his way to a metal concert to bring steve his lunch he forgot at home

[yakool-foolio]

(Stranger Things season 4 and Rain Code spoilers ahead, if that matters to anyone)

Okay, this is a very 'me being me with my silly lil interests' moment, but I feel like Yakou and Eddie from Stranger Things and how their deaths affect the larger scale of their respective arcs are a prime example of how to and how not to do a 'heroic sacrifice.' The main comparison in these two characters' deaths is how their acts of defiance helped protect the city they love, despite the city directly opposing them.

Let's start off with the heroic sacrifice that truly means something by talking about Yakou! Long story short: Yakou loves Kanai Ward, living there for all his life, but once Amaterasu's peacekeepers rose to power, the city turned against him for his detective work. Everyone in the city, including his own former colleagues, deemed his job useless since the peacekeepers could simply handle everything instead of relying on detectives. Yakou even lost his wife because they were motivated to expose Amaterasu's cruelty and leaks, which would ultimately lead to her death. He spent years trying to bring her killer(s) to justice but never could because the peacekeepers did everything in their power to keep him out of it. He's misrepresented across the city as a pest that needs to be eliminated. But most importantly, in terms of how his character is written, he's never shunned by the narrative for his need to stay far away from Amaterasu in fear of what they'll do to him if he sticks his nose in their business as a detective. Him being cowardly was never something that was 'corrected' as a part of his arc.

Yakou continues to care for the city despite everything he's been through. And he shows how he cares by knocking out several birds with one stone by murdering the vile Huesca and dying to the gas in order to reach him. And his sacrifice doesn't go ignored by the public. With the death of Huesca and the reveal of Yomi leaking homunculus info to the outside, changes are made. Yomi is arrested and a new sense of order is brought to the peacekeepers, becoming a much safer place for the NDA detectives and any future detectives in Kanai Ward. Yakou's sacrifice made the city that hated him change all for the better. And with the prototype pill in his possession, he has the ability to make even more change and help save so many lives and not just his own! The characters and the story itself openly acknowledges his selfless deeds and repay him in kind.

Now let's talk about Eddie. He struggles similarly to Yakou in that the town he loves hates him due to something entirely out of his control. He's outcasted by society for leading a group of other outsiders or 'freaks,' and the citizens rally against him when he's believed to be the murderer of a girl he was friendly with. Eddie then goes into hiding to escape the police hunting for him, and teams up with the main group to bring an end to the real cause of the deaths around Hawkins. He clearly wants to prove the citizens wrong about himself and show that he cares about the town by working to help take down Vecna. And in order to do so, he makes himself a distraction and lures the hostile demobats to him, giving the group enough time to defeat Vecna and saving his friend Dustin from the swarm's attacks. In doing so, he's killed by the bats, sacrificing himself for the greater good of his friends and Hawkins as a whole.

But this is where Eddie's sacrifice really starts to fall apart. Only Dustin is there to see Eddie die and console Eddie's uncle about it. Besides Dustin, no one else seems to be impacted by it, not the other outcasts he took under his wing or the citizens who continue to demonize him. His death is an afterthought to everybody but two people, one friend and one family member. He took part in saving the town he loved in hopes it could redeem himself in their eyes to show he wasn't the horrible person everyone else thought he was. But nobody was there to see it, so his sacrifice ultimately meant nothing to the scope of his arc and the future of the town, as Vecna is still out there. The story tries to act like his sacrifice meant more than the characters act like it does. His sacrifice was far from pointless, but the ignorance of the other characters after it was all said and done sure did make it feel like it was. And once again, Stranger Things falls into their own trope of killing off their new fan-favorite character each season, but this time it feels like an even bigger stab in the gut. Eddie's heroism is but a footnote in the epilogue of the season that promised him greatness. I feel like Eddie's sacrifice could've meant a whole lot more if the other characters worked to disprove the citizens' perspective on Eddie, pushing toward giving him the respect he deserved and made his story be heard. It's unsure whether anything like that will happen in season 5, but with how season 4 decided to leave itself on, it's not looking promising. Eddie will continue to be not just be disrespected by the characters, but by the writers as well.

I highly suggest reading the article "This Stranger Things 4 Death Isn't Noble Nor Necessary" because it goes even deeper into why Eddie being viewed as cowardly by the writing is a huge disservice to what his character represents. It's a good read, and it made me think a lot about Yakou's own cowardice and how it's not treated as an inherently bad thing that needed to be 'fixed' by the writers.

[multiverse-mxdness]

if he’s your favorite character

i’m automatically assuming you’re hot

[wayytooobsessedd]

“Why are you so upset about it? They weren’t even a main character.”

The character:

[frecklesandpoverty]

I haven’t been on tumblr in like two years, and you know what brought me back?

Eddie Munson and Chrissy Cunningham

[iworkforthescoops]

They’re a 10 but they liked the second volume of Stranger Things 4

[that-lame-ghoul9000]

This was just released after Vol 2. (And his scene is mentioned in this)

Maybe it's wishful thinking

But guys

EDDIE ISNT ON THE LIST?!

Guys. GUYS!

[fangirlandtheories]

So guess fucking what....

[coldgpa]

Eddie didnt even die a hero's death. He died doing something that's didnt even effect the grand scheme of the fight whatsoever. His death was literally pointless

[mattmaesonnatural]

he literally learned to play the hardest part in Master of puppets.

he went out and bought a guitar and spent months learning it.

[the-sky-the-stars-the-sea]

Where’s my scene in the finale where everyone grieves for Eddie???

Where’s my scene where Dustin catches up with Steve and Nancy and Robin and Steve can see that something is wrong and is like “Where’s Eddie?” and, while still very distraught, Dustin tells him what happened, and Steve’s face is full of shock and disbelief and grief, and Robin comforts him because she Knows, and Steve and Robin and Nancy cry together over their friend, and Dustin still stands there, feeling completely numb?

Where’s my scene where they come back and tell Lucas and Mike and the others about what happened to Eddie, and Dustin and Mike explain to Will who Eddie was?

Where’s my scene where everyone wears Hellfire Club t-shirts in memory of Eddie, and wears them defiantly, no matter what everyone else in town thinks of him?

Where’s my scene where they all vow to always remember Eddie?

These are just some things that I wish we had gotten from the finale.

[5688xoxo]

Can we all just agree that vol. 2 was shit?