If you made it through the finale of Stranger Things’ third season without shedding a tear, we can’t possibly trust you. But could all of the waterworks be totally unnecessary anyway? One of the beloved Netflix show’s main characters was seemingly killed off, but there are a few subtle clues that might hint at a future comeback. SPOILER ALERT: Major season 3 spoilers ahead, stop reading if you haven’t finished your binge yet. 

The tragic moment comes in the last episode after Joyce Byers, Jim Hopper, and Murray Bauman snuck into the Russians’ secret underground lair to forcibly close the rift that had been opened once again to the Upside-Down. The stakes are high: their kids were simultaneously being attacked by the massive, disgusting Mind Flayer. So when Hopper goes out to fight one of the Russian mercenaries beside the machine that’s about to be blown up, Joyce has no choice but to obliterate the machine — and Hopper along with it.

At first, it seems like a pretty cut and dry death; Hopper’s seemingly vaporized, nowhere to be seen after the explosion. All of the other people in the room are also killed, Joyce and Eleven mourn the loss and move away together, along with Will and Jonathan. Despite all of that, many fans believe Hop is still alive, and they have pretty good reasons.

First of all, there’s no body. “Wait now I’m 100% convinced that Hopper is still alive bc the number ONE rule in films is that if we don’t see a dead body then they’re not really dead,” tweeted one fan. And that’s often the case. Not only do we not see Hopper’s body, but a scene from episode 1 of the new season, where many Russian workers were killed in a similar explosion, insinuates that his body should have been badly burned but not entirely vaporized. The fact that we don’t see it (or at least a pile of clothes and gore), and that Joyce was looking away when she turned the keys to blow up the machine, definitely leaves room for a last-minute escape.

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Even more convincing evidence can be found in the scene after the credits. We catch a glimpse of a Russian prison, where a man is taken out of a cell and fed to a Demogorgon. But before choosing that particular prisoner as the snack, one guard goes to open another door and the second guard says “not the American.” “The Americans” is how the Russians referred to Murray, Hopper, and Joyce throughout the season, so it’s possible he’s somehow ended up in Russia as a prisoner after surviving the blast.

Eleven’s sudden lack of power also lends itself to the “Hopper’s still alive” theory. As fans know, Elle has the ability to see into people’s minds to locate them, but by the end of the season she had exhausted all of her powers and was unable to do even something as simple as moving a teddy bear. If she had her regular powers, surely she would attempt to reach out to Hopper’s mind despite Joyce saying he’s dead, so it seems like her inability to do so was intended to make her mourning more believable.

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Speaking of Eleven’s reaction, this quote from Millie Bobby Brown about her performance after finding a letter from her adoptive father speaks volumes. “They had prerecorded David [Harbour] and they played it out loud,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “I didn’t want to read that speech. I didn’t want to hear about it. I didn’t want to rehearse it. I just immediately wanted to put a camera on me and find the way I react and the way I reacted was pure devastation and sadness, and a distraught child that just lost her father or so she thinks.” Ahem … or so she thinks? We see you, Millie.

But it doesn’t end there. Some very clever fans noticed a tiny detail that seems to further foreshadow a fake death. “The song ‘Heros’ is played when Will is found ‘dead’ in season 1. The exact same song is played as Hopper ‘dies.’ Will turned out not to be dead. Maybe this is foreshadowing that the same could be for Hopper. Just saying.” That’s some serious investigative work, folks. We can only hope it’s true, but it sounds like we’ll just have to wait for season 4!

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