The following contains minor spoilers for Stranger Things Season 4, Volume 2, now on Netflix.
When fans fell hard for Joseph Quinn's quirky, metal-loving Dungeon Master Eddie in Stranger Things Season 4, many expected that the show would leave them heartbroken. Eddie's weird but lovable addition to the group of Hawkins kids taking on the Upside Down was a welcome bit of levity that viewers latched onto. At a roundtable attended by CBR, Quinn recently spoke about the joys of playing Eddie and what it was like, emotionally and physically, to film those final two episodes in Volume 2.
CBR asked Quinn what it was like to see the audience's reaction to his character and portrayal after Volume 1 was released. "Oh, it was very gratifying, really," Quinn responded. "I think there's a lot of devotion towards the show, from the fans, and the characters that inhabit it. I think I was a little daunted joining and kind of worried that when you're a new cog in the machine, you don't want to be the thing that kind of brings it to its knees and ruins everything. So I was very relieved that people were so gracious and welcoming to Eddie. It's a lovely feeling."
Given how attached viewers had become to Eddie, Coming Soon asked what it was like for Quinn to join a show with such an impact. "It feels kind of insane," Quinn replied. "Something comes out maybe like once or twice in a generation that kind of touches people's hearts in a way that this show does. It's multi-generational, and the themes within it seem to transcend so many cultures, which is phenomenal. To be a part of that happens once in an actor's career if you're unfathomably lucky, and I feel that. To have had such a brilliantly written and empathetically written character with such a strong beginning, middle, and end, it's a little bit of a lottery ticket. So yeah, I'm gonna sound like a bit of a broken record during this roundtable, but I feel very lucky."
Part of that empathetic story arc was developing a strong bond with other characters, especially Gaten Matarazzo's Dustin. When Looper asked about the process of building that relationship, Quinn described that "it's very easy when you actually quite like the person playing the character. I think you kind of see it in Joe Keery and Dustin's, Gaten's, relationship -- they're both just very funny, personable, quick, and brilliant people, so they have this kind of rapport. By no means am I saying that about myself, but I think it's very easy when you come into a situation, and you're working with someone, and they are just kind of like that, that you're able to bounce stuff off each other. He's a remarkable young man, and he's just really great to be around. So I certainly didn't have to force any kind of feelings of adoration towards him, but I would by no means speak for him. He might have had to work quite hard."
Quinn was also asked by Bloody Disgusting what it was like to embody his light-hearted, free-spirited Eddie knowing the character's ultimate fate. "Gaten and I were talking about the scenes that lead up to his demise," Quinn explained. "We really wanted to just explore this kind of fraternal love between them and how physically they could get excited about stuff and how youthful they could feel in order to really dig the knife in. Of course, it's very helpful to know everything. You want to know everything just so you can bend it in certain ways and get payoffs in different at different moments."
CBR asked Quinn about filming the action scenes in the Upside Down, fending off demobats for the fate of the world. "Demobats are notoriously difficult to work with," he joked. "No, actually, there was nothing there. So you just feel like a bit of an idiot, really, just kind of attacking thin air. Then there was lying down and kind of vibrating and pretending that you're getting eaten alive. But it's great fun, you know. It's a silly day at work. It was good fun."
Even Eddie couldn't fend the demobats off forever. When Coming Soon asked about filming the death sequence and sharing his final moments with Dustin, Quinn responded that "it was lovely. He's a great person to work with. Logistically, it was quite a weird scene to film. We shot it at the end of the very grueling night sequence where we started that 6 pm or 8 pm and then finished at 6 [am]. So it was a proper nocturnal night shoot. We had done all of that kind of bat fights stuff, and then I was in prosthetic makeup surgery, being worked on by four or five brilliant makeup artists, and then wheeled out and chucked on the floor. We managed to get my coverage before the sun came up. Then literally months later, we shot Gaten's coverage. So it's quite weird knowing that that scene wasn't quite done. We were both very relieved to get that monkey off our back, really. It was such a delight doing that with him because he's so great."
Dealing with the fear of the Upside Down and persecution by deranged and misguided teens was an interesting juxtaposition for the usually exuberant Eddie. When Looper asked about how he balanced those aspects of his character's personality, Quinn described how "in moments of pressure and in difficult moments in our life, I think we always try to kind of make light of things." Ultimately, however, he credits the writing with finding the complexity in his character. "I think they wrote for him so brilliantly," Quinn explained, "that you just had to turn up and do [directors Matt and Ross] Duffers' work, really. It was great being able to bounce ideas off the other cast members to try and get those moments of levity within the high-stakes world of trying to defeat the Lizard Man."
Finally, Quinn addressed everyone's favorite Stranger Things Season 4 question when Bloody Disgusting asked him what Eddie's song would be if he had been targeted by Vecna. Unsurprising given his performance in Volume 2, Quinn suggested that "it's got to be 'Master of Puppets,' right? Yeah, I think it's got to be that one."
Catch Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 2, streaming now on Netflix.