David Harbour, who is currently busy promoting Black Widow, recently appeared on the YouTube series, Hot Ones, where he said some not-so-nice things about a cast member. While eating spicy chicken wings, Harbour revealed to host Sean Evans that he hated the Byers family dog (named Chester on the show) in season one of Stranger Things so much that he requested the showrunners to kill it offscreen. The reason being that the dog was not well trained and was a nuisance on the set. Here is what David Harbour had to say,
"I hated that f*cking dog so bad. Take after take it would wander off or do something. And then I remember the trainer on the sidelines going, 'Come on! We got to make our money!' Yeah, I walked up to them and I was like, 'You know, the Byers should probably have that dog put to sleep next season.' We never talk about it the whole rest of the show... We should find it in the Upside Down, though, in one of these future seasons."
This is not the first time David Harbour has expressed his dislike for the pooch. Back in 2016, in an interview with Howard Stern, Harbour called the dog the worst actor that he's ever worked with. Harbour, who plays Sheriff Jim Hopper in Stranger Things, shared many scenes with Winona Ryder's Joyce Byers. During the scenes filmed in the Byers home, he got annoyed at the dog's uncooperativeness on several counts. He even stormed off the set one time.
Consequently, Chester, who was last seen in the season one finale, was nowhere to be found in the second season. As Harbour said, Chester is never even mentioned again in the show. Noah Schnapp, in a 2018 spoiler-filled interview, let it slip that there was a gravestone marked for Chester in season 3, which for some reason did not show up in the final cut. It looks like Chester did pass away offscreen after the events of Stranger Things season 1. Although, a send-off involving Chester going against a Demogorgon or a Demodog would have been better, or maybe he could have gone out like Dustin's cat Mews. Perhaps the showrunners thought that two pets' deaths would be too much for a family-friendly show.
Harbour recently starred in Steven Soderbergh's star-studded No Sudden Move and will be back for season 4 of Stranger Things. However, his character seemingly died in the season 3 finale trying to close the gate to the Upside Down, it has been confirmed that Hopper is alive and imprisoned in a Russian gulag. Harbour recently compared his character's return to Gandalf's resurrection in The Lord of the Rings. Hopper's return, combined with the child actors all grown up now, the show will have a lot of explaining to do when it returns. Stranger Things season 4 doesn't have a release date as of now but is expected to release sometime next year. The show began filming in February 2020 before the shooting was suspended in March due to COVID-19. Picking up again in October, the show has been filming continuously and is on track to finish this August for a likely spring or summer 2022 release. Till then, stay tuned for more updates. This news comes to us from The Hollywood Reporter.